As you walk through the halls of King’s College London, you’ll meet an amazing variety of people from different backgrounds. In comparison to its Russell Group counterparts, King’s has developed a reputation for the diversity of its student population. Promotional pictures feature laughing students from all over the world, hugging each other in a symbol of multicultural inclusivity. And yet, there is one area of King’s that remains particularly homogeneous, and you only have to spend a short time here for that to become glaringly obvious.
The King’s faculty is white. Very, very white.
In my first year, each of my eight lecturers were white. This year, the trend continues as, despite considerable effort on my part to find BME lecturers, the majority remain white. And it’s not just me – this story is one that is echoed by many students and for good reason. Research carried out as part of the Race Equality Charter Mark (REM) trial in 2015 found that King’s has a lower proportion of BME staff than the benchmark set for universities. And of the professors employed by the Arts and Humanities Faculty in 2017, only 5 per cent were BME. We should be appalled at how easy it is to go through your three years at KCL without ever being taught by a BME lecturer. Frankly, it seems contradictory that a university can pride itself on providing students with a holistic education – as KCL claims it does – and yet, overwhelming provide platforms to the narratives and voices of only one demographic.
For a young person of colour, this lack of representation can create a thoroughly isolating environment. The REM investigation also found that BME students were more likely to feel like they did not belong at King’s compared to their white counterparts, and this was a direct result of the lack of representation in academic staff. It’s unsurprising when every symbol of success, every potential role model they could have, is overtly different to themselves. Lecturers are white, personal tutors are white – even the majority of King’s counsellors are white. This means that if there happens to be a student brave enough to begin a discussion about racial issues in academia with a person who has the power to help, they are left with no choice but to attempt to explain their struggles to a person who is fundamentally unable to relate.
Now, I’m not necessarily asking for a diversity quota, which tends to be the most popular solution suggested. Quotas, when used in isolation, ignore the nuances of the struggle for diversity and are usually instated so that institutions have some line of defence against critics. “Hey”, they are wont say, “We are diverse! Look at the single black man we’ve employed!” This type of tokenism is severely reductionist and ultimately detrimental to minority communities, as it perpetuates the idea that members of these communities are not employed based on their merit, but their identity. We need more than just quotas. We need recognition that there is a whole wealth of culture and intellect amongst BME communities that is currently being overlooked, and we need a better understanding of the socio-economic factors that have led to this deficit of BME academics. As an academic institution, it is our duty to tackle the question of why more BME students don’t continue their academic careers instead of only thinking of them when it’s time to hand in the demographics reports for admissions and then employment.
For all the time and money being spent on welcoming students from ethnic minorities, not enough is being done to diversify the academic staff. By not working towards improving the diversity of people in positions of power, academic institutions expose the startling lack of respect they have for the issues students of colour face. Universities need to start taking more responsibility in welcoming ethnic minority groups to academia and showing that they are not hostile to people of colour. In improving representation, they will undoubtedly see more ethnic minority students considering a career in academia, and this is will lead to a more innovative form of academic thought. Intelligence is not limited to the white man, and universities need to stop acting like it is.