Black British identity

Black British identity is the objective or subjective state of perceiving oneself as an black British person and as relating to being black British. Researched and discussed across a wide variety of mediums; the identity usually interesects with, and is driven by, black African and Afro-Caribbean heritage, and association with African diaspora and culture.

Background

A emergent black British identity has been acknowledged and researched in a diverse range of forms, in scholarly or journalistic publications, and works of media.[1][2][3] Writing within the diasporic context of both African and Afro-Caribbean heritage, academic Eddie Chambers has suggested that the identity evolved across decades, after the mid-century arrival of British subjects from former colonies:[4]

How did a distinct and powerful Black British identity emerge? In the 1950s, when many Caribbean migrants came to Britain, there was no such recognised entity as 'Black Britain'; Yet by the 1980s, the cultural landscape had radically changed, and a remarkable array of creative practices such as theatre, poetry, literature, music and the visual arts gave voice to striking new articulations of Black-British identity.

An analysis with ethnogenesistic similarities from historian Kobena Mercer, who has proposed that black Britons manifested their own identity in the 1980s through activism and self-realisation, has examined that conscious nature of the identity in the United Kingdom, and suggesting that the group's black identity "showed that identities are not found but made; that they are not just there, waiting to be discovered in a vocabulary of Nature, but that they have to be culturally and politically constructed through political antagonism and cultural struggle".[5] Black British literature has been analyzed as one of the major contributions towards the emerging identity. In the 21st-century, novelists Diana Evans and Helen Oyeyemi's impact on black British identity has been explored in scholarly research.[6] Dr Charlotte Beyer has studied the concept in Andrea Levy's and Joan Riley's works. The authors, both of Jamaican ancestry, have been described as two of the many authors that have been instrumental in the literary expression of identity for black Britons.[7]

History

Referring to the forging of a new ethnic group and its consciousness, sociologist Stuart Hall wrote in 1997 "that something as distinctive as a new ethnicity, a new Black British identity is emerging".[8] In 2005, anthropologist Raymond Codrington wrote how, in certain contexts, black British identity suffered from comparison with a longer-established "black American-ness" in the United States.[9] In 2011, the BBC published an article examing the impacts of the New Cross house fire, and whether the 1981 incident, which killed a number of black Britons, contributed to the advanced development of black British identity.[10]

In 2016, historian David Olusoga presented Black and British: A Forgotten History. The four-part BBC series explored how ongoing racialised events, such as the 1981 Toxteth riots, helped to shape the identity.[11] In 2019, Huck magazine featured British drama film The Last Tree, discussing the plot - a Nigerian British foster child growing up in Britain - and its intersection the group identity. [12] In October 2019, the UK Ministry of Justice published a blog-piece from an MoJ Civil Service employee, describing her black British identity. A first for a UK Government department, the article was timed for Black History Month.[13]

Jamaican-born photographer Armet Francis was listed, in a 2019 Museum of London curation, as making a significant contribution to the group's burgeoning identity in the mid-to-late 20th century.[14] In 2020, writer Bernardine Evaristo spoke with CBC Radio regarding the emergence of the black British culture and identities, particularly in the 1990s.[15]

Academic research

A 2008 study, conducted at Florida International University, used a series of questions, which were asked of black British children in London-based secondary schools, in order to measure perceptions of the concept. The interviewees (eighteen individual students aged 11–17) and their responses, were used to indicate associations with, primarily, black British identity, as well as notions and beliefs regarding African diaspora.[16] Diasporic factors have been examined as an important aspect of the development of the identity, such as in the works of historian Eddie Chambers,[17] and in relation to both African and African Caribbean ancestry.[18]

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References
  1. "Staying Power: Photographs of Black British Experience". Victoria and Albert Museum. Her photographs explore fashion and style as expressions of black British identity, often with a focus on music culture. She has photographed prominent hip hop artists such as P. Diddy, Jay Z and Mary J. Blige.
  2. John, Anique Terri (2019). Race and Antiracism in Black British and British Asian Literature (Doctoral Dissertation Justice Studies ed.). Arizona State University.
  3. Dave Gunning (2016). "Africa and Black British Identity". Caribbean Women and the Black British Identity: Academic Strategies for Navigating an ‘Unfinished’Ethnicity. Liverpool University Press. pp. 19–63. ISBN 978-1784536176.
  4. Eddie Chambers (2016). Roots & Culture: Cultural Politics in the Making of Black Britain. I.B.Tauris. ISBN 978-1784536176.
  5. Kobena Mercer (1994). Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies. Routledge. ISBN 978-0415906357.
  6. Bénédicte Ledent (2009), "Black British Literature", The Oxford Companion to English Literature (7th ed.), Oxford University Press, pp. 16–22, Complex ideas of otherness have been explored in recent novels such as Diana Evans's 26a (2005) and Helen Oyeyemi's The Icarus Girl (2005) through their use of mixed-race twin characters, symbols of the ambiguity and inbetweenness that is part and parcel of 'black British' identity.
  7. Charlotte Beyer (2012), "Special Issue on Andrea Levy", Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies (EnterText ed.), Brunel University London, ISBN 978-0415906357, The article focuses on representations of ageing and black British identity in Andrea Levy’s Every Light in the House Burnin’ (1994) and Joan Riley’s Waiting in the Twilight (1987).
  8. Stuart Hall (1999). "Frontlines and Backyards: The Terms of Change". In Kwesi Owusu (ed.). Black British Culture and Society: A Text Reader. Routledge. ISBN 978-0415178464.
  9. Raymond Codrington (2006). "The Homegrown : Race , Rap and Class in London". Globalization and Race: Transformations In The Cultural Production Of Blackness. Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0822337720. Race and cultural identity by using black American-ness as an established identity from which to gauge the validity ofblack British identity.
  10. Alexis Akwagyiram (18 January 2011). "Did the New Cross fire create a black British identity?". BBC. The lasting legacy of the New Cross fire may be that it helped create a black British voice with a politicised identity.
  11. "Black and British: A Forgotten History'" (Episode 4: The Homecoming ed.). BBC. 2016. Historian David Olusoga concludes his series with the three African kings who stood up to empire, an irresistible crooner, race riots in Liverpool and the shaping of black British identity in the 20th century.
  12. Kambole Campbell (20 September 2019). "The film exploring masculinity and black British identity".
  13. Karen Minta (29 October 2019). "My thoughts on what it means to be Black and British in 2019". Carving the discourse surrounding Black British identity has always been a contested feature of my existence.
  14. Jilke Golbach (16 October 2019). "Photographing black Britain: Neil Kenlock & Armet Francis". Francis’ newfound concern with black British identity in the 1960s shifted his focus in photography as he embarked on two lifelong projects ... that explore black diasporic communities in Britain, Africa and the Caribbean.
  15. "Bernardine Evaristo on black British identity and her Booker-winning novel, Girl, Woman, Other". Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. January 17, 2020.
  16. Janice Giles (2008), "Method", African History and Identity: A Case Study of Black British Students in London, Florida International University, p. 28, The participants’ responses will indicate their perspectivesand experiences with regard to five thematic emphases, namely (a) Black British identity
  17. "Music, politics and cricket: the rise of black British identity – in pictures". 5 May 2017. A new book by Eddie Chambers, Roots & Culture: Cultural Politics in Black Britain, charts the formation of black British identity through music, politics and more
  18. Sarita Malik (2001). Representing Black Britain: Black and Asian Images on Television. SAGE Publications. ISBN 978-0761970286.
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