Beverley Brathwaite
University of Hertfordshire, UK
Title: The British Black Caribbean nurse: Postcolonial race, gender and power
Biography
Biography: Beverley Brathwaite
Abstract
‘A post-colonial perspective challenges idea of there being a universal standpoint on knowledge development. It provides a window for understanding how concepts of ‘race’, notions of racialized ‘Other’ constructed within a particular historical and colonial context’ (Anderson & McCann 2002). The colonised existed as a primary means of defining the coloniser and of creating a sense of omnipotent unity. However, this relationship is not simply a binary them (white colonisers) and us the black colonised. There are divergent power relations between white women and men and for discussion here, women who identify themselves based on skin colour, culture, nation, country of birth and a nurse.
The ongoing narrative from post-colonial feminists (Anderson, 2002, Anderson et al 2003, McGibbon et al 2013) seek to use post-colonial theory to highlight ‘white privilege and racism in the nursing profession’. (McGibbon et al 2013). Encapsulating the complexities of the colonial relationships. This addresses the lack of attention to ‘marginalised’ groups such as the female British born Caribbean nurses (BBCN). The present location of the BBCN is still one based on colonial, gendered and radicalised beliefs. A powerful nexus of white dominance, supremacy and modern constructs of race that subsists in the female dominated nursing profession and its most important employer the British National Health service. There is a less powerful ‘Other’ assumption of Caribbean women’s gender and racialized identity, within society and as a nurse.
My paper will exam how the intersection of gender, race and class are inexplicably linked to colonial history and power structures than engendered the female black ‘Other’. How it resonates today in the differing forms of gendered racial discrimination, stereotyping and institutional racism that exists for female BBCNs and how this impacts on navigation through their careers in the National health service.