UK Afro-Diaspora collection seeks home

Photo: Africa exhibition

 

 

By Thomas L Blair

All 21^st century information centres have a vital interest in keeping up with the demand for learning about Cultures in the African Diaspora in Britain, in print and online. Bringing the Internet and books closer together could be a boon for far-sighted educators, researchers, rights activists, and the communities they serve.

To meet this challenge, I am offering my digital and print collection on the Black Experience in Britain, and in Europe, the USA and the Caribbean.

The digital component
With over 40 years of academic work behind me, and 15 years on the World Wide Web,  I am one of a growing number of online scholars publishing “minority interests” ignored by mainstream publishers. Notable examples are professors Abdul Alkalimat of the University of Illinois, Manning Marable of Columbia University and Naom Chomsky of MIT.  

 Uniquely, the Blair Collection is British-based, with a digital component of thousands of Internet pages and a dozen CD/DVD volumes of my online magazine The Chronicleworld http://www.chronicleworld.org. 

Written primarily for the Internet generation, the web magazine has merited comment from social scientists and researchers in professional associations. SOSIG and the UK Intute Science, Engineering and Technology cite its “is archived history of Afro-Caribbean settlement in London, book reviews, a gallery of Afro-Caribbean art and links to news services and sites of general interest to the British Afro-Caribbean community”.

The Print Collection

Linking the Internet and relevant books was not a simple a task. Rather than merely compiling cold lists of books from my university lectures and isolated libraries, I backed up my online articles with a personal library of more than 500 scholarly books, contemporary post-Windrush and historical. Photographs, documents, posters and political tracts capture the thrust of eras and political leaders.  Databases point readers to further study in the media, politics, ethnic and race relations and urban affairs.

The cache includes my own books; among them, The Poverty of Planning (1973) proposed solutions to urban decay in districts of immigrant settlement. In Retreat to the Ghetto: The end of a dream? (1977) I examined the crisis of Black leadership – Martin and Malcolm among others – in the US post-civil rights era.

The Eureka moment

My latest work in E-book and print, The Audacity of Cyberspace: The struggle for internet power (2009) brings the internet and books together.  Case studies of the web sites and literature aid our understanding of cyberactivism in Black communities in America, Britain and Africa. See http://m-ybooks.co.uk/blair/index.html.

It was remarkably difficult to unify this information. However, I am proud the British Library chose my web site for its first national archive of web sites on communities and culture.

Furthermore, “The CHRONICLEWORLD.ORG web site is one of best Web resources for education and research,” say subject specialists in UK universities consortium at Intute: http://www.intute.ac.uk.

See http://www.intute.ac.uk/cgi-bin/fullrecord.pl?handle=20091024-18575961

 and especially Shaping of Black London http://www.intute.ac.uk/cgi-bin/fullrecord.pl?handle=20091024-19162369

The Unique Opportunity

New demands are likely to be placed on the cultural information  organizations for material on the African Diaspora communities in Britain, and elsewhere. Many are speeding up their efforts to bring in the type of material relevant to multicultural societies. In this context, the Blair Collection has the potential to attract public readers and reach a wider audience of communities, academics and action-oriented policy researchers, both in-house and online.

It’s time senior scholars turned cyber-advocates, like myself, passed on our acquired knowledge to future generations. I am making a start by offering my digital and print collection to interested parties.

I therefore invite expressions of interest in housing the collection:  

From Archivists, librarians, curators and academic leaders as well as senior cultural managers in administration and education. Please e-mail Prof Blair at tb@thechronicle.demon.co.uk for a detailed prospectus of the Collection.

SAVE BLACK BRITAIN — New talents call for action

By Thomas L Blair
22 October 2009

What links a keen student of world economy, a careers advisor for Black beauty, and a candidate for a Conservative Party seat in Parliament for Hammersmith? They are Black and proud and raised some high-ambition goals at Rev David Shosanya’s State of Black Britain symposium launched 17 October.

 “Youth must globalise their knowledge,” Adam Cooper told the 200 delegates, families and children. Cooper, a scholar in Asian and African Studies, edits Ceasefire, the journal of student and academic activists in the peace movement.

  “Be Totally You,” advised Martina Nelson. The BTY college empowers youth with self-sustaining skills and careers in hairdressing, beauty therapy, ICT, and business administration.

