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Tré Ventour Ed | Twitter, Instagram, Facebook | Linktree

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View treventoured's Linktree. Listen to their music on YouTube, Spotify here.

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'Micahel Holding leads emotional discussion about educating society on racism' (Sky Sports, 2020)

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'Micahel Holding leads emotional discussion about educating society on racism' (Sky Sports, 2020)

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Michael Holding leads emotional discussion about educating society on racism

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'Michael Holding and Ebony Rainford-Brent speak passionately about ending institutionalised racism'  (Sky Sports, 2020)

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'Michael Holding and Ebony Rainford-Brent speak passionately about ending institutionalised racism'  (Sky Sports, 2020)

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Michael Holding and Ebony Rainford-Brent speak passionately about ending institutionalised racism

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'Why We Kneel, How We Rise' by Michael Holding (2021)

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'Why We Kneel, How We Rise' by Michael Holding (2021)

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Completing the CAPTCHA proves you are a human and gives you temporary access to the web property.

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'Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness' by Paul Gilroy (1993)

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'Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness' by Paul Gilroy (1993)

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The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consciousness

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Afrocentrism. Eurocentrism. Caribbean Studies. British Studies. To the forces of cultural nationalism hunkered down in their camps, this bold hook sounds a liberating call. There is,Paul Gilroy tells us, a culture that is not specifically African, American, Caribbean, or British, but all of these at once, a black Atlantic culture whose themes and techniques transcend ethnicity and nationality to produce something new and, until now, unremarked.

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'Branded a Rebel' (on the West Indies' 1980s South Africa Rebel Tours)

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'Branded a Rebel' (on the West Indies' 1980s South Africa Rebel Tours)

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Branded A Rebel - Cricket's Forgotten Men (1980's West Indies Rebel Tours)

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'Fire in Babylon' - Dir. Stevan Riley (2011)

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'Fire in Babylon' - Dir. Stevan Riley (2011)

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Charting the glorious supremacy of the West Indies cricket team throughout the late '70s and '80s.

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'White' (After Richard Dyer) by Tré Ventour (Spoken Word Poetry)

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'White' (After Richard Dyer) by Tré Ventour (Spoken Word Poetry)

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'White' (After Richard Dyer). I wrote this poem last year inspired by the these leaflets going around Bristol which got me thinking about Englishness and different White....

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'A Ballad for Edward Colston' (2020) by Tré Ventour (Spoken Word Poetry)

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'A Ballad for Edward Colston' (2020) by Tré Ventour (Spoken Word Poetry)

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so I'm quite happy to let dead Ed float

and open a conversation about the guilty ghosts

of colonialism and Britain's Empire

to study the histories of that white cricket attire

and how imperialism impacts our ways and laws

even down to racial thinking during the First World War

yet ya know, folks saying we should be grateful for the colonies

not like Africans had economies or invented philosophy

Photo by Jackson David on Unsplash

not like we had lives before the days of the Slave Trade

but Britain perpetuates these ideas of the "great days"

only after Africa's days of indigenous mathematical systems

in black hairstyling, but seemingly whites keep saying we have to listen -

enslaving Black Africans to work crop across sugar plantations

but now we build statues like racists built civilisation

they treated us worse than their dogs; worse than their pets

because colonialism fostered a white superiority complex

but when the wind rushed into Tilbury Docks

"we made them British" and history forgot

forcing them into low-paid, but essential jobs

called them "monkey", "coon", "nigger" and "wog"

as Powell, BNP and the English Defense League

prepared for battle to devestate communities

but Ed Cols stood tall in Bristol City

while pitiful lines brains with grease

sharpening their teeth, Gove and crew

sacrificed British education in lieu

refuse to sanction Black history and immigration

no wonder the public no nothing about this nation

so you're saying early Britons were brown originally

Cheddar Man, Beachy Head Woman, you're kidding me

no wonder they don't want children to see

how this country has always welcomed ethnic diversity

as there were Black Africans in 1500s Edinburgh

but as you can see history has been furloughed, so...

why do we build effigies to people like Ed

when Black British history has so much to be said

for itself, from Black Tudors to Moors on Hardians Wall

this is what we should teach children at school

that whilst we can teach Britain's empire burning

we need to look before colonialism, to Africa's higher learning

and in the early 1900s, Walter Tull fought the fight

as C. L. R James furthered the agenda on human rights

Walter, one of the first half-Black footballers, brilliant

and was army officer in a time when he was one in a million

so why Edward Colston...

wouldn't Tull have been more wholesome

even more so when he played in that Bristol game

fighting racism in his slave grandfather's namesake

but there's nothing more British than looking back

and that's building statues to prejudice the Blacks

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so I'm quite happy to let dead Ed float and open a conversation about the guilty ghosts of colonialism and Britain's Empire to study the histories of that white cricket attire and how imperialism impacts our ways and laws even down to racial thinking during the First World War yet

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'Declarations of Whiteness' (After Sara Ahmed) by Tré Ventour (Spoken Word Poetry)

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'Declarations of Whiteness' (After Sara Ahmed) by Tré Ventour (Spoken Word Poetry)

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'Declarations of Whiteness' (After Sara Ahmed)

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'Declarations of Whiteness' (After Sara Ahmed). I wrote this poem inspired by the work I have come across by academic Sara Ahmed on Whiteness (and other things). This poem is named for....

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'BLM 2020: Breathing, Resistance, and the War Against Enslavement' by Kerry Sinanan (2020)

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'BLM 2020: Breathing, Resistance, and the War Against Enslavement' by Kerry Sinanan (2020)

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On May 20, 2020 many celebrated the birthday of Haitian revolution leader, Toussaint L'Ouverture against a backdrop of ongoing murders of Black people at the hands of current and former police.[1] Ahmaud Arbery, shot while running on February 23, 2020; Breonna Taylor, who would have been 27 on June 5 th, shot 8 times on March 13 th while sleeping in her own home; on May 25 th, Memorial Day, the world watched in horror as George Floyd was callously lynched by four police officers in Minneapolis; on June 5 footage emerged showing the murder of Manuel Ellis by police a month earlier, on March 3. In both of the videos recording Floyd and Ellis' death they utter the words, "I can't breathe." On Tuesday, May 26, when Americans most recently began protesting police violence, the words, "I can't breathe" again became the powerful anti-police mantra that it was in the aftermath of Eric Garner's murder.[2] By Wednesday June 3, 2020, every state in the US was protesting, and the Black Lives Matter uprising had become global, stretching from Dublin to Amsterdam, Paris to Auckland. The protests continue still, worldwide, at the time of writing. The focus of the protests has effectively combined the demand for an end to systemic racism with calls, especially in the US, to abolish the police, who many have observed emerged directly out of slave patrols.[3] As I will argue in this post, calls to defund or abolish the police at this level represent a new aspect of these protests, one that asks us to consider the protests themselves as part of the centuries-long continuum of slave rebellion.

As if to confirm this, on June 1, 2020, President Trump threatened to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act that would allow him to "call forth the militia for the purpose of suppressing such insurrection." This Act arose directly out of the threat posed by Haiti which had declared its constitution in 1805, forming itself into a "free state, sovereign and independent," with Article 2 declaring "Slavery is forever abolished."[4] As Kevin Gannon reminded us upon Trump's allusion to the Act, the Haitian constitution "closed a 14+ year revolution wherein Black and mulatto Haitians overthrew the colonial slave regime (called St. Dominique...and expanded their fight over the entire colony)".[5] Gannon argues that, following Haiti, slave rebellions, and perceived plots of insurrection in the US, inevitably signalled the same revolutionary force that Haiti had so powerfully delivered: "This is the context in which we need to view the 1807 Insurrection Act: a demand from the enslaving class and its political representative for federal protection in case the unthinkable (but seemingly more and more likely) event of a Black uprising occurred." Gannon notes how making connections that link fear of slave uprisings to the Insurrection Act is about reading the "silences" both in between events and in the response to the Insurrection Act itself.[6] Sometimes the historical moment of iteration is the context and the word "insurrection," as in 1807, today certainly resonates explicitly with the fear of Black resistance: Trump's invocation itself provides a link to Black resistance.

Reading the events in this way, it is impossible to ignore that on June 2 nd, the day right after Trump called upon the Insurrection Act, was the anniversary of Harriet Tubman's Combahee raid in which she led 150 black Union soldiers and liberated over 700 enslaved people.[7] In so doing, Tubman actioned a Black, female collective (as opposed to a patriarchal, individualistic, libertarian) vision of freedom articulated by Toni Morrison: "the function of freedom is to free someone else."[8] Freedom, as the authors of the Insurrection Act knew, is contagious. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic that was already claiming a devastating proportion of Black peoples' lives in the US and in the UK, these current protests and resistances force us to look back to the histories of transatlantic slavery and race and- while we explain the multiple ways in which, as Christina Sharpe tells us, "ongoing state-sanctioned legal and extralegal murders of Black people are normative and, for this so-called democracy, necessary"-to also read the protests as part of the long history of slave rebellion, that is, as a transatlantic, global movement that has spanned centuries and transcended national boundaries.[9]

In his new book Tacky's Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War, Vincent Brown argues that, while there is value in thinking of the many kinds of acts of slave rebellion as a continuum, from "everyday assertions of independent will and volition" to "violent collective uprisings like the ones led by Tacky and Apongo," this way of viewing resistance, at the same time, "is too reductive. It masks the complexity of large revolts, glosses over multiple aspirations of rebels, confines the contest to circumscribed locations, and forecloses important questions about planning, strategy, tactics, and claims to territory-the very questions we ask about wars."[10] Brown's argument, that we look again at slave rebellion as we do at war, ties in, he tells us with Olaudah Equiano's famous description of slavery as "a perpetual state of war."[11] As we witness a global, multi-faceted, complex network of uprisings, it seems as if we do indeed need such a framing, which credits the multiple acts of global protest with the kind of complexity granted to battle proper. Brown, as did C.L.R. James before him, tells us that war travels; it is transatlantic and exceeds plantation and island boundaries. And the emphasis on war as opposed to rebellion also explains how Black victims of police violence are in a state of war and their very existence is the act of aggression against the enemy.

Between these large protests and the murders that have galvanized them lies Black life as an ongoing resistance in the war. As Sharpe trenchantly proposed on June 6, 2020: "group noun for young (and middle aged and old) Black folks in the street is a breathing."[12] Read as metaphors-thieves, drug dealers, fraudsters or, indeed, as a "breathing"-Black people face perpetual, extreme violence in a system designed to kill them in the war. We must frame these deliberate misreadings in the full context of the web and network of unceasing Black resistance to white power that is enacted simply by virtue of being Black: to exist is to resist.[13] Breonna Taylor was simply living in her own home when eight bullets wantonly fired by police officers claimed her life; Arbery was simply running, taking the air as he regularly did; George Floyd had bought some cigarettes. Yet these Black people were murdered as threats, enemies in a war, and their rebellion was to exist and breathe.

Here, then, I draw attention to a couple of more un-noted moments-not part of any specific narrative of rebellion in the network of slave resistances-to highlight how Black life itself is a rebellion, a constant pressure today, and stretching back to the slave ship. In November 1786, having arrived in Barbados after crossing the mid-Atlantic passage, Captain James Irving writes to his wife,

We have...not yet disposed of our very disagreeable cargo, but expect it in the 7 th instant when our sale opens...Often, very often have I perused my dear girl's letter and each time with redoubled pleasure...I'm nearly wearied of this unnatural and accursed trade...I think I'll desist as our black cattle are intolerably noisy and I'm almost melted in the midst of five or six hundred of them.[14]

Even above deck Irving finds the slave ship stifling and the enslaved people-horrifyingly reduced to livestock-are restive. The slaves' presence is a serious threat, potent as it is with actual rebellion. Their noise unsettles Irving, his sense of being "melted" articulates an intensely warped expression of white fragility that masks his white power as enslaver. Ironically, Irving finds his own chosen position "intolerable." As C.L.R. James describes, below the decks the conditions "turned these holds into hell."[15] What must they have felt, six hundred people, in the bowels of the ship, languishing in the Barbados tropical heat, surging with the sea swell after months on-board? It was impossible simply to breathe. Yet Irving blames the captives for the hellishness, and will capitalize on their still being alive, on their still breathing, while he blames them for stifling him. Derek Chauvin, with the help of his fellow officers, murdered George Floyd calmly and quietly, in front of the gathered protesting crowd, by blocking his breath, by, as the independent coroner's report has confirmed, asphyxiation. Now, as then, the Black person, cast as a threat to white power, is in fact overwhelmed to the point of death for the act of simply being, even when, as in 1786, they are on the point of being sold for profit. As Paul Gilroy insists, "the slaves' perspective and positions...provocatively suggest that many of the advances of modernity are in fact pseudo-advances contingent on the power of the racially dominant grouping."[16] Inverting the dynamics of power exposes whiteness as barbaric. It is the perspective of suppressed Black lives that we must center in the long war against slavery.

In his slave-ship logs, kept between 1750-54, John Newton also records from the captain's viewpoint through which the slave's perspectives are violently filtered. On December 17, 1750, offshore near Sherbro, Newton records the purchase of an adult male slave "for 60 bars...Our number is now 36." The purchase of a male slave is noteworthy because Newton buys many children: adult men are in short supply and expensive. The next day he writes: "Having now 12 men slaves on board, began this day with chains and sentrys."[17] The threat posed by the enslaved was one that was frequently realized and had to be guarded against. At sea the men below, indeed, mount an insurrection:

In the evening, by the favour of Providence, discovered a conspiracy among the slaves to rise upon us, but a few hours before it was to have been executed. A young man, No. -, who has been on the whole voyage out of irons, first on account of a large ulcer, and since for his seeming good behaviour, gave them a marline spike down the gratings, but was happily seen by one of the people. They had it in possession about an hour before I made search for it, in which time they made such good dispatch (being an instrument that made no noise) that this morning I found near 20 of them had broke their irons. Are at work securing them.[18]

As Brown tells us, these enslaved men did not come from nowhere: likely trained in war, they are ready to battle.[19] In this passage it emerges that the "silent" slaves, previously only listed in Newton's journal numerically as they are either purchased or die of the "flux," have been plotting their escape. The "young man" that has turned his injury to his advantage is strategic. Newton records that the slaves have made quick progress and, but for luck, would successfully have unlocked several male slaves. Given that on this particular voyage sickness had been as fatal for the crew as for the slaves, twenty or more male slaves out of irons would have easily taken the ship. The resistance is constant.

On May 28, Newton writes in his journal:

Their plot was exceedingly well laid, and had they been let alone an hour longer, must have occasioned us a good deal of trouble and damage. I have reason to be thankfull they did not make attempts upon the coast when we had often 7 or 8 of our best men out of the ship at a time and the rest busy. They still look very gloomy and sullen and have doubtless mischief in their heads if they could find opportunity to vent it. But I hope (by Divine Assistance) we are fully able to overawe them now.[20]

Newton is put on his constant guard and finds now the looks, the expressions of the enslaved people deeply dangerous: because they are. Resistance and life, war and breath in this long history are synonymous. These two small moments testify to the ongoing relentless war of slavery that exceeds national boundaries. I position the lives of Black people taken by white power within this war, even if their most "rebellious" act was just to live, and was ended by a tragic, "I can't breathe." Floyd's last breath did not end the war, however. I take my cue from James once more: "In a revolution, when the ceaseless slow accumulation of centuries bursts into volcanic eruption, the meteoric flares and flights above are a meaningless chaos and lend themselves to infinite caprice and romanticism unless the observer sees them always as projections of the sub-soil from which they came."[21] The lives of Black people stretching back, across the Atlantic to Africa, are this "sub-soil," a bedrock of breathing resistance that grounds the present volcanic upheaval. Echoing both Gilroy and James, Brown ends his Prologue with a similar reorienting of our vision: "The rebels' perspectives on empire and insurrection should inform our own." Repositioning and centering these Black lives allows us to see that the breath, lives, and resistances that have been ongoing for centuries are now opening up a door to, as Brown suggests, "another world."[22] At George Floyd's funeral, on June 9, a mourner carried a sign: "We will breathe."

With special thanks to:

Professor Christina Sharpe: permission to cite

Professor Kevin Gannon: permission to cite

Professor Daniel Carey: editorial

Érica Elizabeth Alcocer: recommendation of To Exist is to Resist

Kerry Sinanan is Assistant Professor at UTSA's Department of English. She is completing her monograph, Myths of Mastery: Traders, Planters and Colonial Agents 1750-1833. She has received research fellowships from the Beinecke Library, the James Ford Bell Library, and in 2017 she was a Visiting Scholar at the Yale Center for British Art where she began a new project on representations of slave mothers. Recently, she has been appointed Secretary/Treasurer for the Early Caribbean Society: http://www.earlycaribbeansociety.com. She is on Twitter @Kerry_Sinanan.
Title image:
Ballerinas Kennedy George, 14, and Ava Holloway, 14, posing in front of Confederate general Robert E. Lee's monument, Richmond, Virginia, with protest graffiti. June 5, 2020. The monument is now slated for removal. Photograph by Julia Rendleman.
Endnotes:
[1] There is not clear consensus on the specific date of Toussaint L'Ouverture's birth, but many celebrate it on this date.

[2] In 2014, Eric Garner said the words, "I can't breathe" 11 times, and this eventually became the call for the emerging Black Lives Matter Movement in 2017. See: Matt Taibbi, I Can't Breathe. A Killing on Bay Street (New York: Random House, 2017).

[3] "In the American South, the modern police evolved from a system of citizen slave patrols that were responsible for maintaining the system of enslavement and the established racial order, preventing rebellions and uprisings, and capturing runaway slaves." Cassandra Chaney and Ray V Robertson, "Armed and Dangerous? An Examination of Fatal Shootings of Unarmed Black People by Police," The Journal of Pan African Studies. Vol. 8. No. 4 (September 2015): 51. There is extensive literature on this topic. See also, Sally Hadden, Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001). Tyler D. Parry, "Police Dogs and Anti-Black Violence," Black Perspectives (July 31, 2017): https://www.aaihs.org/police-dogs-and-anti-black-violence/.

[4] 1805 "Constitution of Hayti": http://faculty.webster.edu/corbetre/haiti/history/earlyhaiti/1805-const.htm

[5] Kevin Gannon outlines the historical context in a thread on Twitter 1 June, 2020. https://twitter.com/TheTattooedProf/status/1267614772352212994?s=20

[6] Gannon: https://twitter.com/TheTattooedProf/status/1268971623354454021

[7] Helen Leichner, "Combahee River Raid," https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/combahee-river-raid-june-2-1863/.

[8] Toni Morrison, Cinderella's Stepsisters, Speech at Barnard College graduation, 1979.

[9] Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016), 7.

[10] Vincent Brown, Tacky's Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press), 6.

[11] Cited in Brown, 4.

[12] Christina Sharpe, https://twitter.com/hystericalblkns/status/1269331358704259072 (June 6, 2020).

[13] See: Akwugo Emejulu and Francseca Sobande, eds., To Exist is to Resist: Black Feminism in Europe (London: Pluto Press, 2019).

[14] Suzanne Schwarz, ed., Slave Captain: The Career of James Irving in the Liverpool Slave Trade (Wrexham: Bridge Books, 1995), 112-113.

[15] C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (London: Vintage, 1938), 8.

[16] Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic. Modernity and Double Consciousness (London: Verso, 1993), 56.

[17] John Newton, The Journal of a Slave Trader: John Newton 1750-1754, edited by Bernard Martin and Mark Spurrel (London: The Epworth Press, 1962), 25.

[18] Newton, 54-55.

[19] See Brown, Prologue, Tacky's Revolt.

[20] Newton, 55.

[21] James, Preface to the First Edition, xi.

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BLM 2020: Breathing, Resistance, and the War Against Enslavement

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By Kerry Sinanan On May 20, 2020 many celebrated the birthday of Haitian revolution leader, Toussaint L'Ouverture against a backdrop of ongoing murders of Black people at the hands of current and former police.[1] Ahmaud Arbery, shot while running on February 23, 2020; Breonna Taylor, who would have been 27 on June 5th, shot 8...

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Long Read | Never Again: Refusing race and salvaging the human by Paul Gilroy (2019)

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Long Read | Never Again: Refusing race and salvaging the human by Paul Gilroy (2019)

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It is commonplace to observe that democracy in Europe has reached a dangerous point. As ailing capitalism emancipates itself from democratic regulation, ultra-nationalism, populism, xenophobia and varieties of neo-fascism have become more visible, more assertive and more corrosive of political culture. The widespread appeal of racialised group identity and racism, often conveyed obliquely with a knowing wink, has been instrumental in delivering us to a situation in which our conceptions of truth, law and government have been placed in jeopardy. In many places, pathological hunger for national rebirth and the restoration of an earlier political time, have combined with resentful, authoritarian and belligerent responses to alterity and the expectation of hospitality.

Those reactions underscore the timeliness and importance of analysing racism, nationalism and xenology which are nowadays frequently disseminated online. Intensified by evasive and dubious techno-political forces, they have begun to correspond to the anxieties of lived experience in precarious and austere conditions. The effects of that shift are augmented by the uptake of generic conceptions of racial identity sourced from the US. They have gained significant international currency, even in places barely touched by the signature racial habits of the north Atlantic which would project the world only in black and white.

More than a century ago, W.E.B. Du Bois, whose exceptionally wide-ranging work provided one axis for our discussion earlier today, traced the emergence of what he called personal whiteness. The resulting hierarchy became widely influential. Lately it has, in its residual condition, been well served by the malign influence of social and timeline media. The attractiveness of generic racial identities is part of a psycho-political shift that has encouraged fascination with ossified culture: lacking vitality but easily regulated. The invocations to whiteness now circulating in Europe are freighted with notions of victimage and vulnerability. They become compelling in the face of the existential threats presented by the Trojan horse of immigrant fertility on one hand, and on the other, by the encroachment of alien influences from the global south into the fortified, yet perennially fragile, heartlands of overdevelopment. Vivid images of invasion and demographic warfare have enhanced the allure of the rebranded fascism that styles itself the "Alt-right". It is an unlikely and uneasy alliance of trolls, misogynists, meninists, ethno-nationalists, xenophobes and accelerationists, all dedicated to resisting the looming existential catastrophe they like to describe as "the great replacement".

Rather than confront this rising movement, the political and academic mainstream has sought in vain to steal its clothes in a doomed competition that can enhance neither democracy nor knowledge. Long-established patterns of civility, like those which have marked the boundaries of acceptable political speech, are being altered for the worse. The effects of this new affective ecology are amplified by the predictive capabilities of surveillance capitalism and the technological security complex with which it is allied. So far, the resulting weaponisation of culture and information has been much more successfully exploited by the neofascists than their disorientated opponents.

I want to insist that this notable deterioration in our political culture and institutions cannot be understood without paying careful attention to the specific dynamics both of race as a matter of political ontology, and of racism as a variety of political speech. Race and nation are now primary sources of groupness and absolute ethnicity. They are supposedly endowed with a special power to restore certainty and find stability amidst the flux of precarious life in increasingly dangerous conditions.

In the twentieth century, militarist appeals to racial hygiene, and ethno-national unanimity resulted in genocide. That history of warfare and mass death is something it should be inexcusable not to know. However, as those epoch-making events pass from living memory, familiarity with them becomes patchy and intermittent. The archive of ineffable horror drifts into an indeterminate space where information is untrusted. News can be faked and spun, and truth held hostage, not by the politics of knowledge but by the political machinery that assembles carefully-managed ignorance, a curated ignorance.

From the mid-century, artists, thinkers, jurists, psychologists and philosophers laboured to make the unprecedented slaughter of those times accepted as part of the official conscience of an increasingly networked world. However the difficult, belated acts of recognition and acceptance that they won were not the end they imagined they would be. Keeping attention focused on the charnel houses, in Europe and beyond it, has required continuous commemorative intervention and renewal which has also been a spur for resentment.

Those horrors are always much closer to us than we like to imagine. Preventing their recurrence requires keeping them in mind. Monitoring our motivation for undertaking that thankless work is also essential. As Raymond Williams suggested, we cement our dissenting tradition by selecting the ancestors we need.

Du Bois was a Germanophile before he went to live and study in that country. He visited Poland on three occasions and was clear about exactly what he had learned about the world's "race problems" by placing colonial rule, the Third Reich and the US racial order in historical, moral and conceptual relation. One result of that effort, born in particular from his bearing witness to the fate of the Warsaw ghetto, was, he says "not so much clearer understanding of the Jewish problem, as it was a real and more complete understanding of the Negro problem".

Primo Levi, an authoritative humanistic emissary from the grey zone of the Auschwitz Lager, warned his readers about the continuing dangers posed both by fascism and by its imitators. In 1974 he issued this famous warning to which I have regularly returned for guidance:
"Every age has its own fascism, and we see the warning signs wherever the concentration of power denies citizens the possibility and the means of expressing and acting on their own free will. There are many ways of reaching this point, and not just through the terror of police intimidation, but by denying and distorting information, by undermining systems of justice, by paralyzing the education system, and by spreading in a myriad subtle ways nostalgia for a world where order reigned, and where the security of a privileged few depends on the forced labor and the forced silence of the many."
Toni Morrison can be a third harbinger. She has, incidentally, expressed a strong affinity with what she calls Levi's "defiant humanism" and applauded his "deliberate and sustained glorification of the human" in opposition to the efforts of systematic necrology. Morrison too penned a warning about the steady resurgence of Fascism in the years immediately after the publication of Beloved. Umberto Eco, another thoughtful anatomist of the fascist period, which he had witnessed from the precious perspective of a bewildered child, extended Levi's insights and drew the obvious political conclusions in an enduringly valuable intervention:
"Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes. It would be so much easier, for us, if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying, 'I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Black Shirts to parade again in the Italian squares.' Life is not that simple. Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and to point our finger at any of its new instances - every day, in every part of the world."
These wise comments converge on an understanding of Fascism as a recurrent and infinitely translatable phenomenon. This approach does not consider it to be endowed with an essence. If it has to have one, then the prescient words of Jean Améry, another survivor, who was able to describe its claws and teeth with greater precision than many, might usefully be borne in mind.

Repeated readings of At The Mind's Limits Améry's disturbing study of the predicament of intellectuals in the concentration camp have guided my intellectual work for many years. He interprets his own experience of being tortured and explores it forensically with the phenomenological tools he acquired as a student of philosophy in Vienna. Two aspects of his argument seem especially relevant today. The first is that he felt that the work of Frantz Fanon spoke for him uniquely in grasping the philosophical and political meanings of what he had endured in the concentrationary universe and its supply chains. The second is that he, again like Fanon, responded to those trials by becoming a combative proponent of what he called a "radical humanism".

Améry discovered his juridical and his ontological Jewishness as a result of Nazi violence and was delivered to a deeper understanding of its historical and philosophical significance as a result of being tortured under the outspread wings of "the bird of prey" he called the Gestapo. In those talons, he had acquired a stake in the politics of dignity which could answer the governmental actions that had brought racial hierarchy so disastrously, yet legally, to life. Aggressive commitments to race had shattered the flimsy, social conventions of his civilized, inter-cultural childhood and then hung him from a ceiling hook by his dislocated arms in the dimly lit "business room" of the Breendonk fortress in Belgium: "everyone went about his business and theirs was murder".

The resulting injuries conditioned Améry's passionate post-1945 support for the state of Israel which he saw as a national liberation project. That outlook was intertwined, both with his politics of personal authenticity and with his endorsement of Fanon's view that counter-violence could acquire reparative and even healing effects for individuals who had themselves been subjected to systematic brutality. Améry was motivated not just to explain the indelible effects of brutalization on his own political, psychological and moral dispositions, but to substantiate what he understood to be the difficult and contentious claim that torture was not an "accidental quality of this Third Reich but its essence". Today, that unsettling assertion directs critical analysis of our own securitocracy and its proliferating states of exception to an extremely uncomfortable judgement about the afterlife of the twentieth-century fascist revolution.

Torture is prohibited. So is the use of any information it might produce. Exceptional circumstances cannot make its use legitimate. War and other public emergencies do not provide any justification. However, many governments, not least my own, have been contorting themselves in order to be able to torture their foes without being seen to have done so.

Améry's perspective would interpret the resulting double standard as evidence of the resilience and mutability of fascism. Perhaps, with additional guidance from Fanon, he would also have been able to see it as the living residue of race-friendly, colonial rule. Restored to the metropole, those habits have incubated a new political rhetoric and a distinctive governmental idiom that delights in employing euphemisms such as "waterboarding" and "stress positions". Like the repertoire of cruelty they obfuscate, those "newspeak" terms have proved to be as infinitely translatable as the twentieth-century science of public relations from which they derive. In this context, applying the seductive language of advertising demands additional analysis. It reassures all who dwell complacently within the bubble of official politics that they are correct in believing they can make anything mean whatever they want it to mean. War can be peace and ignorance is certainly strength, even if freedom is not yet slavery.

The corrosive products of the twentieth-century's Fascist revolution are not only discernable in governmental misconduct. They arrive from several directions. They emerge from the unprecedented corporate mystification and orchestration of information and from the effects of ever-more tightly associated police and military activities. They unfurl from the violence common to the mainstreamed ultra-right and its fringe of violent lone wolves that, radicalized in the insomniac virtual world, perpetrates spectacular mass murder on a freelance basis in the actual one.

Refining analytical concepts addressed to the problems these overlapping phenomena exemplify will help us today to know where our democracy is coming apart and what its successors are likely to be. Those speculative efforts will benefit from an extensive historical literacy. They must be guided by a bold commitment to the future which can make the negative clarion call "Never Again" into a positive prescription that places us in contact with the world we desire and strive, against the odds, to build.

Influential commentary on recent manifestations of the fascist resurgence has hindered that utopian possibility by speaking in non-specific terms about the dangers of populism. More serious and specific consideration of racism may persuade them that resorting to that label risks mystifying or even obscuring the alarming situation that is unfolding now that fearful images of the alien invasion of Europe have been merged with ideas of civilizational clash, White cultural vulnerability and demographic decline.

In those perilous circumstances, reaching for the abstractions of high-theory can compound the way that official political communications have become characterised by what Stuart Hall years ago identified as an inferential racism. Those tactics seek to instrumentalise knowing, encoded appeals to racial fears, anxieties and advantages, while simultaneously creating opportunities to disavow or deny the racial meanings that are being "dog whistled" and targeted with increased, algorithmic precision.

If this wicked strategy is challenged, its perpetrators can profess pretended ignorance of how these elements of racist and ultranationalist discourse have functioned in the past and, if that denial sounds implausible, they will hide behind the general problem of free speech which is inflated so as to obscure any other juridical and ethical considerations.

Those of us committed to the multidisciplinary study of culture as a primary object of our research, as well as a methodological key to analyses of the interplay of power, language, performance and context, can contribute to interpretation of the nascent forms of this "psycho-politics". Our attachment to culture points away from the autonomy of race as a category and towards its sedimentation or embeddedness in evolving historical and material conditions. In other words, it underscores the irreducible specificity of cultural life and communication.

Culture is articulated with economic and political structures and flows but they do not determine it. Historical approaches to cultural matters can also foster a distinctive epistemological orientation. Racial difference is not produced by nature, yielding variations that can be misrecognized and thereby transformed into the rational substance of racial hierarchy. Instead, races are assembled, conjured into being, by the-usually violent-workings of racism. Thus races are summoned and animated as political and economic actors.

