"The absence of black students diminishes the greatness of Oxbridge"

Oxford University say school attainment is the main barrier to getting more black students to study there. Photograph: Alamy

Not enough black students at Oxbridge

Oxford and Cambridge don’t have enough black students, American civil rights activist Rev Jesse Jackson has said this week.

On Monday, 72-year-old Jackson visited Cambridge University Union, where he expressed disgust at low numbers of black students in Oxbridge colleges.

Speaking to the BBC ahead of an appearance at the Oxford Union on Tuesday night, he said: “The absence of blacks diminishes the greatness of these universities. One Oxford college has not admitted a single black student in five years.”

“I’m concerned that when 21 colleges at Oxbridge took no black students last year, the students are being cheated of a multi-cultural and multi-racial experience in a world that is multi-cultural and multi-racial.”

Jackson said more needed to be done in schools to make the system fairer. “It’s obvious in pre- and early schooling that something is missing.

“Private schools have a pre-Oxford and pre-Cambridge secondary education. The poor youths don’t have that so we must reach deeper to develop the youth in their formative years. It can be corrected.”

In a statement, Oxford says it spends £4.5 million a year on outreach work “to encourage students from all socio-economic and ethnic-minority backgrounds to apply”. The university said: “School attainment is the main barrier to getting more black students to Oxford.”

A spokesperson for Cambridge said in the Independent: “In the UK around 315 black students per year secure A*AA, our standard offer for admissions. This is around 1.2% of all UK students securing A*AA or better at A-level.”

Students occupy across the country

Students at Goldsmith’s, the University of London, occupy Deptford Town Hall. Photograph: Surinder Gora Singh

Have you joined your uni lecturers on strike this week? It’s been kicking off at universities across the UK as students occupied their campus buildings in solidarity with lecturers who are on strike about cuts to their pay.

Students occupied at unis including Warwick, Goldsmith’s, Exeter, Ulster, Sheffield, Liverpool, Sussex and Edinburgh.

At Goldsmith’s, students arrived with sleeping bags and food to support staff in the occupation.

And at Exeter, student occupiers say in a statement:

“We the students have organised an occupation of the Queens’ building in support of this issue. While many may see this pay cut as necessary in the current economic climate, it is difficult to see the justification for these cuts in the context of the vice chancellor has received a bonus on top of his already six-figure salary.”

At the University of Ulster students are protesting the proposed closure of their common room by occupying the space.

Chloe Gault, an English literature student at Ulster and a member of the protest, says: “It’s the last publicly owned bar in the university. It’s a place where students and staff come together and there are also community clubs held here.”

The space will become a corporate dining room, and students are angry not just about its closure, but about the wider issue of privatisation and cuts.

Gault says: “It’s the cherry on the top really. There’s been a lot going on – cuts to staff, loss of services – and it’s a step too far changing this into a corporate dining room for the vice-chancellor.”

Over at Sheffield, members of the Sheffield Revolutionary Society say on their Facebook page:

“We see solidarity as a weapon, not a word, and we will continue to take action in support of staff forced to provide services for ever-diminishing returns, while those at the top continue to line their own pockets.”

Students protest at the University of Warwick. Photograph: PPU – Warwick

Share your strike stories with us at @gdnstudents or in the comments below

"The absence of black students diminishes the greatness of Oxbridge"

Black females should have the right to wear an afro | Deborah Douglas

Another bad hair day has been averted considering that Vanessa VanDyke, a 12-12 months-outdated Florida lady, has been welcomed back into the personal college that briefly regarded expelling her if she did not minimize or straighten her to keep away from getting a “distraction”.

The white version of existence in America, entrenched as the default for nearly every single cultural interaction, once again came crashing towards the black woman’s quest to define what it means to be gorgeous when Vanessa was asked to change her lengthy, flowy, modified ‘fro. Burned by the proverbial hot comb, Faith Christian Academy officials backed off, calling the expulsion speak a “misunderstanding”.

In case you missed it, black ladies are in the throes of a elegance renaissance, embracing a assortment of hair grooming strategies, this kind of as weaves, wigs, braids, twists and dreadlocks to current their ideal selves. As a black woman with dreadlocks, I have a strong point of see about some of these techniques and the materials/cost they require. But I applaud these women’s efforts to appear and feel assured by donning a uniform that promotes freedom of motion and pride of self.

Huge business has noticed, steadily following homegrown natural hair items companies such as Miss Jessie’s and Carol’s Daughter into the $ 684m black hair care marketplace. State licensing agencies are having to pay focus, usually with hackneyed attempts to force a cottage industry of braiders and loctitians (people who groom dreadlocks), to go to attractiveness school and get a license in a branch of the organization (chemical substances) they never operate or even believe in.