 “Raise your political game”, said Conservative candidate Shaun Bailey. Born in a deprived inner London housing estate, his charity, My Generation, rescues troubled and crime-prone youth in the badlands of inner cities. Definitely not in the mould of his New Labour voting audience, “he is a Tory – and an increasingly influential rising star,” say party leaders.  

 These talent-led, “next generation” proposals herald major changes in knowledge, life styles and political action. Why? “Because the state of Black Britain is in deep crisis,” Rev Shosanya acknowledges. 

 Whatever area of life Black people find themselves in — from deprived neighbourhoods to Her Majesty’s prisons and to college, high-flying IT jobs and leafy suburbs — they are confronted by severe and unfair exclusions that  inevitably damage personal, family and community life.  “It’s time for change; time to say ‘Yes, we can!’ ” says the devout Black Christian church leader, echoing the campaigning motto of US President Barack Obama.

 Rev Shosanya clearly favours up-close, bonding and nurturing Black  communities. However, the founder’s vision may prove to be overly Christian, evangelical, bible-based and too God-obsessed for many in Britain’s diverse Black communities. Not all of Britain’s one million people of African and Afro- Caribbean heritage, colours and faiths can be expected to tread a single path to progress.

Contenders in the movement towards renewing Black Britain have their own views and spheres of influence.  They range from ministers  of the Black Muslims and the Nation of Islam,  disillusioned marxists and Labour stalwarts to obama-ists,  integrationists, mixed-race rights campaigners, Rastafarians and cultural nationalists to strivers, hustlers and “the brothers and sisters who just don’t give a damn”.

 Nevertheless, most recognise the need to increase social mobility and foster greater ambitions. Helping Black families and communities to recover from economic traumas is urgent. Rescuing ailing urban districts with significant Black populations—ghettoes, some say — is over due. Improving education, careers and job prospects are important issues. Crucially, Black voters seek to reform insensitve,  heavy-handed educational and criminal justice policies that weigh heavily on their youth.

 New talents have placed new thoughts for action on the Black Agenda. The symposium marked the first popular 21st century debate on Black life and political progress, or its lack. Constant dialogue about accelerating change over stagnant survival will fuel fierce debates on birthing a new generation in the State of Black Britain.

 * In this third part of a Black History Month 2009 series on Unshackling the Afro-British Mind, the author Thomas L Blair looks at how Blacks in Britain are bedevilled with problems and why talented youth could have the radical answers needed. He is a well-known academic and independent political commentator on Black urban affairs at http://Chronicleworld.org. Details of his book THE AUDACITY OF CYBERSPACE -The struggle for Internet power can be viewed at http://bit.ly/m-ybooksblair  and is highly recommended by The-Latest.com

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Black British Culture in Crisis

By Thomas L. Blair , 11  October 2009

Complacency is the greatest threat to Afro-Caribbean culture in Britain. Only a plan for rescue, revival and representation can save its carriers from a life sentence of cultural illiteracy and dependency. This article suggests the ways that a triad of Black youth, cultural scholars and policymakers can empower local Black communities and revolutionise their  relationship with providers of cultural services.

 After centuries as slaves and subjects of the empire and immigrants in residence, Afro-Caribbeans in Britain are victims of a monstrous popular stereotype – that they have no history, no culture and hence no future in Britain. 

 Alas, unlike Britain’s ethnic groups – indigenous Caucasians, South East Asians, Muslims, Chinese, Jews and Poles — it is solely the descendants of West Indian heritage who show a serious lack of continuity with their cultural, creative and ideological antecedents.

 Professor Rex Nettleford, University of the West Indies vice-chancellor says, “This state of mind has taken its toll on the West Indian diaspora in Britain”. As a result, “The diasporic brethren and sistren are left without the icons of hope they need to survive spiritually in a hostile environment,” says the leading intellectual on urbanism, poetics and politics. 

 However, the situation is not hopeless. Black History can be re-discovered and saved from oblivion. Black Culture can be revitalised. A new Black Agenda can be planned.

 Unchaining the Afro-Caribbean mind begins with a conceptual fact. Experts define “Culture” as the socially transmitted patterns, traits, and products of a people, class or period. Britain’s white ethnic groups, the English Victorians, the Ashanti kingdoms, Han dynasty, and African Americans all have cultures. So do people of Afro-Caribbean and African heritage in Britain.

