I, too, am Oxford: Being othered at university

Inspired by black students at Harvard, who were in turn inspired by the final ringing line – “I, too, am America” – of a 1926 civil liberties poem, a group of black and minority ethnic students at Oxford has launched the website I, too, am Oxford.

Nearly 70 students have so far posed for photographs holding up a sample of some of the attitudes they have met at the university (“How did you get in to Oxford? Jamaicans don’t study;” “So do you like speak Nigerian?”; “Yes my hair is real!”).

While more “students of colour” are now studying at Oxford than ever before, the site says: “Students in their daily encounters in Oxford are made to feel different and othered from the Oxford community.” There are still “issues to be discussed”.

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