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As someone who is both visibly Middle Eastern and visibly Muslim (due to wearing hijab), I’ve always felt that my face said things before my mouth had a chance to speak. I’ve felt that to others, I was a signifier before I was an individual person.
“Borders and Belonging” explores race/ethnicity, social class and intersectional identity, not only in relation to our university, but wider British society. This first article discusses superficial respect, conditional acceptance, and the notion of the “good” immigrant.
Moving cities and adjusting to university-style teaching was challenging, as it is for most people. This, I can relate to with almost any Oxford student. It seems however, that there are certain types of challenges that I and many who share a similar background, cannot relate to with others. I’ve noticed that we attempt to look past and deny their impact on us.
I matriculated after spending an entire summer indoors due to the 2024 UK riots.
I was forced to cancel plans and felt frustrated. I also wondered how it must be for my friends who didn’t look like me, who felt free to go out and meet up anywhere without considering their safety.
Upon starting Oxford, I was glad to finally have the chance to go out more and explore a new city. Yet I quickly learnt that, again, my experience of certain spaces, events, and conversations would be very different to those who look different to me.
From having to sit through a speech by the former deputy leader of the UKIP party at the Oxford Union, to being told that I am “lucky” to be able to “speak in a place like this”, comments upon comments have piled up, exhausting me.
I’ve sat through Union debates arguing whether Britain has become an “Island of Strangers” and heard fellow students argue that everyone except the cleaners and Taxi drivers in Tower Hamlets should be deported. When I once mentioned where my grandmother studied, a classmate responded with “Wait what? So she’s actually smart? Wait, what? That’s one of the best universities in London, so she’s actually smart?”. And I’ve been asked how long I’ve been in this country multiple times.
Perhaps certain questions or reactions have truly come from a place of innocence and perhaps I’ve misunderstood people many times. Yet, one cannot deny that if not “racist”, then at the very least, certain reactions and assumptions are rooted in racism.
While not enough, some have shed light on the experience of being a person of colour, especially at institutions like Oxford. Most times, we do not really need to overexplain our challenges or the prejudice that we face daily.
To give an example, a classmate of mine who was also applying to Oxford and was filling out a bursary form, told me at the time that the ethnicity options in the form were only two: “White” and “Non-White”.
In moments like these, I usually would have ranted about how insulting this is. About how viewing the world, and our position in the world, through such a limited way, and in such narrow and binary terms is unbecoming of any university. How offensive it is to call us “Non-anything”. How “Non-White” implies that ‘white’ is the default. That, therefore, anyone characterised as a “non” implies that they must have a deficiency. How “White” cannot be counted as a single ethnicity if it includes many different categories of people, nations and cultures.
I however didn’t proceed with this rant. I would have been insulting her and my intelligence if I felt that this needed some sort of ‘TedTalk’. The language of the form and the simplistic (and insulting) way in which we were described as and viewed, spoke for itself.
Therefore, I have no intention of writing about why a 2015 Oxford Union party having cocktail drinks called “Colonial Comeback” is inappropriate and insulting to many in our student body. I am exhausted.
I will not be listing anecdotes and why and how the way I and many like me have been (mis)treated is problematic. We shouldn’t have to justify our feelings after every mistreatment.
No, this shouldn’t require explaining. Instead, I want to highlight the times that we are respected and praised and why at times that can be insulting.
At its core, these seemingly ‘positive’ interactions are insulting simply because of the reason why we are being treated well. In the instances that I am referring to, it is simply because we, for whatever reason, are being seen as the “exception to the rule” or the “different one”.
Many times people have disrespected a group that I or others identify with and associate ourselves with, and yet after pointing this fact out to said person – that they are actually referring to us, or our parents, or our grandparents, or people from the same ethnicity as us – many have attested that such people tend to respond with something along the lines of “but I don’t mean you”, “no, you’re not included”,“but you’re different”, “but you were brought up here”, “no but you are cultured”, or “no I mean these other people”.
In recent times, this notion of the “good immigrant” has made it into political discourse and sociology books. The notion of the “good” immigrant can simply (and does) apply to the “good (insert any marginalised or vilified group here)”.
The “good” immigrant describes the acceptable immigrant. This is the “NHS worker” immigrant. The accomplished immigrant, like the one that bakes cakes and wins Gold Olympic medals. The “good” immigrant is the “educated” immigrant, who perhaps came to the UK to study. The “good” immigrant is the one who is from a wealthy family abroad. The one who worships the ‘right way’ or the ‘liberal’ and ‘secular’ immigrant.
Nadia Hussain and Mo Salah? National treasures. South Asian NHS surgeons and experienced doctors? Britain’s heroes. Arabs shopping in Harrods? Absolutely welcome here. But victims of Grenfell? Arab and South Asian immigrants residing in council flats? Even those down the road from Harrods? They are demonised in a way that I personally have not seen directed at any other group of people.
It makes me deeply uncomfortable when I witness the clear difference in the treatment that my grandmother (who is ethnically English and speaks with an RP accent) receives when speaking, compared to my grandfather. I’m certain that in these situations, my grandmother would be given even more respect if she wasn’t wearing a head covering.
