Historians study the past to understand the present. Hoping that hindsight would steer us away from future pitfalls. However, the most enlightening of lessons are found in the untold and unwritten stories. And behind these omissions lay the politics and the power structures that have shaped the world today.
The tragic murder of George Floyd sparked global Black Lives Matter protests in every continent and opened a much need critical dialogue around the politics of history. Here in the UK, the toppling of slave trader Edward Colston’s statue in Bristol exposed the dangers of these hidden power structures that continue to whitewash and airbrush history. For those arguing that history is being rewritten or erased. I would counter that history is finally being told in its full entirety. If we are to learn from the past, then it is time to cast off the rose-tinted veil that shrouds it.
Inspired after reading about one of the hidden Black trailblazers of the past and equally frustrated by the institutional racism that has buried them in historical obscurity, I wrote the below blog in 2018 – titled ‘59 years and still counting’. It frustrates me to say that everything that I wrote then still holds today.
Except with one minor alteration.
It is no longer 59 years and still counting, but now 61 years and still counting….
For almost a century, University of Oxford college All Souls' one-word exam was the bane of brilliant young minds. This was a test unlike any other: there was no right or wrong answer, and its obscure nature made it next to impossible to prepare for. The grand prize was hardly the financial stipend on offer, but the acclaim that went with the title of being an 'All Souls Fellow'.
In 1959, Ghanaian William Emmanuel Abraham achieved global acclaim and overnight notoriety when he became the first African scholar admitted into the opulent halls of All Souls College. Arriving in Oxford on a postgraduate scholarship from the University of Ghana, a newly liberated country in its first tentative years, William found himself sitting the dreaded one-word essay.
The word posed to him was "suffrage" – a fitting word for a young man whose own country was breaking historical grounds and setting precedent as the first African nation to gain independence. William's paper was described as "an essay full of agitation" and his candidacy polarised the college.
Fifty-nine years later William remains the only black person in the college's illustrious history, dating back to 1438. You're probably wondering why on Earth I'm writing about William Abraham and where this is leading to. The short answer is that I find William relatable.
We share a distinct similarity having both attended Oxford as first-generation Africans, although my entrance to the UK was starkly different. Unlike William, I didn't arrive to the UK on a scholarship but as a child refugee from Somalia.
More than half a century after William Abraham, and against all odds, my admission into Oxford was by no means ground-breaking. However ethnic faces continued to be rarities. This distinct lack of diversity is by no means an accident.
Like other bastions of power, the ivory towers of Oxford are no different to the halls in Westminster or the soaring skyscrapers in the City of London. These spaces remain void of the colour, the vibrancy and voices of multicultural Britain. Yet, the decisions made here impact us all.
It is within the highest echelons of power in politics, economy, business, science, media, academia and so forth that diversity and inclusion is so desperately needed. Oxford is not the only institution set in its ways. Changing this current reality calls for a seismic shift at the systemic level.
I believe we are well past the point of feigning shock and ignorance each time a new study further 'unearths' what we all already know to be true and that is the corridors of power remain firmly shut in the faces of minority groups. Institutional racism is the greatest barrier in human progress today.
It's time for action. And I'm not talking about affirmative action. We need to tackle the enablers fuelling and justifying these segregated spaces. This includes dismantling brick by brick the centuries old prejudices and racism that legitimised the commodification of people and romanticised imperialist conquests.
The shocking horrors of the Windrush Scandal revealed that these structural biases are not mere figments of the imagination or a thin skeletal carcass of the past. Instead, over the decades, these biases have become somewhat fortified and more pronounced – subsumed into the structural foundations of our society.
As a society, we can only progress once every member is given a voice and is heard. Until then, we will continue to remain stagnate, or worse deteriorate as nationalism and xenophobia once again rears its ugly head in international politics and discourse.
Fifty-nine years ago, William Emmanuel Abraham became All Souls' first and only African prize scholar to date. Now aged 84 years old, William has returned to Oxford as a revered academic. His portrait proudly adorns the great dining hall of All Souls.
The overt racism that William faced has now largely been banished into the private sphere; however institutional racism remains as rampant as ever fifty-nine years later and still counting.