 Furthermore, evidence has proved that “[Black] Culture, is both a mode and a driving force for individual and group action, and remains the central pillar of black pride and black identity”, say scholarly editors of Présence Africaine, the cultural revue of the Black world.

  “We must learn to use Black culture as springboards to the future”, says Wole Soyinka, Nobel Prize winning writer, cultural activist and member of the Society of African Culture.

 However, major barriers must be overcome. Highly paid guardians of the British culture industry pontificate on what should be done for Black people while living miles away from them.

 What they stubbornly, and often hatefully, refuse to admit is that their arrogance is saturated with centuries of master over slave, white over black cultural abuse. This dominance tore the heart out of Black civilisations, raped their artefacts and resources, and nearly destroyed the inventors and carriers of Black culture, the people themselves.

 Who will silence the deniers of Black culture? Who will denounce the “afrophobia” that sours all Black-White social relations? Who, indeed, is to chart the passage through the valleys of complacency and malaise to the mountaintop of ideas and liberating action?

 [Renascent Black youth is the focus of the next instalment. The series began with Unshackling the Afro-British mind] ©copyright Blair ChronicleWorld 2009

Notes on the author

*Thomas L Blair, PhD and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts FRSA, is an African-American sociologist resident in Britain for over 40 years. His book The Audacity of Cyberspace: The struggle for Internet power (2009) ISBN 978-1 906986-81-0 describes how Black communities in America, England, and language groups in sub-Saharan Africa are taming the new information technologies. It complements this article and is available through bookstores, libraries and online via Google and Amazon books.

Cairo, where Obama and Malcolm X showed two very different faces of America

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The firebrand Muslim minister struck a blow  for African American civil rights and African liberation
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Thomas L Blair, 5 June 2009

Cairo on the tip of Nubian Africa has played host to two exceptional African Americans. One named Barack Hussein Obama, the son and grandson of Muslims, came as US President this June. The other was the radical African American Muslim minister El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (widely known as Malcolm X) in June 1964.

Both invoked the great Islamic past; both aimed to forge unity on crucial international issues. But what a dramatic contrast. Obama, the suited up, sophisticated new African American in the Office, aimed at calming the volatile Muslim world. However, Malcolm X in Cairo called for an unprecedented joint action by Africans and African Americans against a common scourge – racism and imperialism.

Malcolm came to this revolutionary conclusion after founding the secular, black nationalist Organisation of African American Unity (OAAU). Later, he tested his ideas with political activists in an extensive tour of Africa and the Middle East in June 1964.

The tour strengthened his newly developed beliefs. Officials courted him; he gave interviews to newspapers, and spoke on television and radio in Egypt, Ethiopia, Tanganyika (now Tanzania), Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, Sudan, Senegal, Liberia, Algeria, and Morocco. Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, and Ahmed Ben Bella of Algeria invited Malcolm X to serve in their governments.

The scene was set for his unprecedented call for concerted action at the second summit meeting of the Organisation of African Unity, convened from 17 to 21 July 1964.

His arrival was widely noted. To his admirers at the meeting of the fledging African authority, Malcolm X was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crimes against black Americans. He was also El-Hajj, a penitent Sunni Muslim aware of the broad humanity of the Islamic faith.

Interviewed by reporters and radio journalists in Cairo, Malcolm X said: “When I arrived here, there was a great deal of publicity in all of the press over here concerning my coming. It was historic in a sense because no American Negroes had ever made any effort in the past to try and get their problems placed in the same category as the African problems, nor had they tried to internationalize it.”
His reference to “colonialism”, and plea for renascent dignity and justice found favour in the highest quarters. Egypt’s President Nasser made specific reference to the condition of African Americans, and hailed the then recently passed Civil Rights Act of 1964, in his opening remarks.

With this cache of prominent supporters, Malcolm X gained acceptance as an observer at the OAU summit of independent African states. His eight-page memorandum warned America of a coming conflagration; it echoed James Baldwin’s eloquent manifesto “The Fire Next Time” (1963). He urged African leaders and freedom fighters to internationalise the plight of African Americans and bring the issue before the UN.

Then, in one of the most remarkable coincidences of the turbulent 1960s, Malcolm X delivered his memorandum on 17 July, a day before what later became known as the “Harlem riots” that rocked New York that summer.