Likewise, as the granddaughter of an immigrant and as a person of colour, it seems that we too are only deemed acceptable if we speak with the ‘right accent’, show the ‘right colour passport’ and introduce ourselves with the ‘right sounding’ names.
Wearing maxi dresses, balaclavas, knitted hoods, and bonnets? Trendy. Fashionable. Cool. Yet Thobes? Abayas? Hijabs? I wish I could say Muslim women are only verbally abused, or even physically attacked for this, but we all know it’s escalated beyond this point. Numerous British Muslim women have been killed for presenting as visibly Muslim.
It is no wonder then that in pursuit of being deemed “one of the good ones” many chip away at their identity. Stop speaking their native tongue to their children. Stop bringing their ethnic food into work or school. Change their names, even surnames. Step by step, they erase a fraction of their identity. Many over-explain, over-apologise and treat themselves as though that they are guilty before proven innocent
The “good immigrant” rhetoric has been evident in policy making. Policies such as our government offering a £350 monthly payment to anyone who houses a refugee in their home, does not apply to refugees of all backgrounds. Additionally, when Middle Eastern refugees have attempted to apply for schemes that permit European refugees to live in the UK, our government’s stance was clear – these schemes are exclusively for European refugees.
The “good Immigrant” discourse was also seen on our TV screens. When addressing victims of war, some guests interviewed by the BBC pointed out that “These are blonde haired blue eyed refugees we are seeing”. Other guests stated “They are civilised”, “European” and “look like us”.
When talking about certain bombs being dropped on Ukraine, one guest interviewee stated “To be fair, the USA has used this bomb in Afghanistan, but the idea of it being used in Europe is stomach churning”.
Hearing this live, it cemented to me that I and other Easterner’s lives had no value in comparison, at least to some. The dehumanisation in these words, based on a person’s idea of a “good immigrant” compared to an “immigrant”, cannot be made more clear.
The “good” immigrant is cared for. Protected. Accepted. The good immigrant is looked at with awe. Praised. Respected.
I wonder what led students in the Oxford Union, to not only be ok debating whether the UK has become an ‘Island of Strangers’ (which was an intentional echoing of the phrase used by Enoch Powell in his infamous “Rivers of Blood” speech in 1968), but to also be comfortable and confident to joke at our expense and insult our capital’s multicultural streets. Tower Hamlets was mentioned. This area is not only famous for being where London’s south Asian communities have resided and contributed for decades, but for being the most underfunded London borough, despite only being a stop away from Liverpool Street.
To target such specific communities is dehumanisation in action. To vilify a group if they have not, by whatever standards, “contributed” or “accomplished” something “worthy”. To scapegoat a group living in poverty by accusing them of “leeching off” the nation and taxpayers resources. This is dehumanisation in action. Such rhetoric is especially hurtful given that those same communities being accused are those that disproportionately paying the most in tax.
Look closely at the streets, the hospitals, the schools – every social service that Britain prides itself for is disproportionately run by those same communities at the receiving end of such verbal abuse and degrading treatment.
One cannot demand a service while simultaneously degrading those who are providing that same service. Such an attitude, that one is entitled to an immigrant’s labour, or that an immigrant’s value only lies in their labour, only arises from first degrading them beyond measure. While the views of one or two debaters in the Oxford Union do not represent or reflect the union or our student body, this attitude runs far deeper than just our university. It is ingrained in the fabric of society.
I am reminded of Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan’s poem This is not a humanising poem which won runner-up at the Roundhouse National Poetry Slam. Manzoor-Khan writes “Love us when we’re poor, Love us in our back-to-backs, council estates, depressed, unwashed and weeping. Love us high as kites, unemployed, joy-riding, time -wasting, failing at school…”
“Love us when we aren’t athletes, when we don’t bake cakes… When were wretched, suicidal, naked and contributing nothing, Love us then”
“Because if you need me to prove my humanity, I’m not the one that’s not human”
It is exactly here where the problem lies, in that there is a group of people (not that it makes any difference, but including British nationals) who are given conditional respect and conditional human dignity based on how much they are ‘contributing’.
The very moment that any immigrant is seen as contributing anything less than expected by others, they are viewed with contempt. Their acceptance is conditional upon “best behaviour”. When it comes to markers of identity, “immigrant” has become a dirty word. This is despite the fact that the lowest paid work is routinely done by immigrants with no complaint, and that immigrants ultimately carry the nation.
As a person of colour and granddaughter of an immigrant, if these experiences and the “good” immigrant rhetoric has taught me anything, it is that people will attempt to exploit my accomplishments, British accent and/or my Oxford education. They will do so by putting me on a pedestal because of these, and comparing me to others in my own community. They will give me a certain level of respect that they otherwise wouldn’t even extend to my own grandfather – simply because they have decided that I am, for whatever reason, “one of the good ones”.
So, while I am British, speak with a standard British accent and study in one of Britain’s elite universities, I am extremely mindful not to overexplain, over-apologise, or fall into the “proving that I am one of the good ones, the assimilated ones, or the exception in my community” trap. I refuse to be another brown face exploited and masqueraded to spew racist or anti-immigrant rhetoric against myself, my own family and community.