A year ago, I opened a respected British journal and read that I was Black. Specifically, I was, it turned out, a Black historian. Who knew? Until then, I was simply known as a historian. The editor was dismayed when I complained about not wanting to be racialised in this way; he imagined I’d be delighted with the capitalisation and upgrade from black to Black. Finally, he apologised, saying he’d been badly advised.
The advice had come from the US. It is just this kind of cultural cringe to the US, and the notions it exports to these shores, that sits at the heart of This Is Not America, Tomiwa Owolade’s timely intervention into the politics of identity. Owolade contends that Britain continues to cede authority to the US, especially in matters of race, and is blind to what should be obvious: we are not America.
Britain’s problems with race pale beside the awful day-to-day enmity in the US. Increasingly, though – with the murder of George Floyd, the adoption of acronyms such as Bipoc (Black, Indigenous and People of Colour), the capitalisation of Black and White, the rise, fall and rise again of Black Lives Matter, and the mass incarceration of African American men — insights from across the Atlantic are embraced. This is tied up with the allure of America generally, believes Owolade. Which is undoubtedly true: even today British newspapers are more likely to genuflect in front of an African American than a black Briton.
