Slay In Your Lane: The Black Girl Bible

Maya Angelou

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There is no one conclusive reason why black students are less likely to attend elite universities, just as there’s no single reason why we get lower grades, but racists will assure us it’s because we’re undeserving, lazy or simply not smart enough. They complain that the places meant for equally talented white students are being ‘taken up’ by black students, despite the stats clearly stating otherwise. Imposter Syndrome often eats away at even the most talented of students, as they internalise these slurs and feel as though they’re ‘taking up space’.

Once you are at uni, it’s important to remember you have earned your place – not at anyone else’s expense but against odds that actually make it more difficult for you to be there in the first place. Afua Hirsch summarises this perfectly:

‘My grandfather was a son of a cocoa farmer in the village in Ghana and he got a scholarship to Cambridge in the 1940s under the colonial system. In those days, they would pick who they saw as the brightest students in the country every year, it was part of the indirect rule. So, they would send them to Oxbridge so they could kind of condition them [to have] British values and then send them back to run the colonies for them. My grandfather benefited from that, he was really grateful for his experience and my cousin found all his letters from his time at Cambridge and it was so fascinating. I feel like, reading his letters, he was constantly apologising. If he didn’t get the grades he wanted, he’d write and apologise and he’d say something like, “I hope in future, other students from Africa will come and redeem the good name of our continent,” and he felt like he was the ambassador for the black race. Any failing on his part was a failing of the race – he just felt this great burden and I think that he felt like he had to constantly account for himself, and that really struck something in me. Even though my circumstance was so completely different, you do feel that sense of not quite belonging there, of having to explain yourself and having to account for yourself, as if, it’s not your birthright to be there. That goes deep and it’s an intergenerational thing about being a black person in a white institution where you don’t feel you fit in. For years, I couldn’t articulate it, I didn’t have a name for it, but once I read my grandpa’s letters something clicked and was like, “this is Imposter Syndrome.” This is exactly what we all go through. My grandpa went to Cambridge in 1944 and so here I was, 65 years later. It’s just crazy.

‘We question whether we belong there and whether we have the right to be there, and I think that you’ve got to try and flip that on its head and think, I need to rinse this place for every drop I can get out of it. I’m going to use it before it uses me. I worked that out at some point and it really helped. I was like, you know what, whatever I can get from this place is going to give me what I need for my journey, I’m going to rinse it. It gave me a sense of control and it’s hard when you’re 19; you don’t necessarily know what you want to do with your life and you don’t feel in control, but the more you can tap into it and feel like you’re running your own thing, that’s really healthy.’

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‘Universities are not just complicit, they produce racism. They are no less institutionally racist than the police force.’

Dr Kehinde Andrews

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Universities are predominantly white and middle class, not only in terms of attendance but also in terms of staff, which can often mean they also remain so in terms of syllabuses. More than 92 per cent of British professors are white; 0.49 per cent of professors are black; and a mere 17 of those are women.

Only one black person is currently working in senior management in any British university. She is SOAS Director Valerie Amos, who is the first black female to lead a UK university and the country’s first black vice chancellor (the chief executive of a university), full stop. Among the 535 senior officials who declared their ethnicity in 2015, 510 were white. The figures also show that universities employ more black staff as cleaners, receptionists or porters than as lecturers.

Karen Blackett is listed as one of a handful of black university chancellors in the UK (a ceremonial non-resident head of the university) at Portsmouth, and out of 525 deputy vice chancellors or pro-vice chancellors, none are listed as black.

In 2011–12, there were no more than 85 black professors in the entire country, and for many of these, it isn’t exactly plain sailing. According to a report by Professor Kalwant Bhopal, many ethnic minority academics often feel ‘untrusted’ and ‘overly scrutinised’ by colleagues and managers, as well as overlooked when it comes to opportunities for promotion.

Another report by the Equality Challenge Unit stated that BAME academics are also more tempted than their white counterparts to flee to overseas institutions to progress their careers.

The issues regarding the retention of black staff are institutional, and have been the subject of many reports and papers that promise to bring about much-needed change through the reform of policies and programmes. But, as the Runnymede Trust noted in their report on race in higher education, it is all too easy for box-ticking and the filling out of required paperwork to become a substitute for real and substantial change. Many universities put their black students and staff front and centre on their prospectuses, but when it comes to actually ensuring they keep those members of the university body, they often fall far short of the mark.

