This was another eye-opening read for me, as the author, who is mixed race and grew up in Wimbledon, describes, from personal experience, interviews and research, ways in which life in the UK which are difficult for people who are not white. She also describes her confusion, after moving to Ghana to escape the experience of being black in the UK, of finding that she’s not seen as fully black in Ghana.
There are stories of the long history of black people in the UK, as well as explorations of the impact of colonialisation and slavery – both historic impact and ongoing contemporary effects. Hirsch relates this in ways that are easy to read without shying away from the complexities and the highly troubling actions and attitudes of many white people in the UK. Several times my understanding of historical events and people was challenged, as I too lived through some of the times she describes and went to the same university (although sometime earlier).
Closest to home for me as a white foster carer to mixed race children were Hirsch’s descriptions in her chapter on Heritage of issues faced by mixed race people who had grown up with white foster carers, and of ways in which policy around ‘race matching’ in adoption have changed and the effects it has had. She describes the experience of Joseph, a mixed race man who grew up with his white mother and white step-father who also adopted him. After describing how his parents advised him to ignore racist incidents and walk away, he says:
But it didn’t tackle the basic point the at the end of it you still feel inferior, and outsider, undesirable…
I was never short of love … but if there is one tangible thing I can say about the way having white parents and a white family affected me, they didn’t understand that basic thing that you are black and you [should be taught to be] proud of it … as a black child, you have a history. They could have told me about Nigerian history… p.143-144
While, as children in foster care, the children we have still have connection with their birth family, I feel the challenge to find out and teach them about their family background. At the end of the chapter, Hirsch concludes:
People with mixed heritage aren’t less interested in defining their identity, as some people have mistakenly assumed, but are often more so. p.164
This book helps me to see challenges ahead, but has not (yet) crystallised answers in my mind.
This is such an interesting debate. I have always loved History – though when I learnt it was (obviously) from a white British perspective. I did a lot of social history as well as political history, but we were not taught how to look at and evaluate evidence as they are today. If history as a subject manages to survive in the current educational climate, I trust that looking at events and objects from multiple perspectives will become the norm.
Thanks Margaret – yes, it’s an interesting and challenging read.
Have you seen Tarry Awhile by Selina Stone? It’s the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lent book this year, and it’s a book of reflections from Black Spirituality. That’s interesting too.