Name: Being black at Cambridge University - BBC News
Uploaded: 2020-10-23T23:04:08.000Z
Duration: 12 min 29 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

The superlative

for black students studying at one of the most prestigious universities in the world, Academic pressure isn't always the only challenge for some.

Modal verbs - A2

To-infinitive

You feel like you have to be strong, you know, my mom keeps saying to me, Just keep fighting, Just keep going, just get that degree.

Over the years, Oxford and Cambridge universities have come under pressure for their lack of ethnic diversity.

I think it's a place where race has not been acknowledged as relevant, particularly to the whole intellectual experience of being a Cambridge.

Last year at Cambridge, the numbers improved on previous years with the university, except in a record number off 91 black British undergraduates.

I'm actually jump Baptiste, a BBC reporter but also a Cambridge graduate myself on.

Whilst I'm so glad I studied there as a mixed race South Londoner who grew up in care, it felt worlds apart from what I was used to and nearly 10 years on from my own time, I want to find out what life at Cambridge has been like for a new wave off black British.

Black British undergraduates have never made up more than 3% of Cambridge is undergraduate population.

This'll doesn't include international students who roughly make up a quarter of all undergraduates.

In 2018 the university launched the Storm Ze Scholarship to fund a selected number of black.

But I know firsthand that once you enter Cambridge, it's not uncommon to feel out of place.

And as much as the university did offer support, I often felt like an imposter and totally out of my depth.

It's because of my own experience that I really want to know how current black students are coping in a space that is still predominantly white and privileged and to give us their insights.

Meet Fabiana success on Sharon successes from Manchester and studying medicine for his Nigerian parents.

Seeing their son studied at Cambridge is nothing less than a dream come true back home in Africa when they want to maybe make fun off you.

If you're studying so much, they will ask you, why you studying so much?

It's a big thing for US successes, enjoying University a few weeks in, but he was a bit concerned about finding a barber in Cambridge who could cut Afro hair success.

Why is it taking you so long to get a haircut in Cambridge?

When I looked in the mirror one day and saw this mess, I don't really know where to go A few weeks into Cambridge.

Like I have found, I found people that quite like me.

E found people are very different to me, and we've gone beyond its Yeah, it's just been a really good experience when I heard about Cambridge, Oxford and all that kind of stuff like This is the place I wanted to go see if looked up.

Sharon, from Tottenham, is studying history in Spanish.

Her family of ever train origin have come to visit.

We we've seen or something so like unattainable, but we're like a goal for you.

I feel like Cambridge is very welcoming that representing for air trail.

There's not that many Eritreans that good Cambridge.

I came just this a short time in this country and I never dream it.

That's my daughter or to go to Cambridge.

As a mom, I think you did get a sense that you are different.

We just something that you do have to kind of just think about Just be like, you know, if you enter certain, like classes, you might be the only person of color there.

You might be the only one with your hair there.

And like people don't recognize you, they are academically.

But what I was surprised about is how I've been eased into it.

In a way, Fabiana is from Coventry, where she lives with her Jamaican mum.

She's studying psychology and behavioral sciences.

So you had Thio play the part, don't work overnight.

Just get up and say I'm gonna be pushed you've been working towards this.

Fabiana says she encountered racial discrimination from another students at a social event.

The incident involved the use of a racial slur.

This boy just said like a really ignorant comment.

So that was something that, like, free me off Because I've never really experienced someone like outwardly saying something like that to me.

Like I've never been called the n word or anything like that.

Like I didn't I couldn't say anything that everyone just like Oh my gosh, I can't believe you just said that.

No one really spoke up apart from me and my black friend.

You're definitely like I'm black at Cambridge.

She decided not to report the issue, but confronted the student privately, who, she says later apologized.

It's not too long after her own encounter that Fabiana hears of another black students who alleges they've been discriminated against.

According to the student Thean incident involved a staff member from Trinity College which is one of the colleges of Cambridge University.

A man from Trinity College looked at me in disgust and just said verbally assaulted me on the train.

I think to myself, would I have been spoken like that if I was a white man?

It really grates me that I'm getting emotional about it because you feel like you have to be strong.

My mom keeps saying to me, Just keep fighting.

She she's saying, Do you want to drop out?

I'm fighting for every other black person who I know it needs to occupy these spaces.

The university has taken steps to improve its diversity, but it's clear that some black students still struggle.

I took the guys to share their concerns with the university's vice chancellor.

A lot of black students feel like when they get here, they don't really feel like a part of the university like instances where we just feel like outcasts.

What mechanisms does the university have for issues that black sheets experience?

So the first step is creating a critical mass of Behm students black students in particular, so that people did never feel alone.

One of the things that we've done is committed to a three year program of increasing dialogue around issues of race.

Do you think this is a place that is institutionally racist?

I think it's a place where race has not been acknowledged as relevant, particularly to the whole, uh, intellectual experience of being a Cambridge.

So in that sense, I would say it is racist because it doesn't acknowledge race in people's lives.

Despite challenges, the university's African Caribbean Society, also known as the A C s, has been a lifeline for the students.