Introduction

This chapter focuses on the issues of racism during social gatherings faced by all student groups during their university journey, and refers to involvement in clubs/societies, graduate balls and university events.

The social experience within British universities is in many ways a product of the inherent White middle-class nature of these institutions (Arday & Mirza, 2018). Universities were born out of elitism, only those with significant wealth and/or socioeconomic status being able to access a higher level of education (for example, Maesse, 2017). It can be said that being ingrained in British culture is at the detriment of all others (that is, Lentin, 2018). University societies are widely considered to be a staple of the university social experience, so we must consider the Black, Asian and minority ethnic experiences of these groups (Ahn & Davis, 2020). Societies foster practices such as ‘Black face’ and racist drinking games, as they take an ‘anything goes’ approach to humour (as highlighted by Reclaim the Campus, 2020). These are considered by White students to be an unfortunate by-product of an otherwise fun gathering; the mental strain and frustration faced by Black, Asian and minority ethnic students as a result cannot go ignored. Indeed, to ignore these frustrations is to ignore the intersecting identities and feelings of Black, Asian and minority ethnic students, which can be considered racist within itself (for example, Reclaim the Campus, 2020). Racism is not confined to public-facing ventures with university social bubbles; there have been many reports of racism within individual interactions (for example, Ahmet, 2020). It is not uncommon for terms such as ‘chink’, ‘Paki’ and/or ‘n⋆⋆⋆⋆r’ to be hurled at Black, Asian and minority ethnic students, which is often dismissed as humour, or an alcohol-fuelled mistake (for example, Kmietowicz, 2020). White students regularly fail to use their Black, Asian and minority ethnic peers’ proper names, or express difficulty pronouncing them as though it is the fault of the name holder (for example, Gamsu, Donnelly & Harris, 2019). A common question to be asked is “where are you from?”, which is racially insensitive and undermines the supposed multicultural nature of university spaces and cultures.