Being Black in a white country is difficult for most Black people.
Of course, because of unavoidable setbacks like discrimination.
For example, the white person in charge of salaries at your job will probably give you less money than other white people in the same position. Or they might just put you in a position that is lower than what you are qualified for, if you are lucky at all to get hired.
You might also face racism–people say or do nasty things: just because they don’t like you, just because they have been trained to despise your skin color.
But there are also things that are said and done by “well-meaning” white people who don’t have a deep-seated hatred for Black people, but are just pretty ignorant in conversing with anyone who is unlike them.
Unwittingly, they make comments that consciously or unconsciously undermine your success or remind you constantly that they think of you as “other.”
We call these everyday occurrences of racism, discrimination, and aggravation: microaggressions.
Imagine, one thing that one white person says might be perfectly harmless.
But if you go entire days and weeks and months of hearing the same ignorant or undermining statements, they can add up pretty quickly and make for an unpleasant experience for Black people in a white country.
The students at Oxford University in the United Kingdom spoke out against these microaggressions.
In a series of pictures, they expressed racial statements they encounter daily while being Oxford students.
Such microaggressions give Black students at selective colleges an added burden in addition to their study loads.
Do some of these annoying things white people say sound familiar to you?
I am happy African students around the globe are becoming more and more aware of the gross human rights issues in the West. They are not what they claim they are – they are no liberal, they are no democratic, they are not nice, they are not here to help!
Hopefully those African kids studying in their Universities will now find reason enough to go back and and rebuild Africa. It’s been to f-cking long.
This sort of awareness by African students is extremely important. They have to overcome this dehumanization in the West and go back to Africa and forge a new Africa with their friends and families back home so that the next generation doesn’t have to fight to get into Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge etc.
Yes, next time, it will be University of Timbuktu, Ghana, Mali and Songhai that will be receiving students from Europe and their racist selves.
Rude awakening. I also wondered what it took to make African looking everything. From doll to emojis. Alas, people are actually thinking. Thank goodness!
Why even attend these schools in the west? What has Africa gained? Meanwhile these western institutions gain access to Africa markets. What has Africa gained in the long term? Our kids who attend this school have contributed nothing to our growth. What have we gained?
We asked our audience to post across Black Enterprise s social media accounts things white people should never say to their black co-workers. We were flooded with some great suggestions. The below list contains the most repeated offenses our audience cited and our favorites.
And Happy New Year!