Don’t call me a ‘Black academic’

Well said!

What a delight to hear this. It is my belief that we won't manage to eliminate the evil that is racism until we quit the habit of labelling people by the colour of their skin (something over which they have no control, after all) - irrespective of whether we do so in a way intended to be positive or negative. To this end, I refuse to allow myself to be classified in such a manner. Any form asking about 'ethnicity' - the coy code for skin colour - gets that section ignored or at best I ignore their classifications, tick 'other' and write in "human being".

A danger I see in such labelling is that it normalises the view that the default for an academic is to be white and therefore it needs to be highlighted if the academic in question has another skin colour. There was a similar position in the 1970s and 1980s when it was routine to reefer to nurses and male nurses.