Part 1 of a two-part post on the Honours System

Growing up Black, being told Black people are criminals, lazy, stupid, thieves, rapists, illiteratre, how do you think society rewards those that exceed white expectations? When I see people that look like me accepting Honours from the establishment, I wonder what they are thinking. That when I see them with those three letters after their name, I remember the stories I read – about Nanny and the Maroons; and those about Morant Bay, where red-coated soldiers slaughtered children and pregnant mothers where they stood – and how the Arawaks jumped from Grenadine hills to avoid enslavement; how my ancestors were confined to those death camps we call slave plantations, where they were raped, tortured, killed… what I call a Black Holocaust.

The same system of oppression that kidnapped us from the African continent, forced Black people to endure Middle Passage and be thrown from the Zong, is a version of the system that orchestrated the Windrush Scandal, treats the Grenfell victims with contempt, and allowed London Met’s racial bias to run brigand throughout the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry (1993/94). That while we have been the victims of institutional violence throughout history from the establishment, we are also some of its proudest members, particularly with activists, academics and community workers. 

There are people in my own community who have these awards; Black people and white people, in addition to people who are women and working class. This award carries with it a jingoism I saw in [hard] Brexit fever, harking back to the days of Suez, slavery and the Potato Famine. This insistence that Britons from Black and Brown backgrounds should be the diversity in a society that has shunned us since the days of Granville Sharp and the Black Poor. That in having Black and Brown people accepting Honours, it makes them okay for everyone else, because diversity:  

To honour Black Britain in this way is a dishonour (especially during Black History Month and post-George Floyd). To honour people who are working class, women, gay, trans… in this way is a dishonour – since colonialism discriminated on more grounds than just race. That deserving people, especially still during Coronavirus, have been honoured – NHS staff, educators, and more – but when British history holds so much violence, how can one in good conscience accept that on the shoulders of your name?

For me, the British Empire is more than a historical footnote to a darker time in British history. It’s inside my identity: my ancestors’ blood, sweat and tears, which is my blood, sweat and tears. My last name, my slave name is the crime scene. My being, is an everlasting symbol of trauma and violence in this winter of our discontent that I cannot walk away from. When I think how both Benjamin Zephaniah and Ken Loach declined Honours, it gives me hope. But when I see Labour MPs with honours, it’s a disrespect to how the Jews and the Irish kicked Oswald Mosely out of Cable Street; it’s also in contempt of how Rochdale millworkers stood in solidarity with enslaved African-American during the Lancashire Cotton Famine.  

Yet, in the 21^st century, where more people that look like me are writing books and speaking out, could it be down to empire not being taught on curricula to the reason why so many accept these awards? Is there an “I’ve made it” attitude from my parents’ and grandparents’ generation? Do my generation simply not know their history, so do not understand the significance?  Though, I wonder if people that look like me think about the history when they accept these awards. That while they are “honoured”, I can hear the establishment cackling in the aftermath of Stephen Lawrence and Hillsborough, Jamaica 50, Grenfell and the trauma of stop and search.  

In closing, how can anyone know the history and accept the (dis)honour, in the strong arms of colonial laws that stopped people who were Black / Brown, working class, women, gay, trans or had disabilities from realising themselves? And while Black and Brown activists are some of the establishment’s proudest members, they are overrepresented in the morgue, because of inequalities enabled by murderous policies that disproportionately impact people of colour. Evident now in COVID-19. And in the language of today, these are “unprecedented times”, or so they say.

Growing up British-Caribbean, it’s safe to say that I feel like an alien among my own people. That my relatives would accept an honour on the basis, that “they’ve made it” in the “Motherland.” I know them and many of their friends would go to stately homes unhindered by the qualms of colonialism. To dine in halls that would have hosted slave traders like John Locke, Sir John Hawkins, George Washington and members of the Royal African Company. Do I judge those that accept Honours? Not all of them. I have bigger issues with the system, and the educated – activists and historians,

the politicians… who should know better. Many of whom, whose work I have an enormous respect for. Which begs the question, did the sun ever really set on the British Empire? 

