Since 1987, during the month of October, the UK celebrates Black History Month (BHM). (The United States marks a similar occasion in February every year, though it is sometimes called African American History Month.) In general, the stated purpose of activities organised during October is to recognise, celebrate, and remember the major achievements and contributions of Black people to British society. In this essay, I reflect on the ways that UK Higher Education engages with BHM. I suggest that in practice, universities treat it largely as a symbolic gesture, failing to concretely address the structural conditions that continue to produce harm for Black people inside and outside of universities, and marginalise ways of thinking and being we all need. BHM is not but should be better utilised to explore and build possibilities for more meaningful forms of community, belonging, and transformation beyond the limitations of institutional “celebration”.
For universities in particular, these month-long markers have been a way to, among other things, remember people and events often left out of the sector in many ways. Through absences in the staff and student body and from mainstream curricula or research agendas – knowledges and peoples which have historically not been constructed to belong naturally to the space of the university. Thus, during this time UK universities tend to host an array of educational, social and cultural events like panels, socials, exhibitions, talks, film screenings and the like. I have long been ambivalent about BHM in UK universities. Though in the past, I have contributed to the planning and organising of events and been invited to speak at so many. I helped to organise the first (and so far, only) Pan African festival at the University of Bristol. I wrote a factbook for the event (cover below, full text here).
While previously merely ambivalent I had noted the various flaws with the use and structure of BHM programmes within universities. Some of these I will cover later. But I did not initially worry too much. Nothing is perfect, and most structures can be useful even when flawed. However, it was not till much later that I came to question BHM programmes within universities a bit more firmly.
I think my first spate of genuine dissatisfaction began in 2020 when there was a flurry of invitations and events put on as a response to the global antiracism movements that were themselves prompted by the killing of George Floyd. What I think we experienced then can best be described as an exaggerated version of the flaws I have alluded to above. Most of these feel like institutions want to be seen to be doing something, but not much thought is given to that something. In the context of BHM itself, there has perennially been a practice of sending out last-minute invites to Black professionals. A significant number of these invitations, especially those to non-academics, have been called out for not offering payment for the labour sought. In essence, there is an expectation that Black people are waiting around for invitations, happy to give their time and labour for nothing. Along these lines, many people have also complained about how underprepared universities seem to be – surprised as they are by the unexpected arrival of October! Every. Single. Year. October suddenly appears! This also means that an adequate budget has not been circled off for BHM. Furthermore, these events so hastily organised and poorly funded are not always attended by senior management of the universities that organised them. Thus we find often that the most intellectually valuable BHM programmes are put on by student societies – who in comparison to the university are not as well resourced, financially or by personnel.
But the above is somewhat subsumed slightly and seemingly imperceptibly by a wider structural problem regarding the HE sector. Historically, universities have always been somewhat elitist by nature – keeping out women, the working class and racialised peoples among others. Nevertheless, a lot of strides have been made around representational inclusiveness over the years. The data demonstrates an increase in Black people among the student and staff bodies of universities around the UK. However, this increase in representation is not really matched with significant structural change. Universities have moved very slowly to change their elitist nature. And so BHM celebrations such as the ones I describe here cannot really make a huge difference to the relationship between Black people and the ivory tower.
To summarise, the reluctant “celebration” of BHM has not translated into a substantial decrease in the awarding gap or a significant overall decrease in the ethnicity pay gap. We are yet to see a very significant increase in the number of Black women in the professoriate, or an improvement in the funding pipeline problems that meant that over a 3-year period only 1.2% of the nearly 20,000 studentships awarded by all UKRI [UK Research and Innovation] research councils went to Black or Black Mixed students, and only 30 of those were from a Black Caribbean background. So even the representation approach has moved slowly.
But a more structural problem is revealed by how little impact the extremely slow (and seemingly reluctant) inclusion of Black people in the university has had on the business of the university – knowledge production, as well as on the experiences of staff and students in the university. In essence, the university is inherently constructed as a space to which people racialised Black do not really belong. To fit in, they often have to shed a lot of the characteristics that define them: for example, their languages, mannerisms, ways of dressing, food and even ways of thinking. Thus, they are tolerated by and not fully accepted into the university. Their presence is constantly subject to suspicion and scrutiny. Despite universities’ supposed attention to student satisfaction, when racism affects student satisfaction, many universities lose interest in addressing student satisfaction in rigorous ways. A report published in 2024 found that about 24% of racialised students in UK HE experience racism – those numbers rise to 45% when disaggregated for Black students. Universities that were quick to jump on the decolonise bandwagon jumped off just as quickly after making lots of noise and very minimal substantial change to ways of doing. African History, African Studies and Black Studies programmes have been at the frontline of cuts and restructuring – even when they are successful. In a wider disciplinary sense, intellectual engagement with African and Africa-descended continues to be low, imbalanced and Eurocentric – finding little space in curricula and research agendas.
