I’ve been contemplating whether I should share my feelings about the tragic death and loss of Jason Arday.
I am deeply sad. I didn’t know Jason personally, but his reach, his work and his energy felt so close. Everything I hear about him is goodness, kindness and a level of intellect that wasn’t just reserved for academia and education, but one that was able to make people smile, think critically, feel strong, resilient and warm. Every single person I know who knew him talks about his fun-loving personality, his forgiving nature and, of course, his love of football.
On the other hand, I feel angry, ashamed, frustrated and, if I’m honest, scared.
I feel angry and frustrated because how can I, like so many educators, continue to champion academia, the pursuit of higher education, research, teaching, equity in education, widening participation and access, particularly at a time when we are celebrating A level and GCSE results, in the same week as his tragic death? The irony and the parallel worlds of education are not lost on me. We celebrate the transformative power of education whilst, at the same time, being forced to confront some deeply uncomfortable questions about what happens within the very systems we champion.
I am ashamed because I, like many educators, feel a sense of responsibility. Why didn’t we speak up and speak out more? We are all responsible for social justice, fairness and equality. I’ve spent a few days processing that and I think my answer is that I believed, and believe, Jason.
I saw the media scrutiny and thought it was absolutely out of order, but I genuinely believed it would stop. I couldn’t even keep up with the number of articles. I couldn’t bring myself to engage with the people saying “yes, but”, “he said, she said” and all of the other BS because I don’t believe it. I believe him. I believe his work. And I won’t let anyone shake that truth. To paraphrase a recent Guardian article, along with many other comment pieces: there is a difference between legitimate critique and scrutiny, and what happens when scrutiny becomes a public spectacle, when someone’s entire character, credibility and life are put under the microscope, and when that scrutiny becomes entangled with wider narratives about race, racism, diversity and who does and does not belong in elite institutions. I am ashamed because perhaps we should have said more and done more to combat the latter.
But I also want to be careful about how I use the word responsibility, because I am seeing a lot of posts saying that silence is complicity and that silence is no longer an option. Much of this is coming from Global Majority educators who did speak out. Who have been speaking out. Who have been challenging racism and inequity for years.
So my question to allies, particularly white allies, sponsors and mentors is: Whose silence? As far as I can see, it is predominantly Black and brown people using and acting upon this responsibility and, at the same time, risking their work, their livelihoods, their health and, in some cases, their lives to speak up and speak out.
It’s all well and good for allies to say, “we support you”, but what are you actually doing?
Justice and equity are not just my responsibility. They are not the sole responsibility of your Race Equality Network. They are not the responsibility of your EDI team. They are not something that can be dealt with through an EDI module, a safe space or a “we’re here to talk” message.
Sometimes allyship means quelling the noise. It means fighting back and telling people to pipe down and unlearn their racism. It means actively challenging the narrative when someone’s credibility is being deliberately undermined because they have spoken about racism. It means holding people accountable. It means challenging and stopping racist behaviour when you see it. It means LISTENING and ensuring that your Black and Global Majority staff and students don’t have to navigate the exhaustion of racism before something is done about it. It means ensuring they know that racism will be dealt with fairly and swiftly.
Perhaps most importantly, it means doing some of this work without waiting for the person experiencing racism to ask you to.
I am scared too. Working in the field of education and equity, championing belonging and inclusion and trying to disrupt systemic and structural racism puts me in a very vulnerable position. My grandparents would always say, “just keep your head down, there’s no winning.” What they meant was that you “win” if you accept your place as determined by whiteness. You keep your head down. You don’t make too much noise. You don’t challenge too much. You don’t put yourself in a position where people can decide that you are difficult, angry, emotional, aggressive or simply too much. I, like many others, refuse to do that.
I know I have so many white friends and colleagues who “get it”, who will be by my side and who genuinely care, I have to be honest and say that sometimes it doesn’t feel like enough. I’m not sure it ever will be.