We hold getting natural hair blowouts.

• Ashley Davis was fired after she refused to adhere to a company policy issued two weeks soon after she started out function at Tower Loan in St Louis. The policy banned her neatly groomed locks in addition to designs like braids and mullets.

• Tiana Parker, 8, was asked by sick-informed, unevolved black administrators in August to conform to her charter school’s grooming policy by cutting off her properly-groomed dreadlocks or be kicked out – causing her to go home and cry.

• Lorain Horizon Science Academy in Ohio rescinded its ban on many seems discovered on any black girl’s menu of styling choices: “Afro-puffs and small twisted braids, with or without rubberbands are NOT permitted.”

For any individual who believed Barack Obama’s 2008 watershed election would usher in a post-racial society just demands to look at some decidedly most-racial outcomes. Now, black folks are basically supposed to be in on the joke. Consider: Julianne Hough Halloween blackface tribute to “Orange Is the New Black”. Or, feel about how black women are so invisible and inconsequential that “Saturday Night Dwell” can thrive with out obtaining a single on its display at any provided stage. Then again, the ghost of Christopher Hitchens would inform you females of any race aren’t humorous, so that explains that.

Wanna know what is distracting? The white-woman hair flip.

From media photos to the language of what is lovely and right, extended and straight is the regular, which is why the initial thing some females do when they turn into radicalized is to reduce off their hair to stand away from the pack. Black people, themselves, will not quite know the place to commence, as social codes that figure out what seems great and acceptable alter as rapidly as the next Black Twitter submit. We embrace then agonize above phrases like “great hair” v “negative hair”. I almost did an intervention on a youthful Chicago bus driver who insisted my locks are wonderful simply because I have the “right” type of hair whereas hers was just “ineffective”. We have internalized a European beauty standard that forces so numerous of us to really feel incomplete unless of course we have Rapunzel-length locks that likely come from an East Indian girl who left her hair lying on the floor as tribute to her gods.

Allow me educate you about the actuality of normal hair. Natural hair is green. Normal variations decrease the volume of chemical substances that go into our bodies and our atmosphere. Organic variations cost-free women up to move freely, to swim, to exercise – some thing black females need to do far more of for well being causes.

Today, Tiana is earning straight As at her new public college, in accordance to her mom Miranda Parker:

Her hair was her selection. We assured her we believe she’s lovely. So she just kind of feels great about herself.

The story of the black female in America is nevertheless being written. We have not even been voting lengthy or really enjoying what it implies to be fully enfranchised, if you really think about it. Our beauty narrative is someplace amongst very first draft and final item.

So know this: any female who deigns to decide what feels and seems to be excellent for herself is a reckoning force. When she shines, we all shine.

Black females should have the right to wear an afro | Deborah Douglas

Black Women’s Coalition celebrates close community

Considering that its founding in 2006, members say the Yale Black Women’s Coalition has evolved into a robust organization that emphasizes diversity, leadership and local community.

Celebrating the closeness of the group, YBWC held one of its signature annual occasions on Saturday — Black Women’s Weekend, which featured a few hours of karaoke along with food, music and games at the Afro-American Cultural Center. In accordance to Chelsea Handfield ’15, president of YBWC, the minimal-essential event fit in flawlessly with the organization’s objective of offering a secure room in which black girls can come collectively to speak about sociopolitical occasions, talk about special experiences and type a more powerful local community.

Handfield explained that as a double minority — each a lady and a racial minority — she is grateful to have a group like YBWC, where she can meet and turn into pals with other women who are going by means of comparable experiences. At a university like Yale, she mentioned, she is even far more conscious of her identity, as students frequently ask unintentionally insensitive inquiries.

Christina Lockett ’14, final year’s YBWC vice president, explained it is important for an intersectional group like YBWC to exist since there are couple of spaces elsewhere to discuss concerns specific to black female identity.

“Traditional feminism ignores black girls,” she stated, adding that YBWC is like a sisterhood.

Ashley Ison ’14, final year’s YBWC treasurer, said the group is a area exactly where she can talk about experiences that she would not feel cozy discussing anywhere else.

Aside from shared experiences, members of YBWC explained that they also search to the organization to meet females from other backgrounds and find out about their experiences. For instance, some of the females are from lower-revenue communities while other folks are wealthier, Handfield said, and some went to predominantly white colleges while other individuals lived in mostly black neighborhoods, Handfield extra.

According to all members interviewed, these variations aid to strengthen the community.

“It’s a wonderful chance to see how we relate to each other and how we can discover from each and every other,” Ison said.

