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.
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