Education

(continued) 

My first offers of working on BHM projects came in 2001 at a point of unemployment. Theatres and venues I didn’t know somehow managed to find my details, making enquiries about my availability for October with a view to making collaborations with Black History as a focus. The only downside was there was very little preparation time (enquiries began in August) and not much money. However, I believed it was worth it, considering the opportunity to work with such established organisation could foster new lucrative relationships. I felt at the time the opportunity to work during BHM was a chance for organisations to see the way I worked and witness the success of my projects. They were opportunities that couldn’t be passed up…. or so I thought.

After three years of repeated promises to work in a more sustainable way across the year instead of the one month lead up to BHM and then working across the month for very little money, I decided this particular avenue was like a parasite. BHM was feeding off my very presence. It began to signal to me Whiteness’ attempt to validate its existence by delivering BHM as a means to an end. The idea to working longer term with me would literally disappear into the shadows for the following 10 months without even so much as a thank you for some of the frankly Herculean efforts I was making for such low wages. I know I wasn’t the only one, this was being replicated across the country. BHM seemed nothing more than a way to service the system and give the illusion of a non-existent cohesion. Besides, I was growing tired of the slave narrative that seems to dominate BHM.

It’s the same slave narrative that keeps being brought up as ‘black history’. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not. The slave trade is the history of colonial white European domination inflicted on the world. It’s the story of how the British along with the French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese among many others fed and gorged themselves until bloated with gout upon the profits made from enforced “free’ labour entwined with the horrors of enslaving millions of Africans for three centuries, and how the wealth turned turned Britain into a super power, gifting it an empire which ruled over 23% of the world’s population at it’s height. It’s the continuing narrative of how Britain’s educational, legal, political, and social systems were aided by the profits of the slave trade, indeed the rise of the industrial revolution could not have happened without the slave trade. None of this is ‘black history’.

The black history I understand speaks of kings and queens on the African continent, a time before the Europeans enslaved Africans on a mass scale. The black history I understand speaks of Bussa, Nanny Maroon, the Haitian Revolution, as well as many other uprisings by the enslaved which continued throughout the entire period of the slave trade against the colonisers who refused to see human beings. It speaks of the British Civil Rights movement (not American) with events like the Bristol Bus Boycott, and hear the stories of activists like Olive Morris. This is the black history I want to see. Others agree with me, indeed Jeremy Corbyn’s recent announcement for Labour’s proposals to change the way Black history is taught in the U.K. shows there is indeed some sort of a will to do things differently. I want to see such history embedded in the British education system. But this I believe will never happen in my lifetime, not least because it disproves the notion of black people being knife-wielding, uneducated, service providers who should be grateful for being here in the UK. And if a black person doesn’t like how they are being treated then they, and I quote “have the means to leave the country’ as Piers Morgan told Dr. Kehinde Andrews recently. This insipid othering is the thing whiteness always does to protect itself. And too many white people fall unconsciously into this diatribe with wild abandonment when faced with accusations of racism. I say this with a vague hope that I’ll be proved wrong… although I doubt it.

But, I digress.

As a black woman, I am constantly called to justify my presence in the U.K. to white people who literally don’t know the history of how the black community came to be in the U.K. Every single day, I’m faced with a continual barrage of micro aggressions, pictures and articles from a media hell bent on demonising people who look like me and constantly triggering of racial trauma. In order to navigate my daily existence, as well as having artistic expertise which is frankly outstanding (you can’t say that as a black woman… yeah, I can) I’ve had to become part historian, psychologist and social scientist simply so I can defend myself against the daily assaults of whiteness. Funny how I feel I have no choice but to become a sort of collector of facts whilst all whiteness needs to question my valid criticisms

of the U.K.’s continuous attacks on blackness and the on-going racial injustice in general is a ferocity of opinion. I think it’s fair to say that in the thirty years since BHM came into being, the U.K.’s relationship with the black community has at this point fallen to an all time low. BHM has been become a silo, a mouthpiece to keep black people placated. And given the contexts I’ve given, my thinking is being born out by the facts.

The current and blatant attempts to rebrand BHM to Diversity Month seeks to both service whiteness’ wish to erase black people from the British historical canon and maintain the negative perception of the U.K. black community whilst at the same time, promoting through the back door a heightened sense of white people’s diversity as proof that we are all in this together. From the notion of White Christ right up to the lack of acknowledgement by the U.K. of the West Indies effort in fighting in the armed forces in both World Wars on behalf of Britain, Whiteness merely seeks to maintain itself as top of the food chain. White supremacy has been going on for a millennia at the very least.

My criticism is BHM is far less about denigrating the efforts of the many in the black community who year in, year out are called upon to deliver a programme of work, for not much money. Working BHM is a thankless task which rather than being seen as an very necessary and integral way to celebrating a community whose efforts over the centuries have directly contributed not only to the development of the U.K., but to to the world. My criticism is more about the response whiteness has to BHM. A response which I feel will always typify how the dominate white culture in the U.K will always see the black community. The systems in place demands there is no alternative to the fake narrative.

