Editorial: The Illusion of Inclusion |
Editorial: The Illusion of Inclusion
Wasafiri
Volume 25, Issue 4 (2010)
pages 1-6
DOI: 10.1080/02690055.2010.510357
This special issue of Wasafiri – ‘Black Britain: Beyond Definition’ – focuses on writers who are of black and mixed heritage. Labelling us in this way can, of course, be problematic. The badge ‘black writer’ or ‘Black British writer’ or ‘postcolonial writer’ isn’t one many of us deliberately choose to wear. It has a homogenising, ghettoising effect. Why should the profession to which we belong always be qualified in this way? Martin Amis and Ian McKewan only ever get labelled ‘white male writers’ to draw attention to their role in the status quo. Most of the time they are simply ‘writers’ or ‘British writers’.
The label may be frustrating, but in this context it provides us with a convenient shorthand for assessing a literature sector to which we have always had limited access. Grouping everyone together in this way allows us to explore some important questions: What is Britain like for black people today, both in terms of the wider society and the literature sector? Who is writing what? Who is getting published? Who isn’t?
The answers we get reveal that the society we inhabit in 2010 is still far from egalitarian although, compared with some of our European neighbours, we do now enjoy a degree of integration that is positive and progressive. That said, at an organisational level, there is a subtle, often unconscious or unthinking discrimination that is deeply pernicious and alienating for those who are excluded by it. And this needs once again to become the focus of national debate.
…The Obama Effect
Ever since Barack Obama became US President, a noticeable shift has been taking place in the British media’s conversations about race. The ceiling, some decided, really is made of glass and not the reinforced concrete they’d previously assumed. The term ‘post-racial’ has started to be bandied around as if his singular success meant the sudden emergence of a meritocratic society here in the UK.
There is now a sense that those who still dare to mention the R-word are just pesky killjoys. Fingers point towards Obama or any number of black figureheads in this country. In the same way that feminism became a dirty word in the nineties with women declaring ‘I’m not a feminist but … ’, likewise with racism. It’s just not that cool any more to point it out…
…In today’s UK, 48% of Black Caribbean men and 34% of Black Caribbean women have white partners, and one in ten children lives in a mixed-race family (Platt 6). This suggests the triumph of love over loathing, integration over separation, connection over tribalism. Inter-racial couples are not pelted with pebbles by Outraged of Suburbia when they go for their Sunday passeggiata through the local park. Cute black babies are very on trend; so fashionable, in fact, that famous people travel many thousands of miles to adopt them. And we all know that, for a long time now, the pampered princes of our national sport, once a bastion of racism, are as black as they are white.
While there are many such pointers to a more inclusive society, the racial hierarchies and infrastructure still exist. We may have detected some subsidence in that creepy Victorian house, built on the proceeds of empire and overlooking the graveyard of slavery, but the wrecking ball ain’t smashed it down to the ground yet…
Read the entire article here.
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