* Thomas L Blair publishes the Chronicleworld http://www. chronicleworld.org. Discover the Internet facts and common visions of the Black world in the author’s just published E-book The Audacity of Cyberspace: The struggle for Internet power by Thomas L Blair (Orders may be placed at 
http://m-ybooks.co.uk/blair/default.html

Notebook on Equality Britain

Quietly, model Black women are building sisterly bonds

 

When Black women sing praisesongs to empower communities across the African diaspora we all ought to listen. Especially when the women are high achieving educators, broadcasters, writers, fashion icons, and  policymakers in Britain, and Africa’s First Ladies.

Witness the paeans of affection for Dame Jocelyn Barrow, teacher and civil libertarian, by prominent Black women at her tribute dinner in London, in April.

Among the celebrants were Baroness Scotland, the UK’s attorney general, Baroness Amos, the ex-leader of the House of Lords and first Black woman British cabinet minister, publisher, author and broadcaster Margaret Busby, and Moira Stuart, Britain’s pioneering Black woman news presenter.

They applauded Dame Barrow’s 50-year career. In the 1960’s when many Black educators were keeping their heads down, she helped lead the earliest civil rights group, the Campaign against Racial Discrimination. Without CARD, some, say the Race Relations Act of 1968 would never have passed.

Later, she rose up in the bastions of power; she chaired the Broadcasting Standards Council, and was the first Black woman to be a governor of the BBC, famously described as “all-white middle class and male”.

In her long career, Dame Barrow received Empire awards for her work in education and community relations, and in European social and economic affairs.

Many praise her report ‘Delivering shared heritage’, for the Mayor’s Commission on African and Asian Heritage (MCAAH) 2005, that defended diversity and the contribution of London’s many communities.

The praisesong for empowerment — one of the most widely used poetic forms in Africa — has its bards across the diaspora.

 Super-rich model Naomi Campbell lent her celebrity to the voices of Africa’s first ladies at a health summit held in Los Angeles in April. The two-day summit brought Campbell and the wives of African leaders together with U.S. experts, key political figures and aid organizations to create ongoing partnerships on health, women’s issues and HIV/AIDS.

The first ladies envisioned a new dawn in African development in their countries: Angola, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Swaziland and Zambia.

Significantly, they all agreed: “Empowering Africa’s first ladies is an innovative approach to bettering the lives of millions of Africans.”

Quietly, Black women are laying the foundations of innovative cooperation. Black communities everywhere, hammered by the recession, credit crunch and underemployment, need the high-flyers to represent their cause before hope evaporates and fears thrive.

Hailing Black women in education, broadcasting, politics and public affairs should give them inspiration. Black critics offer words of caution, however: “Do their sentiments foster actions to alleviate the problems of Black people in hostile environments? Joining the ranks of power and privilege is all for naught if leading personalities fail as drum majors for Black achievement.

 If, however, the emerging “sisterhood” can ramp up the levels of shared expertise, resources and skillsets, in Africa and the diaspora, and if this ultimately translates into political influence and social capital, then a chorus of new voices will be heard in the praisesong for Black people.

© Thomas L Blair, Chronicleworld weblog 2009

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The Audacity of Cyberspace — USA case study

Black experts add diversity to the hi-tech world

The evidence is that African Americans have matured in their Internet priorities as well as the ways they access and use the Internet. They know that overcoming the perils of information poverty is one of the essential tasks for future success. This fact is evidenced by the increasing growth of Black web sites shown in Prof Abdul Akalimat’s book The African-American Experiences in Cyberspace: A resource Guide to the Best Web Sites on Black Culture and History (Pluto, London 2004).

 

Furthermore, there is a welcome surge of interest in the hitherto unrecognised contributions of Black Internet innovators, computing scientists, media executives, and professors.  “Black kids might embrace technology with more enthusiasm if they knew someone like Dr. Mark Dean was already leading the way,” says Tyrone D Taborn of the Careers Communications Group, Baltimore, Maryland.

 

Dean is a trailblazer, says Taborn in US Black Engineer & IT magazine, “Hi-Tech’s Invisible Man,” Jan 17, 2004. He is a Ph.D. from Stanford University. He is in the National Hall of Inventors. He has more than 30 patents pending. He is a vice president with IBM.”

 

Enthusiastically, he continues: “Oh, yeah. And he is also the architect of the modern-day personal computer. Dr. Dean holds three of the original nine patents on the computer that all PCs are based upon. And, Dr. Mark Dean is an African American”.

