On First Glance

Don't judge a book by its cover. That's straight forward enough, don't you think? One of my on-going reads at the moment is Theodore W. Allen's lifework "The Invention of the White Race". The book is, broadly speaking, a sharp, critical examination of the birth of racism in the United States. Which came first: slavery or racism? Was racism a harsh consequence of the slave trade, or was the trade itself born out of a belief of racial supremacy?

All interesting stuff.

But look at the cover of volume one. The largest, most eye catching text is 'white race' out of the title. As I've been reading it sat around the staff room table at work, I think it has caught a few eyes. Those two words stand out: 'white race'. A friend caught a glimpse of the book as I packed it into my bag tonight. He chuckled, and said he thought it was a white supremacist book. "It's quite the opposite, actually," I replied.

With one glance of a lazy eye, a book which promotes anti-racism through the relinquishing of whiteness and the white privilege that comes with it is so easily confused with the nonsense of of a David Duke. No body at work has yet asked me about what I am reading. I am not sure I could explain it to them if they asked. "Well are you familiar with the William and Mary Quarterly?"...

The natural assumption that because a book deals directly with the white race it must be one of a supremacist ideology or, at best, one with mild racism in it is a troubling one. I consider these two volumes to be quite revolutionary because they deal with whiteness from an anti-racist perspective.

So The Time Has Come

The BBC reports this week that, from the beginning of the 2008 / 09 academic year, Britain's involvement in the slave trade is to be studied by all secondary pupils in England.

When I began university, I studied a core module in the first year called "Black Atlantic: Slavery and it's Legacies". The title, you may notice, is related to a book by Paul Gilroy, but that's not the point. I came out of the first lecture scared. I was not scared by the horrors of slavery (I guess the MTV generation has become passive to images and tales of gore and suffering), but what troubled me personally was that I had gone through my entire childhood without realising that Britain -- the country of which I had always considered myself but a loyal servant -- committed one of the most terrible crimes of modern civilisation. I knew of the Holocaust, which accounted for the deaths of millions of people because of their religion, but I knew not of fates worse than death bore out by African people over timescales of centuries instead of decades. I felt ignorant and out of touch with a passage of history so gruesome and wrong that I simply began to crave knowledge and understanding on a phenomenal and bewildering scale.

What hurt the most was the sudden realisation that slavery and the slave trade mattered. They mattered as early as the sixteenth century, and they still matter here in the twenty-first.

I studied my degree at the University of Liverpool John Moores: the streets I walked down to get to class were, and still are, named after the slave traders. Under the picture on the BBC web site, the caption reads: "pupils will be urged to look at the long term impacts of slavery". While this simply has to be the case if the learning is to be worthwhile, it is worth remembering that the legacies of slavery are not purely aesthetic in terms of the microcosm of Liverpool. As often as raindrops fall upon Liverpool the city tries to cleanse itself, yet it longs for a cleanliness which seems to forever be out of reach, as the raindrops come laced with the blood of the slaves. The same is true of Bristol. The same is true of London.

The only time I ever came close to touching upon the slave trade was in the sixth form at school, when I was studying A-level government & politics. We learnt of about thirty Supreme Court cases in a single one hour lesson. Dred Scott vs Sandford, 1857 passed by in a single sentence: "no slave could be a citizen of the United States" said the teacher. "Next one, Plessy vs Ferguson, 1897," he continued, "the legalisation of segregation in America. This was overturned in the 50's with the case Brown vs Board of Education." In about thirty seconds we covered the spine of African-American history with regard to the U.S. Supreme Court. I can't recall them being mentioned again in class, but I still remember thinking at the time: "slaves? Segregation? There's no connection there." Thankfully I did my reading and I did my research. Twelve months later, in my first year at university.

Until now, the neglect of the slave trade and slavery from the curriculum sticks out like a sore thumb. To not teach the slave trade and slavery and the legacies of both is to effectively deny that they happened.

There's currently a 'comment' up on the BBC web site simply saying the teaching of slavery should not be compulsory, made by Vic, UK. Hmmm. Should pupils learn the concept of equality? Are people of African descent equal to people of European descent? Should pupils learn that everyone should be judged by the content of their character and not by the colour of their skin? (I am assuming the answer is an unwavering 'yes', there). By making slavery compulsory it makes the civil rights movement easier to contextualise -- I find it hard to believe I read King's speech and discussed it in class without taking slavery and the slave trade into account whatsoever. The philosophy of Malcolm X is so misunderstood in high school history that schools won't touch it with a barge pole. On face value it's an angry black man shouting "the white man is the devil!" He shouts the white man is the devil because the white man enslaved the black man for three hundred years, and even though Lincoln "freed" the slaves in 1865, African-Americans were still not free when he (Malcolm X) was assassinated and were still second-class citizens then, 100 years after "freedom". Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.

