A New Conversation On Race
This is a review of the book 'This is not America – Why Black Lives in Britain Matter' by Tomiwa Owolade
This was written by Rev John Root, and republished from his blog 'Out of Many, One People', accessed at johnroot@substack.com, by permission.
‘We need a new conversation on race’ says Tomiwa Owolade (p34). His book is essentially an opening statement for that conversation. Owolade came to Britain from Nigeria to be with his family aged 9. Since graduating in English from University College, London he has become established as a journalist, writing for various publications and now with a regular column at The Times. Whilst the title and structure of the book set up a well-justified contrast between the USA and Britain, in fact the book’s canvas actually covers a wider, comprehensive range of issues concerning race in Britain.
This makes the book a good primer for thinking about race. Owolade engages with and summarises an impressively wide spread of writers on race – amongst many examples, W. E. B. Du Bois and Ralph Ellison in the USA, or Reni Eddo-Lodge and Jeffrey Boakye in this country. He also references formative events in this country, such as the New Cross fire or the murder of Stephen Lawrence, or the Windrush scandal. He picks up on the recent appalling treatment of ‘Child Q’ in Hackney by the police and her school. He was even able to cover the Lady Susan Hussey/Ngozi Fulani encounter, even though it must have required some quick footwork before publication.
My only quibble with his understanding is that he sees the misleading focus on the USA as coming from black people in Britain, when in fact taking the USA to be the normative arena for race was widespread amongst white people from the 50’s onwards, when identification with the Civil Rights Movement gave a frisson of moral righteousness.
Concerning the substance of Owolade’s ‘new conversation on race’, he asks in his concluding chapter: “What will a more effective form of anti-racist politics look like? It will have to be two things: collaborative and specific’ (p 291). Looking at those two areas helps fill out his picture of the ‘new conversation’ needed.
Being specific.
Not the USA.
Owolade’s starting point is how the BLM protests following the death of George Floyd elided and over-simplified the differences between the USA and Britain, using inappropriate slogans, and leading to such silly exaggerations as David Lammy saying in a Labour Party video ‘He could have been me’ (p20). The chapters in the first part of the book spells out American distinctives over ‘Double Consciousness’, ‘American Integrationism’, and a useful chapter critiquing ‘Critical Race Theory’. In the book’s final chapter he writes ‘it is also damaging to see race through an abstract or neutral perspective. We must specifically emphasize a British context’ (p 297). The overall heft of the book is to shake off alien models as a perspective on race and refocus our understanding on what is happening in the UK.
Different ethnicities.
Surveying the very varied experiences of black people, Owolade notes the very different experiences and beliefs of Kemi Badenoch and Bernardine Evaristo, yet both are successful women of Nigerian background. Surveying the whole range of black experiences in Britain he drily observes ‘We are barely a we’ (p 28). In particular he stresses the very different experiences, histories and outcomes between African Caribbean and African people in Britain, which is lost if the black American experience of enslavement, ghettoization, lynching and state-sponsored racism is taken as determinative for all. For example, he notes the contrast of the 53% of black African boys on free school meals progressing to higher education, over against the 25% of corresponding black Caribbean boys. Conflating such experiences, he observes, means ‘we can’t have a targeted approach at improving the outcomes of the black students who are actually struggling’ (p 203).
Different outcomes.
Following the differences noted above, he continues: ‘Disparities in terms of educational outcomes should take into account other factors, such as class, cultural differences, family formation and geography’. Accordingly he weighs in against the ‘disparity fallacy’ that differences in socioeconomic outcomes can automatically be seen as the result of discriminatory bias. Wearily he laments ‘Yet that seemingly invincible fallacy guides much of what is said and done in our educational institutions, in the media, and in government policies’ (p 111), in the process taking apart the most high-profile American advocate of the fallacy, Ibram X. Kendi. The fallacy’s consequent assumption that only equal ethnic representation across the board is the one true sign of racial justice is derided as ‘simply window-dressing’; the result of ‘thoughtless paeans to diversity’ which acts in ignorance of the real world differences between ethnic groups.
The importance of social class.
One major factor of diverse outcomes is social class. For example, the comparative absence of black people from the publishing industry, whilst it may reflect racism, also reflects major differences of aspiration, and yet ‘little thought is put into the perspective of black people themselves and their families and communities’ (p 191). For communities needing to establish themselves in Britain, then better paid and more secure careers in finance or law are more attractive. A study by KPMG concluded that ‘social class is the biggest barrier to career progression in the UK. It is a greater barrier than race or gender or any other diversity characteristic’ (p 206).
Mixed race.