Struggling with these problems has shaped my thinking since I began to publish. They orbit the issue of common-sense nationalism, particularly where it meshes with racism and xenology. And they have intensified my desire to respond to the certainties and moorings provided by racial sentiment by locating and promoting other kinds of ontological ballast. They can be found in forms of identification that, in opposition to reified identity, emerge from affinity and convivial contact, place, generation, sexualities and gender.

With those possibilities in mind, I propose that we are better equipped to turn firmly away from the defaulted racial ordering of life. Historically, that gesture has been associated with the elaboration of new ways of understanding humanity and thus with new varieties of humanism. Their novelty is confirmed by a dogged refusal of the world rendered definitively in racialized shapes. To be sure, this is a difficult response, but it is not one that needs to rely either upon cultivating "colour blindness" or on practising "word avoidance" as its critics have charged.

Instead, it follows Fanon and others in arguing that an intrinsic eye for racial difference should never be assumed or asserted as a defining feature of our species' hard wiring. Comparative historical and cultural analysis reveals that those sensitivities are the outcome of iteration and education which generate the habitual patterns Fanon presented as the workings of racial/corporeal schemata.

Another way to grasp this pivotal point can be found by returning to the opening sentences of The Souls of Black Folk, the book that made Du Bois into a political leader of African Americans, and later, of the world's rebellious colonial peoples. He excavates a key question that he sees as implicit in a host of other routine, conversational interactions which exemplify the limits of liberal reaction to the apparently incorrigible substance of racial division.

That question is "how does it feel to be a problem?" It is an absurd, and insulting inquiry. Yet it was present, though unspoken and unspeakable, in a host of other well-meaning responses to the "badge of inferiority" that the sage of Great Barrington wore as a result of being misrecognized as a Negro. That latent question spoke directly to the predicament of the doubly consciousness modern, black subject whose blackness was antagonistically disposed against the possibility and the value of democratic citizenship.

Du Bois imagined that escaping ontopolitical emplacement as a Negro would yield the possibility of a dialectical resolution of the racial strife that became visible along the fracture between postponed recognition as human and the deferred award of political rights. The warring, plural selves inside the racialised subject could then be sublated into a richer, more substantial conception of national citizenship, reformed and undistorted after the retreat of hierarchy and segregation.

The issue exclusion from national citizenship and political rights remains with us and rightly claims much of the energy of anti-racist movements. However, as my work has evolved, I have become increasingly preoccupied with the other face of the transformation Du Bois aspired to. This is the belated, shocking acquisition, not of rights but of common humanity.

That risky business necessitates more than merely an end to the distorted recursions of racial misrecognition and a substitution of brighter-hued universalism for quieter, more sober and more bloodstained varieties. This will be an epochal change. It involves a qualitative and imaginative transformation that fails if it is undertaken only to vindicate the veiled humanity of the racially inferior. This bold gambit includes potential gains, both for the victims of the racial order and for its beneficiaries, who acquire a precious chance to salve and repair what Fanon saw as their amputated human being.

Contrary to some influential contemporary approaches, the unjust and cruel arrangements that prompt this rebellion are not eternal structures. Du Bois' "color line" was a contingent, historical arrangement: substantial yes, but never invulnerable.

Such systems are more usefully considered historically than metaphysically. My resolute commitment to their undoing is premised on appreciation of their constitutive power, a stance that confirms my status as a dissenter in this narcissistic age. I think we should be sceptical about the seductions of the ontological turn recently promoted in the study of race politics. It has become disastrously complicated by prospective nostalgia for the easy, essentialist approaches that were dominant when assertive cultural nationalism ruled the roost.

We can rebuild an alternative by taking cues from the agonistic humanisms of the black Atlantic thinkers who capitalized upon Du Bois' imaginative breakthrough. Readings of the work of Cooper, Senghor, Hurston, James, Fanon, Césaire, Wynter etc. can be combined with the fruits of long-forgotten versions of black feminism with which those endeavors were entangled. We are drawn to the realization that it is imperative to remain less interested in who or what we imagine ourselves to be, than in what we can do for one another both in today's emergency conditions and in the grimmer circumstances that surely await us.

In opposition to the rarified habits of high theory, I propose a lowly orientation. It corresponds to what we can learn about the primal responsibility we bear towards others by observing humane, selfless and generous responses to elemental perils like flood, drought and pollution as well as acute, deadly emergencies and risky activities like sea-travel undertaken by fugitives and refugees.

The latter example is important. Clear, moral and juridical choices are involved in salvaging people from the water, as they are in the tasks of naming the drowned and promoting dignity by burying their bodies. In many circumstances, we are referred to the forms of care and sociality conditioned by disaster and what might be called the banality of good. They operate on smaller scales than the revolutionary opportunities we associate with disaster capitalism. These responses are closer to the ordinary virtue that can be glimpsed in disaster altruism and disaster solidarity.

Lowly thinking operates optimally at the changing level where sea and land meet and has another advantage. It stimulates concern with planetarity and can foster the worldly outlook that is required if anti-racism is to be more than merely a parochial concern. The activity that results can be understood best not as an exercise in self-exploration or self-care conducted on the primrose path towards diversity understood as enhanced visibility, but when it is conceived as a deepening of democracy, a transformational practice that points beyond unsustainable arrangements towards better ones from which, in turn, richer conceptions of the human, untrammelled by racial styles of thought, may have already started to emerge.

The humanizing possibilities of conviviality and care are not limited to maritime settings. But they seem easier to appreciate in Derek Walcott called the sea's "grey vault". Similar responses have appeared in a host of other emergency situations. The aftermath of the murderous fire in London's Grenfell Tower, now almost two years ago, displayed comparable patterns. In that instance, the survivors' emphasis on the human dimensions of their vulnerability to the flames was both telling and consistent. Stories of sympathy and solidarity were circulated against the effects of slow violence and official indifference.

The language of humanity was central to the survivors' descriptions of their trauma and in the terms of the appeal that they made to the world-not to raise money, but in pursuit of attention, or as they put it, seeking clarity (based on commonality and heteropathic identification) rather than charity.

To me, these humbling and inspiring reactions suggest that trumpeting the abandonment of humanism and spurning the strategic challenges of minor universalism are redundant gestures. Rehearsing them takes us further away from the mentality we need to cultivate in order to respond to the emergencies that await us.

The Black Atlantic traditions I have described were conditioned by the work of vindicating black humanity, but they were never reducible to that task alone. They have been enriched by exposure to cosmologies that do not consider individuality, subject formation, agency, temporality, property or groupness in exclusively European terms. The resulting mix of resources furnishes us with a compass we can use to locate newer and better understanding of the human-considered, "post-anthropologically"-that is, after the death of Man.

Du Bois helps again here. He approached the history of slavery systematically as the unfolding of an Atlantic modernity presented in watery terms. He triangulated the establishment of the modern racial order that counterposed the human to the negro, in an artful interrelation of ship, sea and land.

In harmony with Shakespeare who, did not, according to Du Bois, wince when a Negro sat beside him, a new kind of humanism came into being through the destruction of the historic, racial constellation emanating from the topos of terror he calls "the death ship".

Three streams of thinking have, he tells us, flowed down to our day from that filthy hull. Each contained a thought and an afterthought. He arranged the resulting pairs in dialectical patterns and, in doing so, used a transformative anti-racist humanism to inauguerate a distinctive political tradition. Those ways of thinking about humanity, modernity, ethics, freedom and knowledge are still residually present but they are often scorned. They get dismissed as sentimental and unsophisticated, and come under attack from various trans-, post- and anti-humanisms.

In scholastic settings, distaste for history increases with increased appetites for sophistry. The resulting combination increases reluctance to approach the central issues of anti-racist ambition and hope. Instead, we encounter a simplistic yet tenacious attachment to the idea that the most sophisticated approach to humanism and its ambiguities sees them not as symptoms, but as the fundamental cause of racism in the world.

Considered against the framework derived from Du Bois' path-breaking interventions, that response looks and sounds provincial. Paranoid, parochial hostility to humanism and indeed to humanity, resonates most loudly behind fortified campus walls where the hip imperatives of identity politics: docile nihilism, resignation and complacent ethnic absolutism, reign unchallenged while the seductions of the Alt-right-to which they are kin-present a growing danger.

If the trajectory that Du Bois formalized has to have an origin, it can provocatively be discovered in Equiano's narrative. This option requires dispensing with the conventional sense of the venerable African seafarer as an American positioned at the head of a tradition of imaginative or autobiographical abolitionist writing.

Equiano's restless oceanic peregrinations supply a better key to what we need now. They include the instructive discovery of the plight of the Genoese galley-slaves which precipitated his comparative assessments of the different varieties of slavery and cruelty he witnessed.

Think about the neglected passage where, imperiled by storms off the Bahamas, though still a slave, Equiano takes command of his endangered ship. He is galvanized to intervene because a number of other enslaved but expendable Africans remain chained below decks.

Facing shipwreck and imminent death, Equiano's white fellow sailors become inert, apparently indifferent to their own fate. They begin drinking grog and lie about the vessel "like swine" while he, endowed with hopeful, divinely-instituted energy, takes on the superhuman task of saving everybody on board. He is joined in that demanding task by "three black men and a Dutch creole sailor" and worked so hard to save the foundering boat that the skin was stripped from his hands.

Equiano's predicament in that maritime emergency was particular and instructive. He is bound by faith, law and what we can now call a humanitarian ethic to the fate of his fellow Africans lodged in the hold, while also being obliged faithfully to discharge his responsibilities as a trusted crewman. From that dilemma, with its echoes of the then recent Zong case and the contested commercial value and legal status of slave life, he seized the opportunity to save everyone, not only in the name of God, but also in the name of a humanity yet to come.

Equiano reports that he emerged from that thalassic trial recognizable, despite his slave status, "as a kind of chieftain" among his fellow crewmen. The ordeal had invested him with a new authority: superior both to the conventional ranking established among seafarers and the stricter, violent hierarchies of racialised life routinely found in the segregated order on shore. His conduct exemplifies the generosity and empathy demanded alike by the pursuit of a new humanism, and the elaboration of a hydrophanic ethics in which meaning is revealed through the mediating agency or presence of water.

This maritime archive can help to tune us precisely to the demands resulting from contemporary attempts to divine and apply a different humanist ethos: one that is not congruent with the racial nomos and has been conditioned by emergency conditions, in particular by proximity to water and the obligation to confront its special perils when the fate of other human beings demands it.

The value of this response increases when it combines with an enhanced sense of the difficulties involved in exercising judgement and power, as well as concern with the destabilizing interrelation and interdependency of varying forms of life: human, infrahuman and non-human. The moveable boundaries between those categories were central to the bloody operations of racial hierarchy in the nineteenth century and remain so today.

The earth's colonial nomos was theorised and mapped historically and geopolitically in the twentieth century by the influential Nazi jurist, Carl Schmitt. His small book on land and sea supplies an insightful overview of the mutual association of hydrarchy and planetarity. It also includes the provocative observation that Herman Melville was "to the world of oceans what Homer (had been) to the Eastern Mediterranean."

Delivered exactly from the period when whale oil began to be superceded by fossil fuel in the branded form of Kerosene, Melville's passionate, planetary survey of errant humanity, the life of marine species, weather, capital and objects encompassed a number of arguments about the character and moral integrity of modern racial orders and the elemental significance of racial hierarchy as a repudiation of the claims of humanism, religious or profane. We begin to comprehend what might have made Melville's work so influential among the rising constituency of mid-twentieth-century black Atlantic radicals.

Melville showed them that the racial nomos was implicated in the doom of Atlantic, that is, western humankind. He pointed the way by being prepared to have Captain Ahab speculate pointedly about the commercial value of a slave boy calculated against that of a whale.

Melville presents slavery as pelagic and planetary. Its true character could be revealed in the peculiar theatre of power found at sea. It was an obscure, grey confrontation between the properly human and the supposedly infrahuman-between the white and the black. The mutinied slaves in the novella Benito Cereno who enact the perplexing choreography of their submission while actually being in command of their floundering journey to freedom, were misrecognized in that mist. As a result, they get over-identified with that happy, musical, clownish, baboon the Negro, who is taken to, not "philanthropically but genially", like "a Newfoundland dog" or becomes "an object among other objects" like combs, brushes and castanets. There is something about the maritime staging of encounters between human, animal and object that presents the core dynamics of that rapacious system with great clarity.

We can pursue these lines of argument a little further under the guidance of another Black Atlantic polymath, the Trinidadian, C.L.R. James. Detained on Ellis Island as an illegal alien by the McCarthy era US immigration authorities, James wrote a petition to the US government. It took the form of a book-length study of the writings of Herman Melville. That work Mariners Renegades and Castaways, helped me to appreciate that Melville had been born within a few months of both Karl Marx and Frederick Douglass. As radical anatomists of the pathology and misery of industrial capitalist exploitation, that heavily bearded trio shared several common concerns.

James' plea to the US government, demonstrated how Melville's literary output could be read for the way it complemented the political efforts and epistemologies of Marx and Douglass by extending their enquiries into deeper and murkier water. Douglass published The Heroic Slave his only work of fiction, in 1853, a couple of years before the appearance of Benito Cereno. It too included a shipboard mutiny by slaves on board the appropriately named ship, Creole. His story was based upon real events which were entangled with Melville's extended family, unsurprising perhaps as the two men had lived in the same location on three different occasions and may well have met.

The intertextual sequence that connects them can be supplemented to encompass the work of the later writers who used their ideas to a divine a moral and political course that was repeatedly illuminated by watery examples. Ralph Ellison's connection to Melville was revealed by his employing the concluding words of Benito Cereno as the epigraph to Invisible Man. He acknowledged his debt to writers like Melville for whom
"the Negro symbolized both the man lowest down and the mysterious, underground aspect of human personality. In a sense the Negro was the gauge of the human condition as it waxed and waned in our democracy. "
This view of the Negro as a gauge-or a canary in the coalmine of western civilization-was taken further by others. Richard Wright had been reading Moby Dick while writing Native Son and he listed Melville's book among his favourites. He drew political conclusions at variance with Ellison's, although the maritime metaphors continued:
"The word 'Negro', the term by which, orally or in print, we black folk in the United States are usually designated, is not really a name at all nor a description, but a psychological island . . . This island, within whose confines we live, is anchored in the feelings of millions of people, and is situated in the midst of the sea of White faces we meet each day; and by and large, as three hundred years of time has borne our nation into the twentieth century, its rocky boundaries have remained unyielding to the Waves of our hope that dash against it."
Similar ideas and images can be found in the work of later writers for example, James Baldwin whose essay "Nothing Personal" reads today like a luminous repudiation of every idiocy of "identity politics". He concludes with these lines:
"The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out."
The composite of human frailty and interdependency that becomes visible is the frame of maritime peril is striking. In order to divine its contemporary significance, we can turn to Hans Blumenberg whose essay Shipwreck With Spectator outlines the fundamental significance of the "nautical metaphorics of existence" in European cultural history. Blumenberg is not remotely concerned either with race or racism, but I submit that his angles of vision can be amended to address the meaning of these signs in the context of colonial and imperial hydrarchy.

Blumenberg presents the sight of shipwreck as "the figure of an initial philosophical experience."[1] We get a hint of what this might mean if we remember how the 1781 case of the Zong provided an important source for J.M.W. Turner's sublime 1840 painting: "Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On" and generated moral ballast for the indictment of racial capitalism at the antislavery convention that accompanied its first public display.

As we struggle with the planetary and pelagic dimensions of our own emergency, we must enquire what that philosophical experience might now entail? First, we have to appreciate that the distinctive varieties of human recognition that are being sought and won in these watery spaces of death are of not the standard philosophical variety. They are defined in explicit opposition to the strictures of racism and ethnic absolutism. Second, we must accept that the demands voiced by people resisting their consignment to infrahumanity do not boil down conveniently to existing understanding of group identity. They surpass the habits of mind that were derived from acknowledgement of individual selfhood under eighteenth-century Europe's favoured rules.

Today, demands for "equal dignity" operate as part of an appeal for recognition, not as culturally specific but as vitally and mortally human. Those demands have been articulated precisely against the specifications and the effects of racial hierarchy. They arise in circumstances where the acknowledgement of humanity has either been withheld or is explicitly denied, where the passage towards inclusion in species life has been closed off. They are not necessarily directed towards the attainment of rights.

The bans, double standards and other exclusionary mechanisms against which these demands have been voiced refer us to the contested limits of political communities that have been stratified according to the assumptions of nationalism and absolutist ethnic belonging that are still conveyed as matters of race.

Whether race is figured as natural history, frozen culture or political anatomy, institutionalized racism imagines and assembles it as an absolute, unbridgeable division in social and political life. This may still be considered a vulgar point to raise in polite, scholarly company. However, I want to insist that racism has travelled, mutated and grown from its enlightenment roots in the same intellectual compost that yielded the idea of essential human equality which, we should always remember, provided no significant obstacles to the consolidation of European colonies and empires.

The operations of the racial nomos are still uneven. There are significant regional and cultural variations in the intensity of attachment to race, to the idea of whiteness-which has been falling in value-and to religious or ethical commitments that might qualify or mediate those affects. Similarly, the degree of humanity identified in or awarded to racial, national and ethnic inferiors fluctuates with culture, politics and economic life. The quality of sympathy and empathy that can be expressed once the veil of alterity has been torn to reveal, unexpectedly, a needy, vulnerable human countenance beneath, is neither fixed nor over-determined.

Racism and fascism have been re-branded by forces grown online with help of Russian troll farms, AI and bots that are programmed in one jurisdiction, registered in a second and deployed from a third. It bears repetition that the versions of identity politics in which they trade are built around the idea that western civilization is being invaded and corrupted by alien intruders. The political language of civil war is dominant and these images promote a distinctive conception of political time in which greatness can be restored after periods of weakness and lassitude and nations, once thought lost, can be won back.

They may be divided internally about the significance of gender relations, but the Alt-right and its allies have projected a view of their activities not as radically evil, but as intelligent, daring, transgressive, comic and futuristic. Unlike their anti-racist opponents, these ironic authoritarians have been able to summon up seductive images of the utopia that guides their pragmatic and immediate political choices.

They use the anodyne rhetoric of ethnostates and human biodiversity but make no mistake, they want the world they are building to be racially pure and uniform. That new order will rest squarely upon revived natural relations between men and women no longer distorted by feminism, and it will be dedicated to the preservation of the embattled west which is threatened by the fertility of non-white incomers and menaced, not only by shadowy corporate forces of a cosmopolitan "global elite", but in particular, by the corruption introduced by Islam and the "cultural Marxism" of its treacherous supporters. Muslim has become fixed as a racial trope rather like Jew in the interwar years of the twentieth century.

These unsavoury forces intersect in and rely upon the political ontology of race. They oppose political correctness and multiculturalism and employ the issue of free speech relentlessly to alter the limits of what can be said publicly. The resulting movement expands, not from the distribution of information but by garnering and monopolizing attention. It will not be stopped by the tactics used in the past to fight back against its predecessors.

Of course the nature of the ongoing emergency means that many people will prefer to renounce their liberties in the name of security and the fantasy that the clock of political time can be turned back to a period when alterity just did not arise.

In response and in conclusion, I want to suggest that our responsibility to ourselves and to the people in the water, now and in the future, must show how, against the effects of what Fanon called epidermalisation, something like a "real dialectic between the body and the world" can be reasserted. Perhaps it has already begun, unanticipated, to appear in the politics of sympathy discernable in the shadows of disaster. I hope you will be prepared to join with or at least endorse that ongoing, collective work of salvage. It is likely to involve more than pulling imperiled fellow beings from the sea, for it is our own humanity that needs to be rescued from the mounting wreckage. There is still time for that operation, but not much.

Some years ago, musing on these very themes, the poet and essayist June Jordan suggested that " . . . the ultimate connection must be the need that we find between us". We can still learn from the challenging words she spoke to and for her political generation: "It is not only who you are . . . but what we can do for each other that will determine the connection . . . I must make the connection real between me and these strangers . . . before those other clouds unify this ragged bunch of us, too late."
Holberg laureate for 2019 Paul Gilroy is an American and English literature professor at King's College London in the United Kingdom. He delivered his Holberg Lecture at the University of Bergen in Norway on 4 June 2019. The lecture is republished in full here by kind permission of Gilroy and the Holberg Prize Secretariat.

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Long Read | Never Again: Refusing race and salvaging the human

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It is commonplace to observe that democracy in Europe has reached a dangerous point. As ailing capitalism emancipates itself from democratic regulation, ultra-nationalism, populism, xenophobia and varieties of neo-fascism have become more visible, more assertive and more corrosive of political culture.

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'The last humanist: how Paul Gilroy became the most vital guide to our age of crisis' by by Yohann Koshy (2021)

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'The last humanist: how Paul Gilroy became the most vital guide to our age of crisis' by by Yohann Koshy (2021)

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The newspapers tore it to pieces. The Daily Telegraph ran a front-page article: "Straw wants to rewrite our history: 'British' is a racist word, says report." The Sun and the Daily Mail joined in. The line was clear - a clique of leftwing academics, in cahoots with the government, wanted to make ordinary people feel ashamed of their country. In the Telegraph, Boris Johnson, then editor of the Spectator magazine, wrote that the report represented "a war over culture, which our side could lose". Spooked by the intensity of the reaction, Straw distanced himself from any furtherdebate about Britishness, recommending in his speech at the report's launch that the left swallow some patriotic tonic.

The Parekh report, as it was known - its chair was the political theorist LordBhikhu Parekh - was not a radical document. It was studiously considerate. Contrary to the Telegraph front page, it didn't claim "British" was a racist word. It said that "Britishness, as much as Englishness, has ... largely unspoken, racial connotations". This was the sentence that launched a thousand tirades, but where did this idea come from? Follow the footnote in the offending paragraph and you arrive at the work of an academic called Paul Gilroy.

Gilroy watched this "depressing and deeply symptomatic" episode unfold from across the Atlantic. He had joined Yale University the previous year, having left Britain in search of greener pastures. Several other non-white British academics had done the same: an article in the Guardian from 2000 about this exodus - headlined " Gifted, black ... and gone " - quotes one of Gilroy's reasons for leaving: "Even to be interested in race, let alone to assert its centrality to British nationalism, is to sacrifice the right to be taken seriously." The response to the Parekh report seemed to confirm that he had made the right decision. Twenty years later, it can feel like little has changed. Time moves forward but, on this issue, Britain stays still, having the same arguments over and over.

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Gilroy, 65, has since returned to Britain. Today, he is widely regarded as the country's pre-eminent scholar of race, culture and nationalism. It's a status that he has acquired slowly, without fanfare, through a steady drip of books, essays and lectures rather than dramatic public interventions. Over four decades his work has spanned disciplines - literature, history, philosophy, music, sociology - but it is built around a simple plea: that race and racism be taken seriously.

He first made a name for himself in the late 1980s with his book There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack, which argued that racism was "deeply interwoven" with nationalism in Britain. His 1993 follow-up, The Black Atlantic, still his most influential work, used the writings of enslaved people and their descendants to demonstrate their centrality to the making of the modern world. In 2004's After Empire, more than a decade before the referendum on EU membership, he diagnosed Britain with "postcolonial melancholia": an inability to mourn the loss of imperial greatness, which was encouraging a corrosive nationalism.

Gilroy is a worldly scholar, who wants us to look beyond the nation-state and think on a planetary scale. He has been working for several years on a book about the effects that the climate crisis is having on our ideas about race and humanity. But he can't quite get Britain - or England, really - off his mind. In our conversations over recent months,he circled around the virulent nationalism that accompanied the UK's exit from the EU, the inhumanity of the Home Office 's policy toward migrants, and the renewal of the far-right political forces that he encountered as a young person in postwar London, when he, like so many others, was intimidated by racists in the street. "I really tried to warn people about racism and nationalism in this country," he told me, toward the end of one interview, when Brexit came up. "To have all of those things that could be seen so clearly swell up into this Leviathan and beat everything that I think is important and beautiful and serious and democratic about this culture to death ... It has given me one or two things to think about."

In this moment of resurgent anti-racist politics, people are turning to Gilroy's work. An activist told me that she saw a placard listing the names of essential thinkers at a Rhodes Must Fall demonstration in Oxford - and Gilroy was the only living person on it. When the Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton shared a #BlackLivesMatter reading list on social media, he included There Ain't No Black ..., alongside works by Malcolm X and Maya Angelou. Steve McQueen's acclaimed TV series about Caribbean life in Britain, Small Axe, is further evidence of his influence: Gilroy was credited as an adviser. "He's the foremost intellectual in the United Kingdom: not an if, not a but, not a maybe," McQueen, a friend of Gilroy's, told me over the phone.

He may not have the public profile of someone like the late Stuart Hall, who co-supervised his PhD, but Gilroy's reputation in the field is unrivalled. People who work on race speak of his deep, formative influence; concepts that he developed such as the "black Atlantic" - which refers to the transnational slave-descended cultures that span Africa, Europe and the Americas - are firmly embedded in academia. In 2019, he was awarded the Holberg prize, a $700,000 award funded by the Norwegian government that is often called the Nobel prize of the humanities. (Not a single British newspaper covered it.) The awarding committee described him as "one of the most challenging and inventive figures in contemporary scholarship".

Too challenging, perhaps. For all the plaudits, there is something unsettling about Gilroy's way of looking at the world. He is an untimely figure. His ideas don't correspond to the vogueish pieties of identity politics or even cutting-edge studies of race. He is that most intellectually unfashionable thing, a humanist. And despite his insistence on understanding the importance of race, he has paradoxically spent much of his life encouraging people to work towards something radical, even utopian: moving beyond the idea of race altogether.

When we first met in person, in between pandemic lockdowns last winter in Finsbury Park, north London, Gilroy was easy to spot between the dog-walkers and morning joggers. He is short and bearish, and has a crown of dreadlocks, wisped with grey, reaching down to his waist. Dressed in black, wearing mud-stained walking boots - a partisan Londoner, he is also an outdoors person - he moved across the sodden grass with careful, almost monkish purpose. In conversation, he speaks fluently, gently, like a late-night DJ soothing listeners as they drive, but his tone belies a barbed impatience with the state of things. "I can't watch videos of murder," he said in a recent discussion with the historian David Olusoga, referring to the killing of George Floyd. "I'm already angry enough."Racism, nationalism, intellectual complacency: these disfigure the world and move him, and this hasn't waned as he's grown older.

His mother, Beryl Gilroy, was a teacher, psychotherapist and novelist. She migrated from what was then British Guiana in the Caribbean in 1952, but she wasn't an immigrant: like the rest of the Windrush generation, she was a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies, moving from one part of the empire to another. If that cohort was expecting a measure of hospitality, they found a hostile environment. "Unable to adjust to the presence of semi-strangers who, disarmingly, knew British culture intimately as a result of their colonial education, and who represented a vanished pre-eminence," her son would later write, "the country developed a melancholic attachment to its lost imperial past."

This was the era of the colour bar, when those newly arrived discovered the hollowness of their formal rights. Landlords would refuse to rent rooms based on what the neighbours might think. The graffiti - "Keep Britain White", "[Enoch] Powell for PM" - put things more plainly. So, too did the violence: from the police, the marauding teddy boys, and the assailants, never caught, behind the murder of the Antiguan carpenter Kelso Cochrane in 1959.

In her 1976 memoir Black Teacher, Beryl Gilroy described what it was like to navigate the education system of postwar London. She encountered parents who didn't want a black woman teaching their children, and had to deal with racism from the pupils themselves, who were often parroting their parents. Life among the "workaday English" often amounted to a "daily struggle for survival and dignity", but she was unflappable, eventually becoming the headteacher at Beckford primary school in north London.

In one scene of the memoir, though, we see her stalked by self-doubt. She worries about the child she is carrying, who was the product of what was once called "miscegenation", the mixing of races. Her husband, Pat Gilroy - a trained chemist and a communist, who left the party after Moscow's tanks rolled into Hungary in 1956 - was white. "Might there not be some flaws in the chromosomes?" she wonders, against her better instincts. "After I had defeated an army of nightmares my fears subsided, but I remember to this day the anxiety with which I first examined my son, seeking some flaw, born of a fear buried deep down inside me."

With a white father and a black mother, Paul - named after Paul Dienes, a Hungarian intellectual and friend of his father's - knew early on that he was different, and that sameness was overrated. Gilroy is not forthcoming about his childhood. He resisted the story that seemed to be taking shape as I asked him about it: the scholar of race who was drawn to the subject because of the racism he experienced as a child. "I am so phobic about the cult of victim-speak that I don't want to narrate my life in that way," he told me.

Those formative moments can't be erased, either. In the introduction to his book Between Camps, he recalls a childhood memory of coming across the painted insignia of the British Union of Fascists, Oswald Moseley's political party, on a wall in bombed-out London. What was this doing in a country that had only recently helped defeat nazism? "I think that was a stimulus to begin a kind of critical reflection on the power of racism and fascism and nationalism in British life," he said. "It was literally having my face rubbed in all that shit."

As a teenager, Gilroy was drawn to the affirmative politics of black power, grew out an afro, and immersed himself in soul and funk. "We people, who are darker than blue," Curtis Mayfield, sang at Finsbury Park's Rainbow theatre in 1972, with a teenage Gilroy in attendance. "Are we gonna stand around this town / And let what others say come true?"

His mother didn't always make him to go to school because she knew the kind of things teachers said about kids like him. Instead, he would read voraciously, often at the local library in North Finchley. Through his mother, he discovered books - such as The Souls of Black Folk by the African American polymath WEB Du Bois - that he would wrestle with for the rest of his life.

Gilroy failed his English O-level exam, having gone out the night before to see the American singer-songwriter Boz Scaggs play at the Roundhouse in Camden. But he ended up at Sussex University, where, browsing the university bookshop one day, he came across a collection of essays, Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain. "I thumbed through it and thought, wow," he told me. Until then, he hadn't realised that scholars wrote about things like football, or pop music, or Caribbean culture. Now, after this encounter, academia seemed bigger, closer to life itself. Maybe, he thought, there might be a place for him.

he book that had captured Gilroy's imagination came from the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham, one of the few institutions producing academic work that made sense of what Britain looked like from ground-level. The CCCS was under the directorship of Stuart Hall, the pioneering Jamaican intellectual who famously coined the term Thatcherism and transformed British leftwing thought by focusing on the importance of culture.

When Gilroy joined the centre as a postgraduate student in 1978, he found that it had an egalitarian ethos; the traditional hierarchy dividing students from teachers was undermined. In 1982, he and a number of his fellow students published a text, The Empire Strikes Back, a landmark in the field of British cultural studies. Its central theme, developing Hall's work, was that the hard-right nationalism of the emergent 80s was being secured through appeals to racist fears.

The 80s were a heady decade, in which battles over belonging were constantly being fought. While the far right whipped up support by promising to "repatriate" them, Gilroy's generation affirmed that they were "here to stay and here to fight", as one leftwing group put it. His was a cohort, actually born in Britain, that was "equipped with a sense of entitlement that their parents had not been able to enjoy", as Gilroy later wrote. They were called the rebel generation for a reason: the 1981 riots, in places like Brixton and Toxteth, were a revolt against police harassment, and it was thanks to them that Gilroy found employment after leaving Birmingham. "Suddenly there were jobs in local government in new areas around policing, equal opportunities, around women's needs and experiences," he said. He worked at the Greater London Council (GLC), the city authority under the radical-left leadership of Ken Livingstone, where Gilroy did research for a unit that monitored the Metropolitan police.