The election of Barack Obama to the White House will not put an end to racial prejudice, in the same way that racial prejudice did not begin with the slave trade. But the picture is a complex one: racial prejudice, the political career of Barack Obama, and the slave trade are all carefully interwoven. You can't learn about two of them without the third one. In between these three, of course, there are many more important factors which also cannot be ignored...

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright

Successes Happen Too!

I've just finished watching a programme on Channel Four which followed a young black women in London setting up a business of her own. She opened an Internet cafe where people could come and record music in the attached studio for so much an hour. At first, business was slow: the problem being that no one knew about the shop, and there was no Internet connection. After calling in technical support, she recorded an advert for radio and soon business was booming, as they say. By the end of the programme, she was talking of opening up other similar shops across London.

After feeling compelled to write something about Fergal Keane's chapter on the Rwandan genocide last night, it feels good to be able to write about someones success. Without realising it, the lady had made a stand for black Britain. With the help of her father, she was able to promote a genre of music which is a soundtrack to coloured people's lives in Britain. Urban Britain is a more colourful place (no pun intended) thanks to the artistic and creative minds of ethnic minorities, able to assert themselves on a national level through their artistic endeavours. Hip hop, RnB, dancehall, reggae &c. give black people in Britain an identity. If they have an identity, they become visible to the national consciousness. Such an identity won't stop racism, but it will make speaking out against racist behaviour easier, and racism will be tolerated less.

The success of black women in Britain makes our society better.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright

Friday, October 20 2006. The Day I Lost Faith In Society, So I Injected Some Of My Own

The moral corruption of society hit a new low in Liverpool today.

First, I had it clarified that he wasn't a man of his word.
I'd seen it first hand, but it's different when it involves you personally.
He promised me that favour, and I was foolish enough to believe him.
I respect men of their word who come through for you because there aren't many left.
Anyway, that was just the beginning. It resulted in me getting the bus into university, and then things got serious.

I got on at the usual stop and the bus driver (the company was Stagecoach, not Arriva) was very lacking of job satisfaction, I think it has to be aid (that is, of course, putting it politely).
And when that is the case, I suppose the Mind dictates that you have to look for alternative methods of satisfaction.
I saw him gain his satisfaction.
It was sickening.
As we drew to the end of Smithdown, at the junction with the road (I don't know the name of it) that goes to Toxteth, one lady got off the bus.
There must have been about three empty seats at that point, which is a lot at 08:50 in the morning on a Liverpool bus!
At the second she got off, we all saw a young Muslim girl wearing a black headscalfe (not veil, not that that makes any bloody difference) running along side the bus in a vein attempt to catch it.
Just as she reached the doors, the driver closed them.
He pulled off as she banged on the door, pleading with the bastard to open them.
Ignoring her, he carefully pulled out and negotiated the roadworks in front.

No one can tell me the fact she was Muslim didn't have a bearing on his decision.
What he did was mean, Islamaphobic and downright wrong.
He is a disgrace to the City of Liverpool and to Christianity (assuming he is a Christian) as a whole.
As my journey continued, I imagined him down the pub complaining about such things as extremism within the Islamic community, and yet here he was, angering a young Muslim lady and making her hate him.
Aah, the paradox.

Later on, I couldn't stop thinking about what that bus driver did.
I was thinking about it on the train, whilst reading "Uncle Tom's Cabin", when I suddenly realised the entire carriage had gone very quiet.
I didn't look up.
Then I heard one lady say very assertively to someone else that they couldn't sit in a certain seat due to it being reserved.
I looked up.
She was speaking to two Muslim women.
Eventually, unable to find two seats together, they came to the end of the train to where I was.
One sat next to myself, while the other sat on one of the folddown chairs around the corner near the door.
Remembering the incident on the bus, I felt the need to do a good deed to rectify the balance.
I asked the girl who had sat next to me where they were going.
Leeds, was the polite reply.
I explained that I was only going to Warrington (the first stop, 23 minutes away) and swapped seats with the girl near the doors, so they could sit together and have a proper conversation without having to strain to see each other.
My gesture of goodwill didn't go unnoticed by fellow passengers.
I expect some of them thought I did what I did because I didn't want to be seated next to a follower of Islam.
That is not the case.
For the record I have been seated next to a Muslim before on the train, and with a group of Chinese people as well, not that that makes any difference, of course.
(Incidentally, the journey with the group of Chinese persons was great just because I got to listen to their amazing language. To stimulate their conversation, I put my iPod nano on the table we were sat round: it turns out 'nano' and 'iPod' are the same in Chinese as in English!)

The day left me wondering about the good in society.
There doesn't seem to be much left.
It would, of course, be naive to assume that bastard bus driver was representative of every bus driver in Liverpool.
I just wonder what was going through the mind of one old Muslim women who was already on the bus when the incident happened!
One can only speculate...

Aah, the culture of Liverpool.
What a year 2008 will be...

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright.