AJ Tracey has been making charity moves. Having recently announced the launch of a fund to help Black students on their journey through Oxford university, The AJ Tracey Fund aims to address a “historic underrepresentation” at Oxford, providing financial assistance and mentorship opportunities. Tracey commented saying “I think, in general, for anyone who doesn’t understand why Black people who have managed to become successful want to help Black kids, it should be self-explanatory. The whole country is catered towards white people and we’re just trying to level the playing field by helping Black kids.”
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Stormzy took a similar route four years ago when he created a scholarship for Black students at Cambridge University and received backlash from trolls who branded him as ‘anti-white’. However, AJ Tracey’s donation has been met with a different kind of backlash. One that discusses an important issue of social capital. The perspective of this backlash stands on the principle that often the students who get places at Oxbridge are individuals who on average have access to a particular kind of capital, that being social capital.
Capital in this sense isn’t just representative of “money”, to enter Oxbridge you need certain attributes which provide social capital – e.g. good grades, extracurricular engagement with arts/science etc. Access to extracurricular activities, for example studying the violin, requires certain social factors to be in play, beyond the most basic elements of affording the equipment or paying for lessons, having a parent who is well enough or possesses the capacity to organise these experiences is an attribute that provides a form of social capital that many children do not have access to. Given that nearly one in five children and young people are young carers, this alone already creates a large disparity. These disparities grow when intersected with other forms of marginalisation.
Oxbridge representation often dominates these kinds of conversations around education, however, on a scale of educational issues facing Black kids in the UK it is one that the majority will not interact with and as such falls lower down the list than say having caring responsibilities or a lack of resources to pursue their goals. Resource allocation is important and requiring successful rappers to fill the gaps of elite universities in their support of their Black students exposes a very deep flaw in these institutions.
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Oxford and Cambridge University hold a combined endowment of £13bn between them. You only need to look at the Magdalene College in Cambridge which was awarded the RIBA Stirling prize for the best new building in the UK to see that these institutions are definitely not lacking in terms of resources – rather, what it is clearly struggling with is the equitable and effective allocation of those resources.
All of which begs the bigger question of where this kind of donation money is needed most. If the resources available are being passed on to the top achieving students to fill in the gaps of an already bloated institution, allowing these universities to polish their reputations without any effort on their part, where does that leave young people who didn’t make the cut? Children need to be motivated to pursue their education regardless of where their successes lie, Oxbridge or otherwise.
Money goes further and has more of a long-lasting impact if it is given to the young people who are bled of resources due to their ‘not being excellent enough’. An interesting way to look at the concept could be through the leaps in development that Hip-Hop culture undertook after the New York blackouts in 1977, which saw nearly the whole of New York City powerless for a day. During this time there was mass looting and although the Blackout saw widespread damage across the city, what it did enable was budding musicians and creatives to steal and redistribute technical resources like decks, spreaders and mics, so that their disenfranchised communities could innovate, experiment and build on their creative and cultural capital.
What these marginalised children are suffering from is not just a lack of opportunities to engage and succeed in elite institutions, but an entire lack of resources that prevent them from being able to consider bigger goals as an option or a reality. As it stands many areas in the UK are limited in resources, and there are marginalised communities whose access is being slowly diminished. You only need to look at how TFL recently attempted to remove free bus travel for under 18’s in London, or how nearly 700 afterschool and breakfast clubs across the country have been forced to close in the past year.
Scrutinising the efforts of a Black man who wants to bring more support into his community may not be the most effective way to spark change within these institutions, especially considering that Oxford doesn’t allow its students to be employed during term time, but it does bring up a larger conversation. Chiefly, how the money that is invested in these marginalised communities moves in circles around already established and successful institutions. Ultimately, it’s wayward journey never quite makes its way to those places where it can enact the most long-term socioeconomic impact.
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Words: Naima Sutton
