I really have a million other things to do! And my expertise is not in anti-racist activism. But I'm hoping to strengthen my teaching materials over time, and keep letting people know this important thing happened in the UK.

honestly, if I wasn't properly poisoning minds, why even bother?!

Yeah there's a fair few media articles (although I wish for more detail in all of them!)

The thing that's really struck me as an academic is how thin on the ground any deeper, scholarly research on the topic is.

aren't all good people?!

I am currently trying to land a funding bid with Peaks of Colour (mentioned on that page!) as a partner though. Keep everything crossed for us?!

I did not - thank you for the recommendation! I think I personally need to read a lot, lot more about Black British history and activism tbh.

And also: British students rarely contextualise Parks' role in a far larger social movement. This is something I'm further hoping to cover in class on Monday! I suspect that the vast majority of students will know who Rosa Parks is, but not Guy Bailey. We'll talk about why this might be.

Anyway, knowledge creates knowledge. I hope that by introducing students to this history, they'll be encouraged to do more research themselves, and share the story with others in turn: a virtuous cycle to undo ignorance.

Disappointingly, this piece from the Black History Month website appears to basically copy-paste a load of material from Wikipedia, but has also made some inaccurate edits (e.g. inaccurately stating that the boycott began in 1955).

The Wikipedia page on the Bristol Bus Boycott is actually pretty good, but leans heavily on a single source: Madge Dresser's out-of-print 1986 short book, "Black and White on the Buses: The 1963 Colour Bar Dispute in Bristol". Time for a reprint??

I mean, this could also be genAI. I recently rejected an article by a full prof for a journal I edit, after they repeatedly failed to read the feedback we provided and instead provided increasingly nonsensical genAI email responses and article edits.

Hahahaha incredible.

I feel like this, like AI misuse in academia, is a symptom of a wider problem: prioritisation of metrics over knowledge, pressure to publish and no time to read. So people take short-cuts, they'll find anything relevant looking to cite without doing the damn work.