This is the second outstanding article I’ve read on Unherd today. The good stuff seems to arrive in waves.
Probably my favorite passage from this article was: “I was a person of colour when I was in the US,” she says, but “if I took a plane and went anywhere else, or if I crossed the border I wasn’t a person of colour anymore. So it wasn’t an essential trait. It was more of a particular fiction that was imposed on me”.
Identity politics really is a Liberal American obsession. If it washes up on non-American shores I urge you to resist. Resist with all your might.
Unless you happen to want a job on TV when you should emphasise the identity politics as much as possible.
In the article on journalism it was clearer to me. Thousands of students in the UK take Media Studies degrees but what do they do afterwards? They are only young so they start a blog or even get a job on a newspaper. At that point they have to go with the flow and say the same things as everyone else. But to be able to sell their words for the most money they have to be more extreme – black people become blacker and poor people become poorer, etc. It sells.
You are quite right that this whole “person of colour” is a US originated obsession arising from the fact that until the late 1960s large sections of the US did not simply operate Jim Crow restrictions but actually had anti-miscegenation statutes in something like 18 States. It was effectively an apartheid country.
That is not the UK experience. I listened last night to the TV episode of “Who do you think you are?” Involving the mixed race footballer Alex Scott. On her mother’s side she had a mixture of English, Irish and Jewish roots. On her fathers side the family originated in Portland, Jamaica. The family was traced back in one line, to her visible surprise and discomfort, to a great great great grandfather who was coloured and owned 26 black slaves. He received compensation for them and left money for his “wives” and children. One of whose lines led to Alex Scott and the other involved children born to a slave woman he owned. She met a cousin who came from one of those lines who explained there were many descendants in the area.
Most people probably regard Alex as black simply because her skin is relatively dark and she had a “Black Jamaican” father. Her expectation was that she might find that her ancestors were slaves but she was wholly unprepared to discover that one was in fact a slave owner. The fact that free black people in Jamaica and other Caribbean colonies could and did own slaves is never mentioned. The pretence that it was only racist white men who owned slaves is the popular narrative. I have a white great great grandmother who inherited slaves in Jamaica from her first husband and rooting about her relatives by marriage I discovered several who had children by free black women one of whom was a slave owner.
In the TV program it was suggested that it was unusual that the women concerned were left provided for by Will provisions but in fact judging from my research that appears to have been the norm.
Even in British colonies where slavery operated ( and it never did in the UK itself) there was no bar to black and coloured people owning slaves. This is not to excuse slavery but simply to emphasise that US history is not UK history. There were coloured professional football players in England and Scotland in the 1880s. The US professional baseball colour line was not crossed until 1947 in the States.
UK academics and other UK woke folk need to educate themselves and wake up to the different history of the two countries, and stop assuming that the UK is the same as the US as far as race relations are concerned.
I wasn’t flouting any woke prohibition merely quoting his description in contemporary records which were read out in the program.
His son was described as a “Sambo” in another census document quoted that puzzled Alex Scott. It was explained as being a derogatory reference to a mixed race person whereas it had a rather more precise meaning in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. If one of your parents was a mulatto/coloured (i.e. of one white and one black parent) and the other was black you were classified as a Sambo, whereas if one of your parents was a mulatto and the other white you would be a quadroon.
The fact that few (who have not studied colonial Caribbean records) have any idea of these ancient classifications is a testament to the fact that we are no longer as hung up on fine racial classifications as the officials of that era clearly were.
Never knew that “Sambo” described an individual who was/is three quarters black, one quarter white (which would seem to very roughly describe the average black American or West Indian), but I do know that “Zambo” means a person who is half black, half native American.
You are so right to say that US and U.K. woke people need to educate themselves. That is what is missing in this whole incendiary identity politics debate.
There is a tendency these days – encouraged by the use of social media – to polarise and oversimplify. Very often, the devil is in the detail.
Malcolm X observed something very similar (if you haven’t read it his autobiography is excellent). Unfortunately American racial politics has been exported and is infecting everywhere else.
I came here to say what you said, word by word, including the favourite passage!
Identity politics got me doubting myself sometimes – as a white woman, do I have the right to reject racial classifications and insist that colour-blindness is the only morally justified attitude? These few, simple sentences, provide the answer. I shall be reading the full novel.
Jeff Butcher
2 years ago
By opening his piece with an example of white attitudes from over 100 years ago, the author perfectly typifies how utterly backward so many black people’s attitude to whites is, especially those from Africa.