Since children have gone back to school, there’s been a lot of umming and arghing about whether it’s safe to go back. Having lived with my younger brother more closely these last six months since the lockdown, I have seen him become more in tune with himself. What I have also seen is a shift in what it could possibly mean to be a child in this world, as the gap widens between innocence and experience. When I was a boy, for me, innocence was Winnie the Pooh and the 100-Acre Wood and reading Enid Blyton novels. My brother is twelve years my junior and is really the first generation to grow up with the internet. There are a few saying that the Coronavirus pandemic has taken away this generation of children’s innocence.

However, I am not sure if there was any innocence there to begin with — growing up with the internet, social media and influencers alike.

At twelve, I had MSN and Myspace but his peers have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Tik Tok and more, and are more exposed to the ills of the world than I was. I’m not saying today’s 20-somethings grew up without the internet. Simply, we were on the margins of both worlds. Born in 2008, he will never know a world before YouTube. In April, an article entitled ‘Coronavirus isn’t the end of ‘childhood innocence,’ but an opportunity to rethink children’s rights’ was published by The Conversation. Not only is this the time to rethink their rights but also what it means to be a child in the twenty-first century. As despite there being just over 10 years between us, that is long enough to entertain a sort of generation gap.

Whilst I was born in 1995, growing up in the 2000s, he will never understand why Pokémon was all the rage. That despite Pokémon still being around now (like Pokemon Go), it’s not what it was. When I was ten and twelve, Pokémon was it, including those Game Boy cartridges. What about Tamogotchi, Jetix and Toonatic? Despite being an active user of social media now, this is a new feeling for me, since this stuff wasn’t a dominant when I was younger. To put into context, I was eight when Facebook (2004) was launched, nine with YouTube (2005), and ten with Twitter (2006). And I was sort of banned from social media until I left school.

At fourteen (2010), Instagram was launched. Social media is not something I was born into but it’s something that just arrived as I progressed through my formative years.

In 2017, Simon Curtis’ film Goodbye Christopher Robin was released. A film about children’s author A. A. Milne, with Domhnall Gleeson in the lead role. It follows Milne and his relationship with his son, Christopher Robin Milne. His son went on to inspire Christopher Robin in the Winnie the Pooh stories. Here was a film that shows childhood innocence being stripped away with both Billy (as he was known) becoming a child celebrity, and growing up under a father with shellshock from war (today, PTSD). This picture shows the life of a child that carried the weight of the world on his shoulders and came through it “okayish” in the end. However, did it have to be that way?

It’s a story that shows children at their most innocent — from the direct approach of asking questions to their frankness, to loving-nature and playfulness, and jolly humour. And despite COVID, which has impacted everyone to varying degrees, children continue to show their resilience. The pandemic may have interrupted their childhood but their innocence to some extent has not been lost because it wasn’t there to begin with — in a society that is global and information has never been so accessible, the ability for children to be naive has fast slipped away, unlike when my parents were kids. My parents protected me from a lot when I was ten and twelve (2005–2007) which is not as easy over a decade later for my brother — a time where information is more accessible and where trauma can be streamed onto a smartphone or tablet.

What I admire most about parents today is how they parent between the wide-reaching spectrum of innocence and experience. Now having to discuss Black Lives Matter and racism with their children, not just in reaction to societal trauma, but because it is right. From discussing police violence to the slow ‘drip-drip’ of racial microaggressions and the legacy colonialism left behind. Being a parent in 2020 in this “perfect storm”of Coronavirus and Black Lives Matter… it looks tough, but children are often more open than grownups and are constantly full of surprises.

