For blacks, Britain is not a place of the big dream. General Collin Powell, former US Secretary of State, once said that he was lucky that the ship that transplanted his great, great, grand parents did not drop anchor in Liverpool. His prescient was right. He must have seen the present state of black British and their backwardness and immobility. For him to have been born here, according to his reckoning, he would have become a bus driver! Unlike America, Britain is not a melting pot. Britain is still European in temper, attitude and projections. It is still being defined by its Graeco-Roman and Judeo Christian heritage and ethics. Royal Albert Hall still opens its door to mainly white audience on Saturday soiree of Vivaldi 4 seasons. Alhaji General Kollington Ayinla, Baba-no-shaking, the Alatika supremo can take his isu dudu ni isu awe o odudu kora to the seedy, dark alley of Peckham. Blacks in Britain are still wetbacks on plantation reserve eking out living as office cleaners, bus drivers, parcel couriers, site security officers, cab drivers, hospital porters, rubbish clearers, boiler technicians, night train cleaners, receptionists, janitors, akiri ja number– night traffic warders, CCTV manipulators, hairdressers, barbers, doormen and nightclub in-toilet serviette dispensers. The City where the high flying jobs are aplenty are reserved for the well heeled, well connected, well jawed spoilt brats using social network and class to full advantage. It is no secret that the English have difficulty believing that black people can be clever, intelligent, middle class and patriotic. They have given up hope of ever seeing our Shakespeare, Beethoven and Thomas Addison.
We have a different scenario in America. Of course there is worrisome human suffering and direct racism with all its pain and density in America. But at Times square and from coast to coast, you could still find a wonderful collection of black whizz kids as investment bankers, lawyers, economists, investment analysts, editors, 5 star writers, publishers and fund managers. Blacks are in the Ivy League universities as heads of departments. Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Columbia universities are dotted with black intellectuals of world renown. Oxford, Cambridge and Leeds universities are still grotesquely white. Blacks populate NASA. They are brain surgeons. Blacks head media houses. They have pages to their names in Forbes 500 and are employers of labour. They run corporations and advice US President and State Governors. Blacks head police forces across US and are also top brass in the Army, Navy and Air Force.
The peculiar mess in English soul would not allow a black man to even become London mayor. Ask Derek Laud for the inside story. There you go another peculiar English mess.
In America, there is enviable, soul satisfying solidarity among blacks. Fine, this racial bond was forged through the bloodthirsty course of their history and over 400 years of slavery, segregation and racism. What else could bind if not man-made adversity?
In Britain, blacks live fragmentally with different tribes eying the other disapprovingly and with idiotic air of imagined superiority. There is yet no glue to hold together the scattering humanity of black British. There is even an unexplained but bizarre social and cultural comparison among blacks who migrated to Britain from other parts of the world.
For instance, there is an unspoken hostility between Jamaicans and most African immigrants. To them, Africans are ugly, poor, dirty, uncivilized and badly de-socialized with thick accent. Even among Africans, there is animosity especially against Nigerians from virtually all Africans. There is a kind of self-flagellating eternal disharmony among black British. How can we have a black British Prime Minister when blacks in Britain have no rallying Negro spiritual like, ‘We Shall Overcome’? When there is no positive refrain of ‘Yes, We Can!’ Another peculiar English mess.
Who do we think we are? There is no discernible black leader or hero who calibrates the universal yearnings of Black British as an entity and as a race. There is no Louis Farakan. There is no Jesse Jackson. There is no Nelson Mandela, Che Guevera, Fidel Castro and Robert Mugabe in this island of scones and afternoon tea! Paul Boateng, our first black Cabinet Minister and a supposed leader-messiah has been sequestered to South Africa as Her Majesty’s Ambassador. A way to keep his restive set-me-free spirit quiet! Other hopefuls like Trevor Phillips, David Lammy, Adam Afriyie, Lady Scotland, Baroness Amos, Dianne Abbot, Shaun Bailey and Dawn Butler have been mollified with glorified administrative posts. Even Derek Laud, the old darling of the Conservative party, the first black Master of Foxhounds put the odds of a black British Premier roughly at par with John Prescott winning the Nobel Prize for physics. Lord Taylor of Warwick, the black Conservative peer, has become conspicuous by his absence on national debates. Bill Morris, the avuncular, fire spitting former leader of the trade union and Herman Ouseley former chair of the Race Relation Commission are in retreat, no, retirement. Frank Bruno, former boxer and society big buffoon has been cut down by English peculiar mess. He has been booed into the mental home to delight other inmates with his ‘hehehehe’ cracker. I cannot for all my fantasy million imagine any black man in Britain calling for a million man march in Hyde Park. That will be upsetting the Queen!