For instance, the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 initially required universities to develop and publish their race-equality policies, but many universities were reluctant to do so. Now, following the implementation of the Equality Act 2010, this requirement has been downgraded to mere ‘guidance’. The lack of pressure on universities to retain their minority staff continues to affect the number of black lecturers visible to students. It’s a pressing issue, as Akwugo Emejulu, a lecturer at my old university, points out:

‘This under-representation of black women, not just as professors but throughout the academic staff in university, has lots of different effects. Firstly, it has a symbolic effect. Universities up and down the country, no matter whether they’re the most prestigious, Russell Group universities or they’re former polytechnics, they’re sending a very similar message that black women are not wanted here. They’re sending a very clear message that they do not value the research, interest and expertise of black women, they do not value black women as [being] authoritative, they do not value black women as scholars. I think there is this idea of “knowing agents”, so there is this idea that black women, regardless of the discipline that they’re in, simply cannot be seen as academic experts. I think that is the biggest issue and problem of black women: under-representation.’

Althea Efunshile agrees, adding that this dearth can impede the quality of education, too:

‘We want black people everywhere, so of course it matters. If there are whole tranches of areas of public life where it’s just white men that you see, then that means that there are whole tranches of parts of our community, our citizens, our people, who are likely to be thinking, “That might not be for me, so let me go over there instead,” but your choice about “let me go over there, let me do that” is really just because you see that there are other people like you over there. That, to me, is not acceptable, it’s not justice, it’s not equality. So of course it matters. You want to be taught, or advised, or cured by experts, you want the best people, so obviously if it’s a white man, it’s a white man, but why would you want all the experts in your field to be white men? Diversity is important because it leads to different perspectives and different ways of looking at things.

‘And not just in terms of race or gender, but also social class, or where you come from, or age and so on. In education, it matters, because education is about helping you learn how to think. It’s not about the student as an empty vessel into which you pour a pot of knowledge. If it were, maybe it wouldn’t matter who was pouring in the knowledge, you just pour it in. Education, especially at higher levels, is really about, “How do you think? What are the sorts of questions you’re being taught to ask? What’s the critique you’re being taught to apply?” because we’re thinking people, sentient beings. So it matters who’s teaching you how to do that thinking and teaching you how to do that analysis. It matters.’

As with other professions, there remain barriers to progression within the university workforce for black academics. In the Runnymede report,

minority staff reported having little access to ‘academic gatekeepers’ and feeling locked out of the networks that would be able to provide them with the means to further their professional development – support networks they described as ‘vital’. BAME academics and university staff remain ‘outsiders’ in higher education, and their place of work remains the preserve of those who are white, middle class and predominantly male, among the senior staff.

Stereotypes can plague university staff, too. Some academics noted that because of their race, it was not only assumed by their white peers that they were interested in or working on the topic of race and racism, but they were also expected by their colleagues to take on roles that were related to diversity and equality issues, simply because they were not white. Respondents said racism affected all aspects of their working lives, ‘whether this was related to how they were treated by their white colleagues or students, the roles they were asked to perform or how they were judged in the academy’.

Alongside this, several spoke of a typically British kind of racism: passive aggressive and subtle, and difficult to provide evidence for. This leaves them reluctant to report inappropriate incidents to line managers because they are ‘hard to prove’. For those who did bite the bullet and report it, they said their complaint was rarely taken seriously.

‘The attitudes haven’t changed,’ Heidi Mirza says. ‘And in higher education we have not actually done much in our training of lecturers, teachers, to improve it, for it to filter down into the system. You just meet hardcore racist views. Now, we’ve got a culture of denial, so all you have to say is “I’m not racist!” – people will declare that. And, “Oh yes, I told them to become a hairdresser, it’s not because I’m racist, it’s because I care!” And so if you just declare yourself non-racist, you become non-racist. We call it performativity. You perform it. You hear people say the most horrible things – sexist, racist things – and they go, “Well, no I’m not racist, I’m just telling you like it is.”’

Ethnic minority students who decide to take up roles within the student body also often encounter racism, and find themselves not only under scrutiny from other students, but also from the wider public. In 2017, Jason Okundaye, a student at Cambridge who headed the university’s Black and Minority Ethnic Society, was targeted by mainstream right-wing press outlets for his tweets addressing institutional racism. A selection of those tweets were re-posted out of context, and the racist backlash went on for several days.

