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.
Owolade’s polemic, split into two halves — US and Britain — starts with the former. He provides valuable sketches on America’s obsession with race and its culture wars, focused in recent years on Derrick Bell’s critical race theory (the notion that racism is an ineradicable feature of the US) and Kimberlé Crenshaw’s work on intersectionality (the proposition that an individual can be subjected to more than one form of discrimination, eg sexism and racism).
Turning to Britain, he warns that America’s battles have been adopted here and should be rejected. “This book argues two main points,” he writes. “We should understand race in Britain through a British perspective, and we shouldn’t reduce black people to their race.” I agree, but Owolade’s assertion that “what is at stake is the dignity of black people in Britain’’ sounds a bit of a stretch. Peculiarly, he cites Jeffrey Boakye as a threat to black dignity. The evidence? Boayke writes in Black, Listed, his 2019 book about black British culture: “Poverty is a key defining characteristic of the black experience… Every black person I have ever spoken to has some shared point of reference to an impoverished upbringing.” Owolade responds: “To define blackness in terms of poverty is both untrue and insulting.”
But surely Boakye is just describing a heartfelt view; it’s hardly insulting. At times, This Is Not America possesses a surprising tetchiness, given that its author, a battle-hardened cultural critic, has remained largely unfazed by ugly online abuse from detractors targeting him as someone, he says, “who deviates from the orthodoxy” of race conversations.
In a lengthy introduction, anticipating criticism, Owolade flags up the limits of his book’s ambition. It does not include reflections on British-Asians because, he says guilelessly: “I can only write about what interests me, and I am interested principally in black people in Britain.” Nonetheless, he provides a whistle-stop tour of race relations while acting as a guide.
He subscribes to the “disparity fallacy” – the idea that not all problems faced by black people can be ascribed to racism. It’s wrong to suggest that schools systemically let down black students, he argues, because some children of west African descent are doing all right, thanks, and it’s really only young people of Caribbean descent who are failing. The stats may prove him right but it would help if the author offered some context – whether by introducing, for instance, Bernard Coard’s seminal 1971 text, How the West Indian Child Is Made Educationally Sub-normal in the British School System, or considering reflections from former teacher Boakye’s I Heard What You Said (2022), which details why children of Caribbean origin are more readily excluded from school.
At its heart Owolade’s polemic seems to be a tussle over who assumes pole position for the dubious honour of spokesperson for black people in Britain. He seems to have a handful of “leftist” black British cultural critics in his literary crosshairs, among them Kehinde Andrews, professor of Black studies at Birmingham City University. Owolade takes Andrews to task over his revolutionary belief that in order to survive Britain’s hostile systems “black people need to [build] up their own institutions and safe spaces”. The suggestion is “hollow”, Owolade argues, because “building such institutions will not change the fact that we are a minority”. I hold no brief for Andrews but I don’t think his proposition is without merit.
Towards the end of This Is Not America, Owolade returns to the idea underpinning its title: “Even when two nations speak the same language, [race] can be lost in translation.” His book shows that in this country’s polarising culture wars its attitude towards race is being shaped by the enlightened and the bigots in the US. But he concludes: “To define someone exclusively by their race is to acquiesce to the visions of racists.” Amen to that.
• This Is Not America: Why Black Lives in Britain Matter by Tomiwa Owolade is published by Atlantic (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