He also gigged as a freelance journalist, writing for the counter-cultural music press. He got into prickly debates about jazz in the pages of the Wire and interviewed James Baldwin for City Limits. ("I never got on with the English in general," Baldwin told him, "People who believe that an elderly British matron is the Empress of the Indies and Queen of all Africa are dangerously removed from reality.") He was finding it hard to enter academia. "I wasn't perceived as somebody who was staying within the bounds of the acceptable limits of scholarly research. A lot of the hostility came from people on the so-called left," he said.

His first book, There Ain't No Black ... , published in 1987, was like a little grenade thrown into the discourse. His targets included English Marxists who couldn't understand the importance of thinking carefully about race; sociologists who portrayed Britain's black population as either victims or criminals; the "new racism" of Thatcher's Britain; and even the GLC, his old employer. In the book, Gilroy tookriots and social movements to be as politically significant as any political party or trade union. "My brain kind of cracked open when I read it," Ruth Wilson Gilmore, the celebrated American theorist of prison abolition, told me.

It is the second chapter that furnished the ideas that would, during the Parekh affair, offend the rightwing press. Gilroy marshalled a long list of examples - pervasive phrases such as "the island race" and "bulldog breed"; the way politicians spoke about immigrants as aliens; laws that privileged immigrants with a grandparent born in the British Isles - to argue that race and nation were enmeshed in the British psyche. The government's obsession with repatriating "illegal immigrants" was further evidence. Deportation, he wrote acidly, "assists in the process of making Britain great again".

Most powerfully, Gilroy treated Britain's Caribbean settlers not as a problem to be solved, but as people whose culture offered sophisticated readings of the world. He saw the soundsystem culture of reggae and dub - whose body-shaking bass frequencies could be heard, and felt, in parties across London - as harbouring a radical critique of the modern world. Darkened dance halls transported revellers out of the oppressive present, while the music's lyrics punctured the drudgery of labouring under capitalism.

Caribbean culture was also re-colouring Englishness itself. Gilroy analysed the 1984 single Cockney Translation by the London-born reggae artist Smiley Culture, which playfully juxtaposes cockney rhyming slang and black patois. "The implicit joke beneath the surface of the record," he wrote, "was that though many of London's working-class blacks were cockney by birth and experience ... their 'race' denied them access to [that] social category." He saw the song as a sign of his generation's emergent, hybrid Britishness.

Music is central to Gilroy's work, providing a kind of sonic argument against narrow nationalism. In his view, the history of black music is a powerful demonstration of how cultures, races, identities are all mongrel things, which can't be neatly packaged into ethnic parcels. Even a genre as seemingly American as hip-hop isn't purely American, he has pointed out: it was fertilised in the Bronx by Caribbean sound systems.

It was after a conversation with a musician, David Hinds, of the reggae band Steel Pulse, that Gilroy grew the dreadlocks that he keeps to this day. Interviewing him for a music zine during his Birmingham days, Gilroy spoke with Hinds late into the night, debating black power and music, and discussing Rastafarianism, a socio-political religion that connected people across the black Atlantic world. Growing out dreadlocks was a way of signifying one's ethical commitment to the "sufferers" of the world. In the Britain of the 70s and 80s, it was also a dangerous way to stand out.

When I asked him about this, more than four decades later, Gilroy resisted divulging what in particular prompted the decision to grow dreadlocks. I could tell that I was encroaching on personal territory. Instead, he answered by way of analogy. He talked about George Orwell, a figure whom he admires in all his contradictory complexity. In his essay A Hanging, set in Burma where he was a colonial officer, Orwell describes accompanying a colonial subject to the gallows. During this short journey, a dog runs up to the condemned and tries to lick his face. Moments like these humanise the prisoner, which horrifies Orwell, as it makes the injustice of what is happening inescapable.

In Burma, Orwell decided to tattoo his hands. "He did this to make sure he would never be comfortable in polite society," Gilroy said. "He marked his body in a way that said to them: I am not one of you."

The green, sun-speckled heath was almost empty of people. The morning air was piped with birdsong. It was a pastoral scene, the kind that might be called typically English. As we walked, Gilroy identified varieties of bluebell and rhapsodised over ancient oak trees. He has an exacting ear, easily distinguishing different species of bird from their interlaced song. "A lot of these birds have migrated from west and central Africa," Gilroy said. "What can I hear right now? I can hear a great tit, a blue tit, and there's a particular kind of warbler - that sound - which comes up from the area between Niger and Senegal." Later, to a bemused university colleague who happened to be walking by, he taxonomised three types of woodpecker.

The day before, Gilroy had delivered his inaugural lecture at UCL, where he has been a professor since 2019, via videolink. He used it to make sense of Boris Johnson's government and the Sewell report, published in March by the government's centre for race and ethnic disparities. For Gilroy, the report -which clumsily downplayed the significance of racism in British life - signalled an attempt to wind back the political clock to a time when anger at racism could be dismissed as people being chippy. "It's designed to be an insult to the likes of me," he told me as we walked.

The culture wars have been simmering for as long as Gilroy has been alive. In the 80s, he wrote about how the press would claim Labour-run councils' anti-racist endeavours were destroying freedom of speech. But much has changed, too; the Conservative cabinet, for instance, is more diverse than ever before. "Overtly racist messaging on immigration, culture and heritage," he said in the lecture, "while sock-puppeting the diversity and inclusion of minority government affiliates has, so far at least, proved to be a way to hold a new electoral bloc together and maintain the high temperature of populist and authoritarian ultra-nationalism."

But Gilroy believes there's something brittle about the Conservatives' approach, which seeks to launch American-inspired battles over cultural values. "I think that the British political class has been entirely bereft of any ideas of its own for a very long time," he told me. "And its dismal inability to imagine a future for this country that is not an American future is expressed in the turn towards denouncing ' critical race theory ' or going on about these things."

Race and racism have never been, for him, about individual attitudes. They rather constitute a terrain on which politics takes place, where social meaning is made. In After Empire, he describes race as something that "absorbs the cries of those who suffer by making them sound less human". The triumphant indifference of the UK government towards the suffering of others - it is in the process of making it even harder for refugees to claim asylum - is a sign that race continues to do its pernicious work.

he anti-racist mobilisations of 2020, the largest in British history, sparked by the murder of George Floyd in the US, took Gilroy aback. He remembers watching the toppling of the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston on a livestream. For many years, he had felt unsure about whether such statues should fall. He preferred to see them transformed, as in Hew Locke's 2006 artwork Restoration, which imagined the statue of Colston smothered in layers of guilty gold, or the May Day protesters who once gave Churchill's statue in Parliament Square a grass Mohican and lick of red paint. Gilroy is not an instinctive iconoclast: as a child, he told me, he queued with his parents outside Westminster Hall to see Churchill's body lying in state. He believes that politeness and civility are undervalued virtues.

But his doubts were swept away by Bristol's colourful crowd. "I couldn't believe it," he told me. When we spoke in December, he still seemed euphoric at the memory. Seeing Colston sink into the water had felt like a "beautiful symbolic eruption", a glimpse of what England could be. As the months went by, some of that optimism waned. "We witnessed something special and incredible last summer," he told me on Hampstead Heath in spring. "But I'm not seeing a lot of continued momentum. Maybe I'm not looking in the right places." Gilroy is at his gloomiest when thinking about the effect that "timeline media" like Twitter and Facebook is having on young activists, drawing them into circular and parochial arguments online.

Anti-racism has changed since Gilroy's youth, its edge blunted. For much of the 20th century, being against racism meant being for a radically different political and economic settlement, such as socialism or communism. Today it can mean little more than doing what Gilroy mockingly calls "McKinsey multiculturalism": keeping unjust societies as they are, except with a few "black and brown bodies" in the corporate boardrooms. ("I'm not very interested in decolonising the 1%", he told me.) What is left is a more individualistic anti-racist culture, which is keen on checking privilege and affirming the validity of other people's experiences, but has trouble creating durable institutions or political programmes.

There are moments when Gilroy shifts into lyrical lament, but he usually catches himself and tries to correct course. He has described himself as a " cosmic pessimist " moved by the "obligation to find hope". During one conversation, when I asked whether figures like Priti Patel, the UK government's hard-right home secretary, whose parents were Indian migrants from east Africa, represent the end of a unifying anti-racism, Gilroy demurred."For every Priti Patel, for every 'Dishy Rishi', there are people out there doing things that are important work in solidarity with one another," he said.

He talked about the annual march to Downing Street that memorialises the hundreds of people who've lost their lives to police violence. You can see "all kinds of faces" on those walks, he said. (He tries to attend each year.) Then he described the aftermath of the Grenfell fire in 2017, when people of all religions responded with food, support, solidarity. The rhetoric that came from the survivors of the Grenfell fire stirred him. "It was strongly humanistic actually," he said. Their banners, he explained, critiqued the murderous crime that they had suffered in the language of a common humanity.

One of the guiding principles of his work is a hostility towards "ethnic absolutism", be it white supremacism or black nationalism, which, Gilroy has said, "can be as toxic as any other form of nationalism". (He has pointed out that the black nationalist Marcus Garvey once boasted that his organisation was among the "first fascists".) Above all, he is deeply sceptical about the very idea of race itself. He sometimes places the word "race" in scare quotes to remind his readers that racial categories like black and white do not refer to some essential truth that stretches back through time. Instead, they are a modern invention, dating back to the ordering of the world by European imperialism. He likes to direct attention to the artificiality of these categories, the way they are made and remade. Indians during the 1857 rebellion against British rule were called "niggers" by officials; West Indian people, like Gilroy's mother, only became "black" when they arrived in England. ("How I hated that word 'black' and the emotions, concepts and associations it aroused," Beryl Gilroy wrote in her memoir.) As her son once put it, "It's white supremacy that made us black."

This rejection of race doesn't entail the denial of racism. Quite the opposite: race is a fiction with real effects - and Gilroy has spent much of his life pointing these out. But its constructed nature does mean that when we see a person's racial identity, what we're really seeing is a "virtual reality given meaning only by the fact that racism endures", as he has written. Subjugated people might find solace and community in their race, but the long-term consequence of anti-racist work should be to discard the idea of "race" altogether.

Gilroy spent the 90s weaving these ideas into his third major book, Between Camps - or as it was more provocatively titled in the US, Against Race - which came out when he was at Yale. The book develops a complex argument about the lingering afterlife of fascism in capitalist democracies, which is connected to a provocative critique of identity politics. Race, he argued, was becoming antiquated - and this was a good thing. "Action against racial hierarchies," he wrote, in what is perhaps his most quoted line, "can proceed more effectively when it has been purged of any lingering respect for the idea of 'race'." Between Camps was also deeply critical of a regressive "conservatism" in corporate black American culture, which trafficked in a commodified blackness. (Among his targets were Spike Lee's decision to set up an advertising agency, and the nihilism of muchcontemporary hip-hop.)

Hazel Carby, who has been friends with Gilroy since their days at Birmingham, was head of Yale's African American studies department at the time. As a reporter wrote in 2001, she was hoping that Gilroy's arrival at Yale would help broaden "the field's purview beyond the borders of single nations and single-minded conceptions of race". It did, but he didn't endear himself."The audience bristled at this limey's apostasies" is how the cultural critic Sukhdev Sandhu described one of Gilroy's public appearances during this time. Some American critics found Gilroy's arguments muddled, haughty or excessively broad. Others felt that he had overlooked the practical implications of rejecting race: would it mean the end of anti-discrimination laws, for instance? Prof Ruth Wilson Gilmore loved Between Camps, but it didn't go over well with all her students. "I found that [some of them] found it really nerve-racking and distasteful to think that race as a category should go away," she told me. "And that there was something wrong with somebody who thought that way."

When I asked him about his experiences in the US, Gilroy was hesitant. It was clear he was wounded by the period. "I don't want to make this into an argument with black Americans because I've been immensely affected by that history and culture, and it's educated me in ways that I'm really grateful for," he said. Much of his work, particularly his early books, had resonated there too. Saidya Hartman, a celebrated professor at Columbia University, told me about the formative impact of The Black Atlantic on her work. "At that moment, in US scholarship, the emphasis was still on minimising the role of the Atlantic slave trade and slavery in the making of capitalism," she said. "So to have the Black Atlantic argue so powerfully for its constitutive role in the making of modernity was really important."

But Gilroy admitted to me that he struggled with what he called the "parochial" elements in African American studies. Eventually, he said, he experienced such "unpleasantness at the hands of some African American intellectuals who objected to my expressing my opinions about them as an outsider" that he returned to the UK. For some thinkers in the US, this irritation persists. In his 2017 book Black and Blur, the theorist Fred Moten wrote a lengthyand unsparing footnote that took Gilroy to task: "Who are you to lecture blacks in the United States, whom you conceive in the most egregiously undifferentiated way, about their international dissident responsibilities, while speaking of 'We Britons' ... ?"

But as the dust has settled, younger people have made use of Between Camps. It "anticipated so many of the problems and questions that we are grappling with now," says the US writer Asad Haider, who cited Gilroy's work in Mistaken Identity, his 2018 book about the limits of narrow identity politics. Haider gives a first-hand account of a student politics campaign that broke down because groups devolved into bickering, racialised sub-groups. The key idea he takes from Gilroy is that "we have to go beyond the identity-based conception of politics to one of universal emancipation". ("Bringing the word identity together with the word politics," Gilroy once told me, "makes politics impossible, actually, for me, in any meaningful sense. Politics requires the abandonment of identity in a personal sense.")

Gilroy doesn't endorse a colour-blind politics that pretends the idea of race can be wished away. The post-racial world has to be fought for, against the odds. When Haider asked if Gilroy would provide a quote for his book, which he did, Gilroy sent him a favoured photograph of his, taken at the Manchester Pan-African Congress of 1945. The scene features placards with slogans like "Arabs and Jews united against British imperialism!" and "Labour with a white skin cannot emancipate itself while labour with a black skin is branded".

The rise of Afropessimism is a bleak sign for the likes of Gilroy, schooled on Stuart Hall's argument that race is made politically meaningful through the struggle against capitalism, which is itself not eternal. Gilroy sees Afropessimism as part of an "ontological turn" - ontology is the study of being - in which race becomes an unassailable barrier between the self and the world, and anti-black violence an immutable fact. "What's interesting to me is how resonant the Afropessimist outlook has proved to be," Gilroy said. "I can't help thinking that it's got something to do with the fact that it absolves you of having to do anything at all. That really what you have to do is just be black. And there's a sufficiency in that."

In sharp contrast, Gilroy wants to reinvigorate an old ideal: humanism. In some scholarly circles, calling oneself a humanist can sound not just antiquated, but suspect. It was, after all, the name of the woolly ideology of equality propagated by Europeans at the height of empire, who spoke of the liberty of man while denying it to millions. But to Gilroy, there is hope in the promise of a radical humanism, illuminating a post-racial world. This, he believes, is the humanism of figures who regularly appear in his work such as Du Bois, Primo Levi, Toni Morrison and the French-Martinican revolutionary Frantz Fanon. If thinkers who had lived through the 20th century's abominations could hold on to the idea of a humanism worthy of the name, then so can we.

Gilroy's prose can be difficult. His style is meditative, incantatory. He does not so much pursue a thesis in a linear fashion as solder ideas together into striking shapes. Writers, political figures and musicians are plucked from history and the present, placed in conversation with one another; a chapter might begin with two epigraphs, one from Walter Benjamin and the other from Michael Jackson. Sometimes the effect is frustrating, sometimes revelatory. A single poetic sentence might illuminate paragraphs of slow, swirling argument.

In 2019, after winning the Holberg prize, Gilroy travelled to Norway to give the laureate's lecture, which he titled Refusing Race and Salvaging the Human. It is perhaps the clearest and most succinct statement of his worldview to date. "If you want to be serious about the struggle against racial orders," he said, explaining his motivation behind the lecture, "you have to adapt your understanding of what it is to be a human being and why that is worth fighting over."

The central scene is taken from the 1789 autobiography of Olaudah Equiano, the former slave and abolitionist. Equiano describes how he took control of a floundering ship during a storm in which the white crew had "become inert, apparently indifferent to their own fate". With a few others, Equiano rescued the vessel, working so hard that the skin was flayed from his hands. Equiano's actions scrambled the ship's racial hierarchy. He was temporarily recognised as a kind of "chieftain" by the crew.

Gilroy's point is that disasters can create the conditions in which we are forced to look beyond race towards our common humanity. What does he hate so much about race? It's not just that it is a bogus concept, not just that it leaves behind it an endless trail of atrocities, but that, on a smaller scale, it tries to limit what a person can be, telling them that they are one thing or the other, rather than many things at once.

In the lecture, he offered this summary of his politics, which might be best imagined daubed on the walls of a future flooded city: "It is imperative to remain less interested in who or what we imagine ourselves to be than in what we can do for one another, both in today's emergency conditions and in the grimmer circumstances that surely await us."

"I have a weird love of England. And London in particular," he eventually said. "This is my home. God, it is. And I didn't know it was until I went somewhere else."

When I asked why this love was weird, he replied: "Because it's ambivalent. And because it doesn't love me back. It's unrequited."

He did, surprisingly, receive an invitation from Theresa May's office in 2017 to be put forward for a CBE for "services to cultural and literary studies". Gilroy wasn't bothered so much about the imperial connotation of becoming a Commander of the British empire, as that was clearly "absurd", but did find himself getting cross that the invitation came with a form about his ethnicity to fill in. "So the woman who is hounding my brothers and sisters to death over the Windrush scandal," he told me in an email, "[wanted] to monitor my ethnicity while handing me a bauble. How fucked up was that?" He declined the invitation.

In 2004's After Empire, which he wrote while in the US, Gilroy puzzled over his homeland from afar. Why did it seem to be so stuck, unable to yield a different conception of what it might be? The obsession with the second world war - from the English anti-German football chant "Two World Wars, One World Cup" to the endless, commemorative flyovers of spitfires - troubled him. It seemed like a symptom of a society trapped in a warped image of the past: where the arrival of immigrants or refugees were spoken of as an act of invasion, where memories of the anti-Nazi war were stirred to justify interventions in the Middle East. He noticed that the "neurotic" fixation on the war went hand in hand with a carefully curated ignorance about empire and decolonisation - the brutal conflicts in Malaya, Ireland, Kenya and elsewhere. This stifling airlessness, this "postcolonial melancholia", could also express itself through "outbursts of manic euphoria", as Gilroy recently reminded his followers on Twitter in the hysterical run-up to England's appearance in the Euro 2020 final.

But the book also offered a measure of hope. Gilroy saw stirrings of something positive in the hybrid styles and self-effacing humour of British pop culture - the Streets and Ali G are cited - but also in life as it was lived. Take the north London neighbourhood he has called home for almost 40 years, Finsbury Park. In the mind of England's rightwing newspapers, it is a byword for social breakdown: a den of Islamism, haunted by the threat of inter-ethnic tension. The cleric Abu Hamza, currently serving life sentence in the US on terror charges, was once the imam of the local mosque. In 2017, it was attacked by a white supremacist.

In Gilroy's view, to focus on this is to mistake the exception for the rule. He sees Finsbury Park as a "glorious expression" of actually existing multiculturalism, where racial differences are rendered banal by the flow of urban life. People in cities like London more or less get on, living side by side, with young people, in particular, developing cultures that mix styles, music and slang - the opposite of ethnic absolutism. Gilroy has elevated this observation into a theory, "conviviality".

Affirming the creole pleasures of urban life isn't enough, of course. The years after Gilroy wrote After Empire have seen the great recession, austerity, intensified gentrification, the fire at Grenfell Tower, and the pandemic, which has produced suffering for ethnic minorities at disproportionate rates. Convivial life is being tested. But it promises something more substantive, and hopeful, than mindless flag-waving.

He has always described himself as English, rather than British, he told me on Hampstead Heath. He loves England's countryside, its folk music, its language. "I think I was worried with the idea of Britishness that it would only end up being the black and minority ethnic populations who took it seriously. Because it has no cultural content." At that moment, a little greenfinch made itself heard."They're the ones I like the most to look at," he said. "They've got very forked tails and they're green. There's something about the greenness of the greenfinch, and the way it complements the leaves ... "

"I hope I don't sound patriotic," he said, moments after talking about his claim on Englishness. "Patriotism is a betrayal of that attachment. Because it reduces it to some sort of formula."

Gilroy is fond of the words of the Trinidadian historian CLR James, who wrote, in a 1969 essay, that "black studies" is the "history of western civilization. I can't see it otherwise." This might be the mission statement for what he imagines will be his final job: directing the newly formed Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the study of racism and racialisation at UCL. James's point was that studying race shouldn't be a parochial activity, but a way of understanding the world as it is for everyone. And as it might be. For Gilroy, this universalism is the whole point: the anti-racist struggle against police violence, he has emphasised in the past, should improve society for everyone, forcing the reform of "legal procedures that can impact on the lives of all citizens".

At the end of The Black Atlantic, Gilroy wrote that the "colour line", as WEB Du Bois termed the racial divisions etched across the globe, would soon no longer be the central axis of political conflict. It is still there, he told me, but the task is to see how it crisscrosses with other axes: health, wealth, gender, climate, technology. He wants his students to address race in a "planetary way". At the UCL Centre, they will consider artificial intelligence, public health, borders: the architecture of 21st-century life.

But the past lurks in the shadows. Late last year, during his regular early-morning walks in Finsbury Park, Gilroy noticed something that echoed the racist graffiti he couldn't escape as a child. Far-right vandals had been etching Celtic Crosses, a white supremacist symbol, into logs and tree stumps in the park during the night. "It's the old circle with the cross through it," he said. "A lot of neo-Nazi groups use the sign." There's an app through which you can report vandalism to the council, but he couldn't be bothered to go through all that. "I've been rolling over the logs so it doesn't show," he said, "in the hope that no one will roll them back the other way."

This article was amended on 6 August 2021. The Holberg prize is not awarded by the Norwegian government, but is funded by it. This has been corrected.

Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, listen to our podcasts here and sign up to the long read weekly email here.

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The last humanist: how Paul Gilroy became the most vital guide to our age of crisis

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The newspapers tore it to pieces. The Daily Telegraph ran a front-page article: "Straw wants to rewrite our history: 'British' is a racist word, says report." The Sun and the Daily Mail joined in. The line was clear - a clique of leftwing academics, in cahoots with the government, wanted to make ordinary people feel ashamed of their country.

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'How 'White Fragility' Talks Down to Black People' by John McWhorter (2020)

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'How 'White Fragility' Talks Down to Black People' by John McWhorter (2020)

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The Dehumanizing Condescension of ‘White Fragility’

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The popular book aims to combat racism but talks down to Black people.

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'"When White Women Cry, Black Men Get Hurt" - on White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo' by Tré Ventour (2020)

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'"When White Women Cry, Black Men Get Hurt" - on White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo' by Tré Ventour (2020)

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Once upon a time, if you spoke to British-born and raised White people they would have told you that everybody in this country was equal. Yet, Britain's wealth and to a degree, identity, comes from slavery, empire and stolen land. Why Britain calls itself great comes from the toil and torture of enslaved Africans' labour on plantations in America and the West Indies.

"Social justice warrior bullshit" is a term I have come across when speaking to White Anglo-Europeans online, foolishly engaging in online debates on race and racism. The fact that many of these trolls can't seem to understand the barriers that face marginalised communities, and the more communities you fit into, the worst it can be. And the fact that Boris Johnson's cabinet is the most diverse a cabinet has ever been is not progress. Diversity does not equal representation; and the Priti Patels of this world, who inhabit whiteness and use it to pull the ladder up from other localised disparities in terms of race. i.e increased powers in Section 60.

Priti Patel MP, Home Secretary

Reading White Fragility by sociologist Dr. Robin DiAngelo for the FBL Book Club (but open to all) - all the instances of White people not being able to talk about race mentioned in the text, I have seen at one point in my life or another. The classic is "I was raised to treat everyone equally" or "I don't see colour", and "I don't care if you're pink, purple, polka-dotted" and so forth.

One of the worst and most potent forms of White fragility is White people that think they understand racism because they have mixed-race children or relatives. The instinctive defensiveness is at every level of society; from the White working class that don't feel "privileged" because they use food banks, universal credit or the benefits system to the I-have-a-Black-friend-community-so-I-can't-be-complicit-in-White-supremacist structures sorts.

In her book, DiAngelo breaks whiteness down into layman's terms. She deconstructs whiteness, White fragility and Privilege. How society is constructed is for the benefit of Whites. They are the default, so it's White and the Rest; from the history we learn in schools to "flesh-coloured" plasters which fit the hue of Caucasians. Due to societal design, this also means they have a deficit of "racial stamina" to engage in this discourse without implementing their racial triggers. People of colour are the global majority but colonial borders still dissect us down into "ethnic minorities."

Photo by Lucas Lenzi on Unsplash

Whilst this book is about North America, we need to stop thinking about racism as something only "bad people" do, as DiAngelo says in her book. Racism isn't only the tool of the far right. It's also the tool of seemingly good institutions; from policing to higher education and The Academy. We need to be looking at the Enoch Powells of this world, and not just the little man.

Robin DiAngelo's words will pick at the skin of White people's fragility and their lack of racial stamina to have these conversations. The White people that manage to get through this book to the end will undergo some humility (I hope), analysing all the times they've been treated better than their non-White colleagues in exact same situations. She is intentionally provoking discomfort to be critical of the sensitivity White people show when you tell them they are part of society's institutional racism. And that well-meaning White folks aren't as liberal and democratic as they often think they are.

Photo by niu niu on Unsplash

In light of Brexit and the ongoing Windrush Crisis #Jamaica50, I am not sure we can say racism in this country is nuanced (anymore). The Tory government's obsession with stop and search as a way to combat County Lines and knife crime... you cannot arrest your way out of this, nor can you continue to stop Black people at a disproportionate rate to White people, and expect a community with shaky faith in the police to support you.

Rich White people are the biggest smokers of marijuana I know; I can say that because I went to private school, but on what planet has whiteness ever been linked to criminality?

"This book is centred in the white western colonial context, and in that context white people hold institutional power." In this quote, we need to understand that racism is more than individuals calling each other names, it's a system of power. In the UK, it privileges whiteness, economically and socially. All people have racial bias, but only with White people in Europe and North America is that bias backed by institutional power.

Photo by Alfons Morales on Unsplash

It is not the job of people of colour to explain racism to White people. When a White woman cries (they're also complicit in white supremacy), Black men get hurt. Racism is the problem of White people. They created it and the responsibility to dismantle those systems lies with the White masses.

People that look like me are there to support, but racism is trauma. Is it really ethical to expect people of colour to take on this burden? What White people need to ask themselves, and in the words of the late James Baldwin, "why it was necessary to have a nigger in the first place because I'm not a nigger, I'm a man, but if you think I'm a nigger, it means you need it."

And perhaps in the reading and knowledge-gathering at FBL's Book Club, in how whiteness operates (insidious and pervasive), united we can attempt to push back against the racial inequalities at work in the University on a day-to-day.

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"When white women cry, Black men get hurt" - On 'White Fragility" by Robin DiAngelo

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Once upon a time, if you spoke to British-born and raised White people they would have told you that everybody in this country was equal. Yet, Britain's wealth and to a degree, identity, comes from slavery, empire and stolen land. Why Britain calls itself great comes from the toil and torture of enslaved Africans' labour...

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'Can You Poet: Whiteness Walks Into a Bar' (Spoken Word Poetry Event on White Supremacy)

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'Can You Poet: Whiteness Walks Into a Bar' (Spoken Word Poetry Event on White Supremacy)

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Can You Poet: 'Whiteness Walks Into a Bar - 23rd March 2021

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'Talking about Whiteness: A Bibliography' by Tré Ventour (2021)

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'Talking about Whiteness: A Bibliography' by Tré Ventour (2021)

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I promised a colleague I would put this together so here it is. Whilst Whiteness Studies is multidisciplinary, I have given vague subheadings to help direct people to themes they are interested in ... all these texts may well fit under multiple headings.

bell hooks, 1988. (Photo Credit: Montikamoss / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0)

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Talking About Whiteness: A Bibliography. I promised a colleague I would put this together so here it is. Whilst Whiteness Studies is multidisciplinary, I have given vague....

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'Privilege Beyond Whiteness: On Surviving Private Schoo' by Tré Ventour (2020)

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'Privilege Beyond Whiteness: On Surviving Private Schoo' by Tré Ventour (2020)

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Growing up, my family spoke of their lives like they were snippets of Andrea Levy's Small Island or the lyrics of Gregory Isaacs, Bob Marley or Alison Hinds songs - the rhythms of the West Indies scorching the hallowed turfs of Britain as babylon comes calling. Whilst my family spoke and acted like their authentic selves, I was episodes of The Crown - 'Windsor' and 'Wolverton Splash' in the tint of 'Smoke and Mirrors' because that was what my youth was. Smoke and mirrors. An anomaly. That whilst seemingly living in the more townie areas of Northampton, I was also very village.

I spoke like the ruralaties Northamptonshire is known for. In popular imagination, especially amongst Black people, I spoke like "a white person." At eight years old, in going to private school just off the Bedford Road on the way to Brafield-on-the-Green, I had seemingly run away from my community. It was an exile in a way, formerly of the Black community ... stereotypically "to speak well" - "to play cricket" - and that ugly shamrock green school uniform. My home was in Northampton Town but I grew up in the countryside, the shire's villages like dropping off the edge of the world.

Between the ages of eight and thirteen, it was as if I came to embody whiteness. Very much in the thought of psychiatrist Frantz Fanon in his seminal text Black Skin, White Masks. It was here where I really found out properly what racism was. I had an idea but it's here where it reared its ugly head and snarled its teeth. It was here I was made to identify my Blackness to be wrong as well as everything I knew about my heritage. That my grandparents carried across the Atlantic Ocean in 1960 in those heavy suitcases they carried from the Caribbean full of memories and history.

At school, I was white; at home, I was a Black. In the summer, I donned those cricket whites the colour of Morant Bay, Berbice and Demerera like eleven million winter roses laid at my feet for the Africans lost to enslavement. I ate "English" food and dressed in their uniform and I was The One. So, I was "cherished"... adored, made a spectacle of. I suppose at times, the word fetish comes to mind. At school, I was white until I wasn't; until nigger tittered from their lips like waterhoses in a Jim Crow South. As white racism chewed through Black-brown young, fickle flesh at slow pace.

On the cricket field, I was an honouray white. Quite rightly, you are thinking, how can a Black person be an honouray white person? Why should I be an honourary anything? What is so terrible about what I am? The wicketkeeper from the other school starts "You", followed by "are a nigger." There were many situations like that and have been on my mind these past 10 to 15 years. To play down my Blackness in those structures was to be safer. However, that was a mere perception and many children did think I deserved to go back to whatever "Brown country my family came from." I can tell you I nor my parents and grandparents have been to Africa.

I told those bullyish children that "I am English", that "I am British" but they do not see me. Erasure is more than history and after all, the racism I experienced was skin-deep and my skin colour walked ahead of nationality. To my family, I was The Crown and Jane Austen novles; to the bullies who thought they could catch "my Black" and working-classness, I was Kunta Kinte, Heathcliff and Oliver Twist. Regal and classy-sounding one day and pestilent peasant poor in the next. I started to personify the coloniser and the colonised; the powerful and the powerless; the rulers and the ruled.

That is to say that public schooling hijacked my identity, including the way I spoke and gave me the tools that now today make me "one of the good ones" for when white liberals want to say they have a Black friend. I can round my vowels, cross my t's and dot my i's at a moment's notice. At networking parties, I can work a room of redbrick-educated moneyed-up socialites with ease because these old white men were akin to my colleagues' parents at school. Whilst now, people say I'm "articulate", and speak "good English" (despite the racist connotations), as a child I was even more pronounced.

