Black mark-- Black Students and Cambridge

[Sophist]

Black mark

 

We need to encourage black children from an early age to attend university, argues Labour MP David Lammy, if this country is to catch up with the top American colleges

 

Wednesday January 7, 2004

The Guardian

 

I can still remember how nervous I was as a 17-year-old sixth former when the letter from Cambridge University arrived. The good news was that I was in - a place to read law at Selwyn College. The bad news was that they were concerned that I was "verbose" (well-qualified for a career as a politician perhaps). They also wanted A-level grades that I had no chance of attaining.

 

So it is heartening, watching BBC2's documentary series Black Ambition, to see just how much some black youngsters who did make the grade are getting out of their education at one of Britain's top universities. The series, which begins this evening, follows the lives of eight black British undergraduates at Cambridge over the course of two academic years. The students of 2002 are followed through their final year and into the world of work, while those who graduated in 2003 are filmed undergoing the stresses of exams and finding jobs.

 

What is perhaps most striking about the young men and women profiled is their confidence. In the first programme we meet Annette, a computer science student, and Nadine, who is studying law. "The world's my oyster," says Annette, who aspires to a well-paid job as an IT analyst when she graduates. Nadine plans to eschew the traditional professional paths her father wants her to follow in favour of a career in the media.

 

Such confidence is not just a personality trait. It is something that is carefully cultivated in young people, inspired by supportive parents at home, great teachers in schools and by universities such as Cambridge - or, in my case, London and Harvard - demonstrating their confidence in a young person's potential by awarding them a place to study surrounded by experts and the brightest of their peers.

 

There is a self-fulfilling prophecy at work here, a virtuous circle of high expectation and high achievement. The academic and social elitism of life at Cambridge, claims one of the students, "prepares you for a life which is expected of you when you leave".

 

This kind of confidence, in two fairly typical young black women from south London, is seen all too rarely among their contemporaries. Here the self-fulfilling prophecy breeds only an acute poverty of ambition. Annette's friends accused her of "selling out" when she opted for Cambridge ahead of a place at a less prestigious university closer to her home in Peckham. "Why do you have to go thinking you're better than everyone else?" they told her.

 

The problem is equally prevalent in schools. Nadine's headmaster had told her to forget about university because she wasn't "the right calibre" of student: she proved him wrong by getting a 2:2 in law. Annette's family view her schooling in the Caribbean rather than in Peckham as instrumental in her subsequent success. The lack of suitable role models in education (or law, business or politics for that matter) creates the impression that for black people ambition is somehow beyond British shores.

 

Those that succeed, similarly, often try to escape as soon as they can. When a career in the media fails to take off, one of the students decides to try her luck in the US. Echoing Tony Blair, she points to the success of Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice as evidence that the US is more accepting of black success than Britain. "I know I'll get what I'm worth in America," she says.

 

We cannot afford to lose talented young black people, who make it to university, overseas, or worse, to let other talented black people be put off by the notion that university is somehow not for them. At present, the numbers speak for themselves. There are only 84 black British students out of a total of 11,600 Cambridge undergraduates. Though black people make up almost 5% of the population, they account for less than 0.7% of Cambridge undergraduates. And even those that do apply face major obstacles. In 2001, 419 black British students achieved A-level grades in the range ABB - AAA. One hundred of them applied to Oxford, 98 to Cambridge. We surely have to ask whether these universities could be doing more to ensure that more of these highly talented individuals are given a chance to study at Oxbridge. Are admissions tutors being given adequate equal opportunities training and subjected to appropriate scrutiny to ensure that their procedures are fair?

 

In fairness to Oxford and Cambridge, both have tried hard to widen access in recent years. But it is still not good enough. I know from my experience of higher education in the US that British universities still have an awful long way to go. While at Harvard, I was struck by the palpable sense of noblesse oblige that surrounds their sophisticated outreach and bursary programmes. It is almost as if they view extending opportunity to disadvantaged individuals as their highest mission. There is still elitism, but it is genuine academic elitism, neither as aloof nor as tinged with old-fashioned class prejudice as one finds in Britain. Our top universities have a similar tradition to draw on if they choose - but it is one they seem too easily to forget.

 

How can British universities catch up with their American counterparts? They need to start by demonstrating far more imagination and creativity in how they recruit talented young people from non-traditional backgrounds. Whereas Harvard is all over Harlem, I simply don't see enough of Britain's top universities in Tottenham, and I'm sure the same is true in Toxteth or Peckham.

