“Brit(ish)” (2018) is a book by Afua Hirsch about race, identity and belonging in Britain.
Hirsch:
“Sometimes, when people tell me to ‘get over’ the questions of race and identity that so preoccupy me, I think how carefree that would be.”
The book opens with the words of Maya Angelou when she went to live in Africa:
“The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”
Hirsch has never felt that. She is too Black for Britain and too British for Africa. And even too posh for the ‘hood.
The Question: Everywhere she goes, but especially in Britain, she gets The Question:
“Where are you from?”
Race: Her mother is Black, her father White. Of her four grandparents, two came from Ghana, one from England, and one, her Jewish grandfather, fled Nazi Germany. Her parents brought her up to be British. They did not think of her as Black.
Britain: She grew up in a White, well-to-do part of London, the Wimbledon of tennis fame, and went to one of Britain’s top universities, Oxford. Both places were made by and for White people. She felt out of place in both.
Africa: She left Britain to go live in Africa, in Ghana. But she felt out of place there too. She returned to Britain – to find she was not the only one going through an identity crisis:
Brexit: In the 2010s immigration became a huge issue. Britain broke away from the European Union, in part to stop the free flow of foreigners into the country. Britain needed them – but they made easy scapegoats for Britain’s troubles. And she was seen as one of them, despite having grown up in Britain. Not because she was, in fact, born in Norway, but because she did not look White.
The Good Immigrant: She was expected to be a Good Immigrant: to marry White, never be drunk or loud, never bring up racism, never make White people uncomfortable, distance herself from Bad Immigrants, etc. White people in turn would tolerate her living in “their” country – and pat themselves on the back for being such tolerant people!
Many in Britain long for the good old days that never were, for the false, Whitewashed picture of the past they were taught as schoolchildren. Make Britain White again!
- Thus “Downton Abbey” and all those other lily-White period dramas they love so much.
- Thus the way many could not abide a mixed-race Meghan Markle as part of the royal family.
- Thus the many Blacks and Muslims in Britain who no longer regard themselves as British, not really.
- Thus the homegrown terrorists who no longer see Britain as their country – not because of “radical clerics” or anything like that, but because of White people themselves.
White Britain is racist “with a smiling face” – but is too blind, colour-blind, to see it. To see it would destroy their storybook picture of themselves.
– Abagond, 2020.
See also:
- books – those I read in 2020
- Maya Angelou
- Britain
- compare:
- Grada Kilomba on racism in Europe
- growing up in the USA: Black, biracial, Latino
- tropes:
- “Where are you really from?”
- “I don’t see colour”
- respectability politics – similar to the Good Immigrant thing
- White nationalism – well, the US sort
- yet more mixed chicks:
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I agree, I live in the UK and there is a sense of pretentiousness on issues regarding immigration and identity. Britain is quick to pat itself on the back about ending the slave trade while not mentioning their participation in it. They would look down on the racism of Nazi Germany and the United States but ignore similar horrors and injustices committed across the British Empire.
Despite the contributions of Black Caribbean people to the culture of Britain over the last 70 years, we were reminded through the Windrush Scandal (that is still ongoing) that we can come to the country and help rebuild it after the Second World War, but we are still disposable, just as in both world wars and just like in slavery. Yet they would tell us how far we have come and how multicultural Britain is during the Royal wedding and the same British media would still find ways to undermine Megan Markle in a campaign that has strong racist undertones.
Britain’s imperial past is rarely brought up and hardly taught in schools. So many people (and the media) talk about issues regarding immigration, ethnic minorities with a phenomenal lack of context and an amazing level of arrogance (see Piers Morgan or Carol Malone). It is no wonder that some people here would confidently say that there is no racism in Britain while stating that we should feel proud of the British Empire. Smh…
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“The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”
Abagond…To me, the above quote applies to all of us Black folk who’ve moved and landed elsewhere. I know I tried moving back home to gentrified Charleston, SC in 2014 — only lasted til 2017 cuz it no longer was “home.”Had had to get the hell out.
Thanks so much for this — I’m gonna definitely buy & read this one!
“Britain is quick to pat itself on the back about ending the slave trade while not mentioning their participation in it.”
Aniwazoa… No shit! To my mind, nowhere is their “participation” more felt in the US than in Charleston, South Carolina!
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TCK (Third culture kids), Global nomads, mixed heritage people…experience some degree of identity crises.
Are we transitioning from a world with fixed borders to one that perhaps might be more fluid/porus in the future?
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Same here in 🍁.
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I think that it is hard to say whether we will transition to this point at the moment. That would require a fundamental shift in a lot of established global institutions as well as a reordering of the current economic system.
On one hand more and more people are mixing and we will probably at some point see a convergence of sorts in terms of our phenotype. But one could argue that most humans are already mixed to varying degrees. Very few people have an ancestry that is composed of a single racial/ethnic group and yet for the most part we are not exactly enthusiastic about bringing down our boarders to connect with our distant cousins in other countries.
Humans have always found different ways to divide ourselves and shape our identities. Race is one aspect, but historically it was language and culture. In the future nationalism, religion, culture and ethnicity will probably be as important as they are today regardless of how mixed the human race becomes (which it already is to some extent). Any changes to our current boarders will probably be based on economic and political factors rather than racial or ethnic aspects.
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A sad, but interesting piece from The New Yorker along these lines — but about America:
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/our-fathers-body
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I live in UK also and the terms
“multiethnic is a buffoonery” !
I was born in one of the most multiethnic country in the world “Brazil” but it didn’t change anything at all it was racism and still racism until today!
UK like USA has problem with gentrification,
here in London areas as Brixton,Peckham and Clapham,I am mentioning this areas because they have high number of black people and minority living there but they are pushing them out to make more spaces for rich and posh whites!
Every time poor or low classes are living in that area,because wp can’t stand the smell of non british people living there,they will ask the council to increase the rent so they can move them to live outside London!
Wp had always showed us how they feel about us,but still some of us want to stay with them!
I don’t know how can someone live with that sickness around!
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