This burden of obligation is something that BME (or BAME – black, Asian and minority ethnic) students feel especially. BME isn’t a term that I had encountered before university, but much to the annoyance of almost everyone we interviewed for this book, it is often at the centre of these ‘diversity’ discussions. It’s difficult to pinpoint when it became popularised. Some say it developed out of the notion of ‘political blackness’ used in British anti-racism movements in the 1970s.1 However, some suggest it didn’t become used officially until the early 1990s, when the UK census categories used ‘ethnic minority’ to refer to everyone non-white. If you find yourself in political spaces, more often than not, you will be grouped under BME, or ‘people of colour’.
The term BME is unhelpful. The idea of black and minority ethnic firstly implies that black is not an ethnic minority – but for now, that is beside the point. No one we spoke to had anything positive to say about the term.
Don’t call me woman of colour. Don’t call me BME. – Adaobi
Throw it in the bin or something. Bin it. – Mikai
The term is problematic because it lacks nuance. It conflates all non-white people, and treats them as a monolith. Yet our experiences of race and racism as people of colour are very different. The term speaks to the idea of white normativity – that every other race is constructed as deviant from whiteness, as ‘lacking’ in whiteness. The idea of political blackness has a similar effect. Eireann says, ‘No group is in direct opposition to whiteness,’ but terms like BME and ‘politically black’ suggest that this is in fact the case.
I feel like black people are at the bottom of the totem pole and I don’t feel like our issues are comparable to [other] racial groups. – Kenya
I think at Cambridge specifically, black people face specific resistances and hostilities from the institution that I don’t think can be applied to, let’s say, Pakistani or Chinese international students. – Chelsea
The term BME prevents us from having frank conversations about the unique ways in which black people in particular experience racism. It silences. Even in writing this book, I felt an initial need to apologise for not speaking directly to all women of colour – but why should I? Without trying to engage in ‘oppression Olympics’ here, when Kenya spoke about being at the bottom of the totem pole, it resonated with me. Even though we might all be bracketed under BME in research papers and articles, when are we going to talk about the fact that oppression replicates itself within the BME category as well?
Many do not realise that the idea of BME obscures the fact that racism can, and does, exist between people of colour. Anti-blackness, for instance, is present in many Arab and North African communities. The BME category suggests that white people are the only perpetrators of racism. It obscures the very sore, historical question of the role of Arabs, for example, in the slave trade. But where do you find spaces to have conversations about these issues when all the BME spaces at university are shared?
Anti-blackness is inherent in a lot of [non-black BME people’s] cultures, and I don’t think they want to acknowledge that. – Fope
Why are we all forcing unity that’s not there? – Kenya
When you pander to this whole solidarity thing, you make it seem like we’re best friends and we’re not. Living on a council estate, it’s just loads of people of colour, and a lot of people who are racist are also ethnic minorities. – Courtney
While I was at Cambridge, I was repeatedly asked by people I met if I went to the other university in Cambridge – because of course the notion that as a black woman, I might have earned a place at the best university in the country is difficult for some to conceive of. The first time I was ever asked this was by a boy of South Asian origin – even though I had just told him which Cambridge college I went to. His racialised assumptions about my academic abilities kicked in before his senses could, and he profiled me. Don’t be deceived into thinking that the only racism that you’re going to fight is going to come from white people. A lot of student political work and activism frames the conversation as white v. non-white – but be aware of what that lens obscures.