Even most of the old guerrilla combatants who made Brixton and Broadwater Farm in London and Moss Side in Manchester un-policeable are old, impoverished and wrestling with the demon of credit crunch. In this British peculiar mess of black fragmentation, would an Obama-like hero ever emerge? Although there is a suggestion that Chuka Umunna, the half-Nigerian, half-Irish Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Streatham has the looks, pedigree and electoral appeal to do a counterfeit Obama across the Atlantic. With Umunna, is the English saying that black people are no longer electoral liabilities in this Isle? On Umunna, I will keep you posted. Another peculiar English mess for you!
All said, the most intractable enemy standing in the way of a future black British Prime Minister is the Asian factor. The English have gone for the Asians big time. Asians 70’s cultural timidity has been replaced with confidence and brashness that transcend into arrogance. Now, in the unlikely event that we want to upset the Queen by running for the post of the British premier, would Asians as a powerful block support a black candidate? Would they support a black man who they see through their despicable cultural lenses and caste system as being ignoble, lazy, useless, mugger, outcast and unworthy? To them Obama presidential victory in America is still a fiction.
And what better way to distil their collective racial feeling toward blacks than what Shazia Mirza, a female British comedian had to say on Obama’s shock election victory. ‘I didn’t believe it. Even now it’s amazing there’s a black man in the White House and he didn’t BREAK IN’. The subtext of her jocular but deeply offensive stereotype encapsulates the universal opinion Asians harbour against blacks—that we are thieves, burglars and muggers.
Believe it or not, the English have always preferred Asians to blacks. Already Britain economy has been handed over to the Patels from East Africa and the Sub Continent. That aside, when we juxtapose all the contending paradigms, pound for pound, can we ever favourably compete with Asians for the tenancy of Number 10? The statistics of our incompetence to compete will chill your bone. We have more Asians than blacks in Britain. Lord Swraj Paul, an Asian, is the richest man in Britain. Laxmi Mital, an Asian, owns the most expensive home in Britain. They parade millionaires in Sunday Times Rich List year after year. Compared to their population, they are over represented in the glittering professions like academic, medicine, law, pharmacy, banking, media, teaching, retail, health care, estate agency and IT. They have also infiltrated majority of British think tanks. You will find them in Institute of Public Policy Research, Policy Exchange, Demos, Soundings, Compass and Fabian Society. They own more mortgages than blacks. They are the richest immigrants in Britain. They are blatantly, aggressively ambitious to dominate business, culture and political life of Britain. Not to be outdone, the English palate has known no rest after it tasted curry masala, an authentic eighth wonder of the world from Southern India. The population of their rebellious youths in British jail is lesser than blacks. More English peculiar mess for you.
Are we not hemmed in? Can we emerge unscathed from the deadly landmines scattered along the prime ministerial road leading to 10 Downing Street? Looking at the above reality checks and taking into account Britain’s political, social, economic and cultural barometer, the hottest ticket to the Prime Ministerial seat in today’s Britain is decidedly Asian. Barack Obama was lucky. His Luo father made the most profound decision of his life by rejecting Britain for America. By now, Obama would have been a mere London inner city duff solicitor on a nine to fiver with fading jackets, worn out shoes, hire purchase BMW and a mortgaged three-bed house as his earthly possession.
