When Grandmaster Flash sang 'don't push me cause I'm close to the edge' in 1982, I was pretty close to the edge and subsequently went right over the edge. The early 1980's were a difficult time for black people in the UK, particularly for young black men. The political right under the Thatcher government were in the ascendancy and the extreme right were also on the rise. The issue of police harassment has been well documented, we also had serious mental health issues. Many of us were coming out of adolescence with raging hormones and as children of immigrants trying to find a sense of time and place.
I welcome Sewell's input, put we also need a space for alternative perspectives. I went to Warwick University in 1981, I joke that I wanted to escape the tensions of South London and ended up in Coventry just as Jerry Dammers and The Specials were putting the final touches to 'Ghost Town' about, erm Coventry.
I was looking for an outlet and I did notice that there was a group called 'Race Today', there must be a story around the demise of this group, but nothing replaced it, we have had a dark ages of 40 years for black politics ( before thankfully, the Equiano Project). Ambitious black politicians and activists gravitated towards the Labour Party, and these cliques have dominated black politics ever since.
Today's Conservative Party has elevated many black and Asian cabinet ministers, but none of them are from Caribbean backgrounds. Black Caribbean conservatives did not join the Conservative Party. In many respects Sewell is a Conservative figure, but he comes from a generation where for many black people (and white too) race has taken priority over class. So we have a coalition of the political left and paternalism, racial uplift, advocacy and state intervention (education, social work, psychology etc). So Sewell's laments about single parents and broken families can be easily co-opted into a Conservative worldview. Similarly the rise of black radical feminism in the 1990 could be and was co-opted as part of a critique of black men.
In the 1980's Conservatives were deeply concerned about the alienation and disruption of young black men, they began to think about producing a black middle class, again this agenda could be supported by black conservatives (albeit to be found on the fringes of the political left).
The 1980's saw the demise of the white working class, not so often remarked on was the demise of the black (predominantly male) working class, no longer agents in their own right, but subject to the interventions of middle class advocates berating them for their lack of success, and their poor choices.
Sounds like a solid read
When Grandmaster Flash sang 'don't push me cause I'm close to the edge' in 1982, I was pretty close to the edge and subsequently went right over the edge. The early 1980's were a difficult time for black people in the UK, particularly for young black men. The political right under the Thatcher government were in the ascendancy and the extreme right were also on the rise. The issue of police harassment has been well documented, we also had serious mental health issues. Many of us were coming out of adolescence with raging hormones and as children of immigrants trying to find a sense of time and place.
I welcome Sewell's input, put we also need a space for alternative perspectives. I went to Warwick University in 1981, I joke that I wanted to escape the tensions of South London and ended up in Coventry just as Jerry Dammers and The Specials were putting the final touches to 'Ghost Town' about, erm Coventry.
I was looking for an outlet and I did notice that there was a group called 'Race Today', there must be a story around the demise of this group, but nothing replaced it, we have had a dark ages of 40 years for black politics ( before thankfully, the Equiano Project). Ambitious black politicians and activists gravitated towards the Labour Party, and these cliques have dominated black politics ever since.
Today's Conservative Party has elevated many black and Asian cabinet ministers, but none of them are from Caribbean backgrounds. Black Caribbean conservatives did not join the Conservative Party. In many respects Sewell is a Conservative figure, but he comes from a generation where for many black people (and white too) race has taken priority over class. So we have a coalition of the political left and paternalism, racial uplift, advocacy and state intervention (education, social work, psychology etc). So Sewell's laments about single parents and broken families can be easily co-opted into a Conservative worldview. Similarly the rise of black radical feminism in the 1990 could be and was co-opted as part of a critique of black men.
In the 1980's Conservatives were deeply concerned about the alienation and disruption of young black men, they began to think about producing a black middle class, again this agenda could be supported by black conservatives (albeit to be found on the fringes of the political left).
The 1980's saw the demise of the white working class, not so often remarked on was the demise of the black (predominantly male) working class, no longer agents in their own right, but subject to the interventions of middle class advocates berating them for their lack of success, and their poor choices.