This book arrived at a time when a lot of people were despairing about the political direction of the world. When I take the time to read back over it, I can’t help but dwell on the chapter on feminism. In it, I recalled an early 2014 blog post in which I lamented the lack of any discussion of race that wasn’t steeped in colour-blindness. ‘Think about the last time you heard a comprehensive discussion about the nature of structural racism in the mainstream media’, I had written. ‘...These issues just don’t get the kind of airtime that feminism does in the UK press.’ My assessment back then wasn’t wrong. Coverage in the mainstream was few and far between. Britain is a country that has a very poor record of investing in anti-racist journalists, and it is a country where black academics are numbered in the dozens rather than the thousands. I can count on one hand books of a similar tradition that have been published in Britain in the last three decades by publishing houses with the budget to increase their chances of success. We relied heavily on the American narrative as a tool to find ourselves.
I can’t believe how much has changed since then. There has been a renaissance of black critical thought and culture. Whether it has come from companies with big budgets or creative individuals using social media, it feels like the critical anti-racist perspective is on top of a wave, kept afloat by a groundswell of support. Fashion magazine British Vogue – an institution in itself – appointed its first ever black male editor. An interview given by Alexandra Shulman, then the magazine’s outgoing editor, involved a question asking why, under her leadership, the magazine had a diversity problem. She responded with an insistence that she was ‘against quotas’ and that her Vogue simply included the people she thought were ‘interesting’6 – who just happened to be overwhelmingly white. She hasn’t got a racist bone in her body, she said, plus her grandson had a relative who was a civil rights leader, so the suggestion was deeply offensive to her. On reception by the public and her fashion peers, her comments were widely panned, with fashion website Racked calling the interview ‘a case study in white privilege’.7 I’m convinced that this critical response wouldn’t have happened even as recently as five years ago. There was the success of Get Out, an American horror film detailing the subtleties of white, liberal, fetishising racism, and there was Lubaina Himid, the first black woman to win the Turner Prize with artwork addressing slavery and the legacy of colonialism. The Tate Modern put on an unstoppably successful exhibition on art in the age of black power. When both Prime Minister Theresa May and Leader of the Opposition Jeremy Corbyn spent a little bit of their 2017 expressing a commitment to ending race inequality, I understood that anti-racism was no longer on the margins – that public opinion was turning it into a political priority. My little book was longlisted and shortlisted for prestigious awards, and earned a spot on ‘best books of 2017’ lists. Jo Swinson MP, the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, posted about it on social media, calling it a ‘brilliant read’.8 This dynamic of the conversation feels new to me. I’m proud to have contributed to a renewed sense of urgency. If anything, I hope that the success of this book means I become part of a contemporary British crowd, rather than a stand-alone voice.
None of this means that overt or structural racism is over. Donald Trump is still president of the United States, and far right white-nationalist groups around the world are encouraged by his success.9 They think that everyone will give in to the politics of hate; that they will succeed in taking the world away from the rest of us. Electorally, there has been little climb-down from the far right gains of 2016. But I do believe that there is a difference between ignorance and malice – even though the former can very much feel like (and descend into) the latter. When it comes to the middle ground, I think the side of anti-racist progress is winning. I’m filled with hope, and a kind of political nourishment, when I hear the conversations that come to the fore during my events. Every time I do one I see the audience as a hub of knowledge and potential. I see change. I see talent. It’s there in the crowd, buzzing in the atmosphere. I learn a lot, too, from the people of colour who turn up, who are experts in their respective fields and have taken on the additional job of ‘anti-racist in the room’ at work. Sometimes at these Q&A’s I think there are people in the audience who are far more qualified than me to answer specific questions. This is the power of the collective. We’ve reached a tipping point, and I’m glad that my book has served as catalyst. My dream is that the people who turn up to my events take that opportunity to meet each other, swap details and form their local resistance.
I consider myself to be part of a movement, and I think that if you are deeply touched by what you read in this book, then you are part of that movement too. It’s happening right now.
NOTES
PREFACE
1This 1994 documentary about race was championed by Oprah at the time of its release. It’s a powerful watch.
1: HISTORIES
1The Brooks slave-ship drawing, contributed by Bristol Museum, A History of the World in 100 Objects, BBC & The British Museum, http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/Akxq5WxwQOKAF5S1ALmKnw
2‘Ports of the Transatlantic Slave Trade’, conference paper given by Anthony Tibbles at the TextPorts conference, Liverpool Hope University College, April 2000.
3Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners, episodes 1 & 2, David Olusoga and University College London, first broadcast on BBC2 July 2015.
4Popularised in the 1980s, the concept of political blackness was used by anti-racism activists to describe anyone who wasn’t white, in the spirit of solidarity.
5‘Remember the World as Well as the War: Why the Global Reach and Enduring Legacy of the First World War Still Matter Today’, British Council, 2013, page 12.
6Egypt, France, Germany, India, Russia, Turkey, United Kingdom.
7‘Why the Indian soldiers of WW1 were forgotten’, Shashi Tharoor, BBC News Magazine, 2 July 2015, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33317368
8‘A White Man’s War? World War One and the West Indies,’ Glenford D. Howe, BBC History, 3 October 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/west_indies_01.shtml
9‘Riots on the streets of Cardiff as poverty hits’, Wales Online, 7 July 2009.
10‘The Roots of Racism in City of Many Cultures’, Liverpool Echo, 3 August 2005.
11National Archives, Spotlights on History, ‘Demobilisation in Britain, 1918–20’, www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/firstworldwar/spotlights/demobilisation.htm
12Mother Country: Britain’s Black Community on the Home Front, 1939–45, Stephen Bourne, The History Press, 2010, page 17.
13Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain, Peter Fryer, Pluto Press, 1984, page 326.
14The Keys, courtesy of the British Library, The League of Coloured Peoples, 1933, http://www.bl.uk/learning/citizenship/campaign/myh/newspapers/gallery1/paper2/thekeys2.html
15The Keys, courtesy of the British Library, The League of Coloured Peoples, 1933, http://www.bl.uk/learning/citizenship/campaign/myh/newspapers/gallery1/paper5/thekeys5.html
16By the advent of the Second World War, Dr Moody had married a white woman, Olive Tranter. They had six children, and his son, Charles Arundel ‘Joe’ Moody, was not only old enough to fight, but keen to do so. But when he went to sign up, he was told by a white army officer that it wasn’t possible, because he wasn’t of ‘pure European descent’. Outraged, Dr Moody used The Keys to campaign, and allied with other black organisations for maximum clout. His lobbying of the Colonial Office – a government department that dealt solely with affairs of Empire – led to the decision being overturned in October 1939. Joe was the second black commissioned officer ever to serve in the British Army.
17There were very few black women in port cities due to the gendered nature of military and ship work.
18Report on an Investigation into the Colour Problem in Liverpool and Other Ports, Liverpool: Association for the Welfare of Half-Caste Children, Muriel Fletcher, 1930.
19‘The Fletcher Report 1930: A Historical Case Study of Contested Black Mixed Heritage Britishness’, Mark Christian, Journal of Historical Sociology, Volume 21, Issue 2–3, pages 213–241, June/September 2008.
20Empire Windrush 1948, Exploring 20th Century London, Renaissance London Museum, http://www.20thcenturylondon.org.uk/empire-windrush-1948.
21Peach, Ceri, ‘Patterns of Afro-Caribbean Migration and Settlement in Great Britain: 1945–1981’. In Brock, Colin, The Caribbean in Europe: Aspects of the West Indian Experience in Britain, France and the Netherlands, London: Frank Cass & Co. pp. 62–84.