Black Heritage and Culture

Nottingham has in recent years become almost as famous for its crime rate than for its legendary son, Robin Hood. Nicknames such as Assasination City and Shootingham say it all really, so I wasn’t too surprised to hear of boys from a Nottingham school being excluded for bringing in a knife.

That was until I read that they were primary school children.

Three boys have been excluded for seven days and a 10-year-old boy they allegedly threatened has been told to stay away for three days.

A vegetable knife was found in the bag of the 10-year-old who attends St Ann’s Well Junior School, Nottingham.

Knife crime and gun crime are becoming serious problems within the black community. It is no surprise that Manchester, London, Birmingham and Nottingham have the highest rates of gun and knife crime in England. It is also no surprise that London, Birmingham, Manchester and Nottingham have the highest percentages of black/mixed races inhabitants.

The question is why? In my youth we never had any of of this gun or knife culture in our community, so where has it come from? Unfortunately I can only point the finger in one direction, the United States.

But lets not get ahead of ourselves, this is not he fault of the US, but rather a fault with our own education system. Ask a young negro today who my namesake was and they’ll stare at you bemused. Ask them when slavery was abolished and they’ll either not know or hazard a guess at 1863, which is spot on, in America.

And therein lies the problem. Children in the UK in general and especially black children have nothing to relate to in regards to British history as it is rarely taught. The world wars are covered, perhaps a little about Henry VIII but chiefly it is US history that is taught. Everything from the pilgrim fathers, through to the plains Indians, civil war, slavery and the civil rights movement.

Perhaps in some misguided attempt to avoid offending children, or their parents, the single most important event for multicultural Britain is glossed over. The British Empire. Slavery and more importantly their emancipation is likewise glossed over.

This leads to a disconnection of all children, at the moment English people, notably white English people are struggling with their identity, or indeed questioning if they actually have one. Others such as Muslims, are turning to their religion and the culture of their far off homeland for their identity. Young blacks are turning to the US.

Ask a young black person in Britain to name some of their political heroes, and you would likely receive a string of rappers, or if you were lucky names like Malcolm X or Martin Luther King. Young black people in Britain see black US culture as their own, assume that the violent and in some cases on going struggle is likewise their own. Words like ‘oppression’ and ’struggle’ and probably ‘civil rights’ would be at the forefront of their thoughts. And sadly they would miss so much of what of what being a black Britain is about, people that they should be proud of are being forgotten.

Growing up I had plenty of black heroes, foremost of course was Ignatius Sancho. Sancho was the first Negro to vote in a general election, not just in Britain, but in the Western world. He cast his first vote way back in 1774, two years before the United States declared their independence. In England anyone who owned property was entitled to vote, regardless of colour.

Sancho did much to dispel the myth that Negroes were stupid, inferior and could not be educated in the same way as white people. He was self educated, highly literate and articulate and was quite literally living proof of the immorality of the slave trade. He wrote letters to newspapers criticising slavery and the slave trade, sometimes using the name ‘Africanus’.

All very noble and laudable of course, but what really interested me as a young boy was what he got up to. He was something of a playboy and slept with many of high society’s white women! Clearly the taboos weren’t as clear cut back then as we are today led to believe. When, as a boy, I read about his exploits, I was shocked, even though it was two hundred years later, but it did put a mischievous grin on my face!

Ignatius Sancho truly was extraordinary and paved the way for the abolition of slavery and equality.

Without discourse in schools about where we have come from we cannot move forward, worse, knowledge of the history of another nation but none of their own, gives young blacks today the wrong impression of what it means to be a Black Briton.

Rather than learning about Abraham Lincoln and the abolition of slavery in the US, British children (and not just blacks) should learn about the likes of Ignatius Sancho, Olaudah Equiano and William Wilberforce.

It is also worth pointing out that Britain abolished the slave trade, despite the fact that it was extremely lucrative, because it was wrong. No war was fought, no riots, just reasoned argument in Parliament, with William Wilberforce championing the abolitionists. The fact that this was even possible was a testament to Britain and British people.

Another example is Enoch Powell. Whilst blacks in America were fighting for their civil rights, Enoch Powell delivered his Rivers of Blood speech, a speech that ended his career. He was sacked from the Government the next day and forever branded a racist by the people of Britain.

The history of black Britain doesn’t have the same violence and anger as that of black Americans. Until recently there was no gang culture amongst British Blacks, no need to carry guns and knives for protection. Unfortunately as the education system was unable to offer role models, history and culture, black youths have turned to US films and TV.

Likewise the white youth, bereft of both history and culture are also following suit.