I developed my English, not among the glades of Abington Park or outside the Polish shops of the Kettering Road but with children who hailed from Olney, Mawsely and Yardley Hastings. I didn't wag my tongue to the sounds of binge-drinkers on the Welly Road, grime, or drill music and Northampton market stalls or Black barbershops (well not that much), but to the litany of Shakespeare and the stuttered syllables of Latin, with Odysseus and company, on a strong wind to Ithaca. My English doesn't mesh with Patois but is quite agreeable to poetry's vernacular of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

My identity is infested with the privilege I actively lambaste but it also flows to the histories of West Indian migrants, and my parents' peers who took that language and turned it into UK garage. Yet, in Black communities, still, I often find I am more comfortable in an identity that is not mine. Like nature, whiteness finds a way. I am not white, I think to myself. I am Brit(ish). I am Black/Mixed-Race. But I speak in a way that is often allocated to white men, enjoying things that were once tools of British colonial power.

Now, twenty-four years old, I see bigotry dressed as my public education and I weaponised it on the class that gave it to me. Taking up space and committing to anti-racist work. Yet, it was this same weaponisation that saw me shot in the back multiple times during the last year by institutional violence, advocating for race equality. Social justice activists are the adrenaline shot in the veins of hostile environments, unready for radical change. I spoke in a way that meant I was seemingly "one of the good ones", though ready to motivate students to take up space as well.

To think this Black-white, white-Black Mixed-Race boy was swallowed up and created by the same system that made Rhodes and Churchill born from a Britain that shouts "we defeated Hitler and fascism" while still a major colonial power stepping on the throats of the colonies. The same Britain that perpetuates colonial history as afternoon tea and good table manners. With that thought in mind, I cast you back to where I basically rejected my Blackness. That the skin I was born into was deemed not good enough.

What I want to know is that despite my skin colour, if I spoke in a different voice would people still take me seriously? If I sold people minibags of cannabis on a council estate, would people see me as "more Black" because that's what society expects? If I grew up in the West Indies as my grandfather did, what then? I'm not white, I'm Brit(ish). A friend tells me "you are Black", another tells me "you're not Black Black", an American says "Black Brits in America are Black but they won't get no hassle from police."

Though, whiteness has tried to claim knowledge for itself, likewise to position Islamic, African and other non-white non-European thought outside of reason, the inclusion of the limited number of Black people in British private schools poses a question of race and rank in the elite class. The Black Studies professor Kehinde Andrews said "whiteness is a psychosis", this statement made me question the whiteness within me as someone that went through the public school system and also has a degree, (soon to have his second).

Where there is a hierachy of race; where there is a hierachy of Blackness, I am still that frightened child on the cricket field running in the terror of Morant Bay, Christmas and Demerera. At school, I was Black; at home I was white. White lives don't matter as white lives but I know pushed to the wire I'm no Trevor Philips. And I would be stopped and searched by Cressida in a heartbeat. Now, I know because of my race I am "a problem", doubly so with my education history and the privilege my education bought me.

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Privilege Beyond Whiteness: On Surviving Public School

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Growing up, my family spoke of their lives like they were snippets of Andrea Levy's Small Island or the lyrics of Gregory Isaacs, Bob Marley or Alison Hinds songs - the rhythms of the West Indies scorching the hallowed turfs of Britain as babylon comes calling.

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'Elitist Britain: the Educational Backgrounds of Britain's Leading People' by the Sutton Trust and Social Mobility Commission (2019)

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'Elitist Britain: the Educational Backgrounds of Britain's Leading People' by the Sutton Trust and Social Mobility Commission (2019)

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Report Overview

The nature of Britain's 'elite' is higher in the national consciousness than ever, with a series of events, including 2016's vote to leave the European Union, putting a focus on the strained trust between significant sections of the population and those at the highest levels of politics, business and the media.

Social mobility across the UK is low and not improving, depriving large parts of the country of opportunity. This contributes strongly to this sense of distance. This study, conducted for the first time by both the Sutton Trust and the Social Mobility Commission, looks at the backgrounds of around 5,000 individuals in high ranking positions across a broad range of British society, and provides a definitive document of who gets to the top in Britain in 2019.

The report paints a picture of a country whose power structures remain dominated by a narrow section of the population: the 7% who attend independent schools, and the roughly 1% who graduate from just two universities, Oxford and Cambridge.

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The nature of Britain's 'elite' is higher in the national consciousness than ever, with a series of events, including 2016's vote to leave the European Union, putting a focus on the strained trust between significant sections of the population and those at the highest levels of politics, business and the media.

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'The class ceiling: does the England cricket team suffer for its elitism?' by James Wallace for Wisden Cricket Monthly (2020)

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'The class ceiling: does the England cricket team suffer for its elitism?' by James Wallace for Wisden Cricket Monthly (2020)

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est cricket is a game of contrasts: bat/ball, spin/pace, out/not out. It's risk v reward, creamy whites and cherry reds. Days of meticulous planning against a moment of sheer instinct. Division is also at its core: batsmen play bowlers, county v country, a history of amateurs and professionals. Great rivalries give the game oxygen. So when things become too samey, too comfy, it's a problem.

Scyld Berry has covered a lot of cricket - 43 years of the stuff - so when he notices something, it's worth paying attention. Last month he wrote a column for theTelegraph titled " Why England would be a better team with more state school players in it," in which he noted that the top-six batsmen for the second Test against Pakistan and, unprecedentedly, nine of the total XI, were the products of a fee-paying education. Too samey. Too comfy.

Berry believes that this homogeneity leads to group-think on and off the field, pointing to the example of the interchangeable dismissals of their batsmen when England were reduced to 27-9 (eventually 58 all out) against New Zealand at Eden Park in 2018, and their "stiff upper lip" reactions off it. He describes the omission of Lancashire batsman Liam Livingstone - who was part of the squad but is yet to make his Test debut - as a "lamentable waste of talent and failure to embrace heterogeneity". Livingstone was in good form, having scored a fluent 88 in a warm-up match and shown an aptitude for audacious shots. The point being that his more homespun style may have given the Kiwis something more - or at least something different - to think about.

"Of course I'd have stopped the rot and got a hundred," says Livingstone, tongue firmly in cheek. He saw Berry's piece and was flattered. "The way I grew up, playing club cricket is different to lots of lads. I wouldn't change anything, even if some of the pitches in the northern leagues were terrible. It stood me in good stead."

Boys against men in club cricket is a schooling of different sorts and a pathway that Graham Thorpe, England's assistant coach, recognises. "It was very much the clubs," he says. "Our club set-up locally was fantastic. A lot of the counties now direct a lot of these younger players to the private schools. With Surrey, Rory Burns, Jason Roy, Dom Sibley all went to Whitgift [an independent school in Croydon]. It's possible they get directed in that way."

The Cricketers' Who's Who is a decent place to gauge the make-up of the English professional game. Flicking through the annual compendium compiled using questionnaires filled out by county cricketers, you'll discover who lists the Kama Sutra as their favourite book and whose spirit-animal is a tortoise. Dig a bit deeper into the 2020 edition, and it reveals that of the 462 men's county cricketers listed, 152 went to fee-paying schools and 184 to non-fee paying, with 126 educated overseas. In other words, 45% of the men being employed to play county cricket who were educated in this country come from a private school background. An even split? Not really when you consider that only 7% of the population attend independent schools.

The Sutton Trust and Social Mobility Commission's report, Elitist Britain 2019, found that men's cricket in England was skewed towards those who attended private schools. The national team at the time, with a 43% fee-paying make-up, made the top 10 professions with the highest independent school attendance. A year or so later and the men's game at the highest level looks to be fishing from an even shallower pool.

The 82% make-up of the England side which Berry drew attention to would now put it comfortably top, looming over High Court judges and the House of Lords, and peering down upon diplomats and the Armed Forces. That's tricky to square with a game currently touting its inclusivity. The ECB's strategy document for 2020-24 is titled " Inspiring Generations ", and one of its six priorities is to reach a new audience through its 'elite' teams. This is problematic when those teams are so unrepresentative of the audience they are trying to attract.

Of England's 55-man cross-format training squad selected earlier this summer, 24 were educated by the state and 26 privately, with five schooled overseas. This has been reflected in the corridors of power in men's cricket: Andrew Strauss (Radley), Ed Smith (Tonbridge) and James Taylor (Shrewsbury) follow in the well-heeled footsteps of James Whitaker (Uppingham), David Graveney (Millfield) and Peter Moores (King's Macclesfield). Unconscious or not, does this persistence at the top of the game lead to an old boys' bias gently swirling through it? A drop of ink in a glass of water?

These people are incredibly well qualified and quite possibly the best candidates for the roles, but this isn't about individuals. Historian David Kynaston and economist Francis Green (both keen to stress their own privately educated backgrounds) insist that no one should feel exempt, or barred, from discussing the issue of private education - "the root of inequality in Britain" as they describe it. In their 2019 book Engines of Privilege: Britain's Private School Problem,they argue that the issue is the responsibility of society as a whole: "Everyone has to live and make their choices in the world as it is, not as one might wish it to be."

Joe Root, Jos Buttler and Rory Burns appeal for a wicked in unison during England's series against Pakistan this summer. Photograph: Mike Hewitt/PA

Zak Crawley, 22, and Dan Lawrence, 23, are two young batsmen who are likely to play many games for England over the next decade. Both have already shown commendable commitment and exceptional talent. On the eve of the tour to New Zealand last autumn, Crawley's first taste of the senior set-up, the Kent batsman told Simon Wilde of the Times: "I saw in a magazine once that Johan Cruyff used to live on the ground at Ajax... So I thought, I'll have a flat here [at the St Lawrence Ground in Canterbury]. Living over the shop isn't always the best thing to do. That's why I was never a boarder at school [at Tonbridge]. But this is different because I love it. I didn't really love school."

Lawrence spent his formative years in a flat attached to Chingford CC in Essex and, like Crawley, he possessed an almost insatiable desire to hit a cricket ball. He recently told Berry in the Telegraph: "I spent the vast majority of my childhood in the indoor nets. I remember coming back from school and spending hours there every single day."

Crawley is the son of a multi-millionaire stockbroker and Lawrence is the son of the Chingford CC groundsman. One had the opportunity through geographical circumstance and the other was fortunate enough to have choices available to him. Both had the desire to get to where they are today.

There is more nuance to this than simply a reductive state versus private slug-out. The scholarship system, whereby talented young cricketers from state school backgrounds are handpicked by private schools, which in turn then act as feeders to certain counties, might fudge some of the numbers. Joe Root and Jos Butler are notable examples. Another is Haseeb Hameed, the Bolton-born opener. But what of the children left behind? With a few more years of development, it could have been them with the golden ticket? Too late, chance gone. Bad luck.

Chance to Shine is a charity partly funded by the ECB and Sport England tasked with combating the decline of cricket in state schools. Its chief executive, Laura Cordingley says: "It is inspiring for children to see players from backgrounds like their own at the highest level and we would love to see more state-educated players reach the national team." She also highlights "the incredible benefits that the game brings to physical, social and mental wellbeing, as well as teaching key life skills". In inner-city areas, with green spaces and traditional cricket clubs dwindling, the charity runs street cricket projects to provide a safe space for young people to play for free, all year round.

Wayne Rooney has been called " the last of the back-street footballers" - the country's streets being deemed either too unsafe or full of traffic to allow others to develop in the same way. Football writer Jonathan Wilson says there is a real concern in the game now; youth academies get hold of kids when they are six or seven, they become used to being coached and playing a regimented form of the game on carpet-like training pitches. Football in this country is losing something. "The rough edges, the inspiration and imagination that you would get if you were playing in a backstreet in the 1930s, a favela in Rio or a dusty street in Accra," says Wilson.

The goalposts in Liverpool where Wayne Rooney played as a kid. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

Cricket has always had characters who have done it their own way in spite, or because, of their environment. Steve Cannane's book First Tests: Great Australian Cricketers and the Backyards That Made Them details how important these early environmental factors are - Doug Walters becoming a deft player of spin because the ant bed in his backyard made the ball rip in every direction, or Neil Harvey's sparkling footwork forged on the cobbles at the back of his house, off which a tennis ball would spit and skid. That's before we get to Trumper, Grimmett and, of course, Bradman. Wilson and Cannane both lament the loss of innovation born out of inquisitiveness, ingenuity and in response to environment, with youngsters increasingly learning their sport in the same way in the same select places.

The slope at Lord's is measured at 8ft 2in from the north-east to the south-west of the ground, a far from level playing field. The state-school kids who are lucky enough to make it there one day will be all too used to that unevenness, metaphorically at least. Across the country, state schools are being forced to raze their own "assets" to deal with budget cuts and years of austerity. The government's website reveals that 215 playing fields have been sold off in England over the last decade, a statistic that no doubt contributes to the stark NHS figures of 2016 declaring that 28% of two- to 15-year-olds are overweight or obese. If you are a child that goes to a school without playing fields, and you don't live near a cricket club or have a sibling, parent or guardian with an interest and the means to take you there, then you are very unlikely to play.

Someone who has vast experience of this is Dr Sarah Fane, the newly appointed director of the MCC Foundation, who spent the last 18 years running the Afghan Connection charity, which she established in 2002. Fane has seen how cricket can transform lives, her work reaching places that sat untouched by sport or education. She is hopeful that a network of 55 (and growing) MCC Hubs, which are "unashamedly about talent, totally free to access and absolutely for state-educated kids", can help to reach those children who might fall through the cracks.

There are plans in place to pilot the hubs in more inner-city areas, working closely with existing community groups and networks. She mentions plans for a new hub in Croydon, working with the Refugee Cricket Project, which brings together young refugees and asylum seekers to offer not only opportunities to meet and play, but also to offer advice and support on things such as homework, safe use of the internet and "form completion". It would be some story if just one of these kids went on to pull on an England shirt in 20 years.

Berry believes the game in this country is in danger of becoming the sport of a "privileged and receding niche". The English cricket teams should be more representative of society as a whole. If the aim is to inspire the hearts and minds of those watching, then the audience wants to see a reflection of themselves on the pitch. Someone they can point to and say: "They made it, why can't I?" If everyone on the field comes from the same few places and has an identikit story, then the dream remains just that, too distant to grasp.

This is the third piece in Wisden Cricket Monthly's series looking at all aspects of cricket's diversity crisis. Read other pieces in the series and get £1 off the latest issue, available as a print edition (use coupon code GSN36) and all major digital formats (discount automatically applied).

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The class ceiling: does the England cricket team suffer for its elitism?

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est cricket is a game of contrasts: bat/ball, spin/pace, out/not out. It's risk v reward, creamy whites and cherry reds. Days of meticulous planning against a moment of sheer instinct. Division is also at its core: batsmen play bowlers, county v country, a history of amateurs and professionals.

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'Black Bodies, White Gazes: The Continuing Significance of Race in America' by George Yancy (2007)

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'Black Bodies, White Gazes: The Continuing Significance of Race in America' by George Yancy (2007)

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Following the deaths of Trayvon Martin and other black youths in recent years, students on campuses across America have joined professors and activists in calling for justice and increased awareness that Black Lives Matter. In this second edition of his trenchant and provocative book, George Yancy offers students the theoretical framework they crave for understanding the violence perpetrated against the Black body. Drawing from the lives of Ossie Davis, Frantz Fanon, Malcolm X, and W. E. B. Du Bois, as well as his own experience, and fully updated to account for what has transpired since the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, Yancy provides an invaluable resource for students and teachers of courses in African American Studies, African American History, Philosophy of Race, and anyone else who wishes to examine what it means to be Black in America.

George Yancy is professor of philosophy at Emory University, where he specializes in the study of race and ethnicity. His influential books include: Philosophy in Multiple Voices (2007), White on White/Black on Black (2005), Narrative Identities: Psychologists Engaged in Self-Construction (2005, with Susan Hadley), What White Looks Like: African-American Philosophers on the Whiteness Question (2004), The Philosophical i: Personal Reflections on Life in Philosophy (2002), Cornel West: A Critical Reader (2001), and African-American Philosophers, 17 Conversations (1998).

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Black Bodies, White Gazes: The Continuing Significance of Race in America

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Following the deaths of Trayvon Martin and other black youths in recent years, students on campuses across America have joined professors and activists in calling for justice and increased awareness that Black Lives Matter. In this second edition of his trenchant and provocative book, George Yancy offers students the theoretical framework they crave for understanding the violence perpetrated against the Black body.

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'What White Looks Like: African-American Philisophers on the Whiteness Question' edited by George Yancy (2004)

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'What White Looks Like: African-American Philisophers on the Whiteness Question' edited by George Yancy (2004)

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In the burgeoning field of whiteness studies, What White Looks Like is the first volume in which the subject is addressed by African-American philosophers. George Yancy has brought together a group of thinkers who address the problematic issue of whiteness as a category requiring serious analysis. What does white look like when viewed through philosophical training and African-American experience? In this volume, Robert Birt asks if whites can 'live whiteness authentically'. Janine Jones examines what it means to be a "goodwill white." Joy James tells of beating her 'addiction' to white supremacy, while Arnold Farr writes on making whiteness visible in Western philosophy. What White Looks Like brings a badly needed critique and philosophically sophisticated perspective to a central issue of contemporary society.

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What White Looks Like: African-American Philosophers on the Whiteness Question

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In the burgeoning field of whiteness studies, What White Looks Like is the first volume in which the subject is addressed by African-American philosophers. George Yancy has brought together a group of thinkers who address the problematic issue of whiteness as a category requiring serious analysis.

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'Emerging Intersections: Race, Class, and Gender in Theory, Policy, and Practice' edited by Bonnie Thornton and Ruth Enid Zambrana (2009)

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'Emerging Intersections: Race, Class, and Gender in Theory, Policy, and Practice' edited by Bonnie Thornton and Ruth Enid Zambrana (2009)

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Emerging Intersections: Race, Class, and Gender in Theory, Policy, and Practice

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Emerging Intersections: Race, Class, and Gender in Theory, Policy, and Practice | Bonnie Thorton Dill, Ruth Enid Zambrana, Patricia Hill Collins | download | Z-Library. Download books for free. Find books

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'Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory' by Patricia HIll Collins (2019)

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'Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory' by Patricia HIll Collins (2019)

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In Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory Patricia Hill Collins offers a set of analytical tools for those wishing to develop intersectionality's capability to theorize social inequality in ways that would facilitate social change. While intersectionality helps shed light on contemporary social issues, Collins notes that it has yet to reach its full potential as a critical social theory. She contends that for intersectionality to fully realize its power, its practitioners must critically reflect on its assumptions, epistemologies, and methods. She places intersectionality in dialog with several theoretical traditions-from the Frankfurt school to black feminist thought-to sharpen its definition and foreground its singular critical purchase, thereby providing a capacious interrogation into intersectionality's potential to reshape the world.

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Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory

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In Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory Patricia Hill Collins offers a set of analytical tools for those wishing to develop intersectionality's capability to theorize social inequality in ways that would facilitate social change. While intersectionality helps shed light on contemporary social issues, Collins notes that it has yet to reach its full potential as a critical social theory.

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'Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics' by Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989)

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'Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics' by Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989)

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The everyday work of establishing whiteness as a racialised enactment; of doing whiteness; of getting into it, is also institutional work. Whiteness is not just a personal investment practice it frames our chances for life or death, whether we are imprisoned or walk free, we are rich or poor, which university or not we attend, what marks we attain when we get there, if we do. The notion of institutional whiteness is a way of recognising the links between whiteness and institutional reproduction.

I first started to articulate this link between whiteness and institutional practice when I was working as part of the project team on the Integrating Diversity Project based at Lancaster University independent Institute for Women's Studies (now Centre for Gender and Women's Studies and housed in Sociology) led by Sara Ahmed and Elaine Swan.

T hrough our empirical work on the Diversity project we had started to think about a definition of institutional whiteness as a term which better captured the more active aspects of racist institutional dynamics which were not captured through the definition used in Macpherson. This idea of 'institutional whiteness' challenged the passive definition of institutional failure implied by that definition of institutional racism. The final project report suggested that institutions sustained inequality through the active construction of whiteness as institutional ideal in the following way:

S o the claim was that the note of institutional racism as this exists in UK statute continues to reproduce a deficit model of racialised institutional actors.

O ne of the Diversity Team project leads, the Principle Investigator Sara Ahmed went on to write about institutional whiteness in this way in her book Queer Phenomenology:

I n Ahmed's 2012 book On Being Included which is rooted in the work done for the Integrating Diversity Project she explores the way in which the institutionalisation of diversity work forms a central part of the institutionalisation of whiteness. Her provocative and important claim is that diversity work supports whiteness as much as it puts it into question.

T his work gives us powerful insight into the ways that whiteness institutionalises through practices of human resource management, public relations and communications practices.

​

I build on these observations in my own work developing data from that same project, but also from my work in the UK National Health Service to look at how this institutionalisation of whiteness works via emotion. I consider how professional identities, professional ethics and values and routes through career progression form part of the internal institutional dynamics of whiteness. I consider how institutional cultures which enact whiteness can work through these professional processes to produce forms of paranoid delusion which frame everyday interactions between different institutional actors including users, co-workers, leaders. This paranoid delusional culture works through the space-time compressions linked to neoliberal practices of productivism which in turn frame ideas of institutional success and failure contemporary in public as well as private institutional contexts. neoliberally

I n this excerpt from the final chapter of Power, Politics and the Emotion s 'Mobilising Hopeful Fictions through Differentitated Uncertainties' I consider this issue of the way whiteness is actively reproduced through progressively more paranoid and relationally violent institutional relations. Such that violence is the structuring institutional affect of the contemporary organisation. Whiteness operates as a fundamentally self destructive impulse for the institution. It lies at the heart of what I think of as the neoliberal suicide.

Going back to where I began in Chapter 1 then, whiteness ascends as the cultural manifestation of governmental power through a delusional fantasy structure enacted through paranoid forms of belonging via feelings of persecution, jealousy and exaggerated self importance which relate to the illusory nature of governing omnipotence. Ghassan Hage argues that national identifications work in this sort of paranoid threatened way where in the case of Australia, for example, 'Whiteness operates as a symbolic field of accumulation where many attributes such as looks, accent, "cosmopolitanism", or "Christianity" can be accumulated and converted into Whiteness' (Hage, 1998, p. 232). In Power, Politics and the Emotions the tight coupling of subject and object in Chapter 4 exemplifies the way in which paranoid belongings enact the institutional space as white. Such forms of paranoid belonging are cumulative where fantasies of control over the other lead to the fear of being controlled by the other as a form of retaliation which in turn begets more aggressive attempts to control the other. It is through this paranoid structure that good and bad become progressively more split, projected into good subjects, bad objects, until the ability to collectively symbolise (in the sense of recognising the space between the subject and object) is lost altogether. What is interesting here is the way that belonging to a governing ideal, as a certain sort of governing subject, as a professional, general practitioner or nurse, for example, is differentiated as good and bad through a cultural common sense that threats to the governing order are managed through cultural means. This shows very powerfully the paranoid fantasy structure of whiteness in its institutional operation.

​

Freudian melancholia necessarily involves hostility towards a lost object that has been withdrawn into the ego. It entails the sufferer's assault upon this lost object which, via the means of narcissistic regression, has been incorporated into the ego. These then are the conditions under which a relation to the lost object may be maintained, conditions which amount to a crippling state of internalized aggression. A constituent component of melancholia - far more difficult to romanticize than states of ungrieved loss - is the fact of a loathing, self-abjecting relation to one's own ego that has been deemed worthless and opened up to the punitive fury of the super-ego . . .. A form of suffering tantamount to being buried with the dead, melancholia cannot be summarily equated merely with blockages of identification, with states of unending remembrance.

Whilst I am not claiming that all institutional spaces are literally deathly, I am interested in the ways that they can become toxic, materially, as well as symbolically and psychically. The enactment of institutions can debilitate governing subjects, making them generally fearful and self as well as other abjecting. It is this point about the violent enactment of loathing and self abjection in institutional space which I have been aiming to highlight in Power, Politics and the Emotions via the idea of a potential neoliberal suicide. I have been seeking to do this precisely because the sorts of traumatic toxic violences understood through melancholia, rather than melancholy, are generally viewed as separate from, rather than integral to institutional life. Institutional spaces, as they are defined in modernist rationalist terms via a public/private split, are imagined through their ability to control inappropriate, privately, supposedly individually generated emotionalities, like hate, fear, loathing. This control is dependent on the externalising of violence which, from a melancholic point of view, is already always there; constitutive of institutional space. My analysis of relational politics is an attempt to represent governing subjects' struggles with this absent sociocultural past in the institutional present as a form of struggle which makes visible this absent presence of violence that relationally enacts, but is symbolically written out of (neo)liberal institutional spaces through the practices of cultural forgetting. The more this presence is materially and symbolically repressed within the institutional space the more violently it constitutes it. The racist murder of South London teenager Stephen Lawrence continues to remain emblematic of the struggles to make this link between supposedly externalised trauma and the inside of the institutional space. It looms very obviously in Chapters 5 and 7, but this is only one of a number of back stories through which governing subjects in Power, Politics and the Emotions disrupt linear institutional time which presents the past as over in order to suppress difference in the institutional present.

This brings me to the second related problem with this circular anticipatory logic whereby the world's topography is already anticipated, assumed to be known, ready to be confirmed in practice, rather than changed through it. This problem is the tendency within this logic towards intensification, amassing taken for granted assumptions and solidifying them into an object through the practices of forward momentum, progression and speed. Speed promotes routinisation, quick, quick, hurry; more repetition, forward momentum and therefore paradoxically institutional replication and stasis, rather than change through the promotion of an engagement with difference. This is because it compresses the opportunity for stopping to think differently through encounters with others
(Stengers, 2002). Speed is what holds what are relationally uncertainties together in a form already assumed to be known. It is therefore easy to imagine that we already know what the institutional problems to be faced are. As Tony says in Chapter 6 'we all know what's right and wrong today', the solutions themselves are understood to be self-evident; they don't require thought, but quick and decisive action for resolution. There is an assumption here that the potential consequences of action are already known. This takes me back, yet again, to the linearity of cause and effect logics which assume a rationalist preemptive power rooted in the potential for governing omnipotence; the potential to know the world and the others in it. The problem of paranoid delusion from this point of view is a hyperreflexivity which knows all, but which is coupled with an ever-increasing sense of demoralisation because, in spite of an overall intensification of problem solving activity, nothing changes. It is this mix of hopelessness for the possibility of something different and growing sense of helplessness to change which produces the conditions for [neoliberal] suicide.

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The everyday work of establishing whiteness as a racialised enactment; of doing whiteness; of getting into it, is also institutional work. Whiteness is not just a personal investment practice it frames our chances for life or death, whether we are imprisoned or walk free, we are rich or poor, which university or not we attend, what marks we attain when we get there, if we do.

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'Space Invaders: Race, Gender, and Bodies Out of Place' by Nirmal Purwar (2004)

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'Space Invaders: Race, Gender, and Bodies Out of Place' by Nirmal Purwar (2004)

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Women and minorities are increasingly entering fields where white male power is firmly entrenched. The spaces they come to occupy are not empty or neutral, but are imbued with history and meaning. This groundbreaking book interrogates the pernicious, subtle but nonetheless widely held view that certain bodies are naturally entitled to certain spaces, while others are not. How are positions of authority racialized and gendered? How do people manage their femininity and/or blackness while in a predominantly white male context? How do spaces become naturalized or normalized, and what does it mean when they are disrupted? Engaging with a range of material from a variety of institutions, Space Invaders is a timely contribution to wide-reaching debates on race, gender and space. It is the first book to articulate the full complexity of diversity in organizations.

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Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies Out of Place

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Women and minorities are increasingly entering fields where white male power is firmly entrenched. The spaces they come to occupy are not empty or neutral, but are imbued with history and meaning. This groundbreaking book interrogates the pernicious, subtle but nonetheless widely held view that certain bodies are naturally entitled to certain spaces, while others are not.

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'Decolonise, not Diversify' by Kavita Bhanot (2015)

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'Decolonise, not Diversify' by Kavita Bhanot (2015)

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by Kavita Bhanot

Since the recent failure of World Book Night to include any writers of colour in its 2015 list, there has been a fresh bout of conversation about the need for more 'diversity' in the literature that is published and awarded in Britain, as well as amongst those working in publishing.

Alongside a series of Guardian articles, there has been a call for contributions to Nikesh Shukla's crowd-funded anthology on race and immigration (in itself a great idea); writers of colour have been invited to come forward, to contact Shukla. #diversedecember, a twitter initiative set up by bloggers Naomi Frisby and Dan Lipscombe, has been encouraging people to 'read with diversity' and share the 'diverse' books that they are reading. Many organisations and individuals, readers and writers, are joining in to help bring more 'diversity' to publishing.

To whom is all this directed? Who should read more 'diverse' literature? For whom is literature written by minority writers 'diverse'? For whom are minority writers 'diverse'? Can I describe myself as 'diverse' - do I exist in that space called 'diversity'?

The concept of diversity only exists if there is an assumed neutral point from which 'others' are 'diverse.' Putting aside for now the straight, male, middle-classness of that 'neutral' space, its dominant aspect is whiteness. Constructed by a white establishment, the idea of 'diversity' is neo-liberal speak. It is the new corporatized version of multiculturalism. It is about management, efficiency, box-ticking. As writers of colour, we parrot this idea back, reminding white institutions that they need to increase their diversity; appealing to them to let us in, to give some of us a seat at the table too. To help convince them, institutions are reminded that 'diversity' is actually good for them too, that it will help them to make more money. Danuta Keane writes, in the ' Writing the Future' report on the need for improved cultural/ethnic diversity in literature: 'this isn't about making the industry feel good. Monocultures are bad for business....within 20 years the UK BAME population will be 25%. If books don't reflect that, they will become increasingly irrelevant and unprofitable.' Similarly, Shukla writes in a Guardian article: 'I wouldn't be wasting my time if I didn't feel there was a potential financial reward for investing in BAME writers.' Meanwhile, a tweet on #diversedecember tells us, through a posted article, that 'just being around people of different ethnicities may literally make you smarter.'

Although the lack of interest in our work on the part of white publishers is a very real problem, when we respond to and celebrate 'diversity', we don't deeply challenge a white system. We only appeal to it, try to fit ourselves into it, make ourselves attractive to it to, trying to sell our 'diversity'. We go to workshops that tell us how, as BAME writers, we can brand ourselves better, package ourselves, make ourselves more marketable; to get funding, to find a publisher, to sell books. And in this way, we define ourselves through this system, softening ourselves, performing our identities and ethnicities for it. Perhaps there's little choice when you're entering the mainstream space as an isolated individual, as a writer or an editor; it's the only way to get in and survive. We don't talk about racism, just 'lack of diversity'. As Ellen Berry says in the recent article, ' Diversity is for white people: The big lie behind a well-intended word', 'Diversity is how we talk about race when we can't talk about race. It has become a stand-in when open discussion of race is too controversial or - let's be frank - when white people find the topic of race uncomfortable. Diversity seems polite, positive, hopeful.'

And it's just this non-threatening positivity, hopefulness and cheery celebration that we've seen in this new phase of 'diversity in literature' campaigning, co-curated by the Guardian, drawing on data and recommendations by the recent 'Spread the Word' report. '#diversedecember is a celebration of books by BAME writers. For December 2015, read with diversity and spread the joy of stories' is the message on the twitter page for this worthy cause. 'Diverse December lifts the Christmas spirits,' writes Jackie Kay in the double-page article in Guardian Review, ' How do we stop UK publishing being so posh and white? ' Meanwhile, the extraordinary success of Nikesh Shukla's crowd-funded anthology of essays about race and immigration has left him feeling 'a mixture of relief and vindication that there is such a fierce appetite for BAME voices out there.'

