‘Blackface still exists’: Student rugby player posts racist photo on Snapchat, calling himself ‘Serina Williams’

A photo has emerged on Twitter allegedly showing a rugby player from Anglia Ruskin University in blackface, calling himself “Serina Williams” [sic].

Sunchi Chen, a Nuclear Engineering student at University of Birmingham posted the photo after it was shown to her from a friend at Cambridge.  She said the student who had posted the original Snapchat reached out to her to apologise

However she says she’s since received phone calls from other people criticising her for posting the picture, and calling her a “dumb bitch” and a “racist”. She told The Tab: “One of the boys who got in touch warned me that my phone number had been found via my Twitter.

“A part of me thinks that if I hadn’t posted the picture publicly he wouldn’t have seen any problem with it. In essence, he’s sorry he got caught.”

The student, who we have chosen not to name, offered Sunchi a full apology and promised that the make-up was removed immediately once someone had pointed out how offensive it was.

Sunchi has reached out to Anglia Ruskin via Twitter, who say that they’ll investigate the incident. A spokesperson for the university today tweeted: “Anglia Ruskin does not condone or tolerate any form of racism and will look into this.”

We have reached out to the student for comment.