On what would become Winnie the Pooh, Domhnall Gleeson’s Milne says “the creatures in the story are toys — they’re toys but the woods are real.” The days of my early years are gone now, playing in the woods of Salcey Forest without a care in the world. The winds have changed. I grew up on the margins — on the faultlines of a new world. To my brother, as there is over a decade between us, I am a relic to a bygone era. I am a person that does not remember 9/11 outright but also someone that remembers how it made other people feel. I am someone that remembers how the world wasn’t the same after that, and then the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, trauma porn on BBC News at Ten.

When I watch him online with his friends playing videogames, am I seeing innocence, an innocene applicable for his generation and generations to come? When he’s at drama engaged in theatrics and dance, am I seeing it again? Childhood innocence is ineffable and it alters from generation to generation. Do children his age have more in common with the children that lived through the Spanish Flu pandemic (1918) than they do with me? Maybe that’s a stretch. Where is the line between innocence, ignorance and experience? To no longer believe in Father Christmas or the Boogie Man, or the Tooth Fairy, creatures and monsters in the closet. And to not see the sadness behind your parents’ eyes when they pick you up from school.

He (my brother) is often asking me if I am okay. “Are you okay, Tré?” he says. “Are you okay?”

Innocence is more than ignorance and / or lack of experience. I suppose it can often feel like magic — going to the cinema and shutting off for two hours, excluding yourself from the society outside. Maybe this is why I associate popular culture so heavily with feelings of innocence — Paddington Bear and his marmalade sandwiches included. And other things, like Christmas; and Easter eggs; and stories of seagods and mythical beasts — things so divorced from this war-torn world of rationality, as if that is all there is to hang on to.

Childhood innocence is a myth but the perception of it is clung to. Yet, we cannot deny the fact children all experience sadness and grief, pandemic or no. And for children that have experienced disease, hurricanes, earthquakes, poverty, and traumas — but also the children that experience racism and xenophobia — COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter will not be the first time they are faced with reliving those traumas. Yet, in the West, where concepts of “childhood innocence” are most dominant, this may be a chance to decolonise these concepts, which really are only most prevalent when you walk through halls of middle-upper class straight, cis, white, male privilege — somewhat very 19th/ early 20th Century — from Victorian novels to Disney princess films.

I remember when he was born and I often have to stop myself thinking about him as a small child when he will be man before long. What the pandemic is also showing is that children still need to be allowed to be children. Most of us are taking precautions to protect ourselves and our families (quite rightly) but like many diseases, I am thinking Coronavirus is simply one more that we will all have to grow accustomed to, following our ancestors that lived in a world post-Spanish Flu which was then followed by an economic crisis (1929) and the Second World War. Despite COVID and the biggest anti-racist movement in history, as well as a tattered economy, children will still find ways to be children and they must always find ways.

And whilst this concept of “childhood innocence” is mythic, that does not make it negative. That spirit that comes so naturally to children should not be stifled with excuses like “it’s time to grow up now” (there’s plenty of time to adult later). Despite the myth of innocence, children will be children only once. Like the Spanish Flu (1918) and The Bubonic Plague (1665) before COVID, children must be allowed to exist in their ‘100-Acre Paradise’, whatever that looks like. No matter our locale, children have always found ways to express themselves in the ways that come most naturally to them.

What I do know is that he is very happy to be back at school seeing his friends and teachers, despite the measures; the classroom can be a 100-Acre Paradise and the world my parents are raising him in is not the same as the one in which they raised me.

Ignorance, thoughtlessness and apathy are only three of the terms that come to mind when I think about the implementation of the Black postboxes, four across the country: in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, respectively. However, in the past few years, particularly, the last few months since the pandemic, I think many of us, regardless of our ethnic backgrounds have had enough symbolic gestures to last a lifetime – from ‘clap for our carers’ (albeit enjoyed by some but really of no real substance) to those female traffic lights. In this epilogue of George Floyd, with a resurgence to decolonise the curriculum, some brightspark thought four Black postboxes would be a good idea to commemorate Black History Month this year.