The ‘white audience’ he refers to at the end is the kind of audience that holidays in Tuscany and writes op-Eds for the Guardian, I.e about 0.005% of the white population. Class of course never comes into it. Maybe he should get out more.
I for one am sick as a white person of being co-opted into this group of flagellants. If you don’t want a label, write a novel about something other than being a black immigrant in a white majority country. Write a sci-fi novel instead.
Exactly. The more ‘post identity’ these people seek to become ideally the more narrowly identity based their ideas are. Of course it’s all about some ideal ultimate fairness as if there’s some ideal state somewhere- not the appalling West which is where, strangely, people want to flee to from theocracies or other regimes.
I thought that historical example was interesting and relevant to the article. Also to me the writer does identify the class as the white, university educated progressives. Maybe they are 0.005% of the global white population? Unfortunately they are far more prevalent in the west and run pretty much every major institution.
Actually I think immigrants from Nigeria tend to have a lot more sane attitudes to race than many liberal whites or blacks growing up in the US and UK. Growing up in Nigeria they become acutely aware that living in a country where the majority are not white does not result in an earthly paradise for blacks, and that tribal and religious conflicts can result in precisely the sort of prejudice that blacks complain of elsewhere. if you want a sane black voice in UK politics then listen to Kemi Badenoch who comes from Nigeria.
I don’t resent his description either. But his idea of a ‘white’ audience is so skewed that it does not really include the vast majority of white people, at least in my experience.
Linda Hutchinson
2 years ago
I think identity is something one should be able to choose oneself and not have foisted upon one; I have seen the damage that comes about by others deciding that one should be put into a particular box. My nephew is mixed race and the kids at school decided that he was black and therefore should be into particular types of music and sports, he was (and is) not a sporty person, he loved Mozart and heavy metal (I know a strange combination), but he is mainly a computer nerd and now works in that field, but this did make his school years very difficult. His sister is more laid back, and simply said to those who said she was not black enough that she didn’t care as she didn’t identify as black, she identified as English.
I do find the idea that if you’re black you must be into ‘x’, it’s highly insulting and prescriptive. A few months ago ‘Luther’ was criticised because his character didn’t eat Jamaican food ffs. How about Luther was born and raised in London, probably in the 70s, probably went to a majority white school so his experience of culture might have been fish and chips, Sunday Roast, playing footie in the park and watching the Two Ronnies.
Dustshoe Richinrut
2 years ago
You know, back in the Eighties, the Nineteen Eighties, things were heading in the right direction. For example, rock and pop bands comprising a bunch of white musicians, performing on a TV show or to a live audience, may well have had a trio of black backing singers — but it never felt to the viewer or punter attendee at the time as if some kind of statement was being thrown into the bargain by that. The love of creating a sound was paramount. Each to his own.
Forty years later, we have the ‘“fully formed and footnoted gunfire sentences”’ types who are charting high over the airwaves, with, off to the side now, their innumerable trios of companionable white backing singers singing their high praises. But each is not to his or her own. Lyrics are not written on the back of an envelope. Only the right notes are sung. It’s a creative dull end.
In the 80s the mix of black and white music was great. Especially when you could have ‘white’ reggae and ‘black’ rock and every mixture in between. Music is a great unifier
Yes, indeed it is. The rise of the internet has unfortunately made popular music less influential in spreading good feeling all around, however. Music was the connectivity a long time ago. But it’s overlooked now as a great unifier. Politics always gets in the way.
Richard Parker
2 years ago
Skewers the inanities of our current SNAFU with delicious aplomb. I look forward to seeking out Cole and Oloixarac, who look to be offering fresh and fertile perspectives. Another fine article from Mr Owolade: I’m looking forward to more of them, too.
Claire D
2 years ago
All this skin colour business is like a murky pond that mad people insist on swimming round and round in.
What is the point ? Status, power, publishing deals, attention, money, ie, for corrupt reasons.
I’m reading Pushkin’s short stories at the moment, his grandfather was black. Did he swim in the murky pond ? No, he did not. https://britannica.com/biography/Aleksandr-Sergeyevich-Pushkin
In the U.S., at least, the point is for the elite class to keep the common people hating each other while they pillage for themselves. A red herring.
Christopher Chantrill
2 years ago
Yes. Modern identity politics is a Human Zoo. So if you are one of the exhibited identities — complete with wall text — you have a choice: submit or rebel.
