Ashley Lennard-Kelly

British universities these days are not exactly renowned for being bastions of free speech, open debate and impartiality, but my first year at the University of Warwick has shown me that those concepts are not only dying but completely dead.

Contemporary discourses around race often centre around narratives of “white privilege” and “systematic racism” the latter of which is embedded throughout British society and plague our institutions; from criminal justice to education to media, systemic discrimination and structural racism have become normalised within British culture. Or at least that is what I, and my fellow students at the University of Warwick, were taught upon enrolling on our courses last year.

You may have heard of the “gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss” mantra before, a parody of the popular motivational quote “live, laugh, love” which was popularised back in the late 2000s, the slogan is a staple of TikTok memes and is often used to satirise so-called corporate feminism whose adherents are seen as self-interested and completely out of touch with ordinary people by many in Gen Z.