BHM to me has become a series of wasted opportunities for discussions around how UK society wishes to view itself in the 21st Century. It’s a severely under-resourced month of a string of broken promises. And it serves as yet a further reminder that the system of whiteness will do anything it can to protect itself. U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May’s recent statement about the importance of BHM to U.K. does nothing more than give lip service in a vain attempt to deflect criticism.

My feeling is it’s time to do away with this farce. In the face of Brexit, Britain needs to face up to and confront it’s colonial past with honesty and bravery.

I won’t be holding my breath.

The furore over the apparent rebranding of Black History Month (BHM) to Diversity Month by some London boroughs is of no surprise to me.

I remember when the idea and subsequent rolling out of BHM across the UK began. At the time, I was beginning my dance training at the internationally known Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance. Being a young Hackney girl and just turning 18, this was a big deal for me. I decided to specifically audition for the school as I had watched the associated Rambert Dance company and noticed there were no dancers in the company that looked like me. Without really thinking about it, my audition and subsequent training at the school was a challenge to the status quo. Much like BHM in its very beginnings.

BHM was a challenge to the UK perception that black people were muggers, thieves and rioters, not to trusted and certainly not to be tolerated. Not that I noticed any of this at the time. My awareness of BHM was consigned to a footnote accentuated by seeing Diane Abbott and Bernie Grant every so often on the news. My attention was very firmly placed on becoming a dancer.

In hindsight, my training was the real beginning of being othered. At the school, I wasn’t seen as a pioneer from Hackney, the first cockney girl (to my knowledge) to attend the school. I was viewed by some of the staff as simply a ‘black body’ who was attempting the impossible. ‘Black People don’t do ballet or dance’ was a mantra that was very definitely felt by me. It’s a mantra that Cassa Pancho MBE, creative director of British ballet company, Ballet Black has spoken of recently. And one that still exists today despite the presence of the extraordinary Dance Theatre of Harlem who were a company of twenty years standing at the point I was in training. A fact that school staff at the time seemed to have ignored. For teachers who in theory were experts in the ballet world, this omission is rather startling. Indeed, it was only this week, thirty years after I had begun my training, that Ballet Black working with Freed of London have launched ballet shoes for darker skin tones.

Given I had begun my training at a local youth centre and went on to train at the Weekend Arts College I had up until this point always been around people who looked and sounded like me. Being a British black girl at a world-renowned ballet school was not the ‘Fame’ experience I was expecting.

I never imagined for a second, the colour of my skin would have such an impact on my every day experience at the school. As a child of the Windrush Generation, born and raised in Hackney, it never occurred to me that being British and black would become a serious bone of contention. A couple of teachers seemed to take some sort of exception to my presence at the school. It certainly wasn’t ALL of the teachers… sounds familiar…

The two teachers made a massive difference to my experience at the school. With a staff that had no POC representation, and with students predominantly white European, with some students as far afield as Japan, Canada and the US, seeing examples of black excellence in dance was challenging. I needed to see people who looked like me succeed in the arena I had chosen to live my life, to keep going, to be inspired, so that I didn’t falter. Thankfully the director of the school had cottoned on to how I was feeling and gave me a gift, one I have treasured to this day. The biography of Josephine Baker. Called Jazz Cleopatra, it was about an (albeit American) black woman who took Europe by storm at a point when the idea of a famous black woman seemed impossible. I read the book until it fell apart. And then bought it several times more.

In much the same way, BHM was a way of celebrating Britain’s black community and its contributions to the U.K., which is a home from home. The reach of the British Empire which has eventually morphed into the Commonwealth countries, extended to the Caribbean, where the British had ruled for centuries, leaving it’s mark through the Privy Council which various parts of the Caribbean still adhere to today. West Indians citizens had been told through their educational, legal, and political systems for 400 years that they were British. A fact seemingly denied upon independence from and entry into the U.K. during the 1960’s. The British decided that being black and from the Caribbean meant you were not of Britain but something else entirely, “no Blacks, no Irish, no dogs”. And this way of thinking remains to this day as we have seen with this year’s breaking of the Windrush Scandal. Make no mistake, the illegal deporting of Black British citizens had been going on for decades before The Guardian newspaper shed a light on it.

BHM came after the race riots of the beginning of the 1980’s when the black community railed against the over use by the police of the SUS laws on young black men around the country. In my recollection BHM was a way to build bridges that had been burnt by shining a positive light on the contributions of the UK black community. The recent return of such rudimentary and abusive laws now come in the form of stop and search

which has shown, yet again, to disproportionally target the black community… sounds familiar?

My awareness of BHM really came into being as my dance career took off. Cool Britannia was in, as was Suede, the Gallagher Brothers, etc. Soul to Soul, the Young Disciples and Mark Morrison were showing the world that black music didn’t only come from America it was a part of British culture, the MOBO’s were in its infancy and the U.K. perceived itself to be multi-cultural. Everyone was welcome and could be whoever they wanted to be. Britain was in effect was open to all.