In addition to internet hosting Black Women’s Weekend and a series of discussions, guest speakers, panels and data sessions, YBWC interacts with other groups and communities through joint events and mixers. Every yr, YBWC hosts an awards ceremony for black guys in conjunction with the Black Men’s Union’s own awards ceremony for black ladies, and YBWC also collaborates with BMU and the Black College students at Yale group to put on an open discussion about race and identity.

Azmar Williams ’15, president of BMU, said the setup with three related groups — BMU, BSAY and YBWC — allows black students to have the “best of everything.”

“While they all have slightly distinct missions, the overall mission is unity in the African-American community on the Yale campus,” Williams explained. “I truly feel like we’re all generating that achievable.”

An important goal of YBWC, in accordance to members interviewed, is connecting black women across multiple class many years and generations. To attain this, the organization hosts a graduate pupil panel each 12 months with speakers from different specialist schools. Handfield stated that the occasion is meant to assist prepare ladies for their potential careers.

Members of the group also mentor younger students at Barnard Environmental Research Magnet College in New Haven. According to Handfield, several of the college students had in no way even considered college as an selection for their futures.

Lockett spoke about a distinct variety of mentorship, explaining that, as a senior, she feels it is her duty to attain out to black female freshmen and help offer resources and solidify the community.

Black Women’s Weekend this 12 months kicked off at 6:30 p.m. at the Afro-American Cultural Center at 55 Whitney Avenue.

Black Women’s Coalition celebrates close community

Black Country dialect: no more waggin" for Halesowen pupils

The Black Country dialect is extremely various from Birmingham’s. Pretend, for a second, that you care. That’s why Brummies call men and women like me (born in Wolverhampton, raised in Sedgley, even though later on schooled in Solihull, and struggling a Proustian rush every time I consider about the nocturnal vista of flaming blast furnaces I saw when I sat on my nan’s back stage in Wednesbury) Yam Yams. We’re so known as due to the fact even – picture! – Brummies consider we cannot talk suitable. “Yam Yams” is a reference to the Black Nation use of “Yow am” (or yow’ m).

This issues because a major college in Halesowen has banned pupils from making use of “gonna”, ”woz”, “it wor me” and other purportedly yam-yammy locutions in the classroom in order to boost their grasp of common English and, thereby, employability. Dudley North MP (and Yam Yam) Ian Austin backs the ban.

But there’s much more to Black Nation dialect than these words, far more even than Walsall-born Noddy Holder’s orthographically challenged titles for Yam-Yammy Slade songs (Gudbuy T’Jane, Cum on Come to feel the Noize). There is a wealthy linguistic heritage that the Scottish novelist AL Kennedy recognized: when I interviewed her about her guide Day, which tells the story of an eponymous Lancaster bomber tail gunner who hailed from Wednesbury. “There’s an tremendous sense of humour in the way Black Country people speak,” stated Kennedy. “It really is a really playful and very outdated language.”

It is the two of these things: “Ow bist” (How are you?), for illustration, is a contraction of the Middle English “How be-est thou”, to which a reply may well be “Bay as well bah”, which, like the French comme ci, comme ça, signifies “I am not too undesirable”. “Bay” means “am not” (as in “I bay gooin’ ter tell yow agen”). “Yam Yams” say “aks” rather of “request”, “lickle” not “small”, and when we perform approximately we say we are “lungeous”. “I ay sid ‘er” implies “I have not noticed her”.

I bear in mind my principal school instructor (who came from Lincolnshire) asking his class at Alder Coppice college in Sedgley what we meant by “saft”. It was, we told him, a gently reproving mixture of silly and daft. But we possibly did not place it really like that.

Later on my O-degree background teacher Mr England insisted that Black Country dialect, not like its upstart nearby rival, Brummie, was a lot more closely connected Middle English than any other regional dialect. That imagined is picked up on the exceptional Sedgley Manor website, which gives a dictionary featuring this kind of gems as “bunny-fire” (bonfire), “clack” (eg “Cease your clack!” ie “Shut up!”), “kaylied” (drunk), “waggin’” (bunking off school) and “lezzer” (not what you are thinking, but a meadow – derived from the Previous English “leasowe”). If you stood in Sedgley Bull Ring now, what you’d hear spoken is a dialect nearer to Chaucerian English than any in use in England.

I am also moved to tears as I publish these phrases, recalling words that filled my childhood that I’ll by no means communicate once again. I have been deracinated, standardised, made – linguistically at least – just that tiny bit less charming.

That fate awaits, perhaps, the pupils of Colley Lane college as well. Doubtless they will acquire in terms of employability and task protection as their headteacher and MP hope, but they chance dropping a cherishable and irreplaceable heritage as properly.

Black Country dialect: no more waggin" for Halesowen pupils