Black academics have been told being nice perpetuates “white supremacy”.

A university study, published in the latest edition of the Educational Review journal, says university bosses use “niceness” to “perpetuate white cultural norms” rather than challenging and addressing racism.

This niceness is then adopted by black and Asian academics because it makes them more “palatable to white groups”, according to Professor Kalwant Bhopal of the University of Birmingham.

Based on interviews with 34 ethnic minority academics, the paper, called Complicity and Conformity: perpetuating race and class hierarchies in UK higher education, says: “White managers are able to use a language of niceness which is race-neutral language and used to ignore racial inequalities.”

Just as white male administrators use niceness to avoid making any real changes, non-white academics perform being nice which continues “to perpetuate a culture in which niceness is used to perpetuate white supremacy”, the study says..

Prof Bhopal, a professor of education and social justice at the university, does not define niceness beyond referring to “race-neutral language”.

However, anti-racism activists have pointed to a “light tone of voice”, “eye contact accompanied by smiling”, “over-smiling”, “friendliness” and attempting to find common ground.

‘Darker shade of white’

One British Pakistani tutor quoted in Prof Bhopal’s study says that ethnic minority academics and leaders who conform to white behaviour become “a darker shade of white”, an idea similar to the accusation of being a “coconut” – brown on the outside but white on the inside.

“It’s a bit like we have our Prime Minister [Rishi Sunak] who is a brown man, but he does not represent us in any way,” they said.

“He is part of them [white groups] because he is able to behave as one of them – he’s just a darker shade of white in some ways because he is just like them in every way.”

A black British academic interviewed in the study claimed that some academics of colour in top positions have “in some ways, sold out”.

However, Prof David Mba, vice-chancellor of Birmingham City University and one of two black VCs in UK higher education, said: “It is problematic and divisive to adhere to a specific notion that minority ethnic senior academic leaders reach leadership positions because they reinforce whiteness. It is disingenuous to all these leaders.

“We cannot paint all minority ethnic leaders with one brush,” he added.

Prof Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, said: “This study is saying that if I am generally pleasant to people, then I am reinforcing ‘white supremacy’, but if I am not then I am being racist. Seeing racism in everything like this is more of a problem than racism itself.”

An academic for more than 30 years, Prof Bhopal is co-author of White Privilege: The Myth of a Post-Racial Society.

In her most recent book, Race and Education: Reproducing White Supremacy in Britain, the professor says she “works from the premise that racism is a given in society, and is central to explaining how education reinforces systems and structures of whiteness and white privilege that benefit white people”.

She claims that ethnic minority students in schools and universities experience racism “on a daily basis”.

However, a piece in the New Statesman points out that Black African, Indian, Bangladeshi and Chinese students get better GCSE results than their white classmates and that white pupils are more likely to be excluded than Black African, Indian and Chinese students.

Recently, a survey of 9,000 families commissioned by the Department for Education found that pupils from ethnic minorities were happier, more academically confident and less likely to feel bullied than their white classmates.

Class is more important

A survey of 3,400 adults by the Policy Exchange think thank found that in every ethnic group polled, except mixed race, more than half of respondents believed that Britain was a country where someone of their race would be treated fairly.

Fewer than 20 per cent in each ethnic group disagreed.

It found that ethnic minority individuals now believe by a majority of 54 per cent to 26 per cent that class is more important than race in determining whether a person would succeed in Britain.

Alka Sehgal Cuthbert, director of Don’t Divide Us, said: “What an insult to suggest that successful academics of colour owe their success to ‘performing whiteness’ – whatever that may mean.

“She seems to suggest identifying ‘with white colleagues’ is a problem in some way. This is pernicious, divisive, racial thinking and should be dismissed as such.

“This ideology encourages a victim mentality that is demeaning and unhelpful for those academics who value their intellectual contribution more than their skin colour.”

The University of Birmingham was contacted for comment.