'Nearly one in three Oxford colleges failed to
admit a single black British A-level student in 2015'.
Are you surprised?
Are you surprised that a minority group that is hideously under-represented
across top schools, top professions, top companies, top government roles is
also under-represented in top universities? Because you probably shouldn’t be.
This week’s
headlines have served to remind us that black British people are fighting a
system which fails to include them. And it doesn’t begin at university. I’ve
spent the past three weeks working at a school in East London which, as you’d
imagine, has an extremely diverse student population. Many of the students come
from disadvantaged backgrounds, many don’t see university as something that is ‘for
them’ and many feel disenchanted with a system that they don’t feel like they’re
part of. So how are we supposed to help them become ‘elite’, and qualify for an
application to Oxbridge, let alone a place?
Yesterday a student
said to me “teachers judge me for what I look like, they say I’m ghetto and
they don’t respect me”. And if that’s how you’re addressed by some of the
primary authority figures in your life, what chance do you have of proving them
wrong? Every so often we see the ‘stop and search’ statistics and the
disproportionate likelihood of being approached (or accused) by the police if
you’re black – and we’re all shocked, and then we change nothing. Because black
people are in gangs, and black people commit knife crime, and we can blame Muslims
for everything else. If that’s how you feel like society sees you, why would
you want to be part of it? Similarly, if you go to a school that’s chronically
under-funded, you’re not given the support you need despite teachers’ best
efforts, then your opportunity to change that perception and have the voice
that challenges it is limited too.
The problem is not
with Oxbridge, it’s with social mobility and discrimination. Black male
graduates are twice as likely to find themselves unemployed a white male
graduates, and I’m pretty sure it’s got nothing to do with their degrees. In my
previous two jobs, there were some excellent graduates from some top
universities – but none of them were black. Lots had been to the same university,
or the same school; as much as we try to ignore it, people hire ‘their own’ and
those they think are similar to them. By having white men running all our top
organisations, unfortunately, we are perpetuating the problem. Diversity still
feels like a ‘tick box’, something which is a product of positive discrimination,
and treats the symptoms not the problem. For many, it’s too late by then. No one’s
been ambitious for them at school, or they’ve an intrinsic sense that school
isn’t for them because college isn’t really for them because university
definitely isn’t for them; and all the positive discrimination in the world
cannot justify hiring a black British person with 3 GCSEs over a white British
person with 10 GCSEs, 3 A Levels, a handful of internships and a 2:1 from a
Russell Group university. The cycle continues, it remains ‘us’ and ‘them’ and
black Brits are unrepresented in society, politics and the economy.
Next time you blame
Oxbridge for social inequality, or say ‘aren’t the police awful, falsely
accusing all those young black men’, look at yourself in the mirror because you’re
part of the problem too.