Esme Allman, who was elected to the position of the Black and Minority Ethnic Convenor at Edinburgh University, encountered a similar pattern of behaviour. A fellow student had commented on a Facebook post under the news of a US strike against ISIS; ‘I’m glad we could bring these barbarians a step closer to collecting their 72 virgins.’ It was reported that as a result of a complaint lodged by Allman about the post, the university began investigating the student in question. This caused uproar in the press. In fact, the University of Edinburgh confirmed that the student was actually being investigated for a breach of the student code of conduct rather than for mocking a terrorist group – Allman hadn’t even mentioned ISIS in the transcript of her complaint. The university’s overall handling of Allman’s complaint and the subsequent media attention left much to be desired – they told her not to talk to journalists who had reached out to her, and, once the situation got out of hand as the story snowballed and online trolling from racists began, they simply assured her it would blow over.

For white students to make the news, they have to be actively racist and aggressive – black face, the N-word, the whole shebang – before mainstream outlets show an interest. And when these students are written about, they often have readers springing to their defence decrying what they see as a witch hunt for ‘a kid who doesn’t know any better’. When was the last time you saw a white student make headlines for writing a string of tweets? And when was the last time you saw a black student extended the benefit of the doubt?

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Each one, teach one

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Until recently, not a single institution in the country offered a degree programme in Black British Studies. But in 2016 the first UK undergraduate Black Studies degree course was launched at Birmingham City University.

Given the vast number of degrees on offer in the UK, many of them very niche, it is a surprise that before then, no university had felt the need to offer a course exploring the history, experiences and background of a demographic that has been so key in shaping our country. With the black population in Britain being established more recently, we are a good 50-odd years behind our American counterparts, who began rolling out Black Studies courses in 1968, after their more diverse student body demanded that their history and experiences should be included in a curriculum that they too were learning from. Black Studies is now an integral part of US higher education, albeit only after several protests, boycotts and student occupations across the country.

But this isn’t to say the black community does not make it onto the UK curriculum. Indeed, we often have our experiences explained to us from a far more anthropological standpoint, and find ourselves being the objects of detailed academic scrutiny by academics. In courses such as Politics, Sociology, Psychology and History, the black British experience is often analysed and examined, but it is usually from a distance and – considering the makeup of the teaching staff in most UK unis – usually by white academics. As William Ackah, a lecturer at Birkbeck, explained in an article: ‘Black people are used to illustrate problems as diverse as educational underachievement, health inequality, and religious extremism.’

The complex, diverse and nuanced stories of the black British population are sidelined by a narrative that only further adds to already existing narratives – backed up by research and through findings from the country’s brightest minds. While white academics backpat each other for their commitment to inclusion, black students remain alienated, only seeing themselves reflected in their curriculum when it is part of a course on crime. This dearth of diversity within academic studies led to the creation of the ‘Why is My Curriculum White?’ campaign founded at University College London in 2014 as a response to the lack of diversity found on university reading lists and course content. Over the past four years, the campaign has continued to challenge the existing discourse, and it has since spread onto several campuses. This also prompted a public talk at UCL in 2014, led by Dr Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman and titled ‘Why isn’t my professor black?’, seeking an answer to that very question.

Coleman is one of a handful of black philosophy lecturers in the UK. He claims to have been rejected for a full-time job at UCL because his proposed ‘Critical White Studies’ course did not find favour with colleagues wanting to offer a Black Studies programme that was less critical of the white establishment. Much of Coleman’s work focused on university curricula being too white and excluding the writings of ethnic scholars in favour of ‘dead white men’. After his fixed-term contract at UCL ended, he was informed there was no job for him (such precarious positions are more likely to be filled by those who are young, female and from black or ethnic minority groups, as opposed to them being offered permanent roles; for example, 83 per cent of white staff in higher education in 2012–2013 held permanent contracts compared to 74 per cent of BAME staff).

This was despite what he believed was an outstanding record in teaching and having been awarded Online Communicator of the Year by the university earlier in the year. His application to become a permanent member of staff was rejected, as it would require the creation of a new Black Studies MA, which was deemed unviable. Jonathan Wolff, Executive Dean of UCL’s Faculty of Arts and Humanities, said that the proposed MA was rejected because ‘it became apparent that UCL [was] not yet ready to offer a strong programme in this area’.

