Mixed Race Studies

Jackie Kay on reading out an anti-racist poem at a football ground

The Guardian
2012-10-26

Jackie Kay, Professor of Creative Writing
Newcastle University

Jackie Kay readies for an experiment – being a poet on Sheffield United’s pitch and helping to kick racism out of football

On Monday I’m going to be pitching my anti-racist poem to fans of the Blades and Pompey at Sheffield United’s Bramall Lane stadium, the oldest major football stadium in the world still hosting matches.

I’m an experiment – a poet on the pitch, but not a pitch-perfect poet. I might even be a botched experiment. As far as I know, I’m the first poet to read to a whole stadium just before kick-off – but certainly the first woman poet. The two women behind this initiative are Sue Beeley, head of community at Sheffield United, and Su Walker from Off the Shelf Literature Festival. They came up with the idea of commissioning a poet to write an anti-racist poem, read it at a match, and paint the poem on the stadium walls. They picked me because they’d read I was sporty! Beeley said: ”If it works, it will go down a storm, if it doesn’t we’ll let you know.” Off the Shelf has commissioned poets for years; slowly, deftly, they’ve been creating a poetic map of the city of steel. In Sheffield, Andrew Motion has a poem on the side of one student building, Jarvis Cocker is on another, Benjamin Zephaniah on the railings of another, and Roger McGough can be found in the Winter Garden…

…When I was researching my poem, I came across Arthur Wharton, the first professional black footballer to play in the Football League. He was born in Ghana; his father was half-Scottish and half-Grenadian. He came to England in 1882 and by 1894 was playing for Sheffield United. He died in 1930. Wharton was my talisman. I imagined him coming back from the dead and hearing the news. I imagined his reaction to the monkey chanting. Just thinking about him made me think about the extra time on racism’s clock; how racism is society’s own goal. Shaming….

Read the entire article here.

Why I see myself as a daughter of the Diaspora rather than mixed-race

Black Girl Dancing at Lughnasa
2013-02-12

Emma Dabiri, Teaching Fellow
Africa Department, School of African and Oriental Studies, London
Visual Sociology Ph.D. Researcher, Goldsmiths University of London

Why this ‘mixed’ girl rejects the ‘mixed-race’ label.

There is nothing like hearing the arguments of members of the multiracial movement and certain ‘mixed-race’ activists to make me want to distance myself from them as much as possible and exclusively identify as black! However, after all these years, I refuse to be pushed into making essentialist identity choices.

‘Mixed-race’ has been both pathologized and celebrated across time and space, often simultaneously.  Whether we are being positioned as the halfcaste underclass—Waynetta Slob’s ‘brown babies,’ endemic of a broken Britain populated by brown-skinned, hooded feral youth, or we are cast in the role as mixed-race messiahs; genetically superior, physically fitter, inheritors of a bright new, beautiful brown post-racial future—like all non-white people, we continue to be racialised.

Both constructions assign mixed race people a specific and limited identity based on their ‘race’, and continue the work of 18th century scientific racism ascribing particular physical and mental attributes to people based on so called racial difference. Further, the myth of a new, beautiful mixed race generation as the epitome of liberal, cool, race-less Britain, masks enduring structural racism and inequalities, which will be allowed to continue unchecked if we are seduced by it.

The media and social studies join forces to perpetuate a damaging and a-historical construction of being ‘mixed-race’, where mixedness is presented as something new. But black and white people have been having children since their first encounters with each other. This is a process that has been in place since the conquests of the Americas at least. The populations of the New World are largely mixed-race populations. Although they are popularly categorised as black or white, their origins are heterogeneous. In such a context, it seems nonsensical to categorise the child of one black Caribbean parent and one white European parent as suddenly and magically ‘mixed-race’, yet we continue to do so…

Read the entire article here.

Roots Entwined by Audrey Dewjee

Tangled Roots: Literature and events to celebrate mixed-race people in Yorkshire
2013

Audrey Dewjee

Yorkshire-born Audrey Dewjee has been married for over 40 years to a Zanzibari of Indian ancestry. She has been researching British Black and Asian History since the mid-1970s, and is currently a member of Leeds Diasporian Stories Research Group. In the 1980s she worked with Ziggi Alexander, co-researching the exhibition Roots in Britain: Black and Asian Citizens from Elizabeth I to Elizabeth II, and co-editing Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands, which brought Mary Seacole back into the public consciousness

London abounds with an incredible number of…black men who have clubs to support those who are out of place [i.e. out of work] and in every country town, nay in almost every village, are to be seen a little race of mulattoes, mischievous as monkeys, and infinitely more dangerous.