 

Further investigation reveals that Taborn’s comments are not an overstatement. “Blacks have played a pioneering role in the hi-tech world,” says the popular Black magazine, Ebony, “Black Pioneers in the High-Tech World,” 2 June 2000, Chicago, Il. Moreover, in 2002, researchers from the University of California-Santa Barbara, MIT and the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Center explored “race in digital space” and celebrated the work of Black activists, journalists, entrepreneurs, engineers and scholars using digital technologies (See http://web.mit.edu/cms/Events/race/press.html). 

 

 

Ø  Info Point  Leading Black personalities in US hi-tech  also include:

·         John H Thompson, the first Black chief executive officer of a major Silicon Valley firm

·         28-year-old Darien Dash, who runs  Digital Mafia Entertainment, the first Black-owned publicly traded Internet company

·         US Air Force veteran Earl Stafford, founder of Unitech Inc, a multimillion-dollar military technology firm

·         Yvette Moyo, president of www.mobe.com, a forum promoting the use of information technology in the Afro-American market. See “Black Pioneers in the high-tech world,” Ebony Magazine June 2000; also Tyrone D Taborn, “50 Most Important African-Americans in Technology List” in Black Engineer www.blackengineer.com/events/50_ top_African_Americans_in_Technology.shtml

 

On the horizon

Soon, without doubt, more Black people will be attracted to using the Internet as income and educational levels rise, and as prices of computers and network access fall. Community activists will promote the survival and development of Black neighbourhoods, churches, schools, families and small businesses.

 

The tendencies towards change are apparent. The state of the information revolution in Black America is advancing in strength and purpose. Key factors in this advance were identified by Michael Marriott, in his New York Times article Blacks Turn to the Internet Highway, and Digital Divide Starts to Close”  March 31, 2006. They are:

 

·         Rising Black aspirations to get “wired up” for work, education, politics, leisure and social interaction, associated with

·         More computer and Internet accessibility in schools and libraries, and

·         Greater use of cell phones and hand-held devices that connect to the Internet

 

But the transformation to full access and use of the Internet by Black communities will not be easy. And, the signs are that the struggle for African Americans to get onto the 21st century information superhighway will not cease until their terrestrial rights are fully attained.

 

 

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A decade before Barack Obama’s “net generation” ignited his journey to the White House,  Black communities in the USA, Britain and sub-Saharan Africa went online for equality and social justice. Discover the facts, and their common visions and priorities in –

THE AUDACITY OF CYBERSPACE: The Struggle for Internet Power by Thomas L Blair  tb@thechronicle.demon.co.uk

 

 

 

Cyberblack

Wiring-up Black Britain

Community-oriented web sites are defining the emerging Black British experience in cyberspace.
Black Britain is not the most outstanding example of wired up communities. African Americans are closer to this vaunted ideal. But “going digital” is increasingly the preferred option of African-Caribbeans in the UK.

Mutual aid and self-help
Overcoming the worst effects of information poverty is a typical theme. Patrick Vernon’s Every Generation serves as an “online community resource,” says the Labour councillor and race equality chief in London. “We aim to empower young people and link them with the older generation through history, family genealogy and heritage,” he says. Notably, Every Generation won the Commission for Racial Equality 2003 Race in the Media Award for best website. www.everygeneration.co.uk/

There is an urgent need for Black-led Internet initiatives. Leaders of the African British organisation, ACFF, aim “to raise the aspirations and achievements, academically, professionally and economically for people of African and Caribbean descent”. www.acff.org
Furthermore, Afro-British communities use the Internet to channel aid to their kith and kin in far-off homelands. AFFORD – Africa Foundation for Development “aims to involve Africans abroad more directly in Africa’s development”. www.afford-uk.org

