Robert Webb takes down journalist's claim she got into Oxford because she was 'clever', not 'privileged'

Robert Webb has deconstructed a journalist’s claim that her acceptance into Oxford was unaffected by privilege, demonstrating how the discussion about privilege shouldn’t be interpreted as a personal attack on an individual’s ego.

Data published by Labour MP David Lammy last year revealed that the proportion of Oxbridge offers made to applicants from the top two social classes rose from 79% in 2010, to 82% at Oxford and 81% at Cambridge in 2015.

Enter broadcast and commentator Julia Hartley-Brewer, who waded into a re-surfacing discussion on Twitter about the social barriers affecting education by declaring that: “I didn’t go to Oxford because I was privileged. I went to Oxford because I was clever.”

Of course, personal experience is no substitute for actual data, but comedian Robert Webb responded with an important point about how deep the effects of privilege run – and the importance of recognising where personal privilege may have helped evade social barriers that others face.

“I didn’t go to Cambridge because I was clever,” he tweeted. “I went because I was a white male from a stable family who encouraged me to work hard at an excellent state school. That’s all privilege. All of it.”

Mr. Lammy presented additional statistics to demonstrate the "shocking" lack of diversity at the two universities: Oxbridge draws half their students from the South East and London, with around 11% from the Midlands and 15% from the North.

Furthermore, less than 1% of Cambridge offers went to Pakistani applicants and 1% to black applicants between 2010 to 2015.

The Tottenham MP said: “Overall, the picture painted by this data is of two institutions that overwhelmingly draw their students from a privileged minority in the South of England.”

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