Why ‘anon’ is a woman of colour Online Lifestyle Editor, Amy Butterworth, highlights the value of events like FemSoc’s Women of Colour Poetry Night and the need to decolonise the arts VIRGINIA Woolf famously said that “anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman”. In contrast, the “anon” of today […]
racism
Macpherson Report: What We Are Yet to Learn
This past weekend marked the 20th anniversary of Sir William Macpherson’s report into police handling of the Stephen Lawrence Case. The report famously labelled London’s Metropolitan Police as ‘institutionally racist’ and set out numerous recommendations. One must reflect on the Stephen Lawrence murder case in order to contextualise the Macpherson report. Lawrence was an 18-year-old man […]
Experiencing inequality – misogyny and racism in Exeter
Growing up as a woman of colour, you’re taught to tone down your identity. We experience so many forms of casual to extreme racism, that you do end up silencing yourself. In my first year, I had a drunk girl come up to me at a party questioning where I’m from because I ‘don’t look […]
Black history – more than a month
FOR most of us it would be an awkward task: attempting to find the exact moment in our lives when we absorbed the data that comprises the broad spectrum of general knowledge. Christmas, tig-and-tag, the Olympics – our knowledge of these things arises from osmosis and are generally picked up through our childhood. Alas, knowledge […]
XpressionFM Interviews Vice-Chancellor Sir Steve Smith
Sir Steve Smith, the University of Exeter’s Vice-Chancellor was interviewed by XpressionFM’s Heads of News Lottie Rayner and Chloe Shaw on Monday 15 October. Among other topics, he spoke about sexual assault and racism across campus openly in light of recent campus and national events. He also briefly spoke about the Wellbeing centre and the […]
#ReclaimTheBindi
(originally published in Print May 2018) I want to first acknowledge that I know that this is a contentious debate. Normally, I can’t even say the words “cultural appropriation” without being shut down, accused of being a “social justice warrior perpetrating call-out culture”, whatever that’s supposed to mean. A calm, intellectual discussion about this “non-issue” […]
Roseanne: Top-Down Racism
The Rebooted sitcom Roseanne was recently cancelled by ABC after its title-star, Roseanne Barr, launched a racist and Islamophobic attack against Valerie Jarrett, Former advisor to Barack Obama. Barr, referencing Jarrett, tweeted “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj”. The ape comparison is an age-old racist trope which has been used to dehumanise […]
What’s representation without support?
Considering that fact that most Indian national students spent about three months getting all our documents ready for a visa and poring over procedure, we’d not easily fall for phone calls demanding money and threatening deportation. But the fact that we received one of those phone calls is the problem, really. We know that “this […]
There’s no pride in prejudice
Iremember my first few weeks living in Exeter. The observations made by so many, including non-PoC (people of colour), that this city is very “white”. It’s easy to observe, especially as a student of Modern Languages. Thus, it would be statistically impossible for such ignorance not to exist here. Nevertheless, Arsalan Motivali’s brave act of […]
Canon, colour and colony
University of Cambridge student Lola Olufemi penned an open letter to the university’s English faculty that sought to broaden the current English curriculum to include more writers of colour. This belief was shared by fellow students and academics who signed the missive earlier this year in June. On 25 October, The Telegraph ran a story […]