The plethora of recent books on race almost universally omit one very obvious and important fact about race in Britain – the rapid growth of people from ethnically mixed backgrounds. (The exception is the mixed Polish/Nigerian academic Remi Adekoya, author of Bi-Racial Britain). For those who want to conceive of race in binary and polemical categories, this is, of course, an unwanted and inconvenient source of confusion. Yet ethnically mixed people are the fastest growing ‘ethnic’ group in Britain, with estimates that they will be 30% of the population by the end of the century. It is a tribute to Owolade’s attention to what is actually happening in our society, as opposed to speculative or theoretical abstractions, that he devotes a whole chapter to mixed race Britain, recognising the consequence that ‘identities need to be treated with subtlety rather than dogmatism’ (p 268). ‘There is more than one way to be black’.
Being collaborative.
Positive about life in Britain.
The corollary of Owolade’s distancing of black British people from black Americans is that ‘black British people have more in common with other British people than they do with black people across the rest of the world’ (p 129). He speaks about being innocent of the fact that he grew up a stroll away from where Stephen Lawrence was murdered, ‘But I lived in an even more fundamental state of innocence: virtually all the white people I encountered on the streets of south-east London were kind to me’. It was my home and it felt like it’ (p 134). He distances himself not only from the American radical of a previous generation, Stokely Carmichael but also from Britain’s first professor of Black Studies, Kehinde Andrews, that only a revolution is enough to change the deeply ingrained racism of our societies. In seeking to defuse the contentious accusation that Britain’s imperial history consolidated a mentality of racial arrogance and discrimination he points out that racism is considerably more deeply ingrained in eastern European societies with no history of colonial rule.
Diversity of outlook amongst black people.
Such dissenting from the widespread criticisms of empire, as well as a range of his other views, has led to criticism. ‘I am accused of being a coon, a house Negro, an Uncle Tom, a kapo’ (p 33 – the last term is lost on me). He continues: ‘I think it’s a sad indictment of the nature of race conversations that anyone who deviates from the orthodoxy is criticized in this way’. For Owolade concern about ‘black identity’ is so much waste of time. He knows he is black. He is glad that he is black. It is such an incontestable given that he is free to express his irreducible blackness in whatever way seems right to him.
White free expression.
The freedom of opinion Owolade claims for black people he applies to white people too. ‘White people should be able to take part confidently in these conversations. . . This is why open conversations about race are not well served by white guilt’ (p 298) he writes concerning the forging of a new narrative. Accordingly, as he is dismissive of Ibram X. Kendi, so he is also dismissive of Robin DiAngelo’s ‘White Fragility’ which he sees as an illustration of the ‘Kafka Trap’: either you agree with her that you are a racist, or your very disagreement shows how heavily defended but fragile your racism is. ‘The only option is to acquiesce. If you are white, that is’ (p 115). In reality for white people to be pressed into silence through fear of being called racist deprives the conversation of significant participants. Serious conversation is inhibited. A multi-ethnic society requires honest and open contributions of diverse viewpoints from diverse ethnicities.
Not being complacent.
Owolade’s positivity about life in Britain does not exclude realism about the reality of racism. Not only does he refer to past examples he is aware of continuing injustices, covering the story of one woman adversely affected by the Windrush scandal, and the sense of ‘denied Britishness that made it particularly painful’ (p154). In an improving situation ‘The challenge now for some campaigners is to find ways to recognise this progress without degenerating into complacency’ (p 296). The new conversation is needed not to declare that racism has been conquered or that we live in a post-racial society, but rather that older and adversarial ways of perceiving the situation hinder us from properly understanding and removing current injustices.
An emerging culture.
Emphasising that black people are irreducibly British gives Owolade sharp eyes to see the emergence of new cultural forms. He draws attention to the emergence of ‘Multicultural London English’ as expressing the intertwining of black British identity with influences from both indigenous and other cultures; to the extent that it has been suggested as the ‘dominant dialect spoken in this country by end of this century’ (p 285). (Look up Tottenham’s own ‘Chicken Connoisseur’ on You Tube as an example). ‘Through sport, religion, music, television and language, black communities are linked to a British identity’ (p288).
Conclusion.
So, will Owolade’s ‘new narrative’ take? His rejection of the ‘disparity fallacy’ that sees racism as the only and exclusive factor at play, as opposed to the place of culture, family patterns, social class and aspiration as also relevant, puts him in the same stable as the widely vilified Sewell Report (though I suspect that Owolade is too canny to tie his flag to that particular mast). His positive, angst free experience of life in Britain distances him from most black writers, including several Christians. Yet, as David Harewood said in his recent, eirenic Dimbleby lecture, what is exhausting is not consistently racist attitudes so much as the uncertainty about whether or not one will experience racism. But it is arguable that Owolade’s recent, quite short experience of life in Britain, covering only the last two decades, bears witness to a genuine change for the better. Perhaps, too, his freshness frees him from the shackles of older outlooks and enables him to discern developments that have been over-looked.
Certainly his book, which engages with a very wide variety of writers and with all the major events in Britain’s recent racial past, deserves serious attention. I think it is the best book around on race in Britain today. From my obviously very specific standpoint I think it holds an understanding (maybe a more appropriate term than ‘narrative’) that deserves to be worked with.