Postboxes aside, those that they are commemorating have a right to be remembered, though “a bit of copout” in my opinion, and a very easy escape from using these postboxes to discuss any of the less ‘acceptable’ histories… i.e the Cardiff Race Riots (1919) or the Bechuanaland Chiefs (1895)

Black Lives Matter has left many of us in our communities nationwide in deep reflection and introspection, that we really do not know the legacy of Black contributions to the world, particularly to Britain. Walter Tull and Mary Seacole are known, particularly the latter. (Sir) Lenny Henry (CBE) is very safe and indicative of the “good Black British history” that is easy (not too political, not too angry). What these three have in common is their seemingly “non-threateningness”, which fits patrial British depictions of Black people, as if it was pulled from the reels of one of those Old Hollywood films – versions of Black ‘tolerated’ by the ‘great and the good.’

In the thick of the biggest anti-Black racism movement in history, rallied behind the message of “stop killing Black people”, we are subject to more nonsensical symbolic gestures, virtue signalling and performative allyship.

Embedded in the recommendations made in the Wendy Williams Windrush Lessons Learned review (2020) into the Windrush Scandal, included a critique on the lack of institutional memory pertaining to the British Empire, the history of inward and outward migration, and the history of Black Britons. She further talks about an unwillingness to learn from the past, utilise experts, or engage communities. These postboxes are indicative of institutions that think they know it all, and is reminiscent of the Home Office’s blunder with the chicken boxes raising awareness of knife crime.

In Alt History, Professor David Olusoga says “Black people have been living in this country for centuries and the story of the Black presence in the United Kingdom goes all the way back to Roman times.” There are over 100,000 postboxes in the UK and the use of just four is really a tokenistic handout at best. Imagine commemorating the entirity of Black British history like that when this history goes back to Roman times – from Ivory Bangle Lady (middle-class Black woman living in 4th century York) to Quintus Lollius Urbicus, Governor of Britain in 139-142 CE suprervising the construction of the Antonine Wall in Scotland (Adi, 2019: 4).

In four postboxes, the ominous “they” are telling us that Black lives still don’t matter and they are happy with that. The Black nurses that saved the NHS post-WW2; Black soldiers that fought in WW1/WW2 and at Trafalgar; the Black enslaved that died on plantations to give Britain the British Museum and many national trust homes; the lawyers, doctors and civil servants during the interwar years; the Black people that resisted and rebelled against colonial power at every chance; the Black Tudors in the time of Henry VIII; and the Afro-Romans in Beachy Head and South Shields, and those that stood vigil atop Hadrian’s Wall for the best part of 350 years.

In a country where Black people have been present and contributed to some of the most significant parts in British history… let’s give them four postboxes and pat ourselves on the back… I guess you can say I am fuming and I am bitter.

Referencing

Adi, H. (2019) In: Adi, H (ed.) Black British History: New Perspectives. London: ZED Books, pp. 1-14. ​

Home Office. (2020). Windrush Lessons Learned. (Chair: Wendy Williams). London: TSO.

After the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, Sky Sports did a segment on racism, using testimony from veteran West Indies cricketer Michael Holding and former-England women’s cricketer Ebony Rainford-Brent. Whilst the story of racism and West Indies cricket is known to me through films like Fire in Babylon, the inclusion of Brent, showed me how little media attention women’s sports receives, particularly cricket. This is still a man’s world, even when men and women have been victims of the same pandemic of racism.  

When I look at the history of sports in England, the inclusion of women is presented as a new phenomenon, despite a 1921 ban on women’s football by the FA in England that lasted decades. A ban on women’s football matches taking places on pitches owned by the Football Association. Institutional violence in sports in the 1920s. Furthermore, is there a Black women’s history here too? I have heard whisperings of an Emma Clarke of the 1890s who may be the first Black woman footballer. Interesting indeed.

