Britain we are told is a deeply racist society: while repeating this line those who shape and direct our culture are busy creating another disadvantaged minority — white working class boys<\/p>\n
Britain, we are often told, is a deeply racist and intolerant society, in which sinister \u2018power structures\u2019 hold back minority ethnic groups, while the white majority push selfishly ahead.<\/p>\n
Yet new data flies in the face of this fashionable narrative.<\/p>\n
Following a national drive to make undergraduate intakes more \u2018diverse\u2019, figures released on Thursday by the Department for Education showed that, for the first time, white young people are now proportionately the least likely of all major ethnic groups to attend our top universities.<\/p>\n
Among Britain\u2019s Chinese families, some 40.7 per cent of their youngsters made it to Oxford, Cambridge and others in the elite Russell Group in 2020-21. The figures for Asian young people were 16 per cent. It was 10.7 per cent for black families \u2014 and just 10.5 per cent among white ones.<\/p>\n
Of course, in some ways, this is an inspirational success story. That children from non-white backgrounds are thriving in Britain\u2019s educational system is something to celebrate.<\/p>\n
Commendable, too, are our universities\u2019 efforts to make their student intakes more diverse. Many of these establishments are world-leading and it is right they should be open to anyone with the brains and aptitude to succeed in them.<\/p>\n
Given the disparity between the ethnic background of undergraduates at our elite universities and the country at large, our institutions risk looking as if they are more interested in promoting diversity than in shaping the minds of our brightest youngsters whatever their race.<\/p>\n
The diversity drive is only part of the story: culture plays a huge role, too. One of the reasons that children from black African families are doing so much better in attending top universities is because their parents are often particularly focused on education.<\/p>\n
They put a strong emphasis on family and have low rates of divorce. Such stability helps children flourish.<\/p>\n
In contrast, poor, white, working-class communities experience far higher rates of family breakdown, as well as other challenges that jeopardise academic success, from addiction to joblessness and mental and physical health problems. Nevertheless, much of the problem does lie firmly with the universities.<\/p>\n
Not so long ago, Oxford, Cambridge and their like were revered centres of learning where young people could expand their horizons and learn to think critically.<\/p>\n
Today, they all too often resemble woke citadels, where academics are harassed or sacked if they fail to hold the \u2018correct\u2019 views on issues including Brexit, gender and the legacy of the British Empire.<\/p>\n
My research has shown that about 80 per cent of academics lean to the Left politically.<\/p>\n
The small minority who lean to the Right are far more likely to experience political discrimination and to \u2018self-censor\u2019, or hide, their real views on campus.<\/p>\n
But if our universities really want to pursue racial equality, they should take a look at some other statistics released this week by the Department for Education.<\/p>\n
These revealed the numbers of young people who go to university at all \u2014 not just the elite institutions. The results were even more striking. Fully 81 per cent of Chinese children, almost 66 per cent of Asian children and 48 per cent of mixed-race children go to any university nowadays.<\/p>\n
The figure for white children? Just 40 per cent.<\/p>\n
The numbers are even more damning when you look at the details. Among children who receive free school meals \u2014 that is, the white working-class \u2014 only 13.6 per cent go to university.<\/p>\n
The only ethnic groups with even fewer children making it to university are Roma and Traveller Gipsy communities.<\/p>\n
Why are young white working-class children being let down so badly?<\/p>\n
Last year, I found some answers as I advised the Government\u2019s Education Committee. We produced a report highlighting how decades of neglect and muddled policy thinking have contributed to this sorry state of affairs.<\/p>\n
But few among the metropolitan Twitterati, who cling to the notion that Britain is \u2018institutionally racist\u2019, are willing to speak up for the white working class, let alone the universities who peddle the same eccentric worldview.<\/p>\n
While it\u2019s vital that our universities do all they can to attract promising youngsters from every background, the Education Committee\u2019s report was clear. The pendulum has swung too far the other way.<\/p>\n
We made particular mention of the dubious arguments that have been imported from the U.S. and are now swirling around our education system. These would have you believe most Britons benefit from \u2018white privilege\u2019 \u2014 and should apologise for who they are.<\/p>\n
These ideas are not supported by empirical evidence. Indeed, they may have contributed directly to the neglect of white working-class pupils.<\/p>\n
And the problem is getting worse. Only this week, the Don\u2019t Divide Us group found nearly one in four local councils are actively promoting a divisive brand of \u2018anti-racism\u2019 in schools, pushing concepts such as \u2018white privilege\u2019 and \u2018unconscious bias\u2019 into the classroom.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the think-tank Neon has produced a report showing how, although universities have many initiatives to attract minority groups, they simply don\u2019t invest nearly the same amount of money and energy into encouraging white working-class children.<\/p>\n
This hypocritical disparity was never more apparent than in 2018, when the millionaire rapper Stormzy announced he was funding a scheme to provide scholarships for black students studying at Cambridge.<\/p>\n
Good for him. But the following year, philanthropist Sir Bryan Thwaites\u2019s attempts to fund similar scholarships for poor white students were turned down by both Dulwich College and Winchester College \u2014 two of Britain\u2019s top private schools \u2014 for fear that it would be regarded as racial discrimination.<\/p>\n
The double standards are glaring.<\/p>\n
But the woke brigade brooks no criticism \u2014 even, or perhaps especially, from the very minorities it purports to represent. In March, Nottingham University withdrew an honorary degree from Tony Sewell, the black educational consultant who had been appointed to chair a race commission by Boris Johnson, and who had challenged the claim that Britain is \u2018institutionally racist\u2019.<\/p>\n
That was the university\u2019s right, of course. But Nottingham had no problem expanding its reach into China and handing out honorary degrees to leading Chinese Communists.<\/p>\n
Other universities are equally willing to take money from the ghouls of Beijing \u2014 a regime that is torturing and enslaving Uighur Muslims as I write \u2014 while performatively obsessing over \u2018decolonising\u2019 their curriculums and tying themselves in knots over the role some of their historic benefactors may or may not have played in the Transatlantic slave trade.<\/p>\n
We need to challenge this dangerous and divisive woke ideology \u2014 one that is spinning such a misleading picture of modern Britain. Ours is not an institutionally racist country: quite the opposite.<\/p>\n
As the latest statistics suggest, it is one of the best places in the world to be a member of an ethnic minority.<\/p>\n
At the same time, we need to speak up loudly for white working-class children and recognise that the noble aim of increasing diversity in the classroom and the lecture hall \u2014 especially when couched in the language of \u2018oppression\u2019 and \u2018white privilege\u2019 \u2014 has costs as well.<\/p>\n
Only by doing these things will we ensure that yet another generation of white working-class children do not find themselves so unfairly left behind \u2014 and watch aghast as our universities become even less representative of the country at large.<\/p>\n