Last week, as part of the Sixth Form’s celebration of Black History Month, I had the pleasure of being able to interview Timowa Owolade about his debut book, ‘This is Not America’ – a study of race relations in Britain and the USA. More specifically, he examines the differences of the two nations, considering whether framing British discussion about relations through an American lens can be useful: his conclusion – they can’t.
Owolade was first inspired to write his book following in the wake of the atrocity that was the murder of George Floyd, which brought the Black Lives Matter movement into mainstream media in the US and globally for perhaps the first time, in 2020. Thus, around the world, especially in the UK, important discussion began to be had about systemic racism. However, Owolade focuses on how that the Black Lives Matter movement meant that, very quickly, British race discussions were looked at with an American slant, which, he argues, invalidates the Black British inexperience, and unintentionally ignores the specific nuances of race relations in the UK. His first example of this is the acronym BIPOC to refer to Black, Indigenous and People of colour, when talking about marginalised people – however, as he points out, to use the word ‘indigenous’ in a British culture is something far more associated with the far right than the liberal left.
Language and shared concepts around race relations in America is something Owolade focuses on unpacking, particularly looking at the theories in the American context from which they originated. One such example is Critical Race Theory – the idea born out of the Civil Rights movement that displayed how America is systemically racist, even from its genesis as a country. Racism is written into the constitution – at its time of writing, Thomas Jefferson’s original references to slavery were taken out, and policy was decided on how to prevent the number of African American population from influencing the power balance between the two states, that led to the Three Fifths Compromise. To apply Critical Race Theory to the UK is much harder – whilst it is undeniable that Britain still has a legacy of systemic racism, particularly in education; Britain is fundamentally different as we do not have a written constitution. He similarly dissects the context around ‘intersectionality’ – a term coined by American feminist Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw in 1989 to explain how different forms of discrimination intersect to influence how someone is able to live in society. Yet, in her original definition of the term, Crenshaw does not explicitly refer to class. It is classism, it Owolade’s opinion, that is one of the biggest determining factors for the Black British experience – people of Afro-Caribbean descent are far more likely, in Britain, to experience institutional racism than those who descend from the more-recent African immigrants. This is because Afro-Caribbean people are more likely to be living in poverty, due to a longer period of time facing more extreme systemic racism than those today. “Intersectionality,” he states, “Is not intersectional enough,” to fully explain the complexities of the Black British identity.
To Owolade, the ‘Black British’ is, in fact, a flawed term in itself, due to the diversity in Britain of Black British people. In America, there is a much larger, more established black community – African Americans – who can trace their lineage back, for far longer than most white Americans – to being brought over as part of the slave trade. As a result, the African American population forms a more cohesive, larger, racial identity, at 20% of the American population. This is not to say there is a singular experience of being African American, but that it is easier to view them as a set demographic. The Black British community is far more varied, and only makes up 4% of the population. Many Black British people of Caribbean descent came over from the Windrush generation, but an increasing number of African migrants have come over in the last twenty years from all across the continent. Even with the movement of people that came as a result for the British Empire, race relations with Black British people only became a significant political factor in the election of 1964, when the famous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech was made, and the Conservative party became increasingly concerned with black immigrants. ‘Black British’ Owolade therefore argues, is too broad a term; African American people make up a community and have been included in political policy since the United States came into being, whereas Black British people have come from a multitude of National backgrounds and have immigrated in very different political climates.
Owolade’s book has invited criticism from black activists such as Kehinde Andrews, for suggesting that a global black community should not be the basis of discussion, because it does not make sense. The Black British experience is inextricable from a British identity, he claims; an African American person, living in America, has an American experience before anything else. Whilst American racial theory can provide an interesting perspective for examining race discussions in the UK, they cannot be separated from the American context from which they came. To make real change, Owolade suggests, is to see ‘Black and British’ for the complex, multi-faceted identity for which it is, as well as the British political history from which their experience has come.