Men’s football (and sports), also however, go back over a hundred years. Football has been the go-to for stories of racism in sports and the story of Walter Tull has almost become folk tale and a token symbol of racism in football for Black History Month campaigns up and down the country. Walter was born in Folkestone, Kent, in 1888 and went on to have a glowing career playing for both Tottenham Hotspurs and Northampton Town (Cobblers). Additionally, he was the first mixed-race officer of African heritage in the British Army. At Northampton in 1911, he would have

started under Herbert Chapman – “a manager sympathetic to the additional pressures faced by the few players of colour in the professional game” (Vasili, 2010: 102).  

Whilst Walter Tull has been the token for examples of men of colour in team sports, historically, he by far wasn’t the only the Black or Brown player, in late Victorian early Edwardian Britain. Unknown to many, looking at how his story is told in popular consciousness, he was also an avid cricketer and was one of many men of colour that played during this time. One of the big fish of Victorian cricket was K. S Ranjitsinhji, “a thin-built Indian prince who used his willow bat and body to produce fleeting moments of wonder and lasting memories of beauty” (Vasili, 2010: 127).

Vasili also writes of English-speaking Caribbeans playing cricket in England. We must remember this contradicts populist memory of Caribbeans first coming to England in 1948. In early Edwardian Britain, there was a thriving population of Black middle-class doctors:  

With the existence of other Black and Brown sports players, with their accomplishments, I would argue the constant parading of Walter Tull is problematic. His story is an achievement in the face of adversity but it offends me that our schools do not all look past his story at other Black/Brown sports players in late Victorian/Edwardian Britain. We also know of a Manchurian James Peters, playing rugby for the England team in 1907 and 1908. This narrative in Britain goes as far as there was enough for them to make an argument, the constant focus on Tull is without merit:

“African-American racing cyclist Marshall Taylor beat British and continental opponents in 1902; South African boxer Andrew Jeptha won a world title in 1907; and ex-slave Bobby Dobbs fought in Britain 1898, returned in 1902 […]” (Vasili, 2010: 129).  

While today we have Black boxing champions like Anthony Joshua, the legacy of Black pugilists goes back to the 18^th century in Georgian Britain, where men like Bill Richmond would be enticed by Britain’s boxing culture, not before “he began his independent life in Britain serving as an apprenticed cabinet maker” (Olusoga, 2017: 98). It was later in life he starts his rivalry with Tom Cribb. In a sport that made the careers of Black activists such as Muhammad Ali, “not only did early pugilists fight without gloves, but practices outlawed in modern boxing, such as shoulder-charging […] were all regarded as legitimate tactics” (Williams, 2015: 63).

Now, in this time where many celebrate Black excellence, the common argument is there are not enough positive Black male role models in history for young Black boys today because Black British history is one enveloped by slavery and immigration. But the existence of Black sports players – those that came here and those that were born here – tell stories of free Blacks, ex-slaves and their descendants that are part of British history and succeeded, from football and rugby to athletics, cricket and cycling.  

Positive Black role models for Black men today are there in British history books. Simply, they are needles in haystacks, on the outside of the frame as something “other” or “different – not seen as worthy of academic scholarship or interrogation. However, those interested only need to make the effort and look for it. We cannot be what we cannot see and my references also speak to a profession (History) that is dominated by (white) men and in its lack of diversity is an indictment on the industry at large.

Black men’s (hi)stories in sports go back 150 years. Yet, what about the Emma Clarke and Rainford-Brent characters of today, for young Black girls that want to see themselves? History is written by the conquerors, not the conquered, and the conquerors, even in sports, are almost always men.  

Referencing  

Olusoga, D (2017). Black and British. London: Pan Books.  

Vasili, P (2010). Walter Tull, 1888 – 1918: Officer, Footballer. London: Raw Press.  

Williams, L (2015). Richmond Unchained. London: Amberley. 

These same individuals, women that are smart and innovative are told by authority figures, including academics, that they are lazy and don’t apply themselves – are running businesses out of their halls. Black women sent white male astronauts into space in 1969; Black women also invented CCTV and laser cataract treatment. Knowing this, in the face of a double-figure Black awarding gap at UK universities (Barradale, 2020), I was not surprised to see they were running businesses out of their halls, with online shops – cake businesses, clothing alterations, and the big one – wigs and weave, and hair products.