Firat M H
2 years ago
Brilliant! Identities have become “cages” in a world where experiences that underlie these identities have become so exceedingly mobile and complex that any such category does not do justice anymore to who we are…
Jonathan Ellman
2 years ago
Labelling people is unavoidable, unfortunately, and will always be done. The problem to address is the profiting from those labels: whether it’s racists preventing people participating in activities because of their race and so raising their own status, or whether its anti-racists gaining status from combatting racism, as has been the greater problem in the West for some time now.
Interestingly, I suspect the self flagellating white wokists would volunteer themselves as exhibits for a human zoo.
Personally I identify as a human. My upbringing and experiences are what have shaped me and my skin is nothing more than a protective layer that stops my insides from falling out. I view everyone else equally.
Karl Francis
2 years ago
“… such labels do not reflect the humanity of an individual. While they can breed important forms of solidarity and can be useful in analysing prejudice and discrimination, we shouldn’t cling to them too tightly.”
– Amen.
Su Mac
2 years ago
I always think back to a visit to the Museum of Lincolnville – a pioneering early black neighbourhood of St Augustine, FLA – few years ago. The mottowrit large on one wall was “The first Africans in America were not slaves. The first slaves in America were not Africans” Beware of believing the cliches.
Some quality articles popping up again here. I am cheered to hear that despite cancel culture writers are publishing more intelligent and nuanced fiction about the wonderful puzzle that is race/culture/identity.
Hopefully the obscuring dogma of BLM, CRT will fade away and we can relate to the surprising discoveries about each other without this interpolation.
Dr Anne Kelley
2 years ago
This is a superb article, beautifully and lucidly expressed. The final paragraph says it all ‘Labels should be used …as the start of someone’s identity, not the full definition of it’.
I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t know about human zoos. How abhorrent and insensitive, even into the twentieth century. I’m appalled to think people were taken by force and forced to undergo such humiliation.
Corin Levick
Black people chose black as a label, and put on this handle a list of demands, and definitions of a culture. The reality is defining black activism as excusable as a kind of psychotic trance of the oppressed (murder, theft, arson). Accompanied by fetid cultural appropriation (Lamy says he is English). I am English, Caucasian and proud. Fentanyl Flloyd?
I’m not defending human zoos, but the participants weren’t taken by force; they were volunteers, and paid a reasonable amount (by the standards of the time).
This is the second outstanding article I’ve read on Unherd today. The good stuff seems to arrive in waves.
Probably my favorite passage from this article was:
“I was a person of colour when I was in the US,” she says, but “if I took a plane and went anywhere else, or if I crossed the border I wasn’t a person of colour anymore. So it wasn’t an essential trait. It was more of a particular fiction that was imposed on me”.
Identity politics really is a Liberal American obsession. If it washes up on non-American shores I urge you to resist. Resist with all your might.
Unless you happen to want a job on TV when you should emphasise the identity politics as much as possible.
In the article on journalism it was clearer to me. Thousands of students in the UK take Media Studies degrees but what do they do afterwards? They are only young so they start a blog or even get a job on a newspaper. At that point they have to go with the flow and say the same things as everyone else. But to be able to sell their words for the most money they have to be more extreme – black people become blacker and poor people become poorer, etc. It sells.
You are quite right that this whole “person of colour” is a US originated obsession arising from the fact that until the late 1960s large sections of the US did not simply operate Jim Crow restrictions but actually had anti-miscegenation statutes in something like 18 States. It was effectively an apartheid country.
That is not the UK experience. I listened last night to the TV episode of “Who do you think you are?” Involving the mixed race footballer Alex Scott. On her mother’s side she had a mixture of English, Irish and Jewish roots. On her fathers side the family originated in Portland, Jamaica. The family was traced back in one line, to her visible surprise and discomfort, to a great great great grandfather who was coloured and owned 26 black slaves. He received compensation for them and left money for his “wives” and children. One of whose lines led to Alex Scott and the other involved children born to a slave woman he owned. She met a cousin who came from one of those lines who explained there were many descendants in the area.
Most people probably regard Alex as black simply because her skin is relatively dark and she had a “Black Jamaican” father. Her expectation was that she might find that her ancestors were slaves but she was wholly unprepared to discover that one was in fact a slave owner. The fact that free black people in Jamaica and other Caribbean colonies could and did own slaves is never mentioned. The pretence that it was only racist white men who owned slaves is the popular narrative. I have a white great great grandmother who inherited slaves in Jamaica from her first husband and rooting about her relatives by marriage I discovered several who had children by free black women one of whom was a slave owner.
In the TV program it was suggested that it was unusual that the women concerned were left provided for by Will provisions but in fact judging from my research that appears to have been the norm.
