How the Stepford students rekindled racial thinking

Many mad things are happening on campuses. Fancy-dress parties are banned lest the costumes offend minority groups. Saucy pop songs are forbidden lest they turn male students into marauding sex machines. Controversial speakers are No Platformed. But perhaps the worst thing is the rekindling of the racial imagination, the return of judging people by race.

Yesterday was Martin Luther King Day in the US, a day when Americans, and many non-Americans too, celebrate the man who most famously said people should ‘not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character’. Also yesterday, it was reported that the student union at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London thinks white professors aren’t capable of teaching black students. A report produced by the SU said ‘non-white students’ find it hard to develop ‘cultural familiarity’ with white professors, because their ‘experiences are so different’. Apparently it is ‘unrealistic to expect white tutors to be able to empathise with [black students]’.