In spite of the relative success of the Widening Participation policy and strategies to increase the numbers of students from Black and Minority and White working-class backgrounds going to university, universities in Britain continue to be White and middle-class-dominated institutions. We found, in our two-year qualitative Higher Education Funding Council England/Higher Education Academy-funded study (2010-2012), the existence of fear and raced, gendered and classed antagonisms, underpinned by White middle-class student attitudes and perspectives towards those they constructed as the Other. In the article, we discuss the development of 'us and them' from the perspective of White middle-class, mainly male, students, and demonstrate dysconscious racism and racialised social segregation, which in some disciplines is replicated in the learning context. The context of the research is that of a highly competitive, neoliberal, British higher education system where competitiveness for individual success is paramount. Within this context, anxieties around success and notions or perceptions of authenticity: the 'authentic university' and the 'authentic student' are palpable. These perspectives combine with White privilege and a sense of 'supremacy' and entitlement leading to a desire for distancing from the 'Other'.