It was an overcast day in October when I arrived, Ikea bags in-hand, for day one of Oxford Fresher’s Week. High hopes? Sort of. Having just spent two weeks recovering from Opportunity Oxford (OppOx) – a fortnight-long residential which brought with it enough drinking and clubbing to kill a small horse – I felt that I had already found a place for myself in the city. I’d frequented the Swan and Castle, studied in the Radcliffe Camera, experienced a night at Bridge – what more was there to it? Little did I know what awaited me.
Perhaps fuelled by the implications of participating in an outreach programme like OppOx, I took comfort in being surrounded by people who were broadly like-minded, and whose lives had resembled my own. I had, of course, braced myself for the inevitable Evelyn Waugh or Saltburn-esque stereotypes I expected to encounter; I knew that the Oxford I had come to know – shaped by 250 students from disadvantaged backgrounds – was about to look very different. Yet nothing could have prepared me for what I would come to recognise everywhere, lurking in every corner of the city.
I had been conscious not to allow the judgemental mindset of class categorisation to impact my social interactions, aware of the quickly-developing chip on the shoulders of my OppOx peers. The great clash of private and state school had been long-anticipated. Nobody knew what to expect, there was a morbid fascination with ‘the other’, reinforced by the insulated nature of the programme.
None of this mental preparation could predict the reality of Oxford, however. It is a city of art, culture, music, intellectualism,but most significantly, privilege. But not in the traditional sense. No, it did not come plastered with family crests, donning a Barbour jacket and a signet ring. Privilege in modern Oxford is illicit, disguised as something it is not.
So, you can imagine my surprise as I discovered the truth about even the most self-styled subversive, ‘anti-establishment’ Oxford students. They may be some of the loudest voices in condemning nepotism, entitlement, and inherited advantage – but many of them were products of just that.
After mentioning this to friends from home, I began to question what about it I found uncomfortable. What’s wrong with playing dress up? Can people not style themselves however they like? I probably wouldn’t carry around a sign saying: “Look at me! I come from centuries of generational wealth and privilege”, either. Privilege can, of course, mean lots of different things. But something still did not sit right with me, as I came to realise that their arguments about unaffordable mental health support, class discrimination, and the difficulties of breaking into (especially creative) industries were constructed wholly on perceived struggle, not lived experience.
It’s worth asking: do you really need to have had a direct encounter to comment on these societal problems? They were still ultimately drawing invaluable attention to important social issues, no? Oxford is undoubtedly an echochamber. One could easily go weeks here without thinking about the rest of the world. Was it not understandable that in the ‘UK’s least affordable city’, discourse would look this way?
But, still, it was the deafening volume of their discussion that just did not sit right with me. Solidarity was becoming substitution, those with lived experience quietly edged out. It became clear that empathy and allyship are not the problem – replacement is. The impact of such ‘performative poverty’ – the adoption of the language, aesthetics, and grievances of disadvantage by those who have never had to live with its consequences – was drowning out some of the class debate’s most underrepresented voices.
I first began to see this within Oxford’s artistic circles, after multiple friends told me that they were scared to speak up about their experiences of growing up on Universal Credit, of bereavement, of being in care. If they weren’t able to contribute, then what actually was the art seeking to depict and challenge those issues really doing? My friends originally joked that it was a kind of fetishisation, employing the “my culture is not your costume” line often used in debates around appropriation.
But soon I began to see this pattern everywhere. It exists in the overly sympathetic sighs of ‘solidarity’, the overexaggeration of comparatively minor and mundane inconveniences, and most egregiously in the conversational spaces which so loudly claim societally subaltern status.
I write this midway through my second year as an undergraduate here, after debating back and forth whether writing this piece would merely contribute to a similar culture of class tribalism. However, as the dial on these appropriative voices continues to be turned up, I realised that this was not a debate around exposing imposters, but about encouraging conversation in context. Oxford is at the forefront of providing both life-changing academic and personal support to disadvantaged students. But with a fluctuating national economy and constantly dynamic discourse, institutions cannot be expected to keep up if they are unable to connect with those most deeply and genuinely impacted.
It may take work – it goes against the very foundations of a contemporary society drunk off short term gratification and performative, trend-based discourse. But I hope that with awareness can come true diversity, as we realise that the loudest voices in the room might not always be the most representative – or the most in need of being heard.
