A conversation with Alex Wheatle, an award-winning black British novelist, to understand how underrepresentation can affect young people and their career<\/b><\/p>\n
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\u201cIn prison I found one of the most positive influences in my life\u201d, Alex says. As scary as this may sound, a closer look to our society, can easily explain why a young black man is more likely to find inspiration and encouragement in a place like jail than in the outside world.<\/span><\/p>\n Alex Wheatle went to jail after taking part in the Brixton riots in 1981. He was only 18 when the police knocked on his door the day after the protests. The months that followed would be just the beginning of a long journey of learning about himself, and building up enough awareness to make him the man he is today;<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt wasn\u2019t really the system that helped me. The institution itself won\u2019t lift you up. But I was lucky enough to meet a Rastafarian who educated me about where I come from, about my history.,\u201d he explains. <\/span><\/p>\n Now 54, Wheatle is an award-winning black British novelist of Jamaican heritage. In his young-adult novels, he touches upon social issues and troubled families living in London’s southern areas. He also wrote about his Caribbean culture and the London riots in the 80s. <\/span><\/p>\n Wheatle grew up in a children\u2019s home in Shirley Oaks, Croydon. In 2016, thirty years later, some of those children decided to speak up to denounce the mental, physical and sexual abuses they suffered in the council-run home care. A two-year long investigation revealed that 700 children were abused from the 1950s to the early 1980s;<\/span><\/p>\n The <\/span>Shirley Oaks Survivors Association<\/span><\/a> (Sosa), of which Alex is a member, identified 60 alleged paedophiles and accuses the Lambeth Council of destroying 140 care records. In 2016, the Council declared it would <\/span>pay tens of millions<\/span><\/a> in compensation to the victims.<\/span><\/p>\n During our conversation, he often mentions Nelson<\/span>\u2019s<\/span> words and the impact of Jamaican culture on his works. \u201cWe need to understand the importance of teaching young people about their culture. We need to give them something to relate to, to make them aware they come from something good because they need to believe they can give a great contribution to society,\u201d he continues. \u201cBecause of the dominance of western cultures, sometimes others get lost or squashed down and this would result in kids who feel left out, marginalised in schools.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n [youtube https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Mu7utwE3GEM&w=560&h=315]<\/p>\n <\/p>\n While he sips his tea, I can\u2019t help but notice how down-to-earth he is. It is not only because he still has that now rare, golden characteristic of being humble, but it is him being so similar and close to the rest of us that seems hard to believe. Is he an exceptional case of human being? Or are we getting more and more used to seeing only celebrities as successful and perceiving them planets away from our experience of life? I try to think of black and successful people I know. Morgan Freeman, Michael Jordan, Barack Obama, Usain Bolt, Stevie Wonder, Rihanna, Beyonce\u2019. Ok, the list may not be so short, but I cannot really say I relate to those people.<\/span><\/p>\n It seems that to reach the front pages of newspapers we need to become extremely successful. The kind of success that isn\u2019t accessible perhaps for the majority but that is seen as the final aim for more and more young people. We are left, then, with role models who are more likely to look like a billionaire YouTuber rather than the guy who managed to open the shop in the corner or our parents who managed to simply buy a house. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSelf-esteem can\u2019t really be helped by people from the film industry or the entertainment world; we should rather propose ordinary people, who have done good in their community as an example of success to emulate,\u201d the novelist and social activist says. \u201cSometimes those presented in schools during \u2018special occasions\u2019 such as the Black History Month, for example, have achieved great things, but those are just too out of range for many young people.\u201d <\/p>\n And if one of the first places we find achievements is\u00a0in school<\/b>, it is worthy to have a look at such environment and consider how diverse education is today. <\/span>Overall, we can\u2019t deny that diversity both among teaching staff and pupils improved. <\/span>Alongside the creation of programs to celebrate diverse cultures such as the Black History Month, data show an increment in <\/span>non-UK nationals academic staff<\/span><\/a>, accounting for nearly two-thirds of staff\u2019s growth.<\/span><\/p>\n But diversity in education is not improving if we look at the recent cases of Cambridge and Oxford. Those universities and their colleges have always been considered strictly reserved for the elite. However, for the first time, we have data that confirms the discrimination unfairly applied by showing that good grades will not be enough to guarantee BAME applicants a place.\u00a0<\/span>13 out of 32 Oxford University colleges failed to make a single offer to black A-level applicants in a six-year period, with only three offer a place to a black A-level applicant every year. A closer look at top-level jobs and powerful positions show an even more chronic disproportion and an almost complete absence of BAME people. <\/b><\/p>\n
\n<\/span>Alex would call himself Nelson, in memory of Mandela, as both men inspired him throughout his life.\u201c He gave me reasons to believe I come from a great people too and that my history is not only about slavery and salvages.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span>Wheatle\u2019s words are the result of his personal experience but also of what he sees by regularly visiting schools and prisons to promote reading.<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span>The situation is even more critical at <\/span>Cambridge University<\/span><\/a>, where a quarter of its colleges failed to offer any place to black applicants.<\/span><\/p>\n