 

Under the government's proposals for higher-education funding, and with a new access regulator for higher education, universities will finally have both the incentives and the resources to properly support students from working-class and disadvantaged backgrounds. Cambridge has already announced that it plans to spend £8m of the additional £20m it expects to receive from higher tuition fees on helping poorer students.

 

But if they want to encourage more applications from these students, universities will have to start early. Many talented youngsters in the black community have written off university - or more often, written off themselves - by the time they take their GCSEs. Universities should be targeting children in inner-city areas as early as primary school.

 

But those members of the black community who do go to university also have a part to play. We need ambassadors such as Nadine and Annette to go back into the schools in their communities and help dispel the myth that aspiring to success is selling out, or that university is somehow out of the reach of black students. A university education is a privilege, but we should be proud that in Britain it is also a right, no matter what your income or class or ethnic background. As beneficiaries of such an education, Nadine and Annette, like me, have a responsibility to ensure that more people in the black community see it as their right too.

 

· David Lammy is Labour MP for Tottenham and a minister in the Department for Constitutional Affairs.

[Sophist]

.......twice as many black people are in prison as at university, and with arguments raging about whether broadening...... READ BELOW

 

 

'People say: You went to Cambridge?'

(Filed: 07/01/2004)

 

What is university life like for Cambridge's black students, who make up less than one per cent of its population? Bryony Gordon finds out

 

When Annette Clark arrived at New Hall, Cambridge, to start her degree in computer science, the first thing that struck her was not the city's rich architectural heritage, nor its libraries and museums. Instead, it was: where are all the black people? "I didn't think that there would be an even, 50/50 split," she says, "but I didn't expect that I would be the only one."

Clark (second from left) with fellow graduates, feels she "achieved something for young black people and single parents"

 

When Clark graduated from Cambridge in 2002 with a 2:2, she was one of just 83 black students at a university attended by 11,600 undergraduates. While black people account for almost five per cent of the British population, at Cambridge, they make up only 0.7 per cent

 

of all undergraduates.

 

In a week in which it was revealed that twice as many black people are in prison as at university, and with arguments raging about whether broadening access to top universities is a good thing, Clark's story is particularly pertinent. Her experiences at Cambridge will be shown tonight in Black Ambition, the first part of a BBC2 series that follows her final year of university and her exit into the real world, where she must decide whether studying for a Cambridge degree was worth the effort.

 

Clark, who is 26, was born in south London but moved to Barbados with her family when she was eight. She returned to England at 19 with an exemplary set of A-level results and was accepted by Cambridge. But she soon realised she stood out. "I found three other black girls in my college. I felt lucky, but then I thought: ' There are 400 students here and only four of us are black.' There were none in the years above me, and none came through as I progressed through my degree."

 

She recalls the time a Scottish student at her college said: "I didn't realise that when I came to Cambridge I would encounter ethnic minorities", and tells me how a black friend of hers was refused admittance to his college by the porter because he thought he had walked in off the street.

 

Clark, who was the president of the Caribbean Society, was shocked to discover that, during rag week, the university put on a "slave auction" - where people were sold for a day to the highest-bidding student to do chores for them.

 

"In Barbados, my family is only two generations away from the slave trade. Our house is opposite an old slave pen and my mother was so proud when I got in to Cambridge because she felt it showed how far we had come," explains Clark. "So when I saw this auction I thought: 'Hang on! My great grandparents were slaves!' Out of ignorance or insensitivity, some students would black up their faces for it. But as far as everyone was concerned, it was OK because it was in aid of charity."

 

Clark was the only black person on her course. "I would go in to a lecture hall and realise I was the only black person out of 200 students. You soon realise that you have a choice: either sit there and feel isolated, or just get on with it, which is what I did."

 

It wasn't only her skin colour that marked her as a less than typical Cambridge student - Clark was also a single mother. For the first two years of her course, her daughter, Izzie - who is now five - lived in Barbados with Clark's parents.

 

"I missed her terribly, so brought her back in my third year," she says. This meant having to move out of college accommodation and into housing for single parents on the outskirts of town. "It was a house split into one-bedroom flats - I gave the room to Izzie and slept on a futon in the living room."

 

She describes her final year as a "nightmare" as she had to balance the demands of studying for a degree at the country's best university with bringing up a child. "I got through it by taking out massive student loans. I'm £23,000 in debt now."

 

She received £60 a week through these loans, but needed double that to pay for childcare. "So I applied for more grants. I got a childcare grant from the Government, a nursery grant and a hardship grant from the university." There were times when Clark and Izzie would eat beans on toasts for days on end. "If we had 70p, we would treat ourselves to chips."