Politics and civil rights
Campaigning groups are starting to make an impact. LIGALI, the Pan African Human Rights Organisation, challenges the misrepresentation of African people, culture and history in the British media. “We produce progressive Africentric media and education programmes that actively work for self determination, socio-political freedom, physical wealth and spiritual health”. www.ligali.org/
The Africa Reparations Movement demands reparations from the former colonial powers for the harm done to Africa and the African Diaspora “through enslavement, colonisation, and racism”. www.arm.arc.co.uk/home.html
Cultural activities
The Africa Centre projects a positive face of Africa in London. The directors use the Internet to broadcast their meetings, talks, exhibitions, cinema, literature, and performing arts. www.africacentre.org.uk
British Black Music has its staunch defenders, too. The online home for the Black Music Congress is the hub for information regarding the state of the African British Music industry.www.britishblackmusic.com
Business and professionals
Web site organisers are catering for a new class of Black achievers. The EPN is an online forum for networking and socialising amongst African British business owners and professionals working in London and environs. www.theepn.co.uk. The 100 Black Men of London, mobilise African British professionals to raise the aspirations of youth and their communities. www.100bmol.org.uk

News, views and commentaries
Cyberactivists are convinced that sharing information is the key to a better future. The Black Presence in Britain highlights the lives of the African /Caribbean people since the 1950’s. www.blackpresence.co.uk Black In Britain bridges the digital gap with news, views, and lists of cultural events. www.blackinbritain.co.uk.

The common view is that using the Internet and new information technologies is “liberating”. Moreover, this has global implications. Online Black cyberactivists everywhere are using the Internet to encourage community cohesion, promote alliances, and to prod uncaring politicians in to action on equality demands.

Of course, we cannot ensure that new technologies — the personal computer, the World Wide Web, the all-powerful smartphone — will help set beleaguered minorities free or merely give us that illusion. My forthcoming book The Audacity of Cyberspace explores the issues behind the astonishing trend toward Black cyberpower. It includes:
• Articles by leading specialists and cyber activists from America, Britain and Sub Saharan Africa
• Profiles of more than 100 online community organisations
• The 50 best innovative strategies by governments and infrastructure companies
• Get the facts from 500 internet sources on health care, xenophobia, workers’ rights, or the depiction of minorities in the mass media.

Black History goes digital

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We lost sight of the true worth of Black History
Now let’s get it back — and digitise it

October is a month of mighty memories for Black communities. Their computers are brimming over with the treasures of Black history. However, what are we doing to preserve Black heritage electronically for the next decade, much less for the ages?

Fortunately, in my new series Black History Goes Digital, I offer some answers to this vexing question. You’ll discover that digital preservation is more than a matter of expensive software in the hands of technocrats. It is content that really counts. That is people gathering, creating, storing and digitising Black Heritage for advancement.

Furthermore, in my view, the challenge of the 21^st century is overcoming information poverty. We need to know what Black communities are doing to tackle the problems and increase the prospects of “Going Digital”. How are they “Crossing the Digital Divide” and “Training cyberarchivists and organisers”?  And, crucially, what are the best methods of Internet action for “Decolonising euro-centric history”, “Creating social capital”, and “Networking the Black World”.

Drawn from diverse sources and reprints from the ChronicleWorld web site, the series has one over-riding purpose. It supports the view that Black History is an irreducible web of experiences that unite Africa and Diasporic communities. Not separate, but equal to others in the human quest for fraternal, peaceful and cooperative relations between all peoples.

By Thomas L Blair, 20 October 2008

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 Have you heard the news!!  The Chronicleword.org and its publications are an important “representation of British Culture”, says the national British Library, leader in “conserving world knowledge”. 

Ø  Top-class commentary on policy issues, problems, pride and power of Black Britain and Afro-Europe is our secret of success. Cyber Social Action and Bridging the Digital Divide are constant themes.

Ø  Readers benefit from more than a Decade and a 1000 pages on our website founded in the UK domain in 1997.

Ø  Go to http://www.chronicleworld.org –

Contact details for Prof Thomas L Blair: e-mail: tb@thechronicle.demon.co.uk

 

 

 

 

Is “Post-racial Britain” the End of Black Politics?

 

 How can a handful of people – politicos, media chiefs, business and institutional leaders and downright opponents of equality – manipulate our perspectives on race, and make suckers of us all?

Simple. The new ideologues claim this century’s emerging Black British politicians are radically different from the civil rights and Black Power leaders of the 1960’s. These trendsetters win their elections and appointments by favouring “universal” interests rather than affirmative action policies that can aid Black communities, proponents say.

This dogma fuels the notion that the “race problem” has been transcended. Buttressed by the “Obama phenomenon”, it is said that “Black politics is fading into British politics the same was Jews, long ago, joined the political mainstream. The mood is, “We don’t need to talk about discrimination any more. They’re one of us”.  Hence, we have entered a post-racial future.

