What teaching colonialism taught me about the power of not knowing

I remember vividly the moment I realised that Britain was not as “good” as I had been led to believe. I was in a pub with a colleague from Northern Ireland, who was telling me about the Troubles and the British role in them. I was so stunned that I went outside and rang my partner in horror. Why didn’t I know about this?

I also cringe when I recall the times I have made “colourblind” comments. Once, at a screening of a film about the pains of imprisonment, an audience member commented that race seemed conspicuously absent. I put my hand up and said, “Yes, but this film is about the intrinsic pains of imprisonment experienced by everyone, not about race.” Even writing this now, I feel embarrassed. What a “white” comment that was. At the time, I was oblivious to the epistemic injustice at play: the way some people’s experiences and knowledge are routinely pushed aside, protecting others – people like me – from ever having to know any of it.

When talking to white people about race or colonialism, I can almost see concepts such as white fragility and white ignorance come to life. Even now, I sometimes find myself stumbling over the language of race – a hangover from being taught that it’s something you simply don’t mention.

Yet despite becoming more aware of colonialism, I did very little to educate myself about it in any meaningful way. It made me feel overwhelmed and depressed; the knowledge void felt unmanageable.

So I was genuinely anxious when I was asked to take over a criminology module that, among other things, teaches students about the impact of colonialism on society and on knowledge production. How could I possibly do that topic justice? How could I speak truth to power in a way that would sit comfortably with anyone who has faced colonialism’s consequences more directly?

As a result, during my first year of leading the module, I avoided delivering the lectures on these topics, leaving them to a colleague who has significant knowledge and expertise in this area. But while her content was of an extremely high standard, students repeatedly said they struggled to follow it and could not see its relevance.

Initially, I couldn’t understand it. How could they not see the relevance of colonialism, both to criminology and to life more generally? But when I looked through the slides and readings, I realised that I didn’t understand them either. As an English white person, I lacked the prior knowledge and lived experience to make sense of it.

When I discussed this with my colleague (who is a wonderful scholar), she suggested that calling decolonisation “difficult” can slip into racist territory because it often reflects people’s discomfort with talking about race. From her perspective, decolonial theory isn’t inherently more complex than feminist or critical theory given that they all draw on similar analytical tools – so anyone who can understand those should, pedagogically speaking, be able to understand decolonisation too.

While I understood where she was coming from, it didn’t fully resonate with me. I didn’t think the difficulty came from racism, but from the fact that the education system hadn’t given me the tools or knowledge to understand it. That system, I now understand, whitewashes history and systematically erases evidence of the harm that has been done – and continues to be done – by our country.

So when it became clear the following year that I would be teaching the colonialism content of the module myself, I decided that the only way that I could teach it authentically was to create content that I, as a white British person, would be able to understand and digest. This meant spending time providing some very basic context about colonialism and the British Empire and getting students to reflect individually (in writing) about what they understood colonialism to mean. At the end, the students were required to reflect on how their views had changed as the module had progressed.

While I could not reflect on any lived experience of being a victim of colonialism, I could reflect on my lived experience of privilege and the challenges of navigating this topic from that position. I spoke openly to the students about why they might find this topic hard and alien, explaining that this was how I felt when first exposed to it – and how I still feel, in some ways.

The students responded very positively. For instance, after one lecture, one emailed me to say how much they had enjoyed it: “It was something completely different and I’ve never studied it before or its link to criminal justice. Looking forward to future discussions on the topic!”

By the end of the module, I’d come to the conclusion that sometimes it’s important to own our ignorance. It turns out that being an outsider can be an intellectual asset when you are trying to disseminate knowledge in accessible and digestible ways.

Rather than being a source of guilt, my lived experience of not knowing can help me fill the knowledge gaps that colonialism and colonial education create.

Laura Kelly-Corless is a senior lecturer in criminology at the University of Lancashire.