 

She couldn't get a job -Cambridge does not allow students to take on extra work - and, in any case, she wouldn't have been able to fit one in with looking after Izzie and studying. Clark's average day, unlike that of most students, began at 5.30am, so that she could get her daughter ready for nursery, followed by study. When Izzie went to bed, she went back to her books.

 

"I can count on one hand the number of times I went out socialising," she says.

 

She was often jealous of her friends who frequented the bars of Cambridge, and thinks that she might have got a better degree had it not been for Izzie, "but I don't regret having her and I can't look back now".

 

Access to Cambridge and Oxford is becoming wider and the profile of students is changing, but she would hate to see Cambridge admit people purely because of the colour of their skin. "Even when you are there through academic ability, if you are black, people think that you got in through an access scheme."

 

She says that even now, a year and a half after graduating, people find it hard to believe her when she tells them she went to Cambridge.

 

"They tend to look at me in shock and then go: 'You?' "

 

So does she feel that the debt and the hard work have been worth it? "Sometimes, I'm not so sure. During my degree, I wondered whether I had made the best decision coming to university with a child. And even though I have a well-paid job [as a computer analyst for an investment bank], the fact that I have so much debt means that I am often left with the same amount of money at the end of the week as when I was a student.

 

"But I did this for my daughter, and I am glad I did it. I feel as if I have achieved something for both young black women and single parents. Now, I just want to get on with life, free from being stereotyped."

[Sophist]

Only 83 of out 12 thousand? that is Baaaaaaaaaaaaad.

 

For those of you who are in similar situation as the people described above; how do you cope?

 

In my case, I find it easy to just disremember about this colour thing and it seems to work well for me--never before have I noticed the fact that I am the only "black" male in my faculty--out of almost 750 students.

 

How do you guys deal with it? Does it matter! are you concious about these things?

 

Thus Spake I

[N.O.R.F]

Only a few black ppl in profession, quantity surveying, so i'm the only farax here in this office, apart from a few hindis but hey they r galo, they can relate to all the pub/nights out talk whereas i tend to relate with the footy talk. Do i notice it? thats difficult to say, i notice being a muslim more (going in and out for prayers)than being black. Race is not really an issue for me, grown out of that. Having said that i have prob experienced more racism than most ppl. There is a certain level of discrimination in some high ranking educational establishments, but thats only expected in a majority white country. Like i said, i think the stance for us nomads has changed, religious prejudice is now the main issue for us. White ppl have come to sort off accept black (hence them thinking we are like afro-carribeans) but still have issues with asian (pakistanis).

[Sophist]

Northerner! and there are about 7 Muslims in this faculty mostly sisters from Asian community--great bunch they are.

 

In my first week, bewildered, not knowing where to pray Maqrib, I saw this final year student whom I use to see around the Library-- don't ask me how i noticed her-; normally without a Hijab but you could tell she was a sister; she had that spark about her. She was putting on the Hijab; so I asked her where I can perform the Salat; and she took me to the basement where there was no one. ME and two sisters prayed in an empty lecture hall-- that was an amazing feeling Walahi.

 

Thus Spake I

[N.O.R.F]

you could tell she was a sister; she had that spark about her

lol, good one

 

ME and two sisters prayed in an empty lecture hall

very surprised :eek: that u dont have prayer room,,,,,,,

 

well at least there is something for yourself and the 7 others to do during the 10 days Dhul Hijj, apply/ask for and open a small unused room that u can use as a prayer room, i'm sure there are laws that say u are entightled to it.

 

Man i miss uni, praying with all ya mates from pak/malay/alg/sudan/ethiopia/eriteria/yemen/bangla/moroc etc. I nip down to the local Masjid when i'm up here and pray in the Bengali-founded mosque, no complaints apart from a lack of line/saf, so many gaps and un-straight lines, now i know its something that asians do but u feel so uncomfortable with huge gaps between yrself and those on each side. I have been thinking about taking this issue up with the imam,,,,,

 

Sophist u shud really find a prayer room that all can u, u will gain ajar from it ia,,,,,

[Sophist]

Salaams

 

Brother Oxbridge (Oxford and Cambridge) as an institution is different from other Universities in Britain (perhaps Durham is similar); that they are confederation of colleges. Each college has minimum of say 300 students; that is where students live and get some cultural instruction. However, the central part of the university (actually there is no university as such) is departments. Consequently, since there is no buildings that the University has (where students congregate that is) it is difficult to set up a prayer room. I am actually quite lucky, because my college is about 4 minutes away from the Cambridge Central Masjid.

 

Thus Spake I