Review: Brit(Ish) by Afua Hirsch

Growing up White, there were many things I didn't have to think about: being the only person with my skin colour at school; having a 'foreign' sounding name; people saying strange things to me, like, "Don't worry, Becky, we don't see you as White". I never had trouble figuring out my identity and how I fit into society because I just did. England, Britain, is my home and that was never questioned, either by me or by strangers.

So, why isn't this same courtesy extended to all British people, rather than just those with White skin?

This question forms the basis of Afua Hirsch's book. Born to a White, Jewish father and Ghanaian mother, she grew up in Wimbledon, the most quintessential English place one could think of, and had a privileged childhood thanks to her parents making huge sacrifices for it. But that wasn't the whole story. As a teenager, she wasn't allowed in a certain shop because she looked like a criminal (spoiler alert: because of her skin). Her friends told her, "Don't worry, we don't really see you as Black". She lived in a White community and had no idea how to access her culture. And this all just compounded at Oxford, the epitome of the intersections of Whiteness and elitism.

The book, Brit(ish), gives Afua the space to explore the struggles she faced in her own identity as well as the journey on an international scale which meant that millions of Black or mixed-race people in Britain had this identity crisis, or struggle to belong. It questions how Britain has not really come to terms with its history of the Empire, of immigration, and treatment of Black people, and how this helps precisely no one. There are also some stark facts about the slave trade here, too. When Britain passed the Abolition Act, there were 800,000 slaves in the British-held Caribbean islands. Their 'value' was £47 million. The British government agreed to pay £20m in compensation to the slave OWNERS, not the enslaved. To boot, the enslaved had to work FOR FREE for another FOUR YEARS to pay the rest of the debt!

It's these kinds of things that are just not taught in schools (I will certainly be making the change in my own educational setting) and if they were, it would make so much more of a difference than simply sweeping it under a carpet and hoping it never comes up.

Afua Hirsch looks at many things - class, spaces, bodies, and more - and what the Black experience has been in those different ways thanks to the construction of racism. Bodies, in particular, are fetishized or reviled. White people are too defensive to have a conversation about it because they feel personally attacked or accused of racism, when actually we just need to be open minded about the system we live in and are unconsciously complicit in.

 

"How To Be An Antiracist" by Ibram X. Kendi

Since the death of George Floyd sparked a global outcry, building to what will hopefully continue to grow into a movement, lots of people (particularly White) have been asking what they can do to help. As part of my commitment to being part of this movement, I've been reading into what it means not just to be "not racist" but "anti-racist", denoting action rather than the passivity of being "not racist".

Ibram X. Kendi has written a powerful book with just that title. The main thing I've learned from this book is that being an anti-racist is a choice that we must make every day, requiring continual reflection on our thoughts and perceptions of people of other racialised groups. Separating his book into different themes, such as sexuality, gender, and culture, Kendi has researched and explored what racism means at each of these different levels rather than just a macro, nationwide or global level. He explains the history of racism - that it, how it was created by the Portuguese in order to begin the transatlantic slave trade - and how it has seeped into every part of society.

Each chapter begins with what it means to be a racist and an anti-racist for that particular area. For example, ethnic racism is about racist policies that lead to inequalities between racialised ethnic groups (e.g. mixed-race or biracial people vs Black people with darker skin) vs ethnic antiracism which is about antiracist policies that lead to equity between racialised ethnic groups. By dividing the book this way, and using his own experiences and beliefs growing up, Kendi creates a roadmap of definitions and intersections that are vital for one to think about. For example, we can't just think about the experience of Black people vs White people. We need to think about the experience of the poor Black people vs the poor White people, or White women compared to Black women.

One of the biggest realisations that Kendi comes to in the book is that changing people's minds will not necessarily lead to policy change. Policy change, however, will lead to changing people's minds. This is because that racism was not created because of ideology and moral values. It was created for economic self-interest, and the ideology followed as a way of justifying it.

Racism is far more than just calling someone the n-word. Racism is believing that Black communities are poor because of their own faults rather than the policies which make those communities poor. Racism is having a bias to Black people with lighter skin rather than dark skin. Racism is calling Black women "welfare queens" when the biggest recipients of welfare in the United States are White people.

We need to remember that we are not living in a post-racial society because of the election of Obama. (The Trump administration has done away with that fantasy). We are not going to solve racism overnight, because the Western world was built on it. However, we all have the power to demand change from our elected representatives, in order to pursue policy change that leads to not just equality but equity between different racialised groups. We should not see just treatment of Black and ethnic minority people as a threat to our White privilege. That is a fear created by powerful elites in order to preserve their own power. Racism was created by the elites, for the elites. It's up to us to demand its dismantling.

"Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire" by Akala

Akala brings powerful questioning of the British and its Empire's historical record to bear along with his personal investment in said history. Using the lens of his own experiences growing up as a mixed-race, but for all intents and purposes, a racially black young man, he explains and analyses the intents and effects of white supremacy in the most fascinating, insightful, and truly awful (meaning the actions of white supremacy) manner I've ever read.

There are so many incredible and useful things I learned in this book, so I'll just relate a few here. Firstly, that each of us have a label of White, Black, Asian etc, but Akala describes these terms in a different way. For example, I am a 'racially White' woman, or, I have been racialised as 'White'. What that means is that I have been brought into and up in the world in a way that benefits from a system created by and for white people. E.g. I have never been stopped by the police. I have never had random strangers touch my hair (as happens particularly to Black women all too often). I have never had a teacher underestimate my intelligence because of the colour of my skin. I'm not subject to microaggressions and I've certainly never been asked to 'tone down' my 'Whiteness' or been worried about sharing my opinion in case I'm seen as an "Angry White Woman" (indeed, maybe some think I'm too fond of sharing my opinion!)