Such diversity campaigns make it all look so easy. Through one concrete action, or perhaps a list of actions, everyone can help to sort out the problem. You can recommend your favourite 'diverse' book on #diversedecember. Feeling virtuous, you can read a 'diverse' book this month; a bit like medicine, reading a diverse book is good for you, it opens up your mind, teaches you about another culture/country. 'Today, we'd really like to receive recommendations of books by Muslim authors, please!' #diversedecember tweeted on the 9th December. 'Also don't neglect your genre fiction in #diversedecember - crime novels especially are an amazing way of reading about non-Western life,' says one retweet.

Or you can contribute money to the proposed collection of essays on 'race and immigration' (avoiding the word 'racism'). 'I think this will be an important, timely read. Help fund The Good Immigrant (I've donated at link below)' tweets JK Rowling. (How can race, racism or immigration be timely, you wonder, 'flavour of the month'?)

Rowling, after a generous contribution, is now patron of Shukla's anthology. Her name will grace the front cover of the book. Nobody questions the fact that a book on 'race and immigration' has also now become about Rowling as celebrity white saviour. 'JK Rowling inspires surge to fund book on race and immigration in three days,' the Guardian article, carrying her photograph, tells us. This is the same writer who was recently criticised in two excellent letters by Mia Oudeh (a fan of the Harry Potter series), for signing the 'Culture for Coexistence' letter, supporting Israeli-Palestinian dialogue and opposition to the BDS movement. According to Rowling, 'boycotts singling out Israel are divisive and discriminatory'.

Like accusations of reverse racism or casteism, there is not only naïvete, but also violence in erasing historical and continuing oppressions and power hierarchies, labelling the oppressed who seek to redress, 'divisive' and 'discriminatory'. It is the same conciliatory, ahistorical approach that can ground these diversity in literature campaigns. There is a sense that everyone only needs to come together, make a bit of an effort with a few simple acts. Diversity is about forgetting the past, and celebrating a multi-coloured present. Diversity initiatives often involve a Benetton style ad of 'diverse looking' people's faces, and we see such an image adorning the cover of the Guardian Review which contains the aforementioned article, 'How do we stop UK publishing being so posh and white?'

In this article, various writers, publishers, organisers of festivals have listed the things that they have done or pledge to do to improve the situation. Jackie Kay tells us that Carol Ann Duffy has offered to give up her place on the list of books for World Book Night for a 'diverse' writer. Nick Barley, Director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival pledges that he will, among other things, 'buy another copy of The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma and give it to someone as a Christmas present'; 'try to persuade Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to visit the UK with a group of emerging African writers'; 'invite Jackie Kay to talk to Syrian refugees in Scotland and share their stories at the book festival" and 'ask Kamila Shamsie and Mohammed Hanif to recommend Pakistani writers not yet known here, and invite them to Edinburgh'. Meanwhile Simon Prosser of Hamish Hamilton writes in the same article, 'luckily, there are partners we can work with. The Caine prize for African writing, the Muslim writers awards and the DSC prize for south Asian literature, for example, do a great job in showcasing diverse writers, as do magazines such as Wasafiri and SABLE LitMag'.

We see here one of the problems with quick-fixes to the 'diversity' problem: they usually involve reaching out for the handful of well-known names, writers, organisations that immediately come to mind, promoting them or asking them for advice and recommendations (although there have been some new and lesser known writers recommended and highlighted on #diversedecember). Not to undermine the good work that some of these magazines and prizes do, but this approach ensures that literature remains in the same circles of power, within one class and caste. Such tokenism also means that it is often the writers of colour who are most visible, who work the hardest to turn themselves into shiny friendly packages, who are most acceptable and amenable, that are reached for. These includes international writers who are westernised, cosmopolitan, upper class and upper caste, or British writers whose ideologies and world views, articulated through their fiction and non-fiction, most resemble that of white Britain, right wing or left-liberal. My research, which has included close readings of contemporary published British Asian literature, has shown that the writers who overtly spout the kind of racism that it is no longer 'politically correct' for a white public figure to articulate, are often the most visible and celebrated. The racism in the books and articles by these writers is acceptable, since they are of South Asian origin, and it is invisible because it is normalised in British society. It is perhaps inevitable that writers who are a product of British society, education, literature, media, will internalise and reproduce white supremacy. The literature they write is directed towards white readers; it is about Britishness, about assimilation, about becoming a British citizen. Their representations of 'difference' often feed racism and stereotypes, with their focus primarily on the 'reverse racism' of their families and communities.

It is perhaps not an accident that these writers are so often given a voice and platform. Diversity boxes are ticked, without really shaking things up too much. Even within this double-page spread Guardian article, two or three of the writers, doing okay themselves, undermine the claimed intention of the piece by writing that they don't really see that there is too much of a problem. Sarfraz Manzoor 'would be wary of an excessive focus on race and religion', while Akhil Sharma feels that he has actually "'benefited from being an ethnic writer ... Because I am writing about things that are not well known, and I am writing about a community that people are curious about, I have received a great deal of attention ... my complaining would feel churlish since I have benefited so much from being a minority'.

Who are the 'people' who are curious about the community that Sharma is writing about, allowing him to 'benefit' from his ethnicity? Certainly not the community he is writing about. It is clear in what Sharma says, who his work is directed towards, who he writes for. 'People' here equals white people. So much of our writing consciously or unconsciously reproduces this assumption, and subtly reveals internalised white supremacy. There was an uproar when Marlon James talked about the pressure on writers to pander to white women, but such pressures, on the part of agents and editors, are real. Although it is not necessarily a conscious, cynical pandering, we often unconsciously direct our work towards the white reader, privileging the white reader, since that is the normative perspective. We will continue to do this unless we consciously interrogate ourselves, unless we read each others work and our own critically, to 'see' white supremacy (along with upper class and caste, male, heterosexual supremacy) in what has come before and what continues to be produced. In order to write differently. This will certainly not happen in university creative writing courses, mentoring schemes, through mainstream editors or discussions at literature festivals, where white literature is held up as the 'real' literature that we all need to aspire towards.

Adopting a phrase that is being used by radical anti-racist campaigns and movements growing and connecting across the world today, as writers and editors we need to 'decolonise, not diversify', and that is what we need to demand of publishers, creative writing courses, and mentoring schemes too. Decolonisation does not airbrush colonial history, decolonisation takes continuing white supremacy head-on. And if publishers or organisers of literature festivals are not interested in literature that comes from this place, that doesn't privilege the white reader, we need to use models such as Shukla's crowd-funded book, to produce our own literature. We need to organise our own festivals. There are writers, publishers and organisations that have been and continue, despite all odds, doing this.

But to focus only on numbers, as the 'Writing the Future' report does, to talk only about the need for a greater 'diversity' of writers in terms of background, is a limited and misleading approach. The real problem is not simply a monoculture but a mono-ideology, a mono-perspective. I'm sorry to spoil the party, but this is not a problem that was going to be solved this December or even, now that #diversitydecember has become #ReadDiverse2016.
All work published on Media Diversified is the intellectual property of its writers. Please do not reproduce, republish or repost any content from this site without express written permission from Media Diversified. For further information, please see our reposting guidelines This article is part of our You can find out more and support Bare Lit Festival 2016, giving authors and poets of colour the platform and visibility they deserve here Did you enjoy reading this article? Help us continue to provide more! Media Diversified is 100% reader-funded -you can subscribe for as little as £5 per month academic experimental space for long form writing. A space for provocative and engaging writing from any academic discipline. .
Kavita Bhanot grew up in London, lived for many years in Birmingham, then moved to India, where she directed an international literature festival, worked as an editor for India's first literary agency and set up and ran a guest house in Himachal Pradesh. Having spent some years in Manchester (she recently completed a PhD at Manchester University, in Creative Writing and Literature) she now lives between UK and India. Her short stories and non-fiction have been published in anthologies, magazines and journals, two of her stories have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4, and she is the editor of the short story collection Too Asian, Not Asian Enough (Tindal Street Press, 2011). She is a reader with The Literary Consultancy. Kavita has, over the last fifteen years, been working with writers in the UK and South Asia, as mentor and editor, as well as through organising events, workshops, reading/writing groups and conferences around the politics of reading, writing and representation. Her focus, through these events, through academic research, through social media, and in her fiction and non-fiction, has particularly been on punjabiyat, ideology and white, upper class/caste and male supremacy in 'British Asian' literature.

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by Kavita Bhanot Since the recent failure of World Book Night to include any writers of colour in its 2015 list, there has been a fresh bout of conversation about the need for more 'diversity' in the literature that is published and awarded in Britain, as well as amongst those working in publishing.

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'The Machinery of Whiteness: Studies in the Structure of Racialization' by Steve Martinot (2010)

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'The Machinery of Whiteness: Studies in the Structure of Racialization' by Steve Martinot (2010)

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The Machinery of Whiteness: Studies in the Structure of Racialization

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In this follow up to his book, The Rule of Racializationowhich considered the way class structure is formed in the U.S.oSteve Martinot now examines how the structures of racialization reside at the core of all social, cultural, and political institutions in the U.S.

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'Sharing the Past' by Northamptonshire Black History Association (2008)

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'Sharing the Past' by Northamptonshire Black History Association (2008)

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By Reviewed by Alf Wilkinson, published 24th November 2008

Northamptonshire Black History Association Pub 2008; ISBN:978 0 9557139 1 0; £12.95 [+£2.30 p and p] from: NBHA, Doddridge Centre, 109 St James Road, Northampton, NN5 5LD.

How fortunate Northamptonshire history teachers are! With the current emphasis on community cohesion and diversity in the New Secondary Curriculum, they are presented with a mass of material on a plate! 'Sharing the Past' has been co-operatively written by members of the NBHA, and it gives an overview of local links to the wider world, and chronicles the black presence in Northamptonshire since the first evidence, of Peter the Saracen, crossbow maker, in the early C13th.

All the evidence is presented, both in a local and a national context, to help make sense of everything. The material is presented in chronological chapters, helping teachers find examples to 'drop in' to their teaching programme. Amply illustrated with contemporary and modern pictures, the text provides a fascinating glimpse of Northamptonshire through the ages and the interplay of migrants and residents. From Tudor servants for the rich, via ship-less sailors requiring relief, to penniless touring entertainers, all of history is here, and plenty of stories to grab students. The book is particularly strong on post-WW2 immigration, making excellent use of the NBHA oral archive. Supporting reading and references to local and national archives round out what this excellent example of local collaboration has to offer. A model for other areas to adapt and adopt perhaps?

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Sharing The Past: Northamptonshire's Black History

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How fortunate Northamptonshire history teachers are! With the current emphasis on community cohesion and diversity in the New Secondary Curriculum, they are presented with a mass of material on a plate!

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'What White People Can Do Next: From Allyship to Coalition' by Emma Dabri (2021)

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'What White People Can Do Next: From Allyship to Coalition' by Emma Dabri (2021)

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What White People Can Do Next: From Allyship to Coalition a book by Emma Dabiri.

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THE SUNDAY TIMES AND IRISH TIMES BESTSELLER’An absolute blockbuster of clear thinking and new angles...the most clear, alliance building, shame removing look at race. Emma is once-in-a generation clever’ Caitlin MoranWe need to talk about racial injustice in a different way: one that builds on the r…

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'Superior: The Return of Race Science' by Angela Saini (2019)

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'Superior: The Return of Race Science' by Angela Saini (2019)

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For millennia, dominant societies have had the habit of believing their own people to be the best, deep down: the more powerful they become, the more power begins to be framed as natural, as well as cultural. When you see how power has shaped the idea of race, then you can start to understand its meaning.

In the twenty-first century, we like to believe that we have moved beyond scientific racism, that most people accept race as a social construct, not a biological one. But race science is experiencing a revival, fuelled by the misuse of science by certain political groups.

Even well-intentioned scientists, through their use of racial categories in genetics and medicine, betray their suspicion that race has some basis in biology.

In truth, it is no more real than it was hundreds of years ago, when our racial hierarchies were devised by those in power.

In Superior, award-winning author Angela Saini explores the concept of race, from its origins to the present day. Engaging with geneticists, anthropologists, historians and social scientists from across the globe, Superior is a rigorous, much needed examination of the insidious and destructive nature of race science.

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For millennia, dominant societies have had the habit of believing their own people to be the best, deep down: the more powerful they become, the more power begins to be framed as natural, as well as cultural. When you see how power has shaped the idea of race, then you can start to understand its meaning.

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'"Beyond a Boundary": the Aesthetics of Resistance' by Benjamin Graves (1998)

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'"Beyond a Boundary": the Aesthetics of Resistance' by Benjamin Graves (1998)

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"Beyond a Boundary": the Aesthetics of Resistance

The problem with cricket (or perhaps the problem with America), as Neil Lazarus argues in his "Cricket and National Culture in the Writings of C.L.R. James," is that although C.L.R. James' materialist interpretations of culture and politics are deeply rooted in his fascination with cricket, scarcely any Americans understand cricket well enough for James' insights to carry much meaning. As opposed to baseball, say, Cricket is a rural, expansive, pre-modern game that resists the temporal rhythms and spatial limits of work-time capital. Whereas baseball emerged in America alongside the industrial revolution, Cricket is distinct insofar as its origins are primarily rural, pre-Victorian, and of the privileged land-owning class.

Drawing upon the cricket experiences of Learie Constantine, W.G. Grace [who James claims "built a social organization" (173)], and himself, James demonstrates two guiding points: 1) that cricket is an artform worthy of the "classical" status given opera, theatre, or painting, and 2) that cricket's aesthetics enact a stylization of social resistance against British colonialism.

James' first point of contention, as Neil Lazarus notes, stands in stark contrast to the perhaps Eurocentric suggestion of T.W. Adorno that art is "autonomous" from the commonplace banality of everyday cultural practices. By contrast, James would argue that cricket's commonplaceness and accessibility are in fact the determining factors in its aesthetic and political interest. Whereas critics like Edward Said are primarily bibliocentric (focussing on canonical Western literature), James is a diverse cultural critic sensitive to the nuances of music, sports, and low-culture productions.

"Cricket," as James argues, "is first and foremost a dramatic spectacle. It belongs with the theatre, ballet, opera and the dance" (196). In a chapter entitled "What is Art?", James juxtaposes cricket with ancient Greek sporting rites in order to emphasize the Marxian implications of cricket's aspirations towards "teamwork." As Neil Lazarus points out, James suggests that cricket is not "like" art, but rather "is" art. In the passages below, James demonstrates the nuanced aesthetics whereby the batsman's posture and stroke become a mode of social representation. James recalls the "cutting" (a particular style of batting) of Arthur Jones, and compares it to the famous accounts of William Beldham's "cutting" a century earlier:

My second landmark was not a person but a stroke, and the maker of it was Arthur Jones. He was a brownish Negro, a medium-sized man, who walked with quick steps and active shoulders. He had a pair of restless, aggressive eyes, talked quickly and even stammered a little. He wore a white cloth hat when batting, and he used to cut. How he used to cut! I have watched county cricket for weeks on end and seen whole Test matches without seeing one cut such as Jones used to make, and for years whenever I saw one I murmured to myself, 'Arthur Jones!" (5)

There at the centre of all this was William Beldham and his cut...I said earlier that the second landmark in my cricketing life was a stroke--and I mean just that--one single stroke. (6)

The stylistic specificity of "cutting" is of some relevance here; a cut is a difficult stroke in which the batsman strikes across the underside of the ball so that it angles off to the vacant spaces behind the batsman. The point is that the shot is deliberately difficult--a gesture of mastery that serves little if any practical purpose. To James, the "cut" signifies a belligerant affront to the exigencies of colonial rule--a stylization of emancipatory ambitions. To "play it safe" is unthinkable to James, who considered such play the "welfare state of mind" that conceded liberatory ambitions to British Keynesian economic rhythms. In other words, what makes cricket such a vital political instrument to James is its aesthetics, and not, for instance, an emphasis on winning or losing.

How might cricket (or sports in general) serve as a metaphor for political antagonism in postcolonial literature? Notice how James describes politics in terms of cricket metaphor, and cricket in terms of political metaphor. Where many authors would make use of sexual imagery, James instead portrays cricket as an instrument of revolution!

Again, what's most striking is the trans-historical value James accords a sport--a gesture towards universalism that many argue is James' weak point. Does James fail under the criteria of historical specificity? And how does he compare to other anticolonial writers such as Frantz Fanon? James (or "Nello," as his admirers address him) frequently illustrates the solutions to contemporary social problems using ideas drawn from classical or renaissance literature. Does this suggest a historical continuity between disparate periods that simply doesn't exist?

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"Beyond a Boundary": the Aesthetics of Resistance

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The problem with cricket (or perhaps the problem with America), as Neil Lazarus argues in his "Cricket and National Culture in the Writings of C.L.R. James," is that although C.L.R. James' materialist interpretations of culture and politics are deeply rooted in his fascination with cricket, scarcely any Americans understand cricket well enough for James' insights to carry much meaning.

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'Beyond a Boundary' by CLR James (1963/2012)

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'Beyond a Boundary' by CLR James (1963/2012)

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Beyond a Boundary | CLR James | download | Z-Library. Download books for free. Find books

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'The Tao of Cricket: On Games of Destiny and the Destiny of Games' by Ashis Nandy (1989)

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'The Tao of Cricket: On Games of Destiny and the Destiny of Games' by Ashis Nandy (1989)

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Cricket is an Indian game accidentally discovered by the British, says Ashis Nandy, defying history, in this delightful book. He treats us to meditations on the history, philosophy, and results of the game, as well as intriguing psychological profiles of some of its greatest players. He also extends his analysis to the modern urban-industrial ethic and mass culture.

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The Tao of Cricket: On Games of Destiny and the Destiny of Games

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Cricket is an Indian game accidentally discovered by the British, says Ashis Nandy, defying history, in this delightful book. He treats us to meditations on the history, philosophy, and results of the game, as well as intriguing psychological profiles of some of its greatest players.

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'Cricket in the West Indies' by Carlton McClendon (1998)

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'Cricket in the West Indies' by Carlton McClendon (1998)

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Introduction

The game of cricket has had a long and complicated history in the West Indies. Originally imported to the West Indies as an agent of control and reaffirmation, the game steadily evolved into a cultural institution radically opposed to the original intentions of those who conspired for its import. The exact role cricket has played in terms of resistance to the postcolonial hegemonic order in the West Indies is widely debated. Much of this debate has to do with the variety of ways in which cricket culture has been allowed to progress according to specific histories of individual locales. Because of the diverse national histories in the region, styles of cricket vary a great deal from one island to the next, as does the cultural work each style performs. One must therefore question the usefulness in talking in-depth about West Indian cricket in ways that suggest the game developed throughout the region in a singular fashion. Having set forth this advisory, here I will attempt to point out some of the larger issues belonging to cricket culture in the West Indies which may or may not be specific to any single locale. Discussion of these larger issues is merely meant to stimulate conversation on the topic of cricket and its relatedness to postcolonial discourse. The game of cricket was exported from England to all of its colonies, including those in Asia and Africa, during the nineteenth century as a way to reinforce a hegemonic cultural order in the face of the emancipation of England's slave population (see Colonial Education). A brief history of the state of affairs in the West Indies upon cricket's arrival will help explain why a re-commitment to England's Victorian ideals became necessary for continued colonial consolidation at this time of social and cultural turmoil.

Colonial History of Cricket

English slaves in the West Indies were emancipated in the year 1838. Emancipation brought to an end an institution that had helped England bring one quarter of the world's land mass under British rule. In the West Indies during this time, the two largest groups were the newly-freed Africans, who made up the laboring class, and the white plantation owners who formed the islands' aristocracies. The African population prior to slavery not only performed the role of wealth-makers for the white, land-owning plantocracy, but also provided a metaphorical blackness onto which the plantocracy could project their whiteness. The resulting juxtaposition went a long way in alleviating the anxiety of the white land-owners who were constantly reminded of their location at the farthest reaches of the English empire, of civilization. For the planter class, wealth was not enough. There was the constant need to be reminded that they were a distinct race separate from the Africans. Through the use of stereotypes and other forms of hegemonic control, the plantocracy learned to survive life at what they considered the edge of civilization. White was much whiter when juxtaposed against the black population.

Once the slaves were emancipated, cricket became the new cultural institution by which England sought to socialize the populations and reinforce hierarchies in its colonies. Cricket was imported to all of England's colonies, not only the West Indies. In The Tao of Cricket, Ashis Nandy explains the cultural evolution of cricket in India:

The age was more an affirmation of the superiority of controlled self-indulgence and controlled flair or style, combined with reaffirmation of a moral universe. The nineteenth century was also the period when the various post-Utilitarian theories of progress began to be applied to the new colonies of Britain. The emerging culture of cricket came in handy to those using these theories to hierarchize the cultures, faiths and societies which were, one by one,coming under colonial domination (5).

Cricket operated according to a Victorian model in which cultivated style and carefully defined notions of grace under pressure worked to keep most people out of the sport. Terms such as sportsmanship, dash, courage and temperament were important to cricket's Victorian ethos. Cricket was through and through a "gentleman's" game, and all others were excluded by their inability to demonstrate an understanding of cricket's image of the ideal Englishman (see Anglophilia).

England used its military forces to export the game to the West Indies (Beckles 37). Newspaper accounts written during the early nineteenth-century reveal how matches were staged between English military personnel. Needless to say, West Indian planters, fearful of changing social structures in the islands, welcomed cricket in the West Indies and by 1840 many were staging cricket matches on their plantations (38). Cricket allowed the plantocracy to pledge its support for British cultural values, concepts of social progress, moral codes, behavioral standards and attitudes towards social rankings (Stoddart 66). Blacks who were exposed to cricket on plantations where they made up the indentured labor pool also began to - either in whole or in part - espouse these views.

Despite the actions of the plantocracy, by the end of the nineteenth-century, a mercantile class had begun to dominate West Indian economic and cultural institutions. This new middle-class began forming cricket clubs which were aimed at countering the new image of social unity that cricket was beginning to suggest through its widespread popularity. Cricket clubs were formed throughout the West Indies. Each club drew its membership based on specific racial characteristics, and potential members knew to which club they would be invited to join without being told. There were separate clubs for aristocratic whites, merchant-class whites, coloreds (mulattos), and blacks. Racial integration for the most part during this time was not allowed.

Re-Colonisation or Revolution?

Much of the recent scholarship surrounding West Indian cricket, writes Beckles, addresses the question of cricket's"cultural imperatives" (Intro. 2). The question Beckles and others attempt to answer is whether or not cricket served the needs of the colonial empire, England, by re-inscribing its Victorian ethos on the newly-freed black West Indians, and if so, to what extent. Those who view cricket as revolutionary prefer the idea of cricket as "an ideological weapon of subversive, anti-colonial, creole nationalism" (Intro. 2). Cultural critics C. L. R. James, Ashis Nandy and Brian Stoddart illustrate three different opinions about the role of colonial cricket (see Mimicry, Ambivalence, and Hybridity).

I. C. L. R. James

C. L. R. James, in his seminal work Beyond a Boundary, focuses on aesthetics and takes the position that the style of play of black West Indians is itself a form of "social resistance against British colonialism"(Graves). In Boundary, James writes about the "cutting"("a batting stroke in which the ball is hit toward the off-side in an arc between cover and third man, with the bat held at an angle closer to horizontal than perpendicular") style of West Indian cricketers (Rundell 47):

By that time I had seen many fine cutters, one of them, W. St. Hill, never to this day surpassed ... Phidias, Michelangelo, Burke. Greek history has already introduced me to Phidias and the Parthenon; from engravings and reproductions I had already begun a life-long worship of Michelangelo; and Burke, begun as a school chore, had rapidly become for me the most exciting master of prose in English ... I knew already long passages of him by heart. There in the very center of this was William Beldham and his cut (6).

James equates the cultural value of cricket to great works of Western art, and the omnipotence of style of a great cutter he likens to the artistic style of Michelangelo and Burke. "The stylistic specificity of 'cutting,'" writes Benjamin Graves, "is of some relevance here; ... the point is that the shot is very difficult ... a gesture of mastery that serves little if any practical purpose. To James, the 'cut' signifies a belligerent affront to the exigencies of colonial rule ... a stylization of emancipatory ambitions."

II. Ashis Nandy

Nandy, like James, recognizes cricket's revolutionary potential but he identifies this potential in the "schizophrenic" nature of the game. According to Nandy, it was the "moral posture of the superiority and self-control of the gentleman cricketer" that created the spaces for those outside the hegemony to critique the English for not living up to their own standards of morality (7).

[Cricket] allowed the Indians to assess their colonial rulers by western values reflected in the official philosophy of cricket, and to find the rulers wanting ... The assessment thus anticipated the nationalist and particularly Gandhian critiques of the British which judged the everyday Christianity of the British in India with reference to philosophical Christianity (7).

The heroic ideal imputed to cricketers by Victorians in England combined with the pagan desire to win at all costs to create in cricket culture a kind of schizophrenia. The marginalized people in England's colonies recognized the split caused by this psychotic condition inherent in cricket culture and used it as the point of attack for its critique of colonial England.

III. Brian Stoddart

Stoddart, like Nandy, recognizes the significance in cricket's contradictory ideals. While Nandy identifies this contradiction as the site of cultural resistance, Stoddart focuses on an alternative view that points up the power of cricket as a tool deployed by the hegemonic order. Writing about two members of the Spartan club (a club composed of upwardly-mobile black players), Graham Trent Cumberbatch and H. M. Cummins, Stoddard points out a more complex reaction to racial discrimination:

On the one hand, men like Cumberbatch and Cummins became ardent enthusiasts of the cricket ideology, attempting to share the cultural values of the whites with whom they competed both in cricket and in society. On the other hand, they developed a strong desire to win, to beat the representatives of those who displayed prejudice. The essential paradox in this dual position is clear. While trying to emulate the ruling cricket and social values, Spartan members had also to deal with the inequalities contained in those ruling values. On the whole, Spartan men resolved to accept the inequalities, an excellent demonstration of Gramsci's theory of hegemony (Caribbean 20).

Stoddart views early cricket not as a revolutionary force, but as a white cultural re-inscription of black West Indian culture. While there were isolated instances of black cultural resistance, writes Stoddart, "for the most part, the colonial elites carried on this process [of colonization] unhindered, controlling those agencies ... central in the creation of hegemonic cultural values" (26).

Transnational Competition: "But is it Cricket?"

Cricket in today's global environment has been altered a great deal by new technologies, capitalism and revised geo-political landscapes (see Transnationalism and Globalism). Because of the intrinsic value of cricket as a repository of culture, postcolonial scholars and fans have looked to this new form of global cricket in an attempt to understand its full implications. Several sites on the internet such as CricInfo (owned by giant sports conglomerate ESPN) offer weekly and/or daily information and news items about various national cricket teams. The central role England has maintained in global cricket for well over a hundred years is now being relinquished as her former colonies enter the international and technological marketplace. In the past, England was the primary provider of international competition for many of these countries. As England's Victorian ideal withers under the heat of international play, so too do the theories of nationhood that are tied to, or somehow dependent upon, cricket's age-old Victorian ideal. James's is one such theory, as Kenneth Surin explains:

The claim that cricket is 'a means of national expression' is just untenable, especially in the last two decades or so, when capitalism has moved into a globally integrated phase. Cricket, as a commercial sport, has had to respond to this transformation as a condition of its financial survival. This shift is especially evident in the way in which the modern (one might as well say 'post-modern') West Indian professional cricketer now earns a living, namely, by playing several 'seasons' in the course of a single year: the domestic West Indian season, and English summer of county cricket, a winter tour abroad, and if this can be squeezed in, maybe a spell playing for a state team during the Australian summer (318).

Once professional cricketers become professional athletes who tour the world in pursuit of ever-increasing financial rewards, their faces become more recognizable in the various countries where they play and - most importantly - their style of play becomes less distinctive. This latter point is the result of international players who routinely play against one another and who have more opportunity than in previous ages to imitate the best aspects of one another's style. Adds Surin, "Cricketing styles become homogenized in consequence of this 'internationalization' of the game, and even the 'subjectives' of cricketers becomes fungible" (318).

Nandy, like Surin, also bemoans what has become of cricket in the modern world. As is usually the case with Nandy, he focuses on the role of cricket as harbinger of a cultural ideal. Once cricketers resort to body-lining ("fast leg-theory bowling, especially as used by the England fast bowlers during the 1932-3 Test series in Australia"; bowling close to the batsman's body) and other immoral acts in order to win, the real victory is already lost (Rundell 20). The value of cricket for Nandy is the cricketer's constant search for an ideal behavior. When cricketers scoff at seemingly trite notions of good sportsmanship, the space between the ideal and the actual identified by Nandy never materializes and the opportunity for cultural empowerment is closed off. "When Australian wicket-keeper Rodney Marsh," writes Nandy, "openly says that Australia should try to beat the stronger West Indian side by reverting, if necessary, to being 'ugly Australians,' he is being true to the anti-culture of consumable sport" (117).

Despite the variance of opinion about the past and future role of cricket,the game remains a favorite pastime in former English colonies and does battle with soccer, another British import, as the most popular sport in the world.

Bibliography

Beckles, Hilary McD. and Brian Stoddart, ed. Liberation Cricket: West Indies Cricket Culture. New York: Manchester University Press, 1995.

Beckles, Hilary McD. "Introduction." Liberation Cricket: West Indies Cricket Culture. New York: Manchester University Press, 1995.

Beckles, Hilary McD. "The Origins and Development of West Indies Cricket Culture in the Nineteenth Century: Jamaica and Barbados." Liberation Cricket: West Indies Cricket Culture. Ed. Hilary McD. Beckles and Brian Stoddart. New York: Manchester University Press, 1995. 33-43.

Cashman, Richard. "Cricket and Colonialism: Colonial Hegemony or Indigenous Subversion." Pleasure, Profit and Proselytism:British Culture and Sport at Home and Abroad, 1700-1914. Ed.J. A. Mangan. London: Cass, 1988.

Cummings, Christine. "The Ideology of West Indies Cricket." Arena Review. 14.1 (1990): 25-33.

James, C. L. R. Beyond a Boundary. Durham: Duke University Press,1993.

Nandy, Ashis. The Tao of Cricket: On Games of Destiny and the Destiny of Games. New York: Viking, 1989.

Rundell, Michael. The Dictionary of Cricket. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Stoddart, Brian."Cricket and Colonialism in the English-speaking Caribbean to 1914: Towards a Cultural Analysis." Liberation Cricket: West Indies Cricket Culture. Ed. Hilary McD. Beckles and Brian Stoddart. New York : Manchester University Press, 1995. 9-32.

Stoddart, Brian."Cricket, Social Formation and Cultural Continuity in Barbados: a Preliminary Ethnohistory." Liberation Cricket:West Indies Cricket Culture. Ed. Hilary McD. Beckles and Brian Stoddart. New York: Manchester University Press, 1995. 61-85.

Searle, Chris. "Race Before Cricket: Cricket, Empire, and the White Rose." Race and Class 30.3 (1990): 343+.

Surin, Kenneth."C. L. R. James' Material Aesthetic of Cricket." Liberation Cricket: West Indies Cricket Culture. Ed. Hilary McD. Beckles and Brian Stoddart. New York: Manchester University Press, 1995. 313-341.