So wrote Phillip Thicknesse in 1788. Thicknesse may have been exaggerating the numbers for effect; nevertheless, surviving records show that inter-racial families existed all around the country. There may be a greater number today, but mixed-marriages have taken place in Britain for hundreds of years.
 
Small numbers of Africans and Asians started arriving in Britain as a result of the trading links which followed upon early voyages of exploration. Africans were the first to arrive in the 1500s as a by-product of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. They were followed by Indians and Chinese, after the setting up of the East India Company in 1601. London and the southern counties provide the earliest evidence of marriages – for example, that of Samuel Mansur or Munsur “a Blackamoure” to Jane Johnson at St. Nicholas, Deptford in 1613. Samuel may have been African, Arab or Asian.

Yorkshire eventually caught up with the trend. One of the earliest marriages here took place on 12 November, 1732, at Thornton by Pocklington in the East Riding, when John Quashee wed Rebecca Crosby. Others followed. Henry Osman, who had been brought to England from India by a member of the Lowther family, married Anne Cook at Swillington in 1753. At the time of his marriage, he was employed as a footman by Sir William Lowther, and he remained at Swillington until his death in 1781. Henry and Anne had a number of children, many of whom married and stayed in the local area.

Respectable English women appear to have had no hesitation in marrying men of colour: for instance, Elizabeth daughter of Rev. George Lawson, vicar of Weaverthorpe, who married Peter Horsfield at Boynton in 1780. The fact that many of the men had skills or were in secure employment and therefore able to support a family, would have added to their attraction. Yorkshire men also married African and Asian women. James Doe and Parcira Derosa, described as “a widow and Chinese”, were united in Ripon Cathedral in 1755, while possibly the earliest portrait of an inter-racial family in Britain was that of Harlequin, her Yorkshire husband and their two children…

Read the entire article here.

Scotching Three Myths About Mary Seacole

British Journal of Healthcare Assistants
Volume 7, Issue 10, (October 2013)
pages 508-511

Elizabeth Anionwu, Emeritus Professor of Nursing
University of West London

Mary Seacole has received unprecedented media coverage due to the phenomenal success of the Operation Black Vote petition to keep her included in the national curriculum. In a period of a month, more than 35 000 people signed it since it went online on 3 January 2013. The nationwide and international response has been remarkable. So too the overwhelming display of respect for Mary Seacole, as demonstrated in the comments of thousands who signed the petition.

A leaked draft of the proposed new history curriculum was featured in MailOnline on 29 December 2012 (Petre, 2012). The report stated that ‘pupils will again have to study these traditional historic figures’ and examples included Oliver Cromwell, Lord Nelson and Winston Churchill. In contrast, Mary Seacole and other ‘social reformers’ such as Elizabeth Fry, Olaudah Equiano (ca 1745-1797) and Florence Nightingale would be excluded. This was followed on 31 December 2012 with an article in MailOnline headed: ‘The black Florence Nightingale and the making of a PC myth: one historian explains how Mary Seacole’s story never stood up’ (Walters G, 2012).

The petition led to extensive analysis in newspapers, online media and radio and in February, the Government made it clear Seacole would not after all be dropped from the national curriculum (Rawlinson, 2013). Mary Seacole generated a debate: on the one hand, there was acknowledgement of her achievements, while on the other hand doubts were raised as to whether she merited this acclaim and admiration. It was argued by some that myths created about Seacole need to be corrected; three examples are explored here…

…Myth 2: Mary Seacole should not be considered as a ‘black historical figure’

Seacole was, for example, voted the Greatest Black Briton in 2004 (Taylor, 2004). Some suggest that accolades of this nature are dubious, as Seacole was ‘three-quarters white’ and, it is claimed, more at ease with her white and Scottish roots than her black Jamaican heritage. Evidence to back this up uses selected extracts from her 1857 autobiography, Wonderful Adventures Of Mrs Seacole In Many Lands, including that her skin colour is ‘only a little brown’ and disparaging remarks she made about her black cooks…

Read the entire article here.

Professor Mark Christian on Mixed Chicks Chat

Mixed Chicks Chat (The only live weekly show about being racially and culturally mixed. Also, founders of the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival) Hosted by Fanshen Cox, Heidi W. Durrow and Jennifer Frappier
Episode: #233 – Professor Mark Christian
Wednesday, 2011-11-16, 22:00Z (17:00 EST, 14:00 PST)

Mark Christian, Professor & Chair of African & African American Studies
Lehman College, City University of New York

Note from Steven F. Riley: In my opinion, this was the most engaging episode of Mixed Chicks Chat.

