What is Black LSE?

By Amirah Deji-Abiola

I started “What is Black LSE?” to understand and reimagine the black LSE experience. This article features six interviewees, each representing different aspects of the Black LSE experience, including black queer, alumni, staff, student, and African Caribbean Society experiences. Each article begins with a quote which I believe summarises the key takeaway from the interview and that reflects themes like black excellence, identity, and community.

Tobe was born in Lagos, Nigeria but moved to Scotland at the age of 4 where she has lived up till now. During her gap year, the murder of George Floyd occurred which sparked international outrage about the treatment of black people within our society. All of this prompted her to reflect upon her own experiences and how she could make sustainable change for the BLM movement in Scotland. She started a petition to make Black history part of compulsory education in schools across Scotland which gained over 4,000 signatures. This also prompted her to be recognised as one of the top 10 black future leaders of 2022.

Tobe admits to coming to LSE and “not knowing what (she) was doing” as well as feeling a “pressure to have yourself figured out” as LSE can be quite a cutthroat and intense environment. Still, she always felt “uplifted by her black peers” despite feeling a lack of socio-economic diversity among the black students in her course and throughout the university. The feeling of a class and race divide is a unique pressure that she believed underpinned her black LSE experience. She recounted only meeting “one or two other black working class students” during her time at LSE. Despite the negative start, the true value of her experience stems from finding self-worth in a time of adversity. 

At the end of our conversation, Tobe made two inspirational remarks for the next generation of Black, working-class women at LSE. She hopes that BAME students no longer feel the need to live up to a stereotype of success which is derived from corporate accomplishments, but that we feel value from personal successes. Finally, she hopes that there would be more socio-economic diversity at the LSE.

Manny grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and is the current president of the LGBT+ society at LSE. He is the centre of a Venn diagram that intersects black, queer, and first-generation immigrant experiences in an American context. Living within this intersection gives him a level of self-awareness and compassion that makes him the perfect person to bring together people with unique queer experiences. 

A recurring theme throughout our conversation was community. Manny discusses noticing a strong gay community within his department when he first came to LSE which was different from other predominantly white institutions he had been a part of. Coming to London can be a daunting experience but he found a lot of comfort within the LGBT+ community at LSE. This prompted me to ask about one of the key complaints I have heard from other members of the LGBT+ society at LSE, which is that being a person of colour makes them feel alienated. This was not unfamiliar to our president who recounted a similar feeling upon coming out and encountering queer spaces in Washington D.C. but he exclaimed that he does not “like to see people on the outside.” This feeling of community is what Manny believes characterises his black, queer experience at LSE.

Michael did his BA in Anthropology and Law at LSE during which he was the 2020 LSESU African and Caribbean Society (ACS) president. When I ask him about his time on the ACS committee, he reiterated how proud he is of his fellow committee members. He started his presidency the summer after George Floyd’s death. His committee decided to launch a 3-day IG live where they discussed all of the aspects and key themes circulating the Black Lives Matter movement at the time, raising £500. The resilience showcased by his team is something that he believes underpins the black community, especially at LSE.

Feelings of racialised isolation are not alien to Michael. He recounts being one of two or three black people in his classes at LSE, even at the postgraduate level. Even though this can be quite intimidating at the beginning of your academic experience, he said he was not fazed and recounts that he came to LSE “determined to make (his academic experience) black.” Representing such a diverse and intercultural group of people in a classroom discussion can be overwhelming. He rejects this and sees the racialisation of experiences and understanding the world through an ethnic lens as a passion project. So Michael’s ‘black LSE experience’ has been an empowering opportunity to break away from a European paradigm in academia. 

Upon trying to describe her experience at LSE, Kemi acknowledged that the university can create a bubble of overwhelming pressure and certain expectations that you can be judged on if not reached. However, she constantly reiterates how “lucky” she was that she had a positive experience at LSE and proclaims that the environment “pushed (her) to work hard.”

In my conversations with people, some were eager to discuss the ways in which race or any social category defined their LSE experience and others were not. Kemi’s experience goes beyond her race and instead is characterised by her diligence and adaptability which manifested itself in university and the working world. Throughout her career, there have been different hurdles to her path to success that are more covert than what we may imagine. Though her success may be more typical of LSE alumni, she’s still very humble and heavily appreciative of others who have had more difficult journeys to the path of success.

Within our discussions of her experience in the corporate world versus university, she wishes that she would have tried other things and challenged herself to look beyond the expected parameters of a finance student at LSE. This humble self-awareness goes to show that there is unappreciated value in time.

After her graduation, Shontae moved onto a membership role at Gingerbread (previously known as One Parent Families), then moved into fundraising at London Business School then back to LSE.

Shontae described her years studying at LSE as characterised by often being the “only black person in (her) classes”, feeling “isolated”, like an “imposter”, and “not considered” by the university. 
These feelings of isolation became motivation which carried her throughout her career in fundraising. Volunteering within EmbRace, the staff network for people of colour, and sitting on the Ross CASE EDI Working group, a network for Russell group universities seeking to reduce inequality within higher education fundraising and engagement; she is pushing the institution, the sector, and indeed herself to be bolder in helping students and staff from diverse backgrounds. This motivation exceeds the frontiers of the LSE campus and expands to a lot of elite British universities like Imperial, Oxford, and UCL. Though LSE is doing a lot more for its black students, Shontae still encourages them to “be bold”. So, to answer what is Shontae’s black LSE experience? I think it is progress, motivation, and a desire to aid the progress of others.

Maame was raised in Ghana and self-identifies as an “African Constitutional Theorist.” I asked if she ever felt boxed-in by her speciality in African legal research. She proclaimed in response, “I craft that box! The label to me is an acceptance that legal theory is context-specific and that what African societies might need is not what others might need and that’s okay. It’s a different, not an illegitimate strain of theory.” Stressing the importance for us to create our own labels and live within that experience, her confidence and expertise give me a new idea of navigating my blackness in a higher-education setting. 

On her experience as a black woman, Maame recounts, “[P]eople don’t assume your authority is valid when they first encounter you.” She says that there is a pressure to validate and reaffirm that you deserve your access to spaces of authority. She notes, however, that in the instances she has felt some resistance from students, it has not lasted long. Once she has affirmed that she is rightfully in that space, her authority is accepted and, importantly, respected. This brings me back to the idea of black excellence and the reasonings behind the creation of this ‘movement’. To Maame, black excellence is “a story greater than when people facing fewer odds do it.” Yet it must be carefully projected so as not to become inhibiting to young black people who consider themselves regular people. My conversation with Maame showed me that there does not have to be shame within these labels. They can be a source of pride and identity which should be celebrated in times like Black History Month and beyond. 

In conclusion, there is no “black LSE experience” or a standard of what a black student at LSE should look like despite the shared experiences within this series. I chose each person to represent a different aspect of the black student body at LSE and dismantle the uniformity of the “black LSE experience.” By creating this standard, we erase the diversity and individuality found within LSE’s student body and staff. I hope that this article has stretched your understanding and appreciation of LSE’s black population and that the themes discussed are relatable to people within and beyond this demographic.