He would have been a Fabian subscriber due to his left-leaning politics. His destiny would have been submerged under the weight of British peculiar form of racism, class snobbery, glass ceilingnitis, same-race disunity, poverty and worse of all, Asian antipathy toward black progress in Britain. Someone whispered that the heir apparent, Prince Charles, does not want his mum to be upset. The Queen, a crashing snob, has no plan to welcome an awkward looking, lowlife, once-seen-as-monster black British Prime Minister enjoying tea with her in Buckingham Palace. We are classless and too full of ordinariness to ever belong to that seminal circle of souls who sup with the Queen. Indeed, despite her love for the Commonwealth, there is not a single black face in the inner circle of her Court. Not ever! Sorry, we are not Americans. A black British Premier…No please, we are English. Who will clear this chimerical mist?
4 comments
Well the facts aren’t entirely correct with this article but the the grist of it is true. Who says you have to be born in a country to succeed? Schwarzenegger was not born in California was he? Yes, Britain is better than the rest of Europe but there is still a lot more work to be done before it becomes a true multicultural society and we should all acknowledge that.
It isn’t hard. If you want to know what life is like as a Black British person in the UK then you would be better off getting your views from a person Born, Black and British in the UK and not a recent immigrant. The above article is from the point of a view of an immigrant and not that of a natural born British citizen.
I hate it when such immigrants try and make a major issue about how the white Brits supposedly not seeing the Black born Brits as citizens but still as immigrants and quoting a 50 year old quote in the process. What are we supposed to do then? Stay and claim our British birthrights or run away to Africa where we wouldn’t even last a week living the way real Africans do? If I remember correctly the Americans, even some Black Americans tried to tell Obama that he too wasn’t really an American because of his immigrant father but he stood his ground and claimed his God given right. Whether there will ever be a Black British PM remains to seen but as the other poster said just because a Black man has been elected as the US President it doesn’t mean that every country should now get a black man to lead them. This article is poor and completely ignorant and because of that it gets one star but even that is too much.
Please do your research because the above was just a load of clap-trap and nothing more!
First of all, Colin Powell is recently descended from Jamaican immigrants so I highly doubt that he actually said what you say he said. Secondly Blacks in Britain make up less than 2% of the population of 60m and given that fact there is still a good representative of black news casters and presenters on the BBC, Skynews, C4 and ITV…too many to name. Then we have our Black MPs, Paul Boateng, Dawn Taylor, Baroness Amos etc. to name just a few plus the Nigerian immigrant who was recently elected Mayor of Dagenham. I also don’t know what news report with Mr Afriye MP you are referring to because in the one that I saw, he sounded very positive to me. The cooks, cleaners and other menial jobs that you state are the posts of most black people in the UK must be the work of illegal Nigerian immigrants who have no choice but to do such work using fake IDs. You should get out of the Nigerian community more mate!
Furthermore just because America has elected a black man to the presidency it doesn’t automatically mean that every non-black country should follow suit. Your entire script comes across as though racism has now been totally eliminated in the US when that is far from the truth. The US is a country of 330 million people and only a third of those people actually voted with Obama winning 51% or so of those votes. Now I wish Obama all the best but one shouldn’t be so lackadaisical as to forget that there are still 200+ million people who didn’t vote and then there are the ones that actually voted for McCain…my point being that there are still many possibilities of an assassination and it only takes one bullet. Why do you think that the level of Obama’s security is the highest ever in history?
Back to Britain: Most Black people in Britain….that is Black Britons actually born and raised in the country and not the recent immigrants like yourself, are recently descended from people who came as early 1949. Unlike the Black Americans we have only had somewhat of a major presence in the country since that time unlike the Americans who have been there for about 400 years or so. There is really no comparison between the two groups; Black Americans are 12% of 300 million while in Britain we are a paltry 1.9% or so of 60 million. Given that fact I, as a Black British woman, would say that we have progressed quite well in the short space of time given our numbers in the Britain and the length of time we had actually been here.
You may want to consider that before trashing our Country in future. No country is perfect and indeed Britain does have a long way to go in terms of race relations and other areas but it is still miles better compared to other European countries and in some aspects, even America. Why don’t you write an article about whether an Igbo, Itsekiri, Ijaw or Urhobo man can ever be elected to the Presidency of Nigeria instead?
As an African American I never knew how deep the struggle is for our Black Brit Brothers. Never give up, never let go and never, never stop spreading the word.