Tiffen, Helen."Cricket Literature and the Politics of De-Colonisation: the Case of C. L. R. James." Sport, Money, Morality and the Media. Eds. Richard Cashman and M. McKernan. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 1981.

Related Sites

Information about Ashis Nandy

Website for West Indian national cricket team
http://www.espncricinfo.com/westindies/content/team/4.html

Author: Carlton McClendon, Spring 1998
Last edited: October 2017

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The game of cricket has had a long and complicated history in the West Indies. Originally imported to the West Indies as an agent of control and reaffirmation, the game steadily evolved into a cultural institution radically opposed to the original intentions of those who conspired for its import.

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On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, Martin Luther King outlined a dream of an America where people would not be judged by the color of their skin. That dream has yet to be realized, but some three centuries ago it was a reality. Back then, neither social practice nor law recognized any special privileges in connection with being white. But by the early decades of the eighteenth century, that had all changed. Racial oppression became the norm in the plantation colonies, and African Americans suffered under its yoke for more than two hundred years.

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This document is a collation of six columns, written with Karen Sands O'Connor. These columns were published in 'Books for Keeps', the British children's books periodical, in 2018. The columns are presented in order, from Issue

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'Brit(ish) - On Race, Identity, and Belonging' by Afua Hirsch (2017) 

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'Brit(ish) - On Race, Identity, and Belonging' by Afua Hirsch (2017) 

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Where are you really from?

You're British. Your parents are British. You were raised in Britain. Your partner, your children and most of your friends are British.

So why do people keep asking you where you are from?

We are a nation in denial about our imperial past and the racism that plagues our present. Brit(ish) is Afua Hirsch's personal and provocative exploration of how this came to be - and an urgent call for change.

'The book for our divided and dangerous times'
David Olusoga

Brit(ish) is about a search for identity. It is about the everyday racism that plagues British society. It is about our awkward, troubled relationship with our history. It is about why liberal attempts to be 'colour-blind' have caused more problems than they have solved. It is about why we continue to avoid talking about race.

In this personal and provocative investigation, Afua Hirsch explores a very British crisis of identity. We are a nation in denial about our past and our present. We believe we are the nation of abolition, but forget we are the nation of slavery. We are convinced that fairness is one of our values, but that immigration is one of our problems. Brit(ish) is the story of how and why this came to be, and an urgent call for change.

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Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging

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Where are you really from? You're British. Your parents are British. You were raised in Britain. Your partner, your children and most of your friends are British. So why do people keep asking you where you are from? We are a nation in denial about our imperial past and the racism that plagues our present.

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'Will Britain Ever Have a Black Prime Minister?' presented by David Harewood, BBC (2016)

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'Will Britain Ever Have a Black Prime Minister?' presented by David Harewood, BBC (2016)

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Will Britain Ever Have a Black Prime Minister   BBC DOCUMENTARY 2016

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'White Blindspot' by Noel Ignatiev/Ignatin and Theodore 'Ted' Allen (1967)

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'White Blindspot' by Noel Ignatiev/Ignatin and Theodore 'Ted' Allen (1967)

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'Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880' by WEB DuBois (1935)

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'Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880' by WEB DuBois (1935)

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The pioneering work in the study of the role of Black Americans during Reconstruction by the most influential Black intellectual of his time. This pioneering work was the first full-length study of the role black Americans played in the crucial period after the Civil War, when the slaves had been freed and the attempt was made to reconstruct American society.

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'White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society' by Ghassan Hage (1998)

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'White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society' by Ghassan Hage (1998)

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White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society

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White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society | Ghassan Hage | download | Z-Library. Download books for free. Find books

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'White: Essays on Race and Culture' by Richard Dyer (1997)

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'White: Essays on Race and Culture' by Richard Dyer (1997)

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White people are not literally or symbolically white; nor are they uniquely virtuous and pure. Racial imagery and racial representation are central to the organisation of the contemporary world but, while there are many studies of images of black and Asian people, whiteness is an invisible racial position. At the level of racial representation, whites are not of a certain race. They are just the human race, a 'colour' against which other ethnicities are always examined.In White, Richard Dyer looks beyond the apparent unremarkability of whiteness and argues for the importance of analysing images of white people. Dyer traces the representation of whiteness by whites in Western visual culture, focusing on the mass media of photography, advertising, fine art, cinema and television.Dyer examines the representation of whiteness and the white body in the contexts of Christianity, 'race' and colonialism. In a series of absorbing case studies, he discusses the representations of whiteness in muscle-man action cinema, from Italian 'peplum' movies to the Tarzan and Rambo series; shows the construction of whiteness in photography and cinema in the lighting of white and black faces, and analyses the representation of white women in end-of-empire fictions such as The Jewel in the Crown, and traces the disturbing association of whiteness with death, in vampire narratives and dystopian films such as Blade Runner and the Aliens trilogy.

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White people are not literally or symbolically white; nor are they uniquely virtuous and pure. Racial imagery and racial representation are central to the organisation of the contemporary world but, while there are many studies of images of black and Asian people, whiteness is an invisible racial position.

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'Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches' by Audrea Lorde (1984/2007)

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'Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches' by Audrea Lorde (1984/2007)

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Presenting the essential writings of black lesbian poet and feminist writer Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider celebrates an influential voice in twentieth-century literature. "[Lorde's] works will be important to those truly interested in growing up sensitive, intelligent, and aware."-The New York Times In this charged collection of fifteen essays and speeches, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action and change.

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'Power, Politics, and the Emotions: Impossible Governance?' - Dr Shona Hunter (2015)

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'Power, Politics, and the Emotions: Impossible Governance?' - Dr Shona Hunter (2015)

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How can we rethink ideas of policy failure to consider its paradoxes and contradictions as a starting point for more hopeful democratic encounters?

Offering a provocative and innovative theorisation of governance as relational politics, the central argument of Power, Politics and the Emotions is that there are sets of affective dynamics which complicate the already materially and symbolically contested terrain of policy-making. This relational politics is Shona Hunter's starting point for a more hopeful, but realistic understanding of the limits and possibilities enacted through contemporary governing processes. Through this idea Hunter prioritises the everyday lived enactments of policy as a means to understand the state as a more differentiated and changeable entity than is often allowed for in current critiques of neoliberalism. But Hunter reminds us that focusing on lived realities demands a melancholic confrontation with pain, and the risks of social and physical death and violence lived through the contemporary neoliberal state. This is a state characterised by the ascendency of neoliberal whiteness; a state where no one is innocent and we are all responsible for the multiple intersecting exclusionary practices creating its unequal social orderings. The only way to struggle through the central paradox of governance to produce something different is to accept this troubling interdependence between resistance and reproduction and between hope and loss.

Analysing the everyday processes of this relational politics through original empirical studies in health, social care and education the book develops an innovative interdisciplinary theoretical synthesis which engages with and extends work in political science, cultural theory, critical race and feminist analysis, critical psychoanalysis and post-material sociology.

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Power, Politics and the Emotions: Impossible Governance?

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How can we rethink ideas of policy failure to consider its paradoxes and contradictions as a starting point for more hopeful democratic encounters? Offering a provocative and innovative theorisation of governance as relational politics, the central argument of Power, Politics and the Emotions is that there are sets of affective dynamics which complicate the already materially and symbolically contested terrain of policy-making.

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'Black and British: A Forgotten History' written and presented by David Olusoga (2016)

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'Black and British: A Forgotten History' written and presented by David Olusoga (2016)

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BBC Two - Black and British: A Forgotten History

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A look at the relationship between Britain and people whose origins lie in Africa.

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'Britain's Forgotten Slaveowners' written and presented by David Olusoga (2015)

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'Britain's Forgotten Slaveowners' written and presented by David Olusoga (2015)

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Documentary looking at the price of the abolition of slavery in Britain

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'We Don't Need Anymore White Saviours' by Peter Olusoga (2019)

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'We Don't Need Anymore White Saviours' by Peter Olusoga (2019)

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'Rocking the Boat: Women of Colour as Diversity Workers' by Sara Ahmed (2018), in: 'Dismantling Race in Higher Education ...' (eds. Jason Arday and Heidi Safia Mirza)

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'Rocking the Boat: Women of Colour as Diversity Workers' by Sara Ahmed (2018), in: 'Dismantling Race in Higher Education ...' (eds. Jason Arday and Heidi Safia Mirza)

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Arday, Jason, Mirza, Heidi Safia

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Dismantling Race in Higher Education (Racism, Whiteness and Decolonising the Academy) || Race and Elite Universities in the UK

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Dismantling Race in Higher Education (Racism, Whiteness and Decolonising the Academy) || Race and Elite Universities in the UK | Arday, Jason; Mirza, Heidi Safia | download | BookSC. Download books for free. Find books

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'Disgusted Subjects: The Making of Middle-Class Identities' by Stephanie Lawler (2005)

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'Disgusted Subjects: The Making of Middle-Class Identities' by Stephanie Lawler (2005)

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DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-954x.2005.00560.x
Journal: The Sociological Review Volume: 53 Issues: 3 429--446
Title: Disgusted subjects: the making of middle-class identities
Author(s): Stephanie Lawler
Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
Year: 2005

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DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-954x.2005.00560.x Journal: The Sociological Review Volume: 53 Issues: 3 429--446 Title: Disgusted subjects: the making of middle-class identities Author(s): Stephanie Lawler Publisher: John Wiley and Sons Year: 2005

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'White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness' by Ruth Frankenberg (1993)

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'White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness' by Ruth Frankenberg (1993)

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White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness

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White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness | Ruth Frankenberg | download | Z-Library. Download books for free. Find books

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'Good White People: The Problems with Middle-Class Anti-Racism' by Shannon Sullivan (2014)

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'Good White People: The Problems with Middle-Class Anti-Racism' by Shannon Sullivan (2014)

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Argues for the necessity of a new ethos for middle-class white anti-racism.

Building on her book Revealing Whiteness, Shannon Sullivan identifies a constellation of attitudes common among well-meaning white liberals that she sums up as "white middle-class goodness," an orientation she critiques for being more concerned with establishing anti-racist bona fides than with confronting systematic racism and privilege. Sullivan untangles the complex relationships between class and race in contemporary white identity and outlines four ways this orientation is expressed, each serving to establish one's lack of racism: the denigration of lower-class white people as responsible for ongoing white racism, the demonization of antebellum slaveholders, an emphasis on colorblindness-especially in the context of white childrearing-and the cultivation of attitudes of white guilt, shame, and betrayal. To move beyond these distancing strategies, Sullivan argues, white people need a new ethos that acknowledges and transforms their whiteness in the pursuit of racial justice rather than seeking a self-righteous distance from it.

"...Sullivan posits that it is white liberals' own 'anti-racism' that actually perpetuates racism by shutting down frank or nuanced discussions not only of race, but of white privilege, which created racial problems and still sustains them ... In advising white liberals how to honestly live their whiteness, rather than disown it or pretend it doesn't exist, Sullivan expertly deconstructs the familiar defenses ... Like W.E.B. DuBois and James Baldwin before her, Sullivan sees white domination as a spiritual problem that afflicts one group in particular but that touches us all." - Ms. Magazine

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Good White People: The Problem with Middle-Class White Anti-Racism

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Argues for the necessity of a new ethos for middle-class white anti-racism. Building on her book Revealing Whiteness, Shannon Sullivan identifies a constellation of attitudes common among well-meaning white liberals that she sums up as "white middle-class goodness," an orientation she critiques for being more concerned with establishing anti-racist bona fides than with confronting systematic racism and privilege.

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'Black parents, private school will not save your child from racism. I should know, I suffered at one' by Seun Matiluko (2020)

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'Black parents, private school will not save your child from racism. I should know, I suffered at one' by Seun Matiluko (2020)

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During my first year of primary school, I stood out quite a bit. I was taller than the other kids, the oldest child and the only black pupil in the room. If I got into an argument with another pupil I would be the only one sent into an after school detention. When calling my name in the register, they would snigger at my "ridiculous" African name, rebuke me for wearing braids and openly question whether or not a "black girl like [myself]" would be capable of going to university later on in life.

In my last year of secondary school, my school put on a Christmas tableau, painting a student's face black in order for her to resemble what they thought Balthazar must have looked like. I've been in private education all my life.

My experiences are not unique in Britain, and in research for this article, I have talked to countless former black school students who faced disproportionate punishment and verbal abuse from teachers in the classroom. Indeed, recent reporting suggests that black kids are more likely than most to face discrimination in school and many are fighting hard against this.

Campaign group No More Exclusions is trying to open up more conversation about strategies to combat prejudiced suspensions, particularly for black Caribbean children, who are over-represented in the statistics on permanent exclusion, while both black Caribbean and black African children are over-represented in figures on fixed period exclusion. We have the data but, as Kuba Shand-Baptiste, a columnist and commissioning editor at The Independent, recently wrote: "the penny should have dropped long before now." Indeed, in his recent book Natives, Akala writes about how commonplace racism in schooling was way back in the 1970s. We've known about racism in schooling for years, but yet little to nothing has changed.

Because of this, there is an increasing tendency for black parents and campaigners to suggest that private schools may be the answer. In 2003, lamenting what he saw to be anti-private school bias amongst some universities, Trevor Phillips remarked: "A large number of parents from ethnic minorities...go into debt to send their children to independent schools because they believe that it will help their children escape the disadvantage that they might otherwise face in the state system." And late last year in a piece for The Independent that swiftly went viral, black PR consultant, Diana Young, suggested that in order to get away from the "prejudice, stereotyping and bias" black children face in state schools, private schools could be the answer.

It is true that if you have been to private school you will more than likely have a societal advantage over those who have not attended. Indeed, statistics suggest that those who attend private schools are 22 times more likely to go to a top British university. However, as recent research into the educational strategies of the black British middle class by London's Institute of Education suggests, things get more complex when you look at the experiences of black pupils in private schools.

Their findings show that black pupils, due to being an extremely small minority in private schools, are more likely to be left behind by their teachers than white private school students. As part of the research, one parent described how it was for her black son:

"In the final year, the expectations from some of his teachers, you picked up that they said 'Well you got a pass, so what more do you want?'" This aligns with other data from the government's department for Business Innovation and Skills, which among other shocking facts, suggests that black children in all schools are the most likely to get their A-level grades under-predicted. This of course affects the quality of university that black students attend, perhaps one of the reasons black students are under-represented at Russell Group universities.

It is worth noting that every school I attended from the age of five to 18, in both southern and northern areas of Britain, are private schools that have been ranked "Outstanding" by Ofsted or "excellent" in several categories by the Independent Schools Inspectorate. Indeed, so has Oundle School, where in 2018, a teacher was found to have used overtly racist language, including stating that he did not "want to teach blackies and chinkies in [his] classroom."

I've spoken to black people who've been to all sorts of schools in Britain, including those whose parents were hopeful that upon obtaining a scholarship or bursary to a private school, their children would have a better experience. All suffered some form of racism while at school. Presenting it as a state school problem creates the impression that one can purchase one's way out of racism. By narrowing in on primary and secondary schooling instead of conducting investigations that look at the entirety of Britain's education sector, this perpetual cycle of condemning a few state schools while ignoring the racism that persists throughout many schools in the UK will continue.

Black students are not being left entirely behind, after all, data from the Office for Students suggests that they're more likely to attend university than their white peers. Although when they get to university, they are less likely to get a good degree than their white university mates, more likely to quit and have a relatively high likelihood of experiencing racial harassment on campus. However, what happens to you during your formative years can stick and it is possible that by not doing enough to stamp out racism in primary and secondary schooling, generations of black kids are growing up with significant trauma.

The first sector-wide strategy that could be adopted is ensuring that all those who want to become teachers have to take equality and diversity training while taking an undergraduate or postgraduate teaching qualification.

With that, at least there would be some way of stopping teachers being racist towards pupils, like repeatedly asking black pupils if "English is their first language" or insulting afro-textured hair. Another could be having institutions like Ofsted and the Independent Schools Inspectorate evaluating schools for how they deal with issues of race and racism, particularly in a climate where it seems more and more racist bullying is taking place. We need tangible change now. As we enter a new decade, we need to fight and amplify student stories and concerns so that by 2040 at least, things will have finally changed for black students.

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Opinion: Black parents, trust me, private school won't save your child from racism

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During my first year of primary school, I stood out quite a bit. I was taller than the other kids, the oldest child and the only black pupil in the room. If I got into an argument with another pupil I would be the only one sent into an after school detention.

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'Are private schools serious about tackling racism? I give them a D-' by Hadley Freeman (2020)

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'Are private schools serious about tackling racism? I give them a D-' by Hadley Freeman (2020)

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Can private schools solve racism?
Charlie, by email
This is my first day back at the Guardian after I took two weeks off, although - hoo boy! - it feels more like a decade. Since I last wrote here, there have been global protests about the racist murder of George Floyd. JK Rowling sparked widespread fury when people realised they couldn't cast a silencio spell over her and stop her committing that terrible crime of talking about how female biology has affected her life. And - oh yeah! - we are still living through a global plague.

So a lot has been going on. This may be a radical admission from a journalist, but I pretty much stopped stopped following the news while I was off, for my own sanity. But just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in again. While I was blissfully trying to ignore everything and stop having more sodding opinions, I received an email from my old private school in New York, which reassured the alumnae that, in the wake of the epidemic of killings of black people in the US, there would be "discussions" between the teachers and pupils about "violence against people of colour". Also, the school library is curating an "anti-racism reading list". Alas, the discussions and reading list were not enough and some former students told the New York Times that they had suffered from racial abuse while at the school. Cue further panicky-slash-handwringing emails from the school, culminating in a "plan of action". This included more "diversity training", an "inclusive curriculum" and, last of all, a promise to "review student composition".

British private schools have sent out similar letters and made comparable statements. They are, as the currently popular phrase has it, "doing the work". But are they? Westminster School has said, in response to recent complaints from former students, that it is establishing a "challenging racism committee", and that it will work to "ensure a diverse school community that is truly reflective of the multicultural city in which we live".

I called Westminster, curious as to how it would achieve this diverse and reflective community, given that its fees are in excess of £41k a year for boarders, and more than £28k for day students. It could not share that information, but it reminded me it had formed the challenging racism committee "which will look at the diversity of both the staff and pupils". When I asked whether this would just be about racial diversity or also other forms too, I was told to ask again later in the year.

According to the Independent Schools 2020 census, the percentage of "minority ethnic" students in the UK's private schools is almost the same as in the state sector - 34.9% versus 33%. But "minority ethnic" is a big umbrella. I occasionally give talks at private and state schools, and while the ethnic minority kids in the latter are generally black and Asian inner-city children, in the private schools they are largely wealthy foreign students. This is not a surprise, given how much private schools cost, but it does highlight how elite institutions and corporations, in their rush to score woke points with as little cost to themselves as possible, conveniently ignore the crucial factor of social class.

Gender and ethnicity are important, but social class remains the biggest factor in determining the quality and length of a person's life in this country, so it should play a bigger part than it does in the vogue for identity politics, not least because race and class intersect so much. If private schools were really serious about diversity, they would expand scholarships for working-class kids of all backgrounds. At the very least, they would let state schools use their facilities; I once visited a state school in the morning that didn't even have a library, and then a private one in the afternoon that had a screening room. Instead, they issue press releases about "discussions" and reading lists. It boggles the brain that these schools have charitable status in the UK.

I get a lot of guff in my inbox, from fashion brands avowing how anti-racist they are despite never featuring black models in the shows, to Instagram influencers fighting oppression one sexy selfie at a time. But the schools issue is more important, given what an enormously unfair advantage private schools give to a child's long-term prospects and it is gross - if entirely predictable - how little the schools are willing to try to change to stop entrenching inequality. As efforts go, I give this a D-. More work needed, buckos.

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Are private schools serious about tackling racism? I give them a D-

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Can private schools solve racism? Charlie, by email This is my first day back at the Guardian after I took two weeks off, although - hoo boy! - it feels more like a decade. Since I last wrote here, there have been global protests about the racist murder of George Floyd.

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'Diane Abbott labelled a 'sell-out' for sending her son to private school as Labour reshuffle fall-out continues' by Matt Dathan (2016)

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'Diane Abbott labelled a 'sell-out' for sending her son to private school as Labour reshuffle fall-out continues' by Matt Dathan (2016)

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Diane Abbott has been labelled a "sell-out" for sending her son to a private school after she hit out at shadow ministers for resigning from the Shadow Cabinet in protest at Jeremy Corbyn's reshuffle.

She suggested that the sacked Shadow Culture Secretary Michael Dugher and Jonathan Reynolds, who quit the frontbench on Wednesday, were removed by Mr Corbyn because they were career politicians who had no experience outside of Westminster.

Mr Reynolds responded immediately, accusing Ms Abbott of hypocrisy over her decision to send her son to a fee-paying school and telling her that he was a trainee solicitor before he became an MP in 2010.

Speaking on Newsnight, Ms Abbott said: "If you look at Jonathan Reynolds, if you look at Mr [Michael] Dugher, if you look at some of these others, what do they have in common? They are all former special advisers,

"And what you are seeing is people who came up under a certain system.

"You did politics at university, you became a special adviser, you became an MP, you became a minister, who are rightfully upset, because Jeremy has brought a whole lot of new energy and new people into politics."

Stephen Doughty, who also resigned from the frontbench in protest at the sacking of Pat McFadden, the shadow Europe minister, tweeted:

It comes after the Labour leadership was heavily criticised for its handling of the reshuffle, which became the longest reshuffles in living memory and was described as "divisive" and "petty".

Mr Corbyn was accused of widening the north-south divide in the party by side-lining northern MPs such as Mr Dugher and Mr McFadden and promoting the likes of Emily Thornberry, whose constituency neighbours his north Islington seat.

He also faced controversy after it emerged Ms Thornberry - an anti-Trident MP who was appointed Shadow Defence Secretary - accepted donations from a law firm facing disciplinary action over its role in an inquiry into allegations of murder and torture by British soldiers.

Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell dismissed the criticisms and labelled the three shadow ministers who resigned as being drawn from a "narrow right-wing clique".

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Diane Abbott has been labelled a 'sell-out' for sending son to private school

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Diane Abbott has been labelled a "sell-out" for sending her son to a private school after she hit out at shadow ministers for resigning from the Shadow Cabinet in protest at Jeremy Corbyn's reshuffle.

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'Why Britain's private schools are such a social problem' by Francis Green (2019)

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'Why Britain's private schools are such a social problem' by Francis Green (2019)

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Private schools tend to be richly resourced and expensive, so those children lucky enough to attend them normally receive a good education, with academic advantages enhanced by a range of extra-curricular activities. But while this might be great for private pupils these schools pose a serious problem for Britain's education system and society.

Britain's private schools are very socially exclusive and there is no sign that attempts to mitigate this exclusivity through means-tested bursaries are working. The scale of bursaries is far too small to make a difference - just 1% of children go for free.

The exclusivity stems from the enormous price tag of private schooling. Fees average £17,200 a year per child, and are much higher for boarding schools. Some question whether the schools offer much in return for this parental investment: "Let them waste their money" writes one contributor to the Dadsnet internet forum - convinced from his experience that the quality of a private education is nothing special. But research indicates otherwise.

Large-scale studies confirm the clear academic advantages to be gained from going to a private school in Britain. This holds true, even after allowing for children's prior abilities and for the fact that children tend to come from affluent family backgrounds. At each stage of education the progress made by the privately educated is modestly but significantly above that of state-educated children on average.

Better jobs with more money

Privately educated children also enjoy the many extra-curricular activities on offer. And they get all the guidance and advice they need to "work the system" in order to improve their chances of getting into a top university. The privately educated are twice as likely as similar state-educated children to achieve a place at one of Britain's elite universities.

For fee-paying parents, nothing is guaranteed. But there is no doubt that their children's life chances are bettered when they spend a part of their wealth in this way.

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This private advantage in Britain is unusual. In many other countries where there are an appreciable number of private schools, the fees - and the resource gaps between the private and state schools - are far lower. With the exception of some developing countries, you do not find much evidence of children at fee-paying schools doing notably better academically than other children.

Educational advantages naturally give Britain's privately educated a huge helping hand in the labour market. Put bluntly, going to a private school gets you a job with higher pay. How high depends on age, gender and time period. Some estimates of the premium are as much as 35%.

Unfair and unequal

Only 9% of the overall population in the UK are privately educated, but they occupy an especially high proportion when it comes to positions of public influence: a third of MPs and top business executives, half of cabinet members and newspaper editors, three-quarters of judges -- the list goes on. This disproportionate influence on society detracts from Britain's democracy.

Part of what comes with a private education is "positional". It enables pupils to jump the queue for many of the high-status rungs of British society. Of course, this is privately advantageous, but socially it is of little overall value if others are held back.

This is enormously unjust in a world where education is so important to people's life chances. Indeed, 63% of those recently contacted in a poll agreed it was unfair that "some people with a lot of money get a better education and life chances for their children by paying for a private school". Only 18% disagreed.

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A good deal of private school spending, especially by the wealthier schools, is plainly extravagant: "Luxury country clubs with quite a nice school attached," is how one journalist describes what private schools have become. Some of the resources devoted to Britain's elites would go a lot further if directed instead to the educational needs of children from low-income families.

In our recent book Engines of Privilege the historian David Kynaston and I state the case for reforming these schools. Some proposals we set out would discourage parents - reducing the advantages of paying for private education. Other proposals would seek to partially integrate the private and state sectors to help change the social composition of private schools. Either type of approach would make a real difference.

Ultimately though, making these schools available to a wider and more representative population and making education less unequal is critical for the better functioning of society. Though such a move will not be easy, as there are vested interests capable of blocking policy changes. But as our book shows, serious reform is possible if there is sufficient political will.

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Why Britain's private schools are such a social problem

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Private schools tend to be richly resourced and expensive, so those children lucky enough to attend them normally receive a good education, with academic advantages enhanced by a range of extra-curricular activities. But while this might be great for private pupils these schools pose a serious problem for Britain's education system and society.

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'Private school education may damage students' social and emotional development, study suggests' - University of York (2020)

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'Private school education may damage students' social and emotional development, study suggests' - University of York (2020)

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Posted on 25 June 2020

Privately educated students are more likely to experience bullying, start drinking earlier and take more risks than their state school counterparts, a new study has found.

The study, led by the University of York, looked at whether going to private school benefitted young people's emotional and social development, once family background and prior educational achievement had been taken into account.

The researchers found that attending a private school was of little benefit and actually had a negative impact on some aspects of development.

While private school children are less likely to have behavioural problems, the study found they are 15% more likely to experience bullying over course of secondary school education; 24% more likely to take risks, and are younger when they have their first alcoholic drink, than students attending state schools.
Educational resources
In the UK, seven per cent of secondary school children are privately educated. In 2019, tuition fees cost an average of £18,000 per year for day students or £35,000 for boarders. In the same year, the median household income in the UK was £28,400.

Lead author of the study, Professor Sophie von Stumm, from the Department of Education at the University of York, said: "Private schools expend greater educational resources than state schools for their pupils, including higher-qualified teachers and better pastoral care. Because of this difference in support, we expected much more positive outcomes for private school students - we thought that they would exceed their state-school peers in areas such as volunteering, practicing safe sex and self-control, which require being considerate of others and the consequences of actions.

"In fact we found little difference between private and state school students in these areas and when it came to bullying, risk taking and early consumption of alcohol, private school students fared worse.

"Our study adds to a growing body of evidence that many of the alleged benefits boasted by private schools are actually a product of their selective intake of students rather than the value that the schools add.

"Parents naturally want the best for their children, but for those who would struggle with the astronomical fees, our message is not to feel guilty - private school is not a necessity."
Wellbeing across adolescence
The study looked at data from 2,682 individuals who took part in a large cohort study -- 2,413 attended state schools and 269 attended private schools.

The researchers analysed data on family background and prior educational achievements as well as information gathered from questionnaires (conducted with participants between the ages of 12 and 21) on factors including wellbeing, peer victimisation, sexual behaviour, substance use and anti-social behaviour.

The findings of the study suggest that, when it comes to overall wellbeing across adolescence, private and state school students do not differ.
Privileged family background
Professor von Stumm added: "In the wider population we often assume that a private education will have a very positive impact on a child's development. Our study suggests we have unrealistic expectations of the virtues of a private education, when in reality many of its benefits result from the legacy of a privileged family background.

"Interrogating the role of private schools in Britain is important because we live in a country where the majority of leaders in politics, business and in the arts were privately educated."

About this research

Does private education make nicer people? The influence of school type on social-emotional development is published in Child Psychology and Psychiatry.

Explore more of our research.

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Private school education may damage students' social and emotional development, study suggests

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Posted on 25 June 2020 Privately educated students are more likely to experience bullying, start drinking earlier and take more risks than their state school counterparts, a new study has found. The study, led by the University of York, looked at whether going to private school benefitted young people's emotional and social development, once family background and prior educational achievement had been taken into account.

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'Private Schools Have Become Truly Obscene' by Caitlin Flannagan, The Atlantic (2021)

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'Private Schools Have Become Truly Obscene' by Caitlin Flannagan, The Atlantic (2021)

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Elite schools breed entitlement, entrench inequality-and then pretend to be engines of social change.

Photo illustrations by Oliver Munday and Arsh Raziuddin; renderings by Justin Metz This article was published online on March 11, 2021. Updated at 7:42 p.m. ET on March 26, 2021.
Dalton is one of the most selective private schools in Manhattan, in part because it knows the answer to an important question: What do hedge-funders want?

They want what no one else has. At Dalton, that means an "archaeologist in residence," a teaching kitchen, a rooftop greenhouse, and a theater proscenium lovingly restored after it was "destroyed by a previous renovation."

"Next it'll be a heliport," said a member of the local land-use committee after the school's most recent remodel, which added two floors-and 12,000 square feet-to one of its four buildings, in order to better prepare students "for the exciting world they will inherit." Today Dalton; tomorrow the world itself.

So it was a misstep when Jim Best, the head of school-relatively new, and with a salary of $700,000-said that Dalton parents couldn't have something they wanted. The school would not hold in-person classes in the fall. This might have gone over better if the other elite Manhattan schools were doing the same. But Trinity was opening. Ditto the fearsome girls' schools: Brearley, Nightingale-Bamford, Chapin, Spence.

How long could the Dalton parent-the $54,000-a-kid Dalton parent-watch her children slip behind their co-equals? More to the point, how long could she be expected to open The New York Times and see articles about one of the coronavirus pandemic's most savage inequalities: that private schools were allowed to open when so many public schools were closed, their students withering in front of computer screens and suffering all manner of neglect?

The Dalton parent is not supposed to be on the wrong side of a savage inequality. She is supposed to care about savage inequalities; she is supposed to murmur sympathetically about savage inequalities while scanning the news, her gentle concern muffled by the jet-engine roar of her morning blowout. But she isn't supposed to fall victim to one.

In early October, stern emails began arriving in Best's inbox. A group of 20 physicians with children at the school wrote that they were "frustrated and confused and better hope to understand the school's thought processes behind the virtual model it has adopted." This was not a group with a high tolerance for frustration. "Please tell us what are the criteria for re-opening fully in person," they wrote. And they dropped heavy artillery: "From our understanding, several of our peer schools are not just surviving but thriving."

Shortly after the physicians weighed in, more than 70 parents with children at the lower school signed a petition asking for the school to open. "Our children are sad, confused and isolated," they wrote, as though describing the charges of a Victorian orphanage. They were questioning why "everyone around them gets to go to school when they do not."

