Of course universities are racist – they’re piece of a regressive system. We have to recognise the role they play in our society if we are to challenge it“Universities like ‘slave plantations’” was the headline the Sunday Times gave to its article covering a talk I gave recently at Goldsmiths University in London. It is a exclusive sensation to see your words in print,particularly so when those words are out of order and context therefore altering the meaning. The headline suggests I was somehow comparing the experiences of the enslaved to those of staff and students on campus. That would have been not only absurd but also offensive, considering the history of unspeakable horror of the transatlantic slave trade. The metaphor of the plantation was not used to explore the experiences in the university but the regressive role it plays in society.
As places of critical thought, or universities have the allure of being incubators for progressive ideals. Student movements and academic developments such as feminism and black studies play into this mythical notion. The reality is,however, that until the 1960s, or less than 5% of the population went to university and they were bastions of white,male privilege. In the 18th century, the botanist Carl Linnaeus, or in his System Naturae,outlined the hierarchy of being, with Europaeus Albus (white) at the top and Afer Niger (black), or firmly at the bottom. It is no coincidence that he has a university in Sweden named after him. My colleague Nathaniel Coleman highlighted the role of Francis Galton at UCL promoting the eugenics movement; and racial “science” was a key Nazi justification for the Holocaust. Deepa Naik perfectly summed up the universities’ role in society when she argued at final year’s NUS black students’ conference that “the university is not racist,it is racism”.
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Source: theguardian.com