Black students need support due to ‘racist academics’

BLACK students at Oxbridge may need more support to deal with “racist academics and racist curricula”, a campaigner has suggested.

Lola Olufemi, who wrote an open letter calling for Cambridge University’s English course to be “decolonised”, questioned whether Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) students were given enough assistance when it came to combatting bigotry at university.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Women’s Hour, Ms Olufemi said social divides she was aware of long before going to university persisted on campus.

“Where are the mechanisms for support for BME and specifically black students? Will they be in spaces where they have to deal with racist academics and racist curricula?”

David Lammy, the Labour MP, said last week that Oxford and Cambridge Universities were guilty of “social apartheid” over their admissions policy after figures revealed that many Oxbridge colleges admitted not a single A -level grade black student in 2015.

Ms Olufemi, a student union’s women’s officer, said her experience at university has been positive, but “solely because I have been able to find spaces where I could politically organise with other people of colour. I was able to find spaces where I found support, and I was able to get involved in shaping the curricula in the way that I want”.

Earlier this week, it was revealed that English tutors “could actively seek to ensure the presence” of ethnic writers on their course, under recommendations from the faculty teaching forum.