Hello, This is Ken Baron and todays blog title derives from a Ted X talk by Don
John in Southhampton, England, who has spent much of his working life identifying it addressing why he thinks Black history matters not just to him but also to us.
As an expat myself, I can agree with and add that his experiences mirror the worlds history of colonial racism.
Even though Black Lives Matter has certainly has got everyone’s attention, an appreciation of Black history anywhere helps us to understand its relevance
Given that history is written by the victors, what does that mean to a
black boys who was raised in a culture dominated by the myth of the British Commonwealth?. The victories
of the British Empire mean nothing in a world where black people are up to 37 times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people.
A world where black people are three times more likely to be arrested than white people and a world where black people are three
times more likely to be unemployed than white people.
Don John’s father was one of those proud Africans where status and position was everything and he believed in education
education. British schools showed map where the British pink bits dominated the world. But, those pink bits on the map had Great Britain disproportionately larger than it really was.
That map was the context that underpinned the understanding of that world that Africa was the dark continent where they all lived in mud huts and they traveled by swinging from tree to tree and white
Tarzan was the king of the jungle in black Africa and Christianity was a step towards salvation.
The heroes were people like Sir Walter Raleigh and Francis Drake who coolly played bowls when the Spanish Armada was approaching but casually said: “finish the game”. Later it was learned that he was a pilot and a slave owner and well invested in the slave industry.
Amazingly, Don John was always reminded that his black people assisted in the process of their historical enslavement and subjugation.
it was the civil rights movement of the 60s and the 70s that woke Don John from my slumber where he fallaciously consumed the works of people like Alex Haley, Bobby Seale snd Angela Davis.
His life was enriched by this greater knowledge and awareness and so he moved to the Caribbean for six months or and discovered a world where black people had some say in their own destiny and were seemingly more connected to their Black history.
He moved back to Southhampton to explore that heritage and history at
a grassroots level and in an environment where he felt that he could make a difference.
There was a number of black people who lived in Darby Road which was called the jungle.
There was a heightened level of consciousness in black youth of flexing their newfound pride and were more sensitized to the experiences that their parents had endured. However, these young people had no time for the English “stiff upper lip” and just wanted to kick some ass and they did and I helped them. Black pride and a sense of Black history were the tools they deployed and had a deep desire to recognize and confront the injustice in the world.
Black people became more organized partly through the support of wage equality organizations and empathetic local people and started to challenge the accepted norms in the major institutions.
They clenched their fists and marched and Black history became a new form of protest and the black history movement was
formally celebrated in Southampton from 2005.
Interestingly, there was confusion as for whom its for and who was allowed to celebrate it. Some white people felt that they should not intrude in this private grief, and some people of mixed race were unsure whether they should get involved and would they be betraying the white side of their family. Some black people were embarrassed!
Black History Month is to promote the knowledge of black history, you’d be surprised at what people don’t know. In fact many people still believe that Egypt is not in Africa. Many black inventors of freeway
traffic lights and the gas masks are not known.
It is now fashionable to have several cultural identities and people are quite rightly proud of all aspects of these identities
however the black aspects of these many identities should not be relegated to the periphery of consciousness
Western history fed to local black people in the colonies which systematically and purposefully denied their true heritage and identity
Don John thinks, sadly, that some of this legacy has continued to infect some black people’s perceptions of themselves and so it gets handed down further and further along the line.
What compounds this even further is Western societies capacity to weave in the narrative of racial superiority and to convert that into many aspects of the encounter between black and white peoples.
So, in this Black History Month. We are excited that Black Lives Matter has been nominated for a Noble Peace prize. But we should still make Black History prominent here in the US and the World.
