A Seat at the Table is not Enough

The invitation arrives as it always does; not with malice, but with assumption. An email. A message in the group chat. A “we should all go.” The location is always the same: the pub. Or the bar. Or some JCR at a college located in the basement where the walls are sweating beer and whiteness fills the room faster than the music. These aren’t neutral spaces. They are curated - socially, racially, historically. And yet, the expectation is simple: if you want to belong, you will show up.

‘Chairs’, Horace Pippin (1946), The Met

“These aren’t neutral spaces. They are curated - socially, racially, historically.”

At Cambridge, the idea of inclusion is everywhere. But the practice of it? That’s where the silence begins. It is not just that so many social events happen in pubs, it’s that these are presented as default, natural, apolitical spaces. As if alcohol, class comfort, cultural familiarity, and whiteness don’t shape who walks in without flinching. You’re not just being invited to a bar. You’re being asked to enter a world that was never made with you in mind and then expected to pretend that it feels like home. And if you don’t? The cost is isolation.

You stop getting invited. You miss the bonding that happens when the academic day ends. You become the person who’s “never around.” And slowly, invisibly, the gap between you and everyone else begins to widen.

Cambridge prides itself on being intellectually elite, but socially, it can be painfully unimaginative. The idea of socialising outside a pub, a formality, or a heavily coded “tradition” is somehow foreign.  The assumption is that discomfort is yours to manage, not the institution’s to address. But it doesn’t stop at the bar. Because the whiteness isn’t just in the room - it is the room.

“Because the whiteness isn’t just in the room - it is the room.”

It’s the lecture where everyone knows and has read Fanon and Du Bois but no one knows how to make eye contact with the only Black student when colonial violence is discussed. It’s the subtle freeze in the conversation when you speak in a different cadence, a different register, and your experiences aren’t quite ‘Oxbridge’ enough to be recognised. It’s the way supervisors mispronounce your name, but remember the names of dead European theorists with reverence. It’s the dining hall where you can count the people of colour on one hand. 

It’s the events where you’re the only hijabi, the only Black girl, the only one who didn’t grow up summering in Tuscany, and someone says, “Wait, where are you actually from?” It’s the way whiteness at Cambridge is ambient - present without explanation, without apology, without effort.

And in response to this? You’re told, “Join the cultural societies.” Go find your people, they say. Build your own community. But why should we have to fragment ourselves into corners just to feel seen? Why must “home” only exist in the margins, in the few events a year the ACS hosts, or in the multi-faith prayer room squeezed into a building’s basement? Why must belonging be something we organise for ourselves, when Cambridge is built to feel like home for everyone else by default?

“Why must “home” only exist in the margins, in the few events a year the ACS hosts, or in the multi-faith prayer room squeezed into a building’s basement?”

The fact that I have to go to a cultural society just to feel understood is the very evidence that the rest of this place does not hold me. Not without effort. Not without translation. Not without the constant labour of softening my edges so I can pass through without disturbance

Inclusion at Cambridge often means: you are welcome, as long as you adapt. As long as you don’t make too much noise. As long as you can laugh along when they make the joke.  As long as your critique is palatable, academic, not too personal - not too angry.

But we are not angry. We are tired. Tired of walking into rooms and doing the internal scan: who here sees me? Who here will understand if I say what I actually feel? Tired of shrinking. Of smoothing out our names. Of performing ease. Tired of the assumption that “diversity” has been achieved just because we exist here. Access is not belonging. 

Being tolerated is not being embraced. A seat at the table is not enough. So no - I will not shrink myself to fit into spaces that cannot stretch to hold me. 

Inclusion, when built on default norms and unchanged structures, is not inclusion at all - it is quiet coercion. And what Cambridge too often offers is not community, but conformity disguised as openness.

It is an environment where whiteness is ambient and not because it is named, but because it never has to be. It is a culture that gestures toward diversity, but does not interrogate the foundations that make that diversity feel peripheral. This is not a matter of individual intent. It is structural. It is not solved by adding more names to mailing lists or hosting a token “diverse” event once a term. 

“This is not a matter of individual intent. It is structural. It is not solved by adding more names to mailing lists or hosting a token “diverse” event once a term.” 

It is about whether this university is willing to confront what it has always normalised: That belonging here is seamless for some, and work for others.

We are not asking to be included on terms that erase us. We are not guests at your table. And we will not perform gratitude for surviving a culture that refuses to transform itself. If Cambridge wants to speak of inclusion, then it must begin by asking:

Who is this space built for? And what are you willing to dismantle to make room for those who were never meant to be here in the first place?