But despite the lack of Black Studies courses in UK universities, whatever your degree, as a student, just being at university gives you access to a huge range of broad and engaging texts and resources. Despite my studying law, it was when I chose modules on race and feminism outside of my core curriculum that I fully engaged with learning during my final year, which essentially shaped the views that I have now. Afua did the same, and she speaks of the opportunities that were on offer to – to some degree – create your own curriculum:

‘I started taking African papers and studying postcolonialism and engaging with subjects that were manifesting in my experience, and which gave me access to black professors and black writers and academics and thinkers, and so I had this intellectual community in my head as well.

‘There is a lot of flexibility at Oxford. I was doing PPE; you can choose. There’s such a range of options and I consistently chose options about decolonisation and political theories of equality and race and feminist theories and African studies. So those were the academics who gave me access, and the subjects that I was immersed in, and I think that helped. It helped me reconcile why I was in this place.’

The US is ahead of us in terms of curriculum, and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) provide a tailored educational space for black students that may well help in terms of engagement as well as attainment. Even US universities comparable to Oxbridge, such as Harvard, are much more forward-thinking than those in the UK in terms of diversity within the student body. The Harvard University incoming class of 2017 was reportedly the most diverse in its 380-year history – over half of the 2,056 students were non-white. But Professor Emejulu also believes that the US can learn a great deal from the UK.

‘Historically Black Colleges and Universities are a solution in some ways but they were set up in the beginning to serve a so-called “talented tenth per cent”. Those that were closest to whiteness, to be honest, to be quite frank. That history has been somewhat mitigated, but that still is a huge part, an underlying part of HBCUs. But they serve an important function. I think it’s important not to valorise them completely. That’s not to say that the existence of those institutions isn’t important; being pioneers in Black Studies is absolutely crucial, but I guess, I always feel like, I don’t know how much, in terms of the black diaspora, how helpful it is to always be looking to the United States. There were things that were in place here in Britain that have been dismantled that I think have been far more helpful, if we’re looking at this from a black student’s perspective.

‘First, there’s the issue of the maintenance grant. That in and of itself is essential for encouraging people into further and higher education. So I think that personally that has been far more consequential in terms of undermining people’s access to further and higher education. The institution of fees? That’s kind of the story that often doesn’t get told about the American context, so even though there are fees here of £9,000, back when I was an undergraduate in the US, my tuition was $25,000 a year – plus housing and everything else, it was something closer to $30,000 a year. And so, you know, HBCUs are no different from that; they have to charge as well. Also in terms of what can be learned, I actually think, the lesson doesn’t come from the US so much, it comes from South Africa and the movement for decolonisation. I think that has been something that is incredibly consequential in terms of thinking about dismantling the structures that we’ve been talking about; you know, those structural inequalities in terms of the pipeline from school to higher education, the dismantling of ideas of who gets to be a knowing agent, dismantling the idea that only some knowledge counts. Particularly, the knowledge of black women is somehow less valuable and less important. So these movements of decolonisation that began in South Africa have now spread across Europe and North America. For me, those are important models. In fact, the issue here in Britain was that there were key models that helped students in further and higher education that have now been dismantled, and so the thing is, how do we return to that? How do we take back control in that way?’

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‘Told ’em I finished school and I started my own business / They say, “Oh you graduated?” / No, I decided I was finished.’

Kanye West, School Spirit

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Education is hugely valuable, and getting a place at university is a massive achievement. But too many ethnic minority students choose to apply because they feel they have to, or because they believe that if they don’t, they will have in some way failed. This means that many end up on campuses they aren’t quite suited to, studying subjects for the sake of it, unable to make university work for them. One of the biggest takeaways from this chapter should be that doing your research is crucial – not simply so that you learn what your potential uni can offer in the way of courses and facilities, but also that you know what its vibe and culture is. This way you will find out off the bat if it’s somewhere that would suit you, or somewhere you can at least get the most out of. You should explore all your options: in terms of the choice of degrees on offer, the establishments themselves, when you should go, and indeed whether you have to go at all, as that, too, is of course an option. Increasingly, not all vocations require you to have continued into higher education, or at least not full-time. If she had known what she knows now about how her career has turned out, Alexis believes she would have taken a different route:

‘I personally would’ve taken another year out. I would’ve tried to find myself, because when you come out of college, you still don’t actually know what you want to do with your life, you’re still quite young, you’re 18. Coming from an African background, there is a lot of pressure to go on to university as soon as you come out of college.