Oxford statue must go! Cecil Rhodes 'spread injustice around the world'

[Zardoz Greek]

EDUCATION	 
Student behind Cecil Rhodes campaign accuses Oxford of spreading ‘injustice’ around the world
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/12071900/Student-behind-Cecil-Rhodes-campaign-accuses-Oxford-of-spreading-injustice-around-the-world.html

By John Bingham, Social Affairs Editor
7:10PM GMT 28 Dec 2015
Ntokozo Qwabe claims university is eductaing a generation of future world leaders with a ‘skewed’ and ‘Eurocentric’ mindset and urges it to ‘atone’ for colonial legacy

The student leading a campaign to remove a statue of Cecil Rhodes from an Oxford college has turned his fire on the university itself, accusing it of spreading “injustice” around the world by educating future leaders with a “skewed” and “Eurocentric” mindset.

Ntokozo Qwabe, a Rhodes scholar from South Africa, claimed that students at Oxford endure “systemic racism, patriarchy and other oppressions” on a daily basis.

The 24-year-old also said that the university’s admissions and staff recruitment systems “perpetrate exclusion” and suggested that even Oxford’s architecture is laid out in a “racist and violent” way.

And he accused the British media of treating him and his supporters like “terrorists” for challenging the establishment.

A student wears a sticker calling for the removal of a statue of Cecil John Rhodes from the campus of the University of Cape Town
Students at Oxford want a statue of Cecil Rhodes removed

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His comments came in a lengthy posting on Facebook in response to reaction to his remarks likening the French Tricolor to the Nazi swastika or the hammer and sickle under Stalin as a “symbol of violence, terror and genocide for many”.

He said he had suffered a media “onslaught” as a result.

Mr Qwabe shot to prominence earlier this month after Oriel College agreed to remove a plaque under a statue of the colonial era mining magnate and politician and consider talking down the statue itself.

It followed protests by Mr Qwabe’s “Rhodes Must Fall” campaign group, which takes its inspiration from a movement in South Africa which has succeeded in having statues of Rhodes removed.


A crane prepares to lift the university of Cape Town's statue of Cecil John Rhodes from the position he has occupied for over 100 years

"The coloniality of the university (which has never been atoned for) still actively shapes the configuration of the Eurocentric curriculum which we study, furthers colonial epistemic injustices, and produces graduates with an unjustly skewed view of the world (who then go on and lead the world in ways that reproduce injustice."
Ntokozo Qwabe
The campaigners say the statue glorifies a figure seen as one of the architects of South African apartheid and is therefore “offensive and violent” to students.

But others have argued that taking the statue down would amount to purging the past to conform to contemporary political demands.

Some have likened the call to remove the statue to the actions of Isil extremists in destroying ancient carvings in Syria and Iraq – a criticism Mr Qwabe said was feeding a “racist narrative”.

He said he made no apology for opposing what he called “symbols of racist and genocidal colonialists” in an academic setting.

“The racist and violent way in which the space is configured normalises and props up the existence of systemic racism, patriarchy & other oppressions that students at Oxford go through daily,” he said.

Oxford University has, he added, yet to “atone” for its “coloniality”.

This, he said: “Still actively shapes the configuration of the Eurocentric curriculum which we study, furthers colonial epistemic injustices, and produces graduates with an unjustly skewed view of the world.”

Ntokozo Qwabe
Ntokozo Qwabe

Those Oxford graduates “then go on and lead the world in ways that reproduce injustice”, he claimed.

"The racist and violent way in which the space is configured normalises and props up the existence of systemic racism, patriarchy and other oppressions that students at Oxford go through daily."
Ntokozo Qwabe
“Student admission and staff recruitment practices still reflect skewed patterns that make Oxford unrepresentative, and perpetrate exclusion,” he went on.

Oxford University has recently begun an overhaul of its humanities and social science curricula to ensure it has more “diverse” content.

A spokesman added: “We recognise that we need to do more to get students from more excluded and less traditional backgrounds in to Oxford and we work on that through outreach.”

In response to the suggestion that students suffer daily examples of “racism, patriarchy and other oppressions”, he said: “The University wants to be a welcoming place where people from across the United Kingdom and across the world can study and learn.

“If anybody has any specific concerns or if there are specific incidents they can raise them and they will be looked at appropriately.”


	
	
	
	
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