This autoethnography examines how my experience of microaggression, covert and overt racism is a result of a systemic failure to tackle racism in one particular UK university. In this paper, I reflect on my journey from being a student to a senior-junior staff struggling to break the glass ceiling to finally now a junior-senior staff in Higher Education. I have been through stages of being hopeful, defeated, fighting back and eventually being hopeful again. I hope my survival can help other non-white women to get a better understanding that some of our experiences are not because of who we are, but rather the system in which we are locked in.