Secondly, the 'Black' community is something that was created, again by White people, in order to build a system of 'us' vs 'them'. If you were to lump in all White people together as the 'White community' and expect them to carry the same traits and characteristics ... well, just ask a Brexiteer Englishman how they like being called 'basically the same' as the French or Germans. Africa, it has to be said (and I'm saying this all too often to my students) is a continent, not a country, with a huge and rich and diverse history as different between countries as England is from Greece. This is particularly important when it comes to looking at the transatlantic slave trade. We're taught as if Africans were selling their own people when, in fact, they weren't. Think about it in reverse, would we say that French people selling Belgian people into slavery was White people selling their own? No, because we understand France and Belgium as two distinct countries and all that comes with that.

And finally, the British record on its own history. Much has been made of in the last week of 'erasing history' by pulling down statues of slave traders. And yet, post-war British governments were terrified of the public finding out some of the most egregious acts of the British Empire that they literally burned, buried, and secretly kept hundreds of thousands of documents relating to what would likely now be perceived as crimes against humanity. Talk about erasing history, eh? Far from erasing history, the British education system (in my opinion) has been far too quick to write history in its own terms (as one would expect) that it simply does not do enough to explain why Black British people are not on structurally equal terms with their White peers. The racial and class divides that we see today are not just as a result of the racist systems this country has created, but a deliberate lack of work to bridge those divides in order to keep those at the top in power. We don't have to feel guilty - and there's no point in it - of what happened in the past. However, what we do have to do is act on those wrongs. It would take a political and social revolution of gigantic proportions to start to redress the imbalance, but if we truly do see ourselves in Britain as free, liberal, tolerant, and promoters of democracy, then it is our duty to make every single person in Britain feel that way. After all - we colonised a quarter of the world and proclaimed Britain to be the shining example that every country should follow. We can't blame the people we oppressed and colonised for challenging us to make good on that boast.

I could go on and on for ages but I'll finish by saying that, whatever side of the statue debate you're on, PLEASE READ THIS BOOK.

Review: White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo

This will not be a comfortable book for white people to read, but that's the point. The premise is basically getting white people to get to grips with the fact that even if they think they're not racist, they are part of the system, the 'white collective' so to speak that perpetuates racism is subtle, non-obvious ways, and then get really defensive when called out on it. Obviously, not many people, particularly white progressives and liberals, want to be accused of racism or think themselves as racist in any way, and the beauty of this book is that it breaks down what it means to be racist and how to view our past behaviours in order to show how we can make it better.

Similarly to examples put forward in "Why I'm No Longer Talking To White People About Race", racist acts don't always manifest in obvious ways, such as using the 'n' word. It can be about black people constantly being passed over for jobs or promotions, despite being as or more qualified than white counterparts. It can be about making 'jokes' about black women's hair. It can be playing into the stereotypes of the angry black person. And for white women, it can be about the weaponisation of their tears, something which has horrible, historical and current associations for black people, (Emmett Till and Amy Cooper being two past and present examples).

When responding to accusations of racism, white people can invariably say things like, "I don't see colour", "that's not what I meant, you're just taking it the wrong way", "I have black friends/wife/husband" etc. But the book, written by a sociologist and 'diversity trainer' who works in predominantly white work places, completely counters that. She says that countless times during sessions, white people want to learn about racism in the abstract, general sense, but get defensive and shut down (sometimes the women cry, completely invalidating the point of the exercise and the Black person who is trying to explain their very real experience), when challenged personally.

The key to being anti-racist and actually helping Black people and PoC is not to pretend racism is not an issue, or insist on your non-racist credentials, but to actually honestly examine past behaviour and how that has affected colleagues/family/friends. In the past, I'm pretty sure I'll have said stuff along the lines of 'I don't see colour' or 'I have a black relative' etc instead of thinking, do I have negative perceptions of X black person and why? Why did I assume the mixed race boy in the room chose my subject because he had to rather than because he wanted to and was actually really good at it?

Actually listening to Black people and PoC, understanding why what you said is problematic and how you can do better, and knowing that being anti-racist is a lifelong journey, is so much more helpful and can help the white collective make much more meaningful 'cross-racial' relationships.

So, like I said, not a comfortable or easy read but go into this with an open mind and be prepared to have honest words with yourself, and I promise the work will be worth it.

"Why I'm No Longer Talking To White People About Race" Reni Eddo-Lodge

This is less of a review and more of a 'what I've learned' from this book. A review denotes an opinion on how 'good' or 'bad' a book is and it seems wrong on a few different levels to do that here. The reason I read the book in the first place is to learn more about what it means to be black, particularly in Britain, and the systems that keep justice and equality at bay.

At the beginning of the book, Reni talks about a blog post she wrote in 2014 about stopping conversations with white people about race because they just didn't get it or understand it, at best, and gaslighting her and question her lived experiences at worst. The book gained momentum and she turned the original post into a book that would educate and inform white people about her experiences and experiences for black people in wider society.

Throughout the rest of the book, she tackles several huge, structural issues such as the place and intersections of race, feminism, and class. She explains structural racism in a way that shows that even though white people may not actively participate in racism, we benefit from its set up. This may seem painful and at odds with white people who live in poverty or who have struggled in their lives, but Reni is not saying white people have never suffered. It's more about that white people have fewer struggles based on their whiteness - e.g. stop and search disproportionately affecting black people; people with white sounding names will be more likely offered job interviews than people with 'black' sounding names etc.

If you are a white person and want to read this book, then please do so with an open mind. It may feel like an attack but it's not. It's a conversation and it's about opening our eyes to our experience versus the experience of black people. For me, I found it an uncomfortable but liberating read. And when one is not defending their experience, but learning from someone else's, it's so much more productive and energy-giving.