How do nonwhite scholars succeed in academia?

I am African, Nigerian to be specific, and born to parents who are descendants of rich African ancestry – That is my heritage, and I am proud of it. I am British, English to be specific, born in London and saw the world through the lens of a black boy growing up in Manchester in the late sixties. Finally, I am Dutch, having spent most of my life in the Netherlands, naturalized, raised a family, and built my professional and academic career there. I have multiple contexts I belong to, which gives substance to the plurality in my identity. In the course of my life, I have lived and studied in 6 different countries, moved homes at least 15 times, and managed to build a successful career going by the standard of a black person within a white western context. All of this does not make me unique; however, it has offered me the privilege of living an intense and diverse life for more than half a decade!

Speaking up

In 2018, I started my open advocacy on #antiracism, #antidiscrimination, and #socialjustice. Having been the subject of several instances of overt and covert discrimination, microaggressions, and racism and denied opportunities for academic growth and promotion, I decided to speak up. This was after a heart-wrenching experience at my last place of work. Rather than get myself entangled in a negative spiral of conflict and animosity with an intolerant and implicitly biased establishment, I chose to channel my advocacy through the best gift I had i.e., Writing and engaging in critical inquiry and discourse.

Writing for academic journals

In my academic career, I have witnessed the prejudices of the Ivy League journals towards scholarly contributions from female and non-white scholars. (Hofstra et al., 2020, Woolston, 2021). Although difficult to prove, I have felt such prejudices towards specific articles I have written in the past. Nonetheless, I continue to submit contributions to such journals, especially on topics related to #diversity, #equity, and #inclusion. Central to the perspective papers that I write is the fact that they are triggered by real-life experiences, which on reflection, I carve into a teaching lesson for others to read and learn from.

The story

Recently, following a personal experience, I sent a manuscript to an Ivy league journal based on a #DEI topic that I considered worth sharing. The journal's reach was broad, making it an ideal platform to reach and impact a wider academic community. As a commissioning editor to BMJLeader (and associate Editor to a couple of other journals), I sent this particular contribution to a different journal than any of the ones I was affiliated with. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, the paper was rejected and sent back the following day without being sent out for review. Based on the response, it was evident the article had probably not been thoroughly read and was most likely rejected based on the subject line. As an editor, I understand that not all papers can (and will) be accepted. However, I usually provide a decent and respectful explanation of why the manuscript is being rejected. So, I sent a rebuttal letter to the journal editors requesting detailed feedback to understand the reason for the rejection. Sadly, they declined to respond. I decided to change my approach and send a presubmission inquiry to the Editor of another major journal; I did not even get a response back.

Believe in your message

Because I strongly believed in the message I wanted to share, I did not let the previous two attempts discourage me and submitted the manuscript to a third major journal. The feedback I got from this journal within the space of 2 weeks showed that they read it. The turnaround thereafter was swift, and the paper has just been published open-access online. The moral of my sharing this reflection with you is that much still needs to be done to promote equity and inclusion in academia and academic publications. Despite the many anti-discrimination promises and equity statements several ivy league journals put out on their websites, much of it is still lip service. Only a handful are truly doing a good job.

Nonetheless, as I wrote in my reflection in the Postgraduate Medical Journal, it is important to note:

"that by staying focused and refusing to be distracted by inherent injustices in our educational and healthcare systems, there are (also) happy endings and positive outcomes for underrepresented scholars in inequitable professional contexts."