[...] During the 50s, Britain became a multi-racial and, to some extent, a multicultural society. In the census of 1951 there were just 15,300 Caribbean people living in Britain. Ten years later, there were 171,800 - a phenomenal wave of migration in just one decade. Such figures give an idea of how radically the country changed its racial face during the 50s. The "colour problem" was debated in parliament, on television, in newspapers, magazines, on the radio. It was the big story of the 50s. Yet where is it represented in the literature?
Today, Britain remains the most multiracial of European countries, and London is Europe's most multicultural and racially diverse city. More than 300 different languages are spoken daily in London schools, yet, if we look at contemporary British literature, some of the absences of the 1950s continue today. Then and now, black writers addressed British life, and naturally enough these writers included black characters in their work. Perhaps Samuel Selvon's The Lonely Londoners (1956) is the best example of a 50s novel that tackles the problems of race and class that bedevilled British society at the time. But writers such as George Lamming and VS Naipaul also wrote about race, class and British society, as did Africans, most memorably Wole Soyinka in his poem "The Immigrant". Like their successors in Britain today -- Ben Okri, Hanif Kureishi -- these writers wrote and write about contemporary Britain with eyes that take in not only black people, but white people too. The lack of any reciprocal imagining on the part of white British writers is puzzling.
Braine, Amis, Osborne, Arnold Wesker and Keith Waterhouse cannot have been unaware of the huge public debate around black immigration. And they cannot have been unaware of the social changes that came with it. They obviously knew about the Notting Hill riots, and they were aware of the daily presence of these new people on the streets, on the buses, and working in hospitals and factories all over the country.
Although Amis and Osborne were writers, not social historians or journalists, the omission of black people from the literary landscape is so glaring it does beg questions about the politics of literary representation. [...]
| Caryl Phillips' Guardian UK essay "Kingdom of the blind" (best read before Vikram Dodd's "90% of whites have few or no black friends") makes us wonder what's happened to our copy of MacInnes' "Mr. Love and Justice," and why it's been so long since we last rented "Absolute Beginners"
posted in articles on July 18, 2004 8:43 PM | t (0)
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British identity is still a very white thing, I suppose. I remember a poll on the BBC asking if curry -- eaten by everyone in the UK -- could rightfully be considered a British national dish.
Despite the hard numbers from the article, though, I believe the total percentage of blacks in the UK is under 5%. (Unless, of course, you include anyone who is not white in the definition of "Black" as folks in the UK seem to do.) It's not so surprising (at least to me) that UK folks would have so few friends of color when there aren't that many there to begin with.
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