Racism is a constant presence in people’s lives

It’s a pretty common for cconversation to pause during meetings of the Campaign for Racial Awareness and Equality (CRAE) — someone mentions, for ex­ample, another blackface incident at a bop, and someone else chimes in with another a racist remark on facebook, and someone ech­oes with their latest all-dead-white-men sylla­bus. Everyone pauses, and sighs: “oh, Oxford.”

We recognize that adding our Race Survey data to the conversation around race at Oxford is not going to make anyone’s day. As Oxford’s only dedicated campaign for racial equality, we know how easy it is to be discouraged in dealing with issues of race at Oxford that are prevalent and entrenched enough to look like a fact of life.

But even though racism is a constant pres­ence in people’s lives here at Oxford, we have also seen change for the better in this uni­versity and believe that even more change is possible. We wanted to share the gains we’ve already made, and the actions underway, be­cause knowing that there is something we can do is what keeps us engaged in trying to make things better. By sharing this here, we also want to ask for your feedback on what we’re doing. From CRAE’s various projects, we have found that conditions inhibiting racial equal­ity at Oxford fall into four categories:

1) A lack of diversity in the student body, which produces a ‘splinter effect’ isolating minority ethnic students in different colleges and departments

2) A curriculum that fails to capture the di­versity of non-Western thought, peoples, and cultures, including a lack of diversity in Ox­ford’s teaching staff that further prevents crit­ical re-evaluation of the existing curriculum

3) A pervading culture that struggles to wel­come differences in race and ethnicity, includ­ing through the normalization of racial ban­ter or unquestioned acceptance of racial and ethnic stereotypes

4) A sense of social isolation among minor­ity ethnic students, including through a lack of spaces that are perceived as ‘safe’ to discuss race

When we presented these findings and the data from our Race Survey to the University administration at our historic 2014 Race Sum­mit, we were extremely encouraged by their enthusiasm and support for tackling these issues, and especially their commitment to investigate how curriculum across the univer­sity might be adapted to promote an under­standing of all of the world’s best minds, not only those from the male, white West. Part of this will also involve an investigation into hir­ing practices to promote and support appli­cations by minority-ethnic faculty members, who play a hugely important role in the crea­tion of a respectful and vibrant multicultural academic community.

Beyond our work with the University, how­ever, we are making our own efforts to tackle these issues by creating new spaces for pub­lic discussion of race and ethnicity and all things related, especially in events with other societies like the OUSU Disabled Students’ Campaign and WomCam’s Women of Colour group. We are also looking forward to the 2014 launch of the Alternative Reading List Project, a student-driven website as a place for students to share sources from perspectives that are not on their reading lists—but should be. To get involved or find out more, CRAE meetings are every Thursday at 6pm in OUSU, and are open to all Oxford students regardless of race or ethnicity. We are also reachable by email at [email protected].