The disruptive insider: black women, epistemic dissent, and the politics of institutional belonging

Black women remain underrepresented and emotionally burdened within higher education systems in the UK, US, and Canada. In 2023, only 66 Black women held professorial posts in the UK, reflecting persistent racialised and gendered barriers. Drawing on Black feminist scholarship on voice, silence, institutional power, and epistemic justice alongside UK and North American research, this article conceptualises institutionalised silence and gratitude performance as interconnected mechanisms through which inclusion becomes conditional and extractive. Using a narrative synthesis of academic studies, policy documents, and race-equity reports, it reframes silence and gratitude not as individual coping strategies, but as institutional forms of emotional and symbolic labour through which universities maintain legitimacy while suppressing dissent. The article shifts debates on representation toward epistemic justice, arguing that inclusion without freedom to critique becomes discipline. By asking not only who is included but on what terms, it exposes structural and epistemic harm behind diversity rhetoric.