1. Me A Start Jus Now

I entered the Philosophy of Race lecture three minutes late. A few heads snapped round as I heaved the door open but Ophelia was unphased. She was wearing a scarlet oversized suit and silky cream blouse that made her skin glow. She did not stop speaking when I dropped my pencil case and pens spewed across the back row.

‘If you need one more mark on an essay to get a first, to pass the year even, do not come to my office expecting mercy,’ Ophelia said, twiddling one of the gold rings on her locs. ‘You’ll learn more from repeating the class than you will from prostrating yourself in office hours.’ 

‘I don’t think it’s appropriate to talk about sex-work in an office hours context,’ the whisper of one of the girls in the front row travelled up the aisles. 

Ophelia scoffed. Her skin was the same colour as my mother’s. A shade that was described by makeup brands as almond and by my mother as unimportant.

I bent to pick up my green gel pen then ripped my hand back when my fingers brushed the feet of the boy sitting in front of me. When I sat back up, Ophelia was watching me. I looked at the ceiling, which was dusty and had a missing ceiling panel.

I was sceptical of Ophelia. I’d heard the rumours. The fraud allegations, the new age satanic panic and the myriad other things people said about her too. Mostly, she was accused of being aggressive and hating white people. My boyfriend’s housemate, Ben, assured me Ophelia was almost fired for making students cry. According to Ben, a girl from last year’s cohort had raised the issue of ‘policing language’ (during an ostensibly unrelated W E B Du Bois lecture) because her friend told her off in a club for singing Kanye West’s Gold Digger in its entirety. She insisted that her friend’s disapproval of her screaming the rhyming racial slurs into the dancefloor contradicted her right to free speech. Ophelia had asked her why, if she was so desperate to use the word, did she not just say it out loud in front of the whole class. Then she waited, not allowing anyone to speak until the girl burst into tears. Ophelia explained white fragility as the girl ran from the class. I’d asked Ben if anyone had actually witnessed the event. He said he had seen a petition for her resignation floating around Instagram so it must have been true. Ben said it was disgusting that anyone should be brought to tears in a lecture theatre. Apparently, the primary concern of lecturers should be the welfare of their students. This was the same boy who called me a snowflake when I told him to stop misgendering Eliot Page. Still, it was hard not to metabolise all the stories about Ophelia. Even when I eliminated the lazy accusations levelled against her, a vague distrust lingered about her person like smoke in hair. 

The first time I put my hand up in class was in our third lecture. She asked for the definition of intersectionality. One of the girls in the front row spoke without bothering to raise her hand. She said intersectionality meant making spaces for the voices of those less privileged, knowing when to let others ‘speak their truth’. I lowered my hand instinctively. I knew the girl was wrong but correcting her felt antagonistic. Besides, my left nipple had just escaped from my bra as it did whenever I raised my hand. Just as I slipped a hand under my shirt to adjust, Ophelia shook her head and pointed at me. 

‘And you. What did you want to say?’