Currently, I know a good many Black women turning lemons into lemonade. Through the Coronavirus pandemic there are Black entrepreneurs, like their white counterparts, trying to make a living, make money and get ahead. Yet, their white colleagues won’t be judged for it. However, the “motivation to create a business can spring from the most interesting of places, and for a variety of reasons” (Uviebinené, 2019: 157).

For the women I met when I was an undergraduate student and then as a member of university staff, it was a way to escape the colonising imperatives of whiteness within the institutional frameworks of Britain. Moreover, that despite historic stereotypes of laziness still being on the ascent for Black people, Black women “are achieving additional qualifications and gaining work experience” (ibid). The students I knew were driven and inspiring, graduating and then going on to run businesses, using Instagram and social media as a tool for economic prosperity.  

Seeing many Black women in business it looks incredibly strenusous, as systemic misogynoir permeates all of society – a form of discrimination specific to Black women where race and gender both play roles of bias (Bailey, 2010).

The concept of Black successes of both women and men in a society that is institutionally racist is an achievement of monumental proportions, as neoliberalism runs rampant. Bhopal (2019) argues that “within a neoliberal context, policy making has failed in its attempts to champion inclusion and social justice, and in doing so has further marginalised the positions of black and minority ethnic groups.” She discusses that policy making in its current form affirms the position of white people at the expense of those from various Black and Brown backgrounds, in a society where individuals are privileged for being white over those who are not.

White privilege exists and the fact there are successful Black female businesspeople shows the system designed to subjugate the Black race’s success and humanity has failed. In these still very white spaces, do the Black entrepreneurs that break the glass ceiling allow people up behind them, or do they rescind the ladder?

Do they put their money where their mouth is to help their people? Stormzy heads publishing house #MerkyBooks, priding itself on platforming Black authors. Additionally, he funds Black students to go to Cambridge every year. Do those “allowed” to enter Buckingham Palace to be named Member of the British Empire [MBE] see themselves as Black, or does the “acceptance” of the establishment allow them to forget where they came from? I wonder if money and fortune give some Black business-owners a blinkered mindset to concepts like community and togetherness.  

Modern questions of success and business aside, let’s take a step back and reflect on the past. Black success in business or any other industry is not a new concept. Simply, it is treated as a new phenomenon within the colonial gaze of the white western world:  

Whilst the students I met as an undergrad and then as a staff member were anomalies in accordance to Eurocentric stereotypes of Africans, when you look into the depths of African history one will find that people of the continent are smart and hardworking and innovative and gracious and protective, and so much more, and always have been. In this history, we will begin to understand how Black British people today relate to themselves. This first begins with gaining “a clearer understanding” of other cultures “that is not warped through the biases of colonial documentation” (Dabiri, 2019: 36).

As seemingly corporations want to diversify their workforce and more Black and Brown people seek to go into business, this means having conversations of race and culture away from the proximity of whiteness. When businesses take an anti-racist approach to their everyday, including culture and history, they will see their income increased tenfold.  

Referencing  

Bailey, M. (2010). They aren’t talking about me… — the crunk feminist collection. Available from: http://www.crunkfeministcollective.com/2010/03/14/they-arent-talking-about-me/ 

Barradale, G. (2020). Revealed: New stats show how wide the black attainment gap is at your uni. Available from: https://thetab.com/uk/2020/06/17/revealed-new-stats-show-how-wide-the-black-attainment-gap-is-at-your-uni-162142 

Bhopal, K. (2018) White Privilege: The Myth of a Post-Racial Society. Bristol: Policy Press. 

Dabiri, E (2019). Don’t Touch My Hair. London: Allen Lane.  

Uviebinené, E and Adegoke, Y (2019). Slay in Your Lane. London: 4^th Estate