Parents at elite private schools sometimes grumble about taking nothing from public schools yet having to support them via their tax dollars. But the reverse proposition is a more compelling argument. Why should public-school parents-why should anyone-be expected to support private schools? Exeter has 1,100 students and a $1.3 billion endowment. Andover, which has 1,150 students, is on track to take in $400 million in its current capital campaign. And all of this cash, glorious cash, comes pouring into the countinghouse 100 percent tax-free.
Read: Are private schools immoral? An interview with Nikole Hannah-Jones
These schools surround kids who have every possible advantage with a literal embarrassment of riches-and then their graduates hoover up spots in the best colleges. Less than 2 percent of the nation's students attend so-called independent schools. But 24 percent of Yale's class of 2024 attended an independent school. At Princeton, that figure is 25 percent. At Brown and Dartmouth, it is higher still: 29 percent.

The numbers are even more astonishing when you consider that they're not distributed evenly across the country's more than 1,600 independent schools but are concentrated in the most exclusive ones-and these are our focus here. In the past five years, Dalton has sent about a third of its graduates to the Ivy League. Ditto the Spence School. Harvard-Westlake, in Los Angeles, sent 45 kids to Harvard alone. Noble and Greenough School, in Massachusetts, did even better: 50 kids went on to Harvard.

However unintentionally, these schools pass on the values of our ruling class-chiefly, that a certain cutthroat approach to life is rewarded. True, they salve their consciences with generous financial aid. Like Lord and Lady Bountiful, the administrators page through the applications of the nonwealthy, deciding whom to favor with an opportunity to slip through the golden doors and have their life change forever.

But what makes these schools truly ludicrous is their recent insistence that they are engines of equity and even "inclusivity." A $50,000-a-year school can't be anything but a very expensive consumer product for the rich. If these schools really care about equity, all they need to do is get a chain and a padlock and close up shop.

I've been following these schools for many years, in part because I once taught at one. Before I got that job, I had no idea this type of education existed.

In very small classes, we read very good books and pressed the students to think deeply about the words on the page. A lesson plan was not a list of points for the teacher to make; it was a set of questions. Even better: a single question. I always joked that the perfect lesson plan would have been to wait until the students had assembled in the classroom, throw in a copy of The Iliad, and go to lunch. By senior year, it might have actually worked. By then, they knew what we were teaching them to do. "The seventh grader says Macbeth is weird," my department chair told me once. "The 12th grader says Macbeth is ambitious." Once students could make discernments like that, it was time for college.

In each department, there was one old black clunker of a phone, but it hardly ever rang. Very rarely, a mother might call to fret about her kid a bit, and you'd lean against the file cabinet muttering encouragement while looking at your colleagues with an expression that said, Can you believe this shit? It was then an all-boys school. We didn't have feelings and mothers. We had hard work and athletics. The idea was: Cut the cord! The idea was: We'll take it from here.

But my very first year, I came into the crosshairs of a mother who still flashes through my nightmares. Her kid was a strong student-a solid, thorough student-but he was also aggressive and mean. Furthermore, I felt that his concerns did not lie with the muses and poets.

One day I gave him an A- on a creative-writing assignment. Soon after, the mom called, and she was pissed. I explained that this grade wouldn't lower his average, but she didn't care. She wanted to come to the school with her husband and meet with me. I assumed that I wouldn't have to agree to such a preposterous request but it turned out that I did. For 45 horrible minutes I sat in a borrowed office with the father (clearly mortified) and the mother (rageful) discussing the merits of this 10th grader's poem, each of us locked into the same kind of intractable positions (they wanted me to change the grade; I wanted them to drop dead) that led to the fall of Saigon. They were coming in with force, and I wouldn't budge.
Things were shifting in the world of private schools. Parents were gaining an ugly new sense of power.
The next year, I returned to school, took my class lists out of my mailbox, and discovered that I had the kid again. I raced to the division head and asked if I could move him to another section (something his parents were surely trying to do themselves), but no-go. Day after day, he sat solidly in his seat, pumping out his excellent close readings and in-class writing. One day, however, he didn't meet the mark, and earned another A-. I handed back the essays, and headed to the English-department office for some R&R. Not 10 minutes later the phone rang-it was the mother! Complaining about the grade! How was this possible? I'd just handed him the essay. As she carped away, an image materialized before me: the campus payphone, which was bolted to the side of an academic building, and rarely used. I hurried off the call.

"That little fucker called his mother from the payphone!" I said to my friend.

"What a loser !" she said supportively. (There were older teachers who mentored us, and who never called their students "fuckers" or "losers." But their lessons took a few years to sink in.)

Yet again I had to meet with the parents. Back to the borrowed office, back to the miserable dad and the steaming mother. But I knew I had graded the paper fairly. Once again they left unhappy.

Here's how you know that this private-school story is a quarter century old: The school had my back. When I talk to today's private-school teachers, they no longer feel so unilaterally supported. Many schools have administrators whose job it is to soothe parents-but who often suggest to teachers how they can help with that task. If the mom had called the brass (which I'm sure she did), no one told me about it. Nor did anyone at the school inform me that these parents were major donors. In those days there was an understanding that the teachers kept the kids in line, and the administrators kept the parents in line.

But the meeting was also notable because of how unusual it was for parents to argue about grades. Back then parents still trusted schools like ours. They understood that-with some rare exceptions (see above)-we had a deep affection for these boys, cut them a break when they needed one, and found ways to nudge their grades upward at the end of each year, so that their work was rewarded. There was no better feeling than writing a college recommendation for a kid and a few months later having him burst into your office with the magic words: "I got in!"

I left the school in the mid-1990s, and in my final weeks, another strange thing happened, but to a different teacher. A father was so angry about his son's French grade that he demanded an audit, with the teacher reading out the boy's marks from her grade book while Dad angrily punched the numbers into his son's graphing calculator. That also seemed like something she should not have had to do, but things were shifting in the world of private schools. Parents were gaining an ugly new sense of power.

It was much easier to laugh at private-school parents before I became one. After teaching for seven years, I had seen what was possible at the secondary-school level, and I was determined to get that kind of education for my own children, whatever the cost. But it wasn't until I changed teams-from private-school teacher to private-school parent-that I really appreciated how overwrought these places were.
Read: Why I'm a public-school teacher but a private-school parent
Michael Thompson's 2005 book, Understanding Independent School Parents (co-written with Alison Fox Mazzola), gave me a clearer insight into the many dynamics of private schooling. Thompson, a psychologist, has visited or consulted at some 800 of these schools. In his view, high-powered parents don't realize that they're coming in like a ton of bricks, expecting to talk to a fifth-grade teacher the same way they talk to their own junior employees.

"The relationship between independent school parents and their children's teachers has only grown more intense," Thompson wrote in the introduction. "Administrators and teachers are spending more time focused on the demands and concerns of parents than they ever did in the past."

A decade and a half later, the problem has gotten worse-so much so that Thompson is writing a new book, this time with Robert Evans, another psychologist. "What's changed in the last few years is the relentlessness of parents," Evans told me. "For the most part, they're not abusive; it's that they just won't let up. Many of them cannot let go of their fears that somehow their child is being left behind." They want constant reassurance.

By the time their kids get to the upper grades, parents want teachers, coaches, and counselors entirely focused on helping them create a transcript that Harvard can't resist. "This kind of parent has an idea of the outcome they want; in their work life they can get it," Evans told me. "They're surrounded by employees; they can delegate things to their staff." In their eyes, teachers are staff. But the teachers don't work for them.

Why do these parents need so much reassurance? They "are finding that it's harder and harder to get their children through the eye of the needle"-admitted into the best programs, all the way from kindergarten to college. But it's more than that. The parents have a sense that their kids will be emerging into a bleaker landscape than they did. The brutal, winner-take-all economy won't come for them-they've been grandfathered in. But they fear that it's coming for their children, and that even a good education might not secure them a professional-class career.
Caitlin Flanagan: What the college-admissions scandal reveals
"Half of lawyers say their income doesn't justify the tuition they spent on their degrees," Evans told me. Getting into a top medical school has become shockingly difficult; in 2018, U.S. News & World Report found that the average admission rate among 118 ranked medical schools was 6.8 percent. For the very best ones? The rate is 2.4 percent.
"Get hold of yourselves," the director of college counseling at Sidwell Friends wrote to parents.
Daniel Markovits, a professor at Yale Law School, coined the term meritocracy trap-a system that rewards an ever-growing share of society's riches to an ever-shrinking pool of winners. "Today's meritocrats still claim to get ahead through talent and effort, using means open to anyone," he has written in these pages. "In practice, however, meritocracy now excludes everyone outside of a narrow elite." This is a system that screws the poor, hollows out the middle class, and turns rich kids into exhausted, anxious, and maximally stressed-out adolescents who believe their future depends on getting into one of a very small group of colleges that routinely reject upwards of 90 percent of their applicants.

Pediatricians who see a lot of these kids tell me that they're starting to crack, and that some parents try to help their kids keep it together by asking doctors for study drugs or even sleeping pills. The feeling that the child isn't doing as well as she could-combined with the knowledge that with the requisite documentation, students can take their SATs and ACTs untimed-often has Mom calling her friends, locating the right educational psychologist, and subjecting the teenager to a battery of tests. The doctor almost always finds something.
From the September 2019 issue: Daniel Markovits on how meritocracy harms everyone
The one thing the parents will not do is consider that perhaps this high-pressure school is itself the problem. The student must stay on track, take the drugs, inform her teachers of the disabilities that come "under her portfolio," and keep her eyes on Stanford.

But the parents are also cracking up-and perhaps they, too, should be medicated. Two years ago, their anxieties led a group of them to rise up in an astonishing act of insurrection, storming a citadel of thwarted desire and presumed chicanery in Washington, D.C.: the college-counseling office of Sidwell Friends.

When a private school vaults over the rest of the pack, it is often because the school has attracted a famous parent, someone respected enough that the enrollment seems to be an endorsement. At Sidwell Friends, a Quaker school in Washington, D.C., there were four such parents: Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Barack and Michelle Obama. (Richard Nixon also sent his daughters to the school, inciting no stampede. But today he would provide a little diversity to the parent body: He was an actual Quaker.)

The school is now so flush that its campus is a sort of Saks Fifth Avenue of Quakerism. Forget having Meeting in the smelly old gym. Now there is a meetinghouse of sumptuous plainness, created out of materials so good and simple and repurposed and expensive that surely only virtue and mercy will follow its benefactors all the days of their lives. The building's citation by the American Institute of Architects notes that the interior is lined with "oak from long-unused Maryland barns" and the exterior is "clad with black locust harvested from a single source in New Jersey."

Like all Quaker schools, Sidwell aims to help children listen for and respond to the still, small voice of God. But it's safe to say the contemporary Sidwell parent cares more about college admissions than about Quakerism. And if she tells you the two go hand in hand, then she doesn't really understand college admissions (or, perhaps, Quakerism).
Read: Private schools are becoming more elite
At this point there is no answer to the question "How do you get your kid into Sidwell?" Nobody knows. The best strategy might be to launch an improbable run for United States president and then-if successful-turn in the application and hope for the best.

Quakerism provides a kind of seawall, protecting its followers from the corrupting tides of money and power. But like all seawalls, it can be breached. Two years ago, parents at Sidwell Friends finally slipped the surly bonds of decent behavior and went wild. Some parents of the class of 2019, feeling the pressure of the college-admissions cycle, initiated a campaign of intimidation, surveillance, lurking on campus, and sabotage that bubbled up into the press and revealed Sidwell for what it had become. The still, small voice of God is no match for the psychic scream of Bethesda.

"Get hold of yourselves," a shaken Patrick Gallagher-then the director of the college-counseling office-wrote to the 12th-grade parents in a December email. You could tell what these people must have been up to by the new policies that Gallagher outlined. They included: not placing calls from blocked numbers or sending anonymous letters; not meeting with counselors to spread gossip about other students; not secretly recording counselors' conversations.

The most astonishing of Gallagher's admonitions was this: "While I often arrive at the office well before 8:00 a.m., that does not mean a parent should ever be waiting for me in the vestibule, parking lot, or outside my office door." This is what prosecutors in murder cases call "lying in wait."
Read: High drama inside D.C.'s most elite private school
Gallagher's email made it clear that parents had been trying to thwart others' college prospects in order to enhance their own children's odds. He sent his missive shortly before winter break, which in private schools is the equivalent of a Friday news dump. It was the kind of school communication that simultaneously put bad actors on notice and reassured the other parents that evil was not triumphing. Inevitably, every parent in the senior class was freaked out that their own children might have been targeted.

After the break, the school's head, Bryan Garman, sent a follow-up email reiterating the policies Gallagher had announced. He also reminded parents that the college counselors would not "respond to any inquiry for student records" for other people's kids. The parents' behavior, Garman said, had become "increasingly intense and inappropriate" and had included "the verbal assault of employees." But these transgressions were placed within a therapeutic context of acceptance and nonjudgment. College admissions, he wrote, "can stretch the patience and emotional capacity of parents." (If you want to know if you're rich, try behaving badly and see if someone in authority will apologize for stretching your patience and emotional capacity.) By the end of the school year, two of Sidwell's three college counselors had quit.

College admissions is one of the few situations in which rich people are forced to scramble for a scarce resource. What logic had led them to believe that it would help to antagonize the college counselors? Driven mad by the looming prospect of a Williams rejection, they had lost all reason.

Private schools regularly make decisions that parents don't understand. Like ancient peoples, the parents try to make sense of the clues. They decide that college admissions must be the god of private school-wrong-or that the god must be AP scores, or sports, or institutional reputation. Wrong, wrong, and wrong.

The god of private school is money.

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At an independent school, there are no tax dollars, no municipal bonds, no petitions demanding additional funding for the district. Everything seen and unseen was paid for with funds the school raised itself: every blade of grass, smartboard, academic building, office hour, soccer ball, school psychologist, new paint job, and historic chapel with stained-glass windows spilling colored light onto honeyed pews.

Tuition dollars typically cover some, but not all, of the school's operating expenses. That's what they tell you, anyway, and they always have a pie chart to prove it. No matter which school, where it is located, or how rich the clientele, the administrators are always chasing the dragon of this "shortfall." Personally, I've come to doubt the whole premise. But it is apparently the best way to facilitate the shakedown called annual giving, the once-a-year fundraiser where new parents still gasping from the first payment on the $50,000 tuition find out that more is expected from them. The bread and butter of these schools is the two-career couple who care greatly about their children's education and can afford it, but not easily.

The really big money comes in through the capital campaigns. These are fundraising events dedicated to financing a major school project: paving the locker rooms with gold coins, annexing Slovakia, putting out a hit on a rival headmaster. The campaign gets some cockamamie name-"Imagine the Future" or "Quid Pro Quo"-and lasts several years. There has never in history been a private-school family that slid in and out of the institution without overlapping with one of these campaigns.

Consider Choate Rosemary Hall, in Connecticut, which in 2006 announced the "public phase" of its capital campaign "An Opportunity to Lead." The goal was $200 million-although when the campaign was grandly announced in November of that year, it turned out that the school had already earned more than $100 million during a two-year period of "silent," preliminary fundraising. The gifts included $12 million from the Walton family; $20 million from Herbert V. Kohler Jr., of the plumbing dynasty; and $6 million from a woman who had graduated from Rosemary Hall in 1927.

Two years after the campaign began, the worldwide financial crisis hit. That didn't slow down the campaign, which would eventually bring in $217 million. But-as a sign of sound stewardship-the school informed alumni and other concerned members of the community that it had decided to freeze faculty salaries. This was a high school with a total enrollment of 850 students and in seven years it had raised almost $260,000 per student. And still the school wants more. Currently Choate is in the silent phase of its next capital campaign; in 2019, the school stated that its goal was to raise $300 million.

What forms of payment will these schools accept? You name it. No matter what your assets, they'll find a way to cash them out for you. The Spence School, in New York City, notes that you can make a donation by credit card, by check, or by a gift of securities-shares of stocks or mutual funds. You can designate money for the school in your will, or donate funds from your retirement plan, or make the school a beneficiary of your life-insurance plan, or form a charitable trust.

The inescapable truth is that money guides all sorts of decisions at these schools. Michael Thompson has observed that schools are investing more and more in the "parent-school relationship," which is excellent from the standpoint of fundraising but not necessarily from that of schooling.

Over the years, I've talked with many private-school kids who feel that there is a separate set of rules for the children of huge donors. And in my opinion, they're absolutely right. Private-school donations are the result of carefully developed personal relationships between the top employees at the school and individual donors. It's not unreasonable for a big donor to expect preferential treatment for his or her child. And it's not unusual for him to get it.

Last summer I spoke with a graduate of Princeton's class of 2020, Liam O'Connor, who had come to Princeton from a public school in the town of Wyoming, Delaware. He chose the prestigious college because, "out of all of the places I applied to, it came out as the cheapest one." Cheaper, even, than the University of Delaware, to which he would have paid in-state tuition.

In high school, O'Connor had spent two summers fulfilling his state-mandated physical-education requirement so that he could squeeze in more science classes during the school year. Even so, when he got to Princeton he found that he was not nearly as prepared as the private-school kids, as well as those who had come from a select group of admissions-based public high schools. "It was like I was given a pair of binoculars, and I could see that there were many people far ahead of me," he told me.

O'Connor wrote a series of articles in The Daily Princetonian about the advantages that these students have at the university. Whereas the math curriculum at most American high schools tops out at Calculus I, he reported, "multivariable calculus and linear algebra-subjects normally reserved for college sophomores or juniors-are widespread among moneyed high schools." Andover offers organic chemistry, as do several other top private schools.

All of this preparation doesn't just help private-school kids get into elite colleges; it allows them to dominate once they get there. Over the past decade, O'Connor reported, two-thirds of Princeton's Rhodes Scholars (excluding international students) came from private schools. So did more than half of the winners of the prestigious Sachs Scholarship, which provides two graduating students the opportunity to work, study, or travel abroad.* Forty-seven percent of the winners of "class legacy prizes"-academic awards given to students in each class-attended private schools. This is why wealthy parents think it's life-and-death to get their kids into the right prep school-because they know that the winners keep winning.

Parents are obsessed with finding out which are the feeder schools to the best colleges. College counselors tell parents that times have changed and there are no longer schools that lead directly to one elite college or another. But they aren't being fully honest about that.

As a high-school senior, Sai To Yeung hadn't known many students who had gone on to highly competitive colleges, but he decided to "dream big" and was thrilled when he got into Harvard. He felt that the admissions process needed to be demystified. He told me that he'd decided to bring "order out of chaos" and tracked down information on which schools had sent students to three colleges: Harvard, Princeton, and MIT. I asked him how he had obtained it; he said he couldn't reveal his method. Liam O'Connor double-checked much of Yeung's data for Princeton and found that, except for "a few mistakes," the information was correct.

The result of Yeung's research is a website called PolarisList. Looking over the data for Princeton's classes of 2015 through 2018 is bracing. The list of sending schools is dominated by highly selective magnet schools, public schools in wealthy areas, and famous prep schools: the Lawrenceville School, Exeter, Delbarton, Andover, Deerfield Academy. Among the top 25 feeders to Princeton, only three are public schools where 15 percent or more of the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.

If you went to Lawrenceville, a boarding school not far from Princeton and the university's top sending school, your chances of going to Princeton were almost seven times greater than if you went to Stuyvesant High School, an ultra-selective public school in New York City and itself a top Princeton feeder, where 45 percent of the kids qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. But compared with an average American public school? You don't want to know.

Here is another big number that really needs to be investigated: More than 50 percent of the low-income Black students at elite colleges attended top private schools, according to Anthony Abraham Jack, the author of The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges Are Failing Disadvantaged Students. This means that these schools, which collectively educate a tiny proportion of Black teenagers, have a huge influence on which of these kids get to attend the best colleges. To some in education, this is a cause for celebration-the old route to social and professional success has within it some dedicated lanes for Black children from low-income families. To others, it is a cause for concern-if these children want to attend an elite college, their best bet by far is to spend their adolescence in a school where the experience of being Black is, for many, a painful one.

As part of last summer's protests, Black students and alumni of certain private schools began a powerful Instagram campaign in which they anonymously described racist encounters. Most of the posts detail recent experiences, but the older ones are often the most haunting. One post, by a man who graduated from Exeter in 1984, caught my attention. "I remember just minding my own business, a Black boy strolling through the gym on a Saturday afternoon. A gymnast was performing, and I could see her gracefully leap through the air, doing all kinds of motions I found very curious." A white woman came up to him and told him to mind his own business. "She implied that I was not appreciating an athletic feat, but simply ogling at a young white girl.

"To this day," he wrote, "I think of her shrill, demeaning voice when I see a gymnast perform on TV, even if that gymnast is Simone Biles."

Among the posts from more recent students, what's striking is that several kinds of experiences were related over and over: the expectation that Black kids would be excellent athletes (and possibly weaker students); insulting assumptions about Black students' family backgrounds; teachers repeatedly confusing the names of Black students; other students constantly reaching out and touching Black girls' hair; and non-Black students using the N‑word. Read collectively, these posts are a damning statement about the schools.

Last summer, I spoke with Saidah Belo-Osagie, a graduate of Spence's class of 2014, who is Black. The school had put her on a straight path to the things she wants most in life: She went to Penn, where she realized she had a passion for television and movies. Now that is her field. In 2018, she worked on When They See Us, and got to watch Ava DuVernay direct a scene-someone who is telling exactly the kinds of stories she wants to tell, and doing it at the highest level.

We talked for more than an hour, and Belo-Osagie spoke fondly of friends she'd made at Spence and teachers who'd inspired her. But toward the end of the interview, I asked if there had been any negative aspects to the experience. She said that in all the prep-school diversity-and-inclusion programs, "there's always this preface of 'Okay, we're now welcoming you to the majority, where you should be'-with the white people, so to speak." But "inherently within that, you are sacrificing who you are as a person-and it's not like that would ever happen on the opposite end." There had been costs to going to Spence. One of those, she now realizes, was "sacrificing my Blackness."

Dalton has always considered itself progressive in every sense of the word, and it has long been regarded as a leader among private schools in addressing the concerns of its Black students. But the complaints expressed on the Black at Dalton Instagram account could not have been a surprise.

Over the summer, Jim Best, the school head, announced that he had "committed Dalton to becoming a visibly, vocally, structurally anti-racist institution." He issued plans for making this transformation. But the teachers had their own ideas.

In December, a document that 120 faculty and staff members had signed over the summer became public. It outlined a list of proposals: Half of all donations would have to be contributed to New York public schools if Dalton's demographics did not match the city's by 2025; the school would have to employ a total of 12 diversity officers (roughly one for every 100 students); all students would be required to take classes on Black liberation; and all adults at the school, including parent volunteers, would be required to complete annual anti-racist training. Tracked courses would have to be eliminated if Black students did not reach full parity by 2023.
The parents had demands, including an immediate halt to curriculum changes.
Private-school parents have become so terrified of being called out as racists that they will say nothing on the record about their feelings regarding their schools' sudden embrace of new practices. They have chosen, instead, anonymous letters and press leaks. In December, someone from the Dalton community leaked the teachers' list to Scott Johnston, who writes often about elite education. He published it on his website, The Naked Dollar, where it got enormous traction. The Wall Street Journal asked him to write an opinion piece, and he did-it ran under the attention-grabbing headline "Revolution Consumes New York's Elite Dalton School."

Best wrote to parents saying that the list was not of demands but of "conversation starters." However, a few weeks later, a group of anonymous parents-it's unclear how many-wrote a long, plaintive letter, which was also leaked, complaining about changes that had already taken place.

It's quite clear that over the summer, when schools across the country were thinking deeply about how to reopen and teach students, the Dalton administration was on a crusade to radically transform the school's curriculum and pedagogy.

John McWhorter: Schools must resist destructive anti-racist demands
According to the letter, in science class there have been "racist cop" reenactments, art class has focused on "decentering whiteness," and health class has examined white supremacy. "Love of learning and teaching is now being abandoned in favor of an 'anti-racist curriculum,' " the parents wrote. "Every class this year has had an obsessive focus on race and identity."

The tensions at Dalton are fascinating: Are there enough wealthy white parents willing to pay $54,000 a year to have their kid play the part of Racist Cop in science class (or-the final insult-to have him cast as Racist Cop No. 2)?

The parents had demands of their own, including an immediate halt to curriculum changes. According to Scott Johnston, some board members feel the letter itself is racist, and the school has taken the extraordinary step of scrubbing the names of board members from its website.

The parent letter was gleefully mocked. But these aren't parents in the public-school system; they are consumers of a luxury product. If they are unhappy, they won't just write anonymous letters. They'll let the school know the old-fashioned way: by cutting down on their donations. Money is how rich people express their deepest feelings.
In a just society, an education wouldn't be a luxury item.
Over the summer, once Manhattan's private-school families had fled the city for their houses in the Hamptons-after they had called Citarella for a delivery, and told the gardeners to open up the pool and the cleaning women to air out the bedrooms-many of them settled down to read White Fragility (or at least to read about White Fragility). But it's one thing to feel chastened in the Hamptons; it's another to come back to the city and have your child casually ask if you're a white supremacist.

At Harvard-Westlake School-where I taught so long ago and from which one of my sons graduated-some faculty members have adopted a practice that has become common in colleges: acknowledging that the campus sits on Native lands. As one middle-school English teacher wrote on her syllabus: "We recognize the Kizh, Tongva, Chumash, Tataviam, Serrano, Cahuilla, Luiseño and other Native peoples as past, present, and future caretakers and stewards of this land. We honor them by also building a relationship with Mother Earth."

An Instagram account called Woke at Harvard-Westlake was created in response to the school's new anti-racist initiatives. One of its posts opines on the fraudulence of these pious acknowledgments, given that the school has pulled yet another fast one on Mother Earth. It has purchased even more presumably Native land, for $40 million-and is now shaking down parents to help refurbish the acquisition, a private tennis club located a mile from the upper-school campus.

Writes the administrator of the account:

On the one hand we can laugh at this latest example of HW's comical embrace of Radical Chic. But on the other, our kids are being taught terrible values: that hypocrisy and dishonesty are fine so long as you virtue-signal the right fashionable politics. And that those fashionable politics are basically meaningless-they are just for show, a way to make being privileged and wealthy truly guilt-free.

The problems atthese schools are endemic to their business model. Their existence depends on an unseemly closeness between the wealthiest parents and the most powerful administrators. The current system is devoted to excess-bigger, better, more. The schools compete with one another over programs and campuses; many have such luxurious facilities that they're almost revolting.

The kind of changes that would solve their problems would involve not only limiting the amount of money that individual parents can give, but also accepting that schools don't need to be showplaces. In order to become more equitable, they would have to become less opulent-and risk missing out on a few rich parents. But in their typical way, they want the tennis club and to be regarded as hubs of social change.

In a just society, there wouldn't be a need for these expensive schools, or for private wealth to subsidize something as fundamental as an education. We wouldn't give rich kids and a tiny number of lottery winners an outstanding education while so many poor kids attend failing schools. In a just society, an education wouldn't be a luxury item.

We have become a country with vanishingly few paths out of poverty, or even out of the working class. We've allowed the majority of our public schools to founder, while expensive private schools play an outsize role in determining who gets to claim a coveted spot in the winners' circle. Many schools for the richest American kids have gates and security guards; the message is you are precious to us. Many schools for the poorest kids have metal detectors and police officers; the message is you are a threat to us.

Public-school education-the specific force that has helped generations of Americans transcend the circumstances of their birth-is profoundly, perhaps irreparably, broken. In my own state of California, only half of public-school students are at grade level in reading, and even fewer are in math. When a crisis goes on long enough, it no longer seems like a crisis. It is merely a fact.

Shouldn't the schools that serve poor children be the very best schools we have?

When I started teaching at Harvard School, it had not yet become the world-conquering Harvard-Westlake, with a second campus in the heart of Bel Air. I arrived in 1988 at age 26. There was wealth, but it wasn't as visible. The campus was still a bit ramshackle, with outbuildings tucked into the hillside, some of them left to molder. An academic building leaked so badly during heavy rains that for a week or so we'd all have to squelch down the soaked industrial carpeting in the hallways, leaving wet footprints on the linoleum floors of the classrooms.

I could not have cared less.

In those innocent days, I thought of schools as places of actual transformation. You came in as one person and left as another. In the fall, the Valley heat was intense, and Macbeth was weird. In the spring, the jacaranda trees burst into flower and Macbeth was ambitious. And after that, it was time for the boys to leave. We didn't have anything else to give them.
This article appears in the April 2021 print edition with the headline "Private Schools Are Indefensible." * This article originally stated that two-thirds of the winners of the Sachs Scholarship over the past decade came from private schools. In fact, more than half did.

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Private Schools Have Become Truly Obscene

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Elite schools breed entitlement, entrench inequality-and then pretend to be engines of social change. Photo illustrations by Oliver Munday and Arsh Raziuddin; renderings by Justin Metz This article was published online on March 11, 2021. Updated at 7:42 p.m. ET on March 26, 2021.

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'Critical Whiteness Studies' by Anoop Nayak (2007)

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'Critical Whiteness Studies' by Anoop Nayak (2007)

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'The Road to the Wigan Pier' by George Orwell (1937)

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'The Road to the Wigan Pier' by George Orwell (1937)

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In the 1930s Orwell was sent by a socialist book club to investigate the appalling mass unemployment in the industrial north of England. He went beyond his assignment to investigate the employed as well-"to see the most typical section of the English working class." Foreword by Victor Gollancz.

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In the 1930s Orwell was sent by a socialist book club to investigate the appalling mass unemployment in the industrial north of England. He went beyond his assignment to investigate the employed as well-"to see the most typical section of the English working class." Foreword by Victor Gollancz.

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'White Privilege: The Myth of a Post-Racial Society' by Kalwant Bhopal (2019)

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'White Privilege: The Myth of a Post-Racial Society' by Kalwant Bhopal (2019)

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Why and how do those from black and minority ethnic communities continue to be marginalised? Despite claims that we now live in a post-racial society, race continues to disadvantage those from black and minority ethnic backgrounds.

Kalwant Bhopal explores how neoliberal policy making has increased rather than decreased discrimination faced by those from non-white backgrounds. She also shows how certain types of whiteness are not privileged; Gypsies and Travellers, for example, remain marginalised and disadvantaged in society.

Drawing on topical debates and supported by empirical data, this important book examines the impact of race on wider issues of inequality and difference in society.

Kalwant Bhopal is Professorial Research Fellow and Professor of Education and Social Justice in the Centre for Research on Race and Education at the University of Birmingham. She is visiting Professor at Harvard University at the Graduate School of Education and visiting Professor at King's College London. Her areas of interest and expertise focus on the educational experiences of black and minority ethnic groups as well as Gypsies and Travellers. Her research specifically explores how processes of racism, exclusion and marginalisation operate in predominantly white spaces with a focus on social justice and inclusion.

"Many of the critical analyses of neoliberalism in education have neglected the ways in which neoliberalism as a theory and as a set of policies and practices is deeply connected to racialisation. In White Privilege, Kalwant Bhopal provides us with a clear and powerful analysis of these connections and of why they are so crucial to understand." Michael W. Apple, John Bascom Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Policy Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison

"A lucid straightforward illumination of whiteness and white privilege, as it is currently acted-out in school and society, despite social justice policies. It puts before readers the pervasiveness and meanness of white privilege in education/schooling and society in this neoliberal, non-post-racial era. Timely and deserving of urgent attention." Carl A. Grant, Hoefs Bascom Professor University Wisconsin-Madison and author of Du Bois and Education.