Even in British colonies where slavery operated ( and it never did in the UK itself) there was no bar to black and coloured people owning slaves. This is not to excuse slavery but simply to emphasise that US history is not UK history. There were coloured professional football players in England and Scotland in the 1880s. The US professional baseball colour line was not crossed until 1947 in the States.
UK academics and other UK woke folk need to educate themselves and wake up to the different history of the two countries, and stop assuming that the UK is the same as the US as far as race relations are concerned.
Thanks for flouting the woke prohibition against saying “coloured”.
I wasn’t flouting any woke prohibition merely quoting his description in contemporary records which were read out in the program.
His son was described as a “Sambo” in another census document quoted that puzzled Alex Scott. It was explained as being a derogatory reference to a mixed race person whereas it had a rather more precise meaning in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. If one of your parents was a mulatto/coloured (i.e. of one white and one black parent) and the other was black you were classified as a Sambo, whereas if one of your parents was a mulatto and the other white you would be a quadroon.
The fact that few (who have not studied colonial Caribbean records) have any idea of these ancient classifications is a testament to the fact that we are no longer as hung up on fine racial classifications as the officials of that era clearly were.
Never knew that “Sambo” described an individual who was/is three quarters black, one quarter white (which would seem to very roughly describe the average black American or West Indian), but I do know that “Zambo” means a person who is half black, half native American.
You are so right to say that US and U.K. woke people need to educate themselves. That is what is missing in this whole incendiary identity politics debate.
There is a tendency these days – encouraged by the use of social media – to polarise and oversimplify. Very often, the devil is in the detail.
Malcolm X observed something very similar (if you haven’t read it his autobiography is excellent). Unfortunately American racial politics has been exported and is infecting everywhere else.
I came here to say what you said, word by word, including the favourite passage!
Identity politics got me doubting myself sometimes – as a white woman, do I have the right to reject racial classifications and insist that colour-blindness is the only morally justified attitude? These few, simple sentences, provide the answer. I shall be reading the full novel.
By opening his piece with an example of white attitudes from over 100 years ago, the author perfectly typifies how utterly backward so many black people’s attitude to whites is, especially those from Africa.
The ‘white audience’ he refers to at the end is the kind of audience that holidays in Tuscany and writes op-Eds for the Guardian, I.e about 0.005% of the white population. Class of course never comes into it. Maybe he should get out more.
I for one am sick as a white person of being co-opted into this group of flagellants. If you don’t want a label, write a novel about something other than being a black immigrant in a white majority country. Write a sci-fi novel instead.
Exactly. The more ‘post identity’ these people seek to become ideally the more narrowly identity based their ideas are. Of course it’s all about some ideal ultimate fairness as if there’s some ideal state somewhere- not the appalling West which is where, strangely, people want to flee to from theocracies or other regimes.
I thought that historical example was interesting and relevant to the article. Also to me the writer does identify the class as the white, university educated progressives. Maybe they are 0.005% of the global white population? Unfortunately they are far more prevalent in the west and run pretty much every major institution.
Actually I think immigrants from Nigeria tend to have a lot more sane attitudes to race than many liberal whites or blacks growing up in the US and UK. Growing up in Nigeria they become acutely aware that living in a country where the majority are not white does not result in an earthly paradise for blacks, and that tribal and religious conflicts can result in precisely the sort of prejudice that blacks complain of elsewhere. if you want a sane black voice in UK politics then listen to Kemi Badenoch who comes from Nigeria.
That’s a very good point. As ever ordinary people the world over are much the same.
I am as viscerally anti-woke as they come, and don’t resent his description of white guilt-trippers at all. In fact I think it’s a very good article.
I don’t resent his description either. But his idea of a ‘white’ audience is so skewed that it does not really include the vast majority of white people, at least in my experience.
I think identity is something one should be able to choose oneself and not have foisted upon one; I have seen the damage that comes about by others deciding that one should be put into a particular box. My nephew is mixed race and the kids at school decided that he was black and therefore should be into particular types of music and sports, he was (and is) not a sporty person, he loved Mozart and heavy metal (I know a strange combination), but he is mainly a computer nerd and now works in that field, but this did make his school years very difficult. His sister is more laid back, and simply said to those who said she was not black enough that she didn’t care as she didn’t identify as black, she identified as English.
I dunno. Mozart was the metal of his day.
Mozart and metal really isn’t a strange combination. I reckon there are loads of closet metal heads at the Proms
There have actually been studies that show metal fans commonly lean towards classical music.
If I remember rightly, it was thought to be because of the similar drama in the styles: the sturm und drang.
