When I moved from Scotland to an English university in 2011, I expected to find myself immersed in a world of black womanhood that I had missed out on up north. I wanted to learn how to slick down my baby hairs, find some decent Caribbean takeaways, and pick up MLE slang – which might mean my friends would stop saying that they were “blacker” than me.
My conception of blackness soon turned out to be pretty naive. When I moved into halls in London, I was surrounded by white people. They were early starters, 17-year-olds like me, who had come from abroad or from the farthest corners of the UK.
Most black students at the university were from London and lived at home. I was struggling to come to terms with my identity, and I realised that I was going to have to put some work in. And, bumpily, I began to navigate my way through university as a person of colour (POC). Here’s what I learned along the way.
Find your community
The racial imbalance of universities has been widely reported. Worrying figures show that students from ethnic minorities and disadvantaged areas win fewer undergraduate places than white applicants with similar qualifications. And British universities employ literally zero black academics in senior roles. So we are still carving out a space for ourselves.
Many people of colour turn to societies for a sense of place and purpose at university. For students like Kelvin Idialu-Ikato, a second-year medic at Imperial College London, who is the social media officer for his African Caribbean society, they have been life-changing.
“I first joined ACS because I came from a school that didn’t have many black pupils,” he says. “I’ve never really been part of a society where everyone is so genuinely nice, funny, talented and yet dedicated to work.”
Sure, university is about meeting fresh faces, but for a POC, the strength that can come from having a network of people from a similar social background to you shouldn’t be underestimated.
Learn your history
Over the past few years, I’ve realised just how important it is to learn about your own history. University is the perfect place to do that. You have access to vast online resources through digital libraries like Jstor, and even the dustiest books in the library can become your best friend. As an undergrad, I repeatedly checked out tomes on race that had last been stamped in the 1990s. British colonialism has played a massive part in the development of racist and xenophobic attitudes, and it’s not possible to understand how you fit in to the fabric of our country unless you do your research.
“When I came to uni, I was definitely aware that I was a fish out of water,” says Simran Randhawa, a third-year sociology student at Bristol University. “Luckily I study sociology, and my faculty gives us a lot of space to specialise in what interests us. So a lot of my research and essays have been geared towards people of colour.”
From drinking up the 19th century literature I read in my final year as part of my Caribbean writers module, to analysing Spike Lee’s Malcolm X during Black History Month, and crying every single bloody time a plaque was mounted in David Osoluga’s series Black and British: A Forgotten History, I tried to take full advantage of my access to education.
Be prepared for ‘microaggressions’ and racism
Going to university may not necessarily expose you to more racism than you might otherwise encounter, but it’s not a bad idea to prepare yourself for facing ignorance and microaggressions during your studies. For instance, I remember one lecturer who seemed to take delight in calling a black author a “negro” until I pointed out, by email, that this was, at best, an outdated and mildly offensive term.
There has been a spate of reported incidents up and down the country of racist abuse against ethnic minority students. For example, a first-year student at Warwick had the words “monkey” and “nigga” written on her bananas last April, and earlier this month it was reported that a trio of students at Bristol had been faced with monkey chants and racist “banter” on social media.
Kelly Emelle, who was one of the Bristol victims, says that she “would emphasise that students [who face racism] should try and get video evidence and report it to the student union”.
Don’t feel you have to challenge all ignorance
It took me a long time accept that I shouldn’t feel bad for not taking to task every single one of my friends who said a vaguely problematic thing about race. The burden of education has for too long fallen on the shoulders of people of colour. Don’t bother working yourself up about not being able to articulate the offence in a useful way. Instead, point them in the direction of Google, send them a few articles, or, if they’re taking up too much of your time, just cut them out.
You can do as Kelly suggests and report offenders to the relevant POC officer at your student union, to university management, or, if their actions fall under the banner of a hate crime, to the police.
Start your own movements
I didn’t actually ever join the African Caribbean society at my university because I was too busy learning to do a backflip at cheerleading and trying to be a journalist. What I discovered when I actually became a journalist, however, was just how pale, male and stale the industry was. So, while on my journalism master’s, I helped to set up gal-dem, a magazine written exclusively by women of colour, which is helping to diversify the media industry.
The success of gal-dem testifies to the unparalleled space and time you have as a student to direct your energies into something valuable that might actually effect change.
As Varaidzo, – a Goldsmiths English student, gal-dem’s culture editor, and a contributor to The Good Immigrant – says: “Being part of a movement for POC feels a lot more solid, as injustices don’t stop when your time at university does. It’s a way to build and bond.”
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