Why did Oxford circulate a criminalised image of me – because I’m a black man?

I remember going to UMSL to look up programs and classes for going there. My mother dropped me off near the Psychology building because it had a bench and I did not drive.

I got some flyers and a course catalog and called my mother on a pay phone.

Psychology called a security guard on me because I was sitting on a bench and reading papers. Didn't seem to believe me that I wanted to be a student there. This was in the early 1990s. My mother picked me up but security said someone had panicked in the building because they saw me.

I'm white by the way, never had a criminal record or anything. I decided to wait to go back to college later.

But yeah, security can be paranoid based on one's looks or people calling and complaining until security does something.

I was at Oxford from 2004-2007. There were two black students in my year (of around 3-4k), one of whom was an Old Etonian and stood as a Conservative candidate at the last election. I can fully believe this.