All is not as it seems
But here’s the sting.  When the new acceptable Blacks are elected to a place at the political table, they are said to prove there has been satisfactory progress. However, as in slavery and colonial times, the large mass of Blacks who toil gain little.  

Concerns about the post-racial ideology have been widely discussed in weblogs and a flurry of e-mails in America. One posting strikes a chord in Britain. It’s from Linda Burnham on “Obama’s Candidacy: The Advent of Post-Racial America and the End of Black Politics?, H-Afro-Am@H-Net.MSU. EDU).

Importantly, we can garner some clues about the strategies that frame national debates about race and public affairs, and block Black political energies.

How post-racial ideologues control debate
There is “Double-bind racism”, in which anyone who condemns the actual existing racial regime is charged with extremism. Similarly, advocates for anti-racist practices and policies, are accused of being racist, and of ‘playing the race card’ to win special treatment, sympathy and favour.

There is “Dog-whistle racism”, in which racist messages are broadcast through racially coded words and phrases, to reach ears that have been primed and highly attuned to them. (Political leaders that praise “a Britannia of hard-working Britons steeped in British family values and speaking the Queen’s English” are sending a coded message: “Don’t vote for a black”).

Then, there is “Colour-blind racism”, in which supposedly race-neutral policies are used to mask, sustain and defend the unbalanced racial status quo. (The colour-blind assertion –“Who me? I’m not prejudiced; some of my mates are black” — leads many otherwise worthy people to fail to see injustice. It is also the favourite tool used by opponents of affirmative action for racial equality.)

Furthermore, there is “Visually evocative racism”, in which pictures and graphic imagery are purposefully used to trigger deeply embedded racial stereotypes.  (Historically, subservient dancing and prancing Golliwogs and “nigger minstrels” served this purpose admirably. So do today’s persistent images of  aggressive, menacing Blacks prowling the streets, so popular in the media, television dramas and documentaries).  

How racisms are used
End of race ideologues skilfully manipulate four stratagems to control race debates; and here’s how.

·       They serve to confuse and divide Blacks from potential allies across race, class and faith lines. They make it difficult build friendly networks with progressive leaders in minority ethnic groups: Africans, Asians, Irish, Jews, Poles, Muslim. The stratagems create false distinctions between the so-called assimiable immigrants of the past and the doubtful integration of the new immigrants, asylum-seekers and economic migrants from Eastern Europe and world regions. (Scholars and Orientalists say this “divide and rule” strategy has proved a useful tool in the colonies and Britain.)  

 

·       Furthermore, the proponents of the end of race future throw roadblocks in the drive for racial justice and advocacy initiatives. (Though there are no laws explicitly upholding racial inequity, the stratagems used aim to roll back the fragile gains made by legislation and equal opportunity procedures.  

 

·       Proponents use the stratagems to filter out progressive Blacks who take a stand against the status quo. Thus, they undermine the potential influence of anti-racist and empowerment organisations in the corridors and boardrooms of power.  (Come back Black political mavericks: Bernie Grant, Claudia Jones, Learie Constantine, and Lord Pitt, and other partisans for a political humanism that embraces rather than excludes Black communities.)

However, what if you could convert opposition to these stratagems into social power? What if you could blunt their impact on the Black body politic? Inadvertently, the end of race ideologues have, in fact, pinpointed many policy issues in which race is a factor. Confronting and overcoming these issues can help us answer the puzzling question: How will we know when post-racial Britain has arrived?

Reading Burnham’s e-mailed article suggests to me that change will not be by benign governance, top-down bureaucratic diktat or heavenly intervention. It will arise from dedicated efforts to define and support political leaders and policies that add genuine social value.  

The markers of change will be the end of race-based disparities in health, education, housing, income distribution, and wealth. Changing widely contested police, prosecution, criminal justice and mental health practices, sentencing and incarceration policies will be important milestones, too.

 

Greatly increased political participation, representation and commitment to social justice are essential hallmarks.  There is an excellent opportunity to challenge the habitual pessimism of political pundits and survey researchers, say many observers. Simon Woolley, who heads Operation Black Vote (OBV) has said:  “Never before in British history has the black vote been so powerful. In over 70 mostly inner-city seats, such as Battersea, Bristol, and Luton, black communities could determine who wins and who loses”.