Solidarity cannot just mean standing beside someone while they do all the difficult work themselves - including bearing the exhaustion and consequences of discrimination. It has to mean using your own position, power and privilege to change the conditions that made that work necessary in the first place.
Paul Miller’s work on structural racism is important here because it reminds us that racism cannot be understood simply as individual acts or individual attitudes. It is embedded within systems, structures, policies and processes, and those systems can reproduce unequal experiences and outcomes even when the individuals operating within them do not necessarily see themselves as racist.
Kimberlé Crenshaw’s work on intersectionality reminds us that these systems of power do not operate independently. Race intersects with gender, class, disability and other forms of marginalisation, creating experiences that cannot always be understood by looking at one identity or one form of discrimination in isolation. Intersectionality is, fundamentally, a ‘lens’ for seeing where and when different forms of power collide, interlock and intersect.
This isn’t just about education. This is societal. It is economic. It is intrinsically embedded into our shared systems of communication, the media and as a result, the narratives we create about people. It is about who gets believed, who gets questioned, who is afforded the benefit of the doubt and who is expected to continually prove their credibility. Again, the irony is not lost on me as an educator: what exactly is the point in me, as a teacher, designing and teaching lessons about misinformation, disinformation, fact and opinion, something we’ve been doing for YEARS? What, if anything, are my lessons doing for children, if there is no accountability?
We need to consider: there was an ongoing investigation and scrutiny about Arday’s work. Let’s be honest, for those of us working in academia and education, or publishing in general, this is nothing new - investigations are hard and uncomfortable, but they happen. However, there are serious questions and scrutiny needed when that workplace investigation becomes a racialised public spectacle, with no boundaries and no accountability - taken completely out of the control and boundaries of what I would call a standard workplace investigation. Why this was stretched so far to make a spectacle of his personal life is not beyond any of us - we know what was happening. We need to ask why Black academics can become symbols in much bigger political and cultural battles. We can ask what responsibility institutions, the media, colleagues and allies have when someone becomes the focus of that level of public scrutiny.
These are difficult questions. But they are questions we need to ask - and they require answers.
As Beverly Daniel Tatum reminds us through her powerful “moving walkway” analogy, there is a difference between actively participating in racism, standing still while the system carries us along, and actively working against it. Anti-racism is not passive. You can’t simply say you’re anti-racist. It requires movement. It requires us to think about our own ‘sphere of influence’ and what we can actually do within it, rather than assuming that not actively participating in racism is enough. It may result in challenging friendships, awkward staff room conversations and feeling uncomfortable. It may also result in building an actively anti-racist world, or at least silencing what ‘should’ be silenced (the racism). So I think, as Tatum says, we need to collectively work to be ‘actively anti-racist’.
We start with our own spheres of influence. We encourage more of our white friends and colleagues to be actively anti-racist. We challenge the people around us. Most importantly, we hold those who “won’t” accountable.
we recognise that this work can be exhausting. It requires us to have conversations that we would sometimes rather avoid. It requires us to acknowledge that good intentions are not enough.
But one of the things I keep coming back to is that Jason himself showed us that we can do all of this uncomfortable, hard work with love and kindness. That is how I will remember Jason Arday. I will remember him by continuing to read his work. I will remember him by sharing his love and kindness with anyone who asks me about him. I will remember him by championing his truth. I will remember him by continuing to challenge the systems and structures that he spent so much of his life researching, questioning and trying to change.
Perhaps most importantly, I will remember him by continuing to believe that change can happen incrementally. Day by day. Conversation by conversation. Challenge by challenge.
We can nudge our friends, our neighbours, our villages, our workplaces, our institutions, our societies and the world at large towards something better. Just as Jason would do it, we can with love, courage, grace and kindness.
RIP Jason.
You were so loved and respected by those who knew you, and by those of us who only knew your name, your work and your impact.
You were clearly so much more than your work, but your work will continue to matter. And so will your legacy.