Against the foregoing, the “celebration” of BHM in UKHE can be accurately described as a pseudo-celebration that only nods vaguely and imperceptibly at something considered nebulously to be “Black culture”. But this is not backed up by an entrenched study of African history or engagement with African-produced knowledges. In many cases – through an undue focus on hero narratives within racialised enslavement that happened beyond the British Isles – BHM becomes mostly a cursory marking of Black trauma/experience that sees no intellectual value to engaging with Black/Africana thought. In all of that, there is little care paid to addressing that trauma in the past or in the present. Black members of the university are shown over and over in many ways that the university is not theirs to belong to without cost. In other words, an unserious commitment to BHM reveals itself not as repair but as a deepening of that message of non-belonging.
What do we do instead?
As members of the university who are racialised Black, I do not yet have a clear sense of what needs to happen next. My approach has been to not get involved with BHM over the last couple of years. If a programme needs to be put on to support members of the university who are racialised, this does not have to be done in October. This is my approach. I know that some people will prefer to work critically and with self-awareness within the structures as they are and will attempt to work within the flaws of BHM. That is an approach. And it is an approach that I myself have used in the past.
When I set up Forever Africa Conference and Events (FACE) in 2017, that was definitely my approach. Since 2017, through a vast variety of innovative programmes, we worked to build flourishing spaces for knowledge exchange, solidarity, and action concerning African and African-descended peoples in higher education and beyond.
Based on the foregoing concerns, I am less certain that that approach continues to be workable going forward.
“What does it mean when the tools of a racist patriarchy are used to examine the fruits of that same patriarchy? It means that only the most narrow perimeters of change are possible and allowable… For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.” Audre Lorde
So, what can we do now? Where can we belong? How can we belong?
In trying to answer these questions, I scheduled a programme for the end of BHM 2026 called Reimagining FACE: A Community Listening Session. The programme is designed to be an online participatory event. Students, researchers, university staff, alumni, artists, activists, and community members are all invited to discuss what becomes not just of BHM within universities, but of Black people within universities. What support do we need? What type of universities do we want to see? What organisations, research projects, curricular and programmes can we put together across the whole year that respond to our needs, interests and desires? How do we get community, financial and structural support for these? What becomes of BHM in an ideal university, and how do we build that ideal university? What kinds of intellectual, social, and political futures are made possible for us within universities? What forms of knowledge are enabled or constrained? What relationships can we build with one another? What possibilities for flourishing remain when institutions invite us into spaces that continue to be shaped by assumptions about who naturally belongs and who does not?
These questions require sustained attention, imagination, resources, and courage. They require universities to challenge their own histories and contemporary practices. They require movement towards transformation. They do not require Black people to do all the work. We have done our part. We must remember that across generations, inside and outside universities, African, African descended and Black people have built communities of learning through political organisations, cultural institutions, activist movements, faith communities, artistic practices, informal networks, and collective struggle.
Our histories, our knowledge, our creativity, and our humanity do not depend on institutional approval. If the university refuses to celebrate us every day for who we are, we must not forget that we belong to each other. We have always belonged to each other. We will always belong to each other.
Contact us
- T/X: @ForeverAfrica_
- I: @foreverafrica2019
- W: http://foreverafrica.org/
- F: Forever Africa Conference and Events
- E: ForeverAfrica@outlook.com
Thank you for writing this, Foluke. I recognise so much of what you describe. I too have contributed to Black History Month events because I know they matter to students, but I have also experienced the last-minute emails you mention, as though Black colleagues will simply be available to contribute whenever October comes around. We know it is coming every year. Why is the thought, planning and invitation so often left so late?
I keep coming back to the need for Black history, knowledge and thought to be part of the everyday life of the university: in our materials, our classrooms and our physical spaces. Students should not have to wait until October to encounter them, or to feel that they belong.
Thanks, Syca. It is so sad that it resonates so much. Indeed, students should not have to wait until October. But often they do, and then October is insufficient.