"White Privilege brilliantly dismantles the myth of a post-racial society. It is a 'must-read' for all those concerned about inequalities of race in society." Diane Reay, University of Cambridge

"More than ever, the study of whiteness proves indispensable. Kalwant Bhopal is a voice of reason in a cacophony of fervor. She takes to task the presumptions of post-raciality and defies its pretenders. We will be post-racial in a condition of post-racism. Until then, evidence and ethics are on her side." Zeus Leonardo, University of California, Berkeley, Author of Race Frameworks: A Multidimensional Theory of Racism and Education

"A valuable insight into the complexities and subtleties of modern day racism, the intersection of race and class and the unfinished battle to transcend white hegemony." Peter Tatchell, human rights campaigner

"In this wide-ranging book Bhopal addresses racial inequality in Britain and the United States. She demonstrates how racial inequality is pervasive in British society across sectors, especially education and the labor market, an important perspective for scholars. A great introduction to issues of racial inequality." Natasha Kumar Warikoo, Harvard University, Graduate School of Education.

"Offers a crucial and timely focus on the perpetuation of white privilege in a society that claims to be post-racial, and the continuing disadvantages experienced by black and minority ethnic groups... provides a wealth of data on social, educational and economic inequalities in both the UK and USA where white supremacist hate is increasing. It should be read by policy makers, practitioners and the public to help them realise how white privilege works and disadvantage is perpetuated" Sally Tomlinson, University of Oxford

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White privilege: The myth of a Post-Racial Society

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Why and how do those from black and minority ethnic communities continue to be marginalised? Despite claims that we now live in a post-racial society, race continues to disadvantage those from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. Kalwant Bhopal explores how neoliberal policy making has increased rather than decreased discrimination faced by those from non-white backgrounds.

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'Whiteness: WTF? White Privilege and the Invisible Race' by Tom Nicholas (2020) - basically an overview to Whiteness (not particularly in-depth but useful to those new to the subject!

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'Whiteness: WTF? White Privilege and the Invisible Race' by Tom Nicholas (2020) - basically an overview to Whiteness (not particularly in-depth but useful to those new to the subject!

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Whiteness: WTF? White Privilege and the Invisible Race

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'Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing' by Dr. Joy DeGruy (2005)

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'Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing' by Dr. Joy DeGruy (2005)

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While African Americans managed to emerge from chattel slavery and the oppressive decades that followed with great strength and resiliency, they did not emerge unscathed. Slavery produced centuries of physical, psychological and spiritual injury. Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing lays the groundwork for understanding how the past has influenced the present, and opens up the discussion of how we can use the strengths we have gained to heal.

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Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing

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While African Americans managed to emerge from chattel slavery and the oppressive decades that followed with great strength and resiliency, they did not emerge unscathed. Slavery produced centuries of physical, psychological and spiritual injury.

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'Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome' (In Summary)

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'Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome' (In Summary)

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Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome. How Is It Different From PTSD?  | AJ+ Opinion

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'Living While Black: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Racial Trauma' by Guilaine Kinouani (2021)

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'Living While Black: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Racial Trauma' by Guilaine Kinouani (2021)

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Completing the CAPTCHA proves you are a human and gives you temporary access to the web property.

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'Declarations of Whiteness: the Non-Performativity of Anti-Racism' by Sara Ahmed (2004)

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'Declarations of Whiteness: the Non-Performativity of Anti-Racism' by Sara Ahmed (2004)

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'Unnamed' by Porsha Olayiwola (Spoken Word Poetry)

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'Unnamed' by Porsha Olayiwola (Spoken Word Poetry)

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The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley

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From hustling, drug addiction and armed violence in America's black ghettos Malcolm X turned, in a dramatic prison conversion, to the puritanical fervour of the Black Muslims. As their spokesman he became identified in the white press as a terrifying teacher of race hatred; but to his direct audience, the oppressed American blacks, he brought hope and self-respect.

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'Black Looks: Race and Representation' by bell hooks (1992)

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'Black Looks: Race and Representation' by bell hooks (1992)

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Colonial slavery shaped modern Britain and we all still live with its legacies. The slave-owners were one very important means by which the fruits of slavery were transmitted to metropolitan Britain. We believe that research and analysis of this group are key to understanding the extent and the limits of slavery's role in shaping British history and leaving lasting legacies that reach into the present.

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'Young British and Black ...' by Lucy Campbell and Aamna Mohdin (2020)

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'Young British and Black ...' by Lucy Campbell and Aamna Mohdin (2020)

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24 * Northampton * Writer and race equality activist

I remember when Mark Duggan was killed by police. It was my generation's Stephen Lawrence moment

An event that I had a first visceral connection to was the London riots of 2011, when Mark Duggan was killed by police. It was probably my generation's Stephen Lawrence moment. Black people in this country are given the talk. I was eight years old when my parents gave me that talk; that one day, I might be stopped by the police. I might not have done anything wrong, I just happen to be black in this country and that's a mandate for suspicion. I don't know a black person who hasn't been stopped by the police. The London riots had an impact because I sort of linked it to when my parents gave me the talk. Being stopped by the police can result in someone's death. There are many that have lost their lives in police custody. I encountered racism day in and day out, and some of it was from my teachers. People called me savage, asked if my family lived in huts in Africa. Being black at private schools was very difficult, but if I can deal with racism there, I can deal with it anywhere. Middle-class and upper-class people talk in a certain way, where they could be saying the most horrible things about you but because they say it in such a way, with their accent and their pronunciation of words, how they were taught to speak the Queen's English, that when they do stuff like that, it sort of pads it down a little bit. When Boris Johnson goes on about Muslim women being letterboxes or black people with watermelon smiles, because he says it in that vernacular that is tied to the English private school system, it comes across in such a way that is less threatening than Tommy Robinson. Nothing like this has ever happened in my lifetime. When we protest in Northampton, we're lucky to get 10 people to turn up and we had 1,000 people attend the first Black Lives Matter protest. Northampton is a famously white town. The protest was led by young people. If I didn't go, I would feel guilty. I don't think you can be black in this country and not support the protests. People say that British racism is very subtle and covert. But nothing about the Windrush scandal was covert; it was very open, very honest. Grenfell as well.

18 * Birmingham * Singer and student

If I have to fight every day for the rest of my life, I will

The UK is not innocent and never has been innocent. I remember walking in town with my friends when I was 12, and two white girls were fighting and the police started threatening and ragging up all the black kids that happened to be there, while the white girls continued to fight. We ran home because we knew we would get arrested, even though we weren't part of it. I was flabbergasted. I thought, why just us? To be black in the UK is beautiful, especially now with so many black entertainers. I want to become a music mentor, but first I need to become a performer. I don't really fit the look you see on TV. I'm thick-bodied, thick-lipped, I've got big nostrils and my hair is curly. I have friends who are musicians and they're all slimmer, they have straighter hair, they even act a certain way. But I will always just be myself. I'm not sad that I'm black and I won't pretend to be something I'm not. Casting agencies and judges tell me I don't really "fit the criteria" or they don't think I'd be able to do this part because of "the way you look". They would never say anything about my talent and I'd think, why aren't you judging me based on my talent? When I saw the hurt on my brother's face over George Floyd, or, as he put it "the world", I thought, I'm going to London [to protest]. This can't carry on, we can't not go: this is my fight. The next day, I went to one in Birmingham, then London the week after. We cannot stop - if I have to fight every day for the rest of my life, I will. The energy that day was fire; that day my mentality changed to: "No justice, no peace". I realised I was fighting for me, for my brothers, for my parents, for my ancestors. I want to be able to tell my children: "I fought for you, I fought for your children. I went for us".

21 * London * Student

Being black, especially a black woman, is a political statement in this country

School in the UK was really difficult. I've tried to suppress and put in the back of my mind the traumatic experiences that come down to racism. I was experiencing racism at the age of eight. I was aware that I was being treated differently to other people. It was the end of the day and I really needed to go to the toilet. There was about 10 or 15 minutes of me having my hand up and you could tell I was really distressed. I was crying like I really needed to get to the toilet and then I wet myself. It just makes me really upset that I had to go through such a traumatic experience at such a young age because a fully grown adult didn't like the colour of my skin. I would never want anyone to feel one-tenth of what I felt when I was going to school. You have so much self-hate and you just don't really know how to deal with it. Looking at myself now, I couldn't have imagined when I was younger that I would have turned into this person. We went to France when I was in year 9. The teacher didn't know I was in the lift, I was at the back, and she said: "Oh, my God, all these black people are so annoying". Everybody in the lift turned around and looked at me and I just didn't really know what I was supposed to do. No one defended me. No one said anything, and you know from a really early age that you're on your own. My life has changed drastically within the last six weeks, since Aima and I first put that tweet out and organised the protest in London with All Black Lives. I didn't expect it to change me in the way that it has. Now, I wake up every day and I have purpose and I have something to fight for, and something that I know I can put my full self into that's changing people's lives. Being black in this country, especially a black woman, is a political statement. You've seen just within the past six weeks, how much more confident black people have been, how much more outspoken - they realise their opinions are valid.

19 * Shetland Islands * Student

I remember hearing black people with Scottish accents for the first time and thinking I'm not the only one!

The very first political event I can remember was Obama being elected as the first black president. I was seven or eight at the time. We were in Cuba, so me and my Cuban family, who are all black, were sitting on the couch watching it happen. School was hard. I was bullied mercilessly in primary school and it took me years to realise that actually happened. Just young kids not knowing that people have different skin colours and that is an OK and normal thing. There was a lot of being picked on and being grouped together with other brown-skinned girls or boys when we weren't even the same race. I think we have 1% of ethnic minorities here in Shetland. In primary school, I remember being the only black or mixed-race person and there were three Asian kids. Because I didn't realise I was being bullied, I never thought to talk to my teachers about it. I never sought the support I needed. But when issues did come to light, for the most part I was supported by my teachers. The earliest experience I have, and the worst one probably, is being in the playground and me and a Pakistani boy from my class were pushed together. All the other kids were standing in a circle around us, pointing and laughing, and saying that we were boyfriend and girlfriend just because we had the same skin colour. I went to the protest because somebody has to be the voice for black people in Shetland. Because it's so white-populated, it's hard to find somebody who is going to have the strength and courage to stand up and be that voice. So I thought if I don't do it, who is going to do it? It was really incredible seeing the amount of support. It's the biggest turnout for protests that we've ever had. It was really amazing seeing just how many people came out to support the movement. It was heartening to see. Growing up as a black person in Shetland was hard but it's definitely strengthened my character as a young woman today. I don't really identify with the Scottish side of my family; I would consider myself British more than I would Scottish. And I definitely much more identify with the Cuban side of my family. So amalgamating my black and Scottish sides is something I've not quite done yet. But it's definitely interesting. I can remember hearing black people with Scottish accents for the first time and thinking I'm not the only one!

21 * London * Student

In year 6, my teacher told me, 'When you're older, please don't join a gang'

I would say the first event I was actually politically inclined and knowledgeable about would be over the death of Mark Duggan. It was the first one that hit home. The anger and frustration that was happening within the black community, and just how the media painted him out to be this barbaric guy, when really, he was a human being just like me, who looked like me and my friends. School in the UK was probably the worst experience I've had in my life. The school system didn't understand me or cater to my needs. I got sent to boarding school in Uganda for a few years to study there instead because I felt so out of place in Britain. In year 6, my main teacher approached me and my friend, who was black, and said: "When you're older, please don't join a gang". I replied: "We're not going to join a gang", but it wasn't until I started growing up that I began thinking to myself, what did she actually mean by that remark? Why would she select two black males and differentiate them from their peers? The protests are about the injustices that we face here as the black community, especially with deaths in custody. Black people are twice as likely to die in police custody than any other race in this country. When it comes to disparities in the criminal justice system, it is one of the reasons why I felt I also had to take a stand and move with my brothers and sisters to forge a movement here. I remember the first time I got stopped and searched. It was a section 60 in the Stoke Newington area of London and I was 18. I was walking and a police car pulled up. An officer asked where I was going and I said: 'I'm going to eat'. I put out my hand and he handcuffed me. It was very shocking and traumatising. It fragments people like me from society, it makes us feel like we're not British. Being black in the UK is trying to fit in areas that you know aren't really built in your favour. But when it comes to black culture, everyone wants to copy it and not call it black. I love my culture, I love my heritage, I love what my community has to bring to civil society.

25 * Edinburgh * Student

Teachers refused to test me for dyslexia and instead told my parents to stop speaking other languages at home

I'm dyslexic and I've only just found out at the age of 25, while I was at university struggling. When I was in school, I had the same struggles that I'm going through now with my work, but the teachers refused to test me and told my parents to stop speaking other languages at home. My parents told them there was not a language barrier. My school was very problematic. I remember I got into a fight because this girl hacked into my social media. She made everything about slavery, claiming my family were slaves and put all the pictures as slaves in shackles. I didn't even see it until I got to school, and I remember everyone being really weird to me. I got pulled aside by the headteacher and a police officer into this meeting room. They told me something's happened on your social media and we talked about it. Then they took my phone off me. Afterwards, I had a PE lesson with the girl who did it. I'd never been so angry in my life. I remember blacking out and I went for her and we had a fight. We got sent home and a couple of days later we returned with our parents for a big meeting about it. I remember sitting there with my mum and dad, who said to the teachers: "What are you guys going to do? This can't keep happening to our kids." They were trying to exclude me for being violent. And my parents were like, 'That's not fair. She's obviously at a point where she can't take it anymore. Someone was racist to her.' It was a bullshit conversation. They didn't know what they were doing, but they were trying to do their best. And then halfway through the conversation the girl's parents used the comparison of their daughter being bullied for being ginger as the equivalent to racism. My mum and dad got up and left. I was in a team of people that were organising the protest in Edinburgh. It was overwhelming. I've been in Edinburgh for almost 20 years now and I didn't know there were this many black people here. As bad as the experiences black people have had, I feel like we have a uniqueness that we can laugh so much and we can always find happiness and peace within, despite the damage that goes on. There are things to celebrate in being black and being British, because there are not all bad things about British culture. I like a cup of tea and dipping my biscuits in it. Yes, we are more commonly first-generation migrants but be proud of us for adapting.

21 * Bristol * Student

Blackness means innovation. It means resistance. It means persistence

There were a lot of black and brown people at my school, which was great. I was able to find a group of black girls that I felt that I could find comfort in, friendship and solidarity. But that didn't stop us from facing racism in school. I think one of the difficult things was seeing a lot of kids being put in isolation, being taken out of lessons, being harshly graded, and not being given the same patience as the white students. We do have systemic racism here, and the police are violent towards black bodies. We have a history here, especially in Bristol, of a deep involvement with the transatlantic slave trade. When people say the UK is not innocent, this is what we mean. It's about being stopped and searched, it's about how you feel like there's going to be some kind of altercation every time you leave your house. If you see a police van, even if you've done nothing wrong, you risk the violence of being shot with a Taser stun gun and the violence of being hit with batons. I think it's amazing that there's such a strong black British culture. I love that there's so much influence from the Caribbean community - from the music people listen to, to the slang people use. There's such a heavy influence of blackness across the UK, which can be frustrating when we see that we're not being respected. It gives me a sense of pride because I feel that black people, wherever we go, are so innovative. And especially here in Britain, I think blackness means innovation. It means resistance. It means persistence. I'm from South Sudan and everybody there is very dark-skinned. As a black person, being dark-skinned kind of comes with its own issues that's specific to communities of colour, specifically the black community. I think it will be an obstacle moving forward, and that's paired with being a woman as well. I think it sets up a lot of things against me. But at the same time, I really wouldn't want to be anything else. I feel like being a black woman is the best thing that's ever happened to me.

17 * London * Student

I realised it's not because you're annoying, it's not because you're ugly, it's because you don't look like them

I just remember hating myself because I've always been in school with only white people. It gave me body dysmorphia. I remember feeling ugly as a child. I look back at pictures of myself as a child and I wonder why I felt that way. I had teachers who were racist and I was bullied. Teachers used to belittle me. I never found groups of friends, because they were all white, that I felt that I could slot into. I never felt like I could fit in. It was a traumatic experience and it just leaves you feeling quite socially homeless. I used to get left out and I would wonder to myself, why is this happening? When I was in lockdown, more and more the pieces started to fit together. I'm one of the only ones like this. I'm one of the only ones that are around these people. So then I realised, it's not because you're annoying, it's not because you're ugly, it's not because of this or that, it's because you don't look like them. I think that racism in the UK is so dangerous, more dangerous than people realise. I think for America, if someone doesn't like you because you're black, they'll say it to your face or they'll do it in ways that make it easy to identify. But in the UK, it's so subtle. And it's still systemic. It was my first response to go to the protest to be part of the movement here. It was exhilarating. Seeing streets full of people that look like me and were there for the same reason as me, it made me feel so warm inside. When you go on the train and someone sees your sign and they do the fist, that was stuff I had never experienced before. It made me very emotional. Being black in the UK means you have a very close connection to the cultures that you come from. But it also means you have to go through struggles that people pretend not to see or understand and don't want to fix.

20 * Buckinghamshire * Student

Somebody would cross the road because of coronavirus, but that's an everyday thing for black people

I think my school was very micro-aggressive. People would be like, "Oh, can I touch your hair?" I got a detention once because somebody stuck a pencil in my hair. I had an afro and people thought it was interesting and wanted to run their hands through it, but I'm not an animal. I'm just normal, but because you're unfamiliar with the texture of my hair, you think it's interesting enough that you want to pet me. I look back and I think, wow, I actually tolerated that and allowed that to happen, but it's because I didn't understand what it was. People don't know what Britain has done because we don't get taught it. We've been taught about Henry VIII and his six wives. Who cares? I don't want to know how he manipulated the Christian church so that he could get away with divorce. That's got nothing to do with me. I want to know about what Britain's been up to colonising the whole world; imperialism and the effects of it. I think it's important that we protest. I think there are issues in the UK. It's so important that we also take on America as well. It's interesting that you have people like Boris Johnson, who will happily sit up and say, 'What's going on in America only concerns America', but then what have we been doing in the Middle East for all these years? Coronavirus has given an insight into racism in the UK because when you're walking down the street now, somebody will cross the road because they think you've got coronavirus. But if you're black in the UK that's an everyday thing. It's me walking to school and a white lady walking towards me, clutching her bag, and crossing the road because she's scared about what I'm going to do. I'm going to school! That happens two or three times a year. Being black in the UK gives you a sense of belonging. There's a level of respect the black community gives each other. When you're walking down the street, it's like a nod or a smile. It's so encouraging to see that from whatever generation, whether it's old or young. We all kind of have that caring nature towards each other because we need to have it.

20 * London and Oxford * Student

At secondary school, the world is screaming very loudly that you're not wanted

I think going to school in the UK is one of the hardest things. I was recently talking to my friends about it, because the George Floyd protests have made people begin to re-analyse experiences at school. I think every black woman has had an experience that's jarring, of feeling like you're not pretty. I used to get told, 'You're like so blick', which is slang for being very dark. It has a profound impact. As you grow up, you go through a phase of forcefully trying to love yourself. But in secondary school, the world is definitely screaming very loudly that you are being rejected and that you're not wanted. It was really hard. The UK constantly points the finger at America and there's a complete misconception that the UK isn't racist. At one protest I attended in Oxford, one American woman stood up and spoke about what was going on in America, but then she went on to say that her family were really happy that she moved to the UK because this isn't a racist country. Everyone was outraged. I think our lived experience as black people is overlooked in the UK. As a result, it means the government doesn't have to do anything. My mum migrated from Ghana to England and I'm the first generation of my family to be born here. If you ask people who have just migrated, they identify with the country they just moved from. I don't think my mum identifies as being black British as much as I do. I love Ghana and my Ghanian heritage, but I think I feel more of a sense of belonging here. They came here at a time when Britain was still so racist, where pubs had the sign 'No blacks, no Irish, no dogs', and that would make you want to hold on to your culture more. With our generations, being black British is a mix of your heritage and a mix of being British. We've created a whole new identity. Look at Stormzy, Burna Boy, and Kojo Funds. Artists like NSG have these beats that are like Ghana highlife, a type of music in Ghana, and grime energy mixed into one. Music is a perfect example of what being black British is like, regardless if you're first generation or if you're fourth generation. It's a beautiful mix and fusion of different identities.

20 * Monmouth * Student

I could sense this was perhaps the biggest moment I've felt for black people during my 20 years of life

I remember the 2008 US presidential campaign for Barack Obama. It was good to see a man of a similar colour running for one of the biggest jobs in the world. Although I was comfortable going to school with people who were predominantly white, it was still reassuring when another black boy joined in year 6, and we're still really good friends. Hair was a big thing for me. I didn't understand certain people constantly wanting to touch my hair. It's just one of those things I let happen for a while, but when this other black boy joined, he just wouldn't have it. So I thought I should just be saying no. I then wouldn't let people do it. I felt privileged as well as I got to go to a good private school here. I think when looking at the problems to do with race, we should also be looking at class as well, because a lot of the issues come hand in hand. I could sense this was perhaps the biggest moment I've felt for black people during my 20 years of life. I hadn't been to a protest before so I asked my mum, who lived in Zimbabwe when it was Rhodesia, what they could achieve. I thought it was quite important because I knew a lot of people in Monmouth. It's quite a small community. I think it's got a population of 10,000. I felt very privileged in the fact that I was lucky enough to speak and convey my message. I did get quite upset at one point. I thought If I were lucky enough to have grandchildren, I wouldn't want to have to have the same conversations that my mum is having to have with me. So that's one thing that I think would break my heart. My parents have always told me to be proud of who I am and where I come from and never to forget that. There's a sense of togetherness in the community a lot of the time. I love going to Zimbabwean functions because you know you're always guaranteed good food, lots of singing, lots of dancing. I remember when the Dave song Black came out. It just resonated with me. I think the song was for those who weren't in the black community to see what it can be like to be black and British.

18 * Sunderland * Student

Being black is to be strong. But it's not an option, you have to be

The north-east is typically not a very diverse place, so school was difficult for me. I've had racial abuse from peers and stuff like people touching my hair and calling me names. After school I went to college to do music and I just didn't really fit in with anybody. It sounds ridiculous but it's a bit intimidating walking into a room and no one looks like you or has the same history as you, and just automatically being different wherever you go. The history curriculum is kind of ridiculous. They just teach you, 'Oh well there was slavery for a little bit and it was really bad but then the slaves got freed and that was that'. Martin Luther King did a speech and racism was over. A lot of it is very whitewashed. They try to make people like Winston Churchill a hero when he's not. It's only from reading material by black authors that opened my eyes and made me realise how much of my own history I was shielded from. I heard about the protest in Newcastle but it got cancelled and moved online after a backlash because of the pandemic. I was pretty outraged by that, so I started my own. It was kind of my first opportunity to speak about my struggles and the struggles of black people in the UK. It was like a moment of relief for me because I thought people were finally doing something about it. It's hard to succeed when you don't have confidence in who you are. How am I supposed to have confidence in who I am when there are people who literally hate me and want to see me down and think they're more superior than me because of the colour of my skin? Being black in the UK means to be different. It means to be silenced. However, hopefully in future generations to come, being black in the UK will be something to be celebrated by everyone. In the meantime, I'm always going to celebrate where I come from. I think black people should be proud. As a race, they've come so far in life and had so much success, even though they've repeatedly been squashed and dragged down by oppressors. I think being black is to be strong. But it's not an option, you have to be.

18 * London * Student

I just did not feel comfortable speaking about race in my school

I was absolutely disgusted, angry, but not shocked by George Floyd's death. I've seen this happen so much ever since I was a little girl. I've been so desensitised to it that I'm not shocked when it happens anymore. It's just like a normal daily thing. I was talking to my friend Natasha, who helped organise the London protest with me, and said: "We need to do something. We can't just be silent". This doesn't only happen in America, but also happens here. We posted tweets about the London protests and it just skyrocketed everywhere. I was just in shock that so many people came out in support. I remember we were walking out of the US embassy and one of the police officers came up to us and said there were more than 9,000 people still there, and another 10,000 coming to join the march. The amount of systemic racism in the UK is disgusting; and how normalised racism is, in this country, is just terrible. The UK needs to take ownership for what it has done in the past. I never learned about colonisation in the UK. I remember so clearly in year 7, I was in hi

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Young, British & Black: the voices behind the UK's anti-racism protests

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I remember when Mark Duggan was killed by police. It was my generation's Stephen Lawrence moment An event that I had a first visceral connection to was the London riots of 2011, when Mark Duggan was killed by police. It was probably my generation's Stephen Lawrence moment.

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'Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race' by Reni Eddo-Lodge (2017)

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'Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race' by Reni Eddo-Lodge (2017)

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Why I'm No Longer Talking (to White People) About Race

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Why I'm No Longer Talking (to White People) About Race | Reni Eddo-Lodge | download | Z-Library. Download books for free. Find books

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'Autoethnography as Method' by Heewon Chang (2008)

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'Autoethnography as Method' by Heewon Chang (2008)

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Autoethnography as method / | Heewon Chang. | download | Z-Library. Download books for free. Find books

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'Performing Autoethnography' by Tami Spry (2001)

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'Performing Autoethnography' by Tami Spry (2001)

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DOI: 10.1177/107780040100700605
Journal: Qualitative Inquiry Volume: 7 Issues: 6 706--732
Title: Performing Autoethnography: An Embodied Methodological Praxis
Author(s): Spry, T.
Publisher: Sage Publications
Year: 2001

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DOI: 10.1177/107780040100700605 Journal: Qualitative Inquiry Volume: 7 Issues: 6 706--732 Title: Performing Autoethnography: An Embodied Methodological Praxis Author(s): Spry, T. Publisher: Sage Publications Year: 2001

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'Autoethnography: An Overview' - Carolyn Ellis and colleagues (2011)

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'Autoethnography: An Overview' - Carolyn Ellis and colleagues (2011)

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DOI: 10.2307/23032294
Journal: Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung Volume: 36 Issues: 4 (138) 273--290
Title: Conventions and Institutions from a Historical Perspective / Konventionen und Institutionen in historischer Perspektive || Autoethnography: An Overview
Author(s): Carolyn Ellis, Tony E. Adams and Arthur P. Bochner
Publisher:
Year: 2011

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DOI: 10.2307/23032294 Journal: Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung Volume: 36 Issues: 4 (138) 273--290 Title: Conventions and Institutions from a Historical Perspective / Konventionen und Institutionen in historischer Perspektive || Autoethnography: An Overview Author(s): Carolyn Ellis, Tony E. Adams and Arthur P. Bochner Publisher: Year: 2011

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Desiring Whiteness by Dr. Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks

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Desiring Whiteness by Dr. Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks

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Desiring Whiteness provides a compelling new interpretation of how we understand race. Race is often seen to be a social construction. Nevertheless, we continue to deploy race thinking in our everyday life as a way of telling people apart visually. How do subjects become raced? Is it common sense to read bodies as racially marked? Employing Lacan's theories of the subject and sexual difference, Seshadri-Crooks explores how the discourse of race parallels that of sexual difference in making racial identity a fundamental component of our thinking. Through close readings of literary and film texts, Seshardi-Crooks also investigates whether race is a system of difference equally determined by Whiteness. She argues that it is in relation to Whiteness that systems of racial classification are organized, endowing it with a power to shape human difference.

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Desiring Whiteness: A Lacanian Analysis of Race (Opening Out)

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Desiring Whiteness provides a compelling new interpretation of how we understand race. Race is often seen to be a social construction. Nevertheless, we continue to deploy race thinking in our everyday life as a way of telling people apart visually. How do subjects become raced? Is it common sense to read bodies as racially marked?

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'Appeal for Northamptonshire Windrush Generation to share their stories ...' - Chronicle & Echo

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'Appeal for Northamptonshire Windrush Generation to share their stories ...' - Chronicle & Echo

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The team behind a ground-breaking new book collating stories about the Windrush generation in Northamptonshire are calling for more contributors.

Anyone with connections to those who arrived in the UK from the Caribbean between 1948 and 1973 are being urged to get in touch with community group Norfamton.

They can either talk to a member of the team or write their own story or poem to be included in the collaborative book, which author Alan Moore is writing the introduction for.

Two of the elderly people Norfampton has provided with a hamper full of essentials during the coronavirus pandemic, who inspired the Windrush generation book project

Shereen Ingram, from Norfamton, said: "Many people are confused with what the Windrush generation means so it would be nice to clear it up and to have the whole community involved in a collaborative book - that would be awesome.

"That's why we want people from different lives involved so people feel part of it.

Shereen came up with the idea for the book while delivering essentials to people who were shielding during the coronavirus pandemic through Norfampton's Windrush Generation Doorstep Befriending Team.

Norfamton's Shereen Ingram delivers hampers to elderly people in Northampton shielding during the coronavirus pandemic

She wants to highlight how important their contribution to British culture has been as well as the deep-rooted racism they have had to deal with that is still being felt today.

"The people I was going to had such amazing experiences of love, life and discrimination and I just thought, 'this needs to be documented'," she said.

So Shereen got in touch with writer Tré Ventour to help put the stories onto paper and put the book together.

He believes it would be the first of its kind to document the lives of the Windrush generation outside of the big cities and Black British history.

"We are just looking for members of the Windrush generation interested in being interviewed and people who want to write their own stories about the Windrush," he said.

"So if we can get as many different perspectives across the community that would be good - not just Carribean people but Irish, Sri Lankan and others."

Much of Britain's communities can trace their ancestry to the Windrush generation, which takes its name from the HMT Empire Windrush ship, which brought one of the first large groups of Caribbean people to the country in 1948.

Many took up jobs in the newly-formed NHS and other sectors affected by Britain's post-war labour shortage and were automatically British citizens because of the Commonwealth, according to the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants.

In 2017, it emerged that hundreds of Commonwealth citizens who came to the UK had been wrongly detained, deported and denied legal rights - known as the Windrush scandal.

Norfamton has organised a festival to celebrate the Windrush generation's contribution to British culture in food, art and music, hence the name FAMfest.

Shereen hopes the festival and the book will help to raise awareness of their importance to the UK but she knows that time is running out to hear their stories first-hand.

"Many members of that generation are dying especially with Covid and we didn't get to record their stories," she said.

"So this is quite urgent as they are getting to an age where they are not going to be here. If it's not done now, it will never be done."

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Appeal for Northamptonshire's Windrush generation to share their stories for ground-breaking new book

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The team behind a ground-breaking new book collating stories about the Windrush generation in Northamptonshire are calling for more contributors. Anyone with connections to those who arrived in the UK from the Caribbean between 1948 and 1973 are being urged to get in touch with community group Norfamton.

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'The Alternative History Behind the Windrush Scandal' - Tré Ventour (2021)

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'The Alternative History Behind the Windrush Scandal' - Tré Ventour (2021)

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Working with Norfamton these past weeks on the Windrush Doorstep Befriending Team, it was interesting talking to Shereen on how the original critiques of the Scandal did not go far enough in their primary challenges to the Home Office.

My family history in Britain goes back to the 1960s. L-R: Great-Grandma Toiley, Cousin Rita , Grandma Cathy, Great-Auntie Rosie, and Great-Auntie Mona (front) (Source: Noel Family Archive)

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LONG READ: The Alternative History Behind the Windrush Scandal

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LONG READ: The Alternative History Behind the Windrush Scandal. Working with Norfamton these past weeks on the Windrush Doorstep Befriending Team, it was interesting talking to Shereen on how the....