Black History/ White History - Whose History?

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 06 October 2012 20:49:20

Revd Cannon George Kovoor preached at Cornerstone for Racial Justice Sunday last month. Within his sermon he made the point that history is written by the winners from a position of power. What we take as historic facts are not always correct, rather they are often ethnocentric interpretations of what has happened. This aspect of how history is transmitted is what leads to the marginalisation and invisibility of certain groups and is why over recent years things like Black History Month  have emerged. It's also one of the things which contributes, I would argue, to a lot of unintended institutional racism. If people aren't taught the broad range of history (and are rather subjected as I was for GCSE to the history of medicine) then we don't have knowledge and so are liable to behaving on the basis of ignorance.

I want to suggest that this transmission of history which is written in a particular way is something which applies as much to white working class culture as it does to black history. Similarly there are chunks of women's history which go largely unacknowledged in our culture.

The history of the white ruling class is important and I think yes this should be taught in schools but the wider history should also be taught. Now I know this is getting better but it is something under question at the moment.

We are currently in Black History Season and the MK Library has marked it in various ways. Firstly, they have a set of pictures about African rulers which linked to the website "When We Ruled". Secondly they have a time line which gives a set of facts about black culture. However, it is very limited and the period 1957-1994 primarily relates to the independence of Caribbean islands. There is very little African history. The final part of the display has pictures of contemporary Afro-caribbean role models including David Lammy, Baroness Valerie, Professor Christopher B-Lynch, Johnson Beharry VC, Paul Ince, Lewis Hamilton and Trevor Phillips.

The latter is one of the authors of my most recent bit of reading Windrush: The Rise of Multi-Racial Britain. I chose to read this book partly as a response to an ongoing discussion at church about diversity and partly because I love social history, The Edwardians,  by Roy Hattersley is another recent read. I have recognised that I have a knowledge of British history which is not that bad, but could be better.

Windrush is primarily a set of interview extracts which are joined together by an analysis of history. It is written from a specific position which is why the voices within it are primarily from the Caribbean rather than African or Asian community. It is also written by dominant voices within a community, Trevor Phillips is chair of the EHRC and was head of the Commission for Racial Equality prior to this. That said it is a useful read to understand the development of certain aspects of culture and ethnicity within Britain from the second world war onwards.

What I found particularly interesting was the chapter on the Deptford Fire which took place in January 1981 and is entitled "Thirteen Dead and Nothing Said". This is explained together with other aspects of the situation in the early 1980's in order to explain the complex set of circumstances which led to the riots of the early 1980's.

The important point to make here is that what is being explained is not black history or white history it is simply our history. Yet, it is black history and white history. It explains how at that point the minority black community was let down by majority white institutions and power. Reading it as a white will invariably invoke a different response to if I were a black person reading it. David Morley's structured interpretation audience response model makes sense here.

Is it helpful to know more about history, geography and religious studies? Of course it is. Should we be made to feel guilty when we don't have the level of knowledge that people from other cultures wish we had? No, I don't think so. People who may perhaps be new immigrants (from the African continent for example) need to understand the culture we have been educated within and the information we have been told not told and then seek to tell us their stories and about their cultures rather than to get annoyed at our ignorance. As is made clear in Windrush at one point, our schools have let white pupils down just as much as black pupils in some ways.

That said we need to be careful we don't fall into some of the problems we've fallen into in the past. We need to continue learning from each other and that takes an acknowledgement that we don't know lots about our own country and culture and even less about other countries and cultures.