Dr. Christian received his B.A. in Sociology and American Studies from Liverpool Hope University, his M.A. in Black Studies from The Ohio State University, and his Ph.D. in Sociology from The University of Sheffield in 1997. He is the author of Multiracial Identity: An International Perspective (Palgrave, 2000) and two other edited volumes, and has been the guest editor of three special issue journals. Currently, he is the book review editor for the Journal of African American Studies.

Selected Bibliography:

• “Mixing Up the Game: Social and Historical Contours of Black Mixed Heritage Players in British Football in Race,” in Ethnicity and Football: Persisting Debates and Emergent Issues, Daniel Burdsey, ed. (London: Routledge, 2011). 131-144.
• Multiracial Identity: An International Perspective, New York: Palgrave, 2000. 186 pp. Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-312-23219-1.
• “The Fletcher Report 1930: A Historical Case Study of Contested Black Mixed Heritage Britishness,” Journal of Historical Sociology, Volume 32, Number 2 (November 2001): 213-241.

Listen to the episode here. Download the episode here.

Before the Windrush: Race Relations in 20th-Century Liverpool

Liverpool University Press
March 2014
288 pages
16 black and white illustrations, 1 colour illustrations, 1 maps
234 x 156 mm
Hardback ISBN: 9781846319679
Paperback ISBN: 9781781380000

John Belchem, Emeritus Professor of History
University of Liverpool

Long before the arrival of the ‘Empire Windrush’ after the Second World War, Liverpool was widely known for its polyglot population, its boisterous ‘sailortown’ and cosmopolitan profile of transients, sojourners and settlers. Regarding Britain as the mother country, ‘coloured’ colonials arrived in Liverpool for what they thought to be internal migration into a common British world. What they encountered, however, was very different. Their legal status as British subjects notwithstanding, ‘coloured’ colonials in Liverpool were the first to discover: ‘There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack’.

Despite the absence of significant new immigration, despite the high levels of mixed dating, marriages and parentage, and despite pioneer initiatives in race and community relations, black Liverpudlians encountered racial discrimination, were left marginalized and disadvantaged and, in the aftermath of the Toxteth riots of 1981, the once proud ‘cosmopolitan’ Liverpool stood condemned for its ‘uniquely horrific’ racism.

‘Before the Windrush’ is a fascinating study that enriches our understanding of how the empire ‘came home’. By drawing attention to Liverpool’s mixed population in the first half of the twentieth century and its approach to race relations, this book seeks to provide historical context and perspective to debates about Britain’s experience of empire in the twentieth century.

Contents

• List of Tables
• List of Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Introduction: ‘The most disturbing case of racial disadvantage in the United Kingdom’
• 1. Edwardian cosmopolitanism
• 2. Riot, miscegenation and inter-war depression
• 3. War-time hospitality and the colour bar
• 4. Repatriation, reconstruction and post-war race relations
• 5. Race relations in the 1950s
• 6. 1960s: race and youth
• 7. The failure of community relations
• 8. ‘It took a riot’
• Sources consulted
• Index

Patterns of self-harm and attempted suicide among white and black/mixed race female prisoners

Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health
Volume 13, Issue 4 (November 2003)
pages 229–240
DOI: 10.1002/cbm.549

Jo Borrill
Division of Neuroscience and Psychological Medicine, Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine
University of London

Rachel Burnett
Division of Neuroscience and Psychological Medicine, Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine
University of London

Richard Atkins
Psychology Subject Group
Thames Valley University

Sarah Miller
Division of Neuroscience and Psychological Medicine, Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine
University of London

Daniel Briggs
Division of Neuroscience and Psychological Medicine, Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine, University of London

Tim Weaver
Department of Social Science and Medicine, Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine
University of London

Professor Anthony Maden
Division of Neuroscience and Psychological Medicine, Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine
University of London

Aim

The aim was to investigate ethnic differences in lifetime self-harm and attempted suicide in women prisoners, and to examine relationships between self-harm, suicide and substance use and dependence.

Background

Previous studies have suggested that there may be ethnic differences in the proportion of prisoners reporting substance misuse, self-harm and attempted suicide, although relatively few minority ethnic women have been studied in the UK. This study examines drug and alcohol dependence in white and black British women in prison, and explores possible associations with self-harm, suicide attempts, and family violence.