Woolley says empowerment campaigners can spell out an agenda for the politics of hope. OBV activists have toured the nation spreading the news of the “Equality in our Lifetime” manifesto along with the 1990 Trust and the National Assembly Against Racism,   

When we reach and surpass these milestones, and when the day comes that all Black people are free, secure and can walk the streets everywhere without fear or hindrance, you will know the post-racial society has arrived to stay.

Read more in my article “What’s so “post” about post racism? We’re all right” gaffe by Windrush author deserves vigorous response”, to be published in The_Latest citizens’ journal www.the-latest.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

Can East London projects win gold for Britain’s 2012 Olympics?

Post-Beijing there’s a compulsion to better the Chinese and deliver a Games that “was   just as fantastic, just as memorable”, said Mayor Boris Johnson when he accepted the Olympic flag as host for the the 2012 Games. But pride from making East London a better living cityscape will garner more world praise than medals and sporting. 

 

It’s been called “the backside of the city”, “a colony of depressed labour” and a “multi-racial ghetto”. However, the 2012 Olympics Committee could make East London a showcase of urban development with a human orientation. This action, nay, ideology, can carry the mood of Olympics sport and sponsorship to another dimension.

 

To do this, the great and the good of London’s 2012 world tournament will have to up their game. Olympics sports chief Lord Sebastian Coe and builder-developer David Higgins are key players. The government factotums, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and Olympics minister, Tessa Jowell, will certainly have to provide leadership to end the pernicious pattern of benign neglect of London’s East End.

 

In this regard, the past is an eloquent teacher. Olympics planners and financers should study the commentaries of dedicated East End observers.

 

Benign neglect is a serial occurrence in the Olympic boroughs. Way back in 1991, the compassionate doctor David Widgery showed how we blame the victims of impoverishment rather than the real villain, the inequality of the “free market metropolis”. The flagship projects of the multi-national commercial developers of the 1980s and 1990s — Canary Wharf, the Isle of Dogs, and the London Docklands (LDDC) — caused wide spread havoc on people and the cityscape.

 

This upheaval threatens to scratch the thin veneer of racial tolerance. The talents of newcomers from Africa, Bangladesh and Vietnam are grossly under-employed, says senior sociologist Michael Young and his colleagues in The New East End: Kinship, race and conflict (2006).

 

After Beijing, Britain faces a formidable challenge. But it lies not in breath-taking fireworks and claiming more medals and glory. Team Great Britain must ensure that the creativity of the people gains expression within the Games and around the Olympics sites. Some basic questions must be anwered. 

 

Will costumed Elisabethans, Jack the Rippers,  and the gaslights of Edwardian days, fish and chips, fruit scones be the main British cultural features in the opening ceremonies, with photos of past medal-winning Black athletes parading around the stadium wrapped in the Union Jack flag?

 

Alternatively, can the Olympics organisers make sure that the festivities are a genuine display of the myriad cultures that make up East London, an exceptional part of one of the world’s great cosmopolitan cities?

 

Furthermore, the Coe-Higgins-Burnham-Jowell team Great Britain, backed by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, must be seen to be paragons not only of sporting prowess, but also of corporate responsibility and accountability. They must make effective preparations to uplift communities and their environment. 

 

Olympic cities have always struggled with their social image. “In Athens, a mere three years after their Olympics… I passed some elaborate Olympic project, already crumbling and abandoned to the weeds”, wrote Philip Hensher in The Independent. China’s government and Olympics authorites were widely criticised for displacing people and destroying homes to make way for its 2008 Games. 

 

If by 2012 British Olympics organisers do not help identify and change the inequities that plague East Londoners – benign neglect and malevolent intervention — their critics will be proved right.

 

Indeed, critics will see the failure to aid the reconstruction of East End life and living as the “mask of a species of social apartheid”.  An apartheid that bars the aspiring “people of the abyss” as Jack   London called them, from competing in sports and participating in the economy. (Note: Beijing Olympics gold medallist, Christine Uhuruogu, was born,  raised and still lives in East London). 

 

A disputed Games that supports the invasive computer-age, affluent athletes and workers and excludes long suffering East Londoners is no symbol of a modern, democratic urban society. 

 

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For a further exploration of this topic, see my article “Vital economic link between Carnival and the London Olympics” in the citizens’ journal http://www.The-Latest.com submitted  Sun, 24/08/2008