I do find the idea that if you’re black you must be into ‘x’, it’s highly insulting and prescriptive. A few months ago ‘Luther’ was criticised because his character didn’t eat Jamaican food ffs. How about Luther was born and raised in London, probably in the 70s, probably went to a majority white school so his experience of culture might have been fish and chips, Sunday Roast, playing footie in the park and watching the Two Ronnies.
You know, back in the Eighties, the Nineteen Eighties, things were heading in the right direction. For example, rock and pop bands comprising a bunch of white musicians, performing on a TV show or to a live audience, may well have had a trio of black backing singers — but it never felt to the viewer or punter attendee at the time as if some kind of statement was being thrown into the bargain by that. The love of creating a sound was paramount. Each to his own.
Forty years later, we have the ‘“fully formed and footnoted gunfire sentences”’ types who are charting high over the airwaves, with, off to the side now, their innumerable trios of companionable white backing singers singing their high praises. But each is not to his or her own. Lyrics are not written on the back of an envelope. Only the right notes are sung. It’s a creative dull end.
In the 80s the mix of black and white music was great. Especially when you could have ‘white’ reggae and ‘black’ rock and every mixture in between. Music is a great unifier
Yes, indeed it is. The rise of the internet has unfortunately made popular music less influential in spreading good feeling all around, however. Music was the connectivity a long time ago. But it’s overlooked now as a great unifier. Politics always gets in the way.
Skewers the inanities of our current SNAFU with delicious aplomb. I look forward to seeking out Cole and Oloixarac, who look to be offering fresh and fertile perspectives. Another fine article from Mr Owolade: I’m looking forward to more of them, too.
All this skin colour business is like a murky pond that mad people insist on swimming round and round in.
What is the point ? Status, power, publishing deals, attention, money, ie, for corrupt reasons.
I’m reading Pushkin’s short stories at the moment, his grandfather was black. Did he swim in the murky pond ? No, he did not.
https://britannica.com/biography/Aleksandr-Sergeyevich-Pushkin
In the U.S., at least, the point is for the elite class to keep the common people hating each other while they pillage for themselves. A red herring.
Yes. Modern identity politics is a Human Zoo. So if you are one of the exhibited identities — complete with wall text — you have a choice: submit or rebel.
Brilliant! Identities have become “cages” in a world where experiences that underlie these identities have become so exceedingly mobile and complex that any such category does not do justice anymore to who we are…
Labelling people is unavoidable, unfortunately, and will always be done. The problem to address is the profiting from those labels: whether it’s racists preventing people participating in activities because of their race and so raising their own status, or whether its anti-racists gaining status from combatting racism, as has been the greater problem in the West for some time now.
Or Pseudo anti racists earning a good living from exploiting the lot of the socially dysfunctional.
Indeed.
Interestingly, I suspect the self flagellating white wokists would volunteer themselves as exhibits for a human zoo.
Personally I identify as a human. My upbringing and experiences are what have shaped me and my skin is nothing more than a protective layer that stops my insides from falling out. I view everyone else equally.
“… such labels do not reflect the humanity of an individual. While they can breed important forms of solidarity and can be useful in analysing prejudice and discrimination, we shouldn’t cling to them too tightly.”
– Amen.
I always think back to a visit to the Museum of Lincolnville – a pioneering early black neighbourhood of St Augustine, FLA – few years ago. The motto writ large on one wall was “The first Africans in America were not slaves. The first slaves in America were not Africans” Beware of believing the cliches.
Some quality articles popping up again here. I am cheered to hear that despite cancel culture writers are publishing more intelligent and nuanced fiction about the wonderful puzzle that is race/culture/identity.
Hopefully the obscuring dogma of BLM, CRT will fade away and we can relate to the surprising discoveries about each other without this interpolation.
This is a superb article, beautifully and lucidly expressed. The final paragraph says it all ‘Labels should be used …as the start of someone’s identity, not the full definition of it’.
I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t know about human zoos. How abhorrent and insensitive, even into the twentieth century. I’m appalled to think people were taken by force and forced to undergo such humiliation.
Corin Levick
Black people chose black as a label, and put on this handle a list of demands, and definitions of a culture. The reality is defining black activism as excusable as a kind of psychotic trance of the oppressed (murder, theft, arson). Accompanied by fetid cultural appropriation (Lamy says he is English). I am English, Caucasian and proud. Fentanyl Flloyd?
I’m not defending human zoos, but the participants weren’t taken by force; they were volunteers, and paid a reasonable amount (by the standards of the time).