Methods

301 women (190 white, 111 black or mixed race) were interviewed in ten prisons from different parts of England. Measures included the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification test (AUDIT), the severity of Dependence Scale (SDS), section C (suicidality) of the MINI International Neuropsychiatric Interview.

Results

Half of the women in the sample reported at least one act of self-harm in their life and 46% reported making a suicide attempt at some time. Lifetime self-harm was associated with a history of harmful drinking and with being a victim of violence, including physical assault, sexual assault and violence from family and friends. Lifetime suicide attempts were associated with reported violence from family or friends. Current high suicide risk was most common among women on remand.

Drug dependence and reported violence from family or friends were both more common amongst white women than black/mixed race women. Self-harm and attempted suicide were generally more common among white women, but black/mixed race women dependent on drugs had the highest proportion of women reporting self-harm. There was tentative support for three-way association between ethnicity, dependence and self-harm; this raises the possibility that drug dependence may be a predictor of self-harm in the black female prison population, which is worthy of further investigation.

Read or purchase the article here.

Playwright Sarah Rutherford on her play Adult Supervision

TheatreVOICE
Department of Theatre & Performance
Victoria and Albert Museum
2013-10-22

Heather Neill

Interview: Sarah Rutherford

The playwright talks to Heather Neill about her new drama, Adult Supervision, a story about race which is currently playing at the Park Theatre in London’s Finsbury Park in Jez Bond’s production. Recorded at the Park Theatre, 16 October 2013.

Listen to the interview here.

Review of Adult Supervision at Park Theatre Finsbury Park

LondonTheater1.com
London
2013-10-20

Alan Franks, Senior Reviewer

Adult supervision, if you remember, is what Barack Obama said Washington needed. This was back in 2006, two years before his election as forty-fourth president of the US, and the first black incumbent of the office. So there could hardly be a more timely moment than now for a play bearing his words as its title, with America once more squeezing through one of its congressional crises which baffle the world with their apparent childishness.

What’s more, Sarah Rutherford’s play is set on that giddy evening five years ago when the votes were counted, the unthinkable happened and a black American family prepared to move into the White House. So the joyful political liberation plays out as a running backdrop to the get-together of the four youngish women on whom we are here to eavesdrop. More a frontdrop actually, since the TV is situated on the fourth wall, which means they gawp and whoop at us as the results of the count come in. It is as if we are making our own fleeting guest appearances at the unfolding drama.

Our hostess is the controlling Natasha, lawyer turned full-time mother who loses no opportunity for trumpeting the moral virtue of her career shift. Her children are a statement in their own right; she is white and they are black, the fruits of an adoption mission to Ethiopia. One of her guests is the angry Mo, whose husband is black; another is Issy, Natasha’s supposed best friend; the third, and only black woman is the heavily pregnant Angela. In Natasha’s patronising, or matronising vision, the four of them are bonded by their commitment to mixed-race progeny…

Read the review here.

Mary Seacole: The Charismatic Black Nurse Who Became a Heroine of the Crimea [new edition]

Constable & Robinson
2006-11-16
288 pages
Paperback ISBN: 9781845294977

Jane Robinson

The ‘Greatest Black Briton in History’ triumphed over the Crimea and Victorian England. She became an independent ‘doctress’ combining the herbal remedies of her African ancestry with sound surgical techniques. This biography of a Victorian celebrity, voted the greatest black Briton in history, brings Mary Seacole centre stage.

The ‘Greatest Black Briton in History’ triumphed over the Crimea and Victorian England. ‘The Times’ called her a heroine, Florence Nightingale called her a brothel-keeping quack, and Queen Victoria’s nephew called her, simply, ‘Mammy’—Mary Seacole was one of the most eccentric and charismatic women of her era. Born at her mother’s hotel in Jamaica in 1805, she became an independent ‘doctress’ combining the herbal remedies of her African ancestry with sound surgical techniques.

On the outbreak of the Crimean War, she arrived in London desperate to join Florence Nightingale at the Front, but the authorities refused to see her. Being black, nearly 50, rather stout, and gloriously loud in every way, she was obviously unsuitable. Undaunted, Mary travelled to Balaklava under her own steam to build the ‘British Hotel’, just behind the lines. It was an outrageous venture, and a huge success – she became known and loved by everyone from the rank and file to the royal family.

For more than a century after her death this remarkable woman was all but forgotten. This, the first full-length biography of a Victorian celebrity recently voted the greatest black Briton in history, brings Mary Seacole centre stage at last.