57: A careers trip to university

Working in a Black-majority school, we took students on a careers trip to a university city, I noticed how they were nervously looking round to spot someone who looked like them. At the same time, groups of tourists would stop and stare at us because they were unused to seeing groups of young Black people. The students spent the day trying to count the Black people and told me on the way home that they didn't think they could attend such a university because it wasn't "for people like us". I recalled that when I had made similar university visits at school, the vast majority of people shared my white ethnicity and so I never doubted that someone who looked like me could attend - in fact I assumed that I could and should attend such a place because of the role models I was seeing. This for me is just one example of how white privilege operates: the subtle and unacknowledged advantage in society that comes from being white.