In May 2021, on the first anniversary of the murder in the US of George Floyd by a police officer, the Labour Party in Britain promised new laws to tackle racism. It produced a slick video for social media in which David Lammy, then shadow justice secretary, recalled Floyd’s death as his killer knelt on his neck. “Floyd looked like me; he could have been me,” said Lammy.
Could he really? Lammy is a Harvard-educated lawyer who has been an MP in London for 23 years. Floyd lived more than 6,000 kolometres away, where he battled a drug problem and spent almost one third of his adult life in jail. What did he and Lammy have in common apart from skin tone?
“Floyd only looked like Lammy in the most superficial sense, and his life experience could only have been like Lammy’s in the most superficial sense, too: in that they were both black,” writes British author Tomiwa Owolade in a provocative new book on race, This is Not America.
Owolade laments the transposition of fevered, US-style racial politics to other countries including Britain. The murder of Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin sparked antiracism rallies all over the world, as protesters chorused Floyd’s last words: “I can’t breathe”. Owolade identifies this as the high point of the export of US racial perspectives, and a low point for international understanding.
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In his book, he is out by a year on the date of Labour’s video: he mistakenly writes that it was in 2022. But he is on firmer ground with his scepticism about why the murder of a black man in the US could be assumed to have such transferable ramifications for Britain.
“Why should we assume that being a black person in Minneapolis is the same as being a black person in Mile End, apart from the magical powers of alliteration [deployed by Lammy in the video].”
Owolade’s book is an unabashed polemic. Its central theme is to dismiss the notion that the experiences of black people in Britain can ever really mirror what happens in the US, which has its own unique race dynamics.
“Racism is not the same everywhere in the world.”
Black identity and US identity are often in conflict. Later, he adds a warning for other black people: “[Don’t] fall into the trap of embracing your racial identity above all else.” To do so, he argues, is to undermine their own humanity by dismissing the importance of their personal experiences in shaping their lives, reducing everything down to skin colour instead. He says well-meaning white liberals do this too. Black people are more than just their race.
Owolade, who was born in Nigeria but raised in southeast London, mostly makes his case with clarity and care as he calls for race relations in Britain to be understood from a unique perspective.
The first section of the book is an appraisal of US race relations, which are rooted in the history of slavery. He contrasts this with Britain’s racial history, which is less confrontational and more influenced by immigration, which causes different dynamics. Yet US ideas on race are readily accepted in Britain because of the relentless consumption of US culture.
“Black Americans are the most influential black people in the world. This is not because they are black. It is because they are American,” he writes.
Owolade wades somewhat indulgently for 100 pages through the ideas of US black intellectuals, from 19th century sociologist W E B du Bois to Ralph Ellison, the author of acclaimed 1950s novel, Invisible Man. He also critiques modern critical race theory. At times, the US section drags like an academic literature review. Owolade’s assessment would have been more engaging had he done more first-hand research by interviewing US black people about their life experiences, instead of keeping it all so theoretical.
The second section is more satisfying, as Owolade draws on his personal experiences and those of others to craft a nuanced, compassionate and surprisingly optimistic view of race relations in Britain.
“Virtually all the white people I encountered on the streets of southeast London were kind to me,” he writes. Yet he also gives plenty of space to acknowledging that the experiences of most other black people in Britain were more difficult.
He concludes that race problems in Britain are not as intractable as the US. He calls for a more nuanced view of race issues, one more cognisant of local factors. He also rejects the notion that, unlike with the race-nationality identity conflict that faces black people in the US, there is an inherent tension between being British and being black.
Then comes what might be provocative for some. Owolade concludes that Britain, for all its problems, is a far more “integrated society” than many understand. He also rejects “stigmatisation” of white people over race issues, and argues black people should be satisfied that elements of their culture, such as dialect, are now being absorbed by white people.
He concludes by recalling how Martha, a white secondary school student whom he was tutoring in English literature, spoke to him in a south London voice but with “unmistakably African intonations”.
“To be black and British is to see yourself reflected back in wider society, to see your identity as consistent with the mainstream. Martha was white and had a bit of black in her voice; but she was still, like me, irreducibly British.”
It is a sanguine, sweet finish. If only the earlier sections of the book were so easy to swallow.
Mark Paul is London Correspondent of The Irish Times
