Mixed Race Studies

Mixed Blessings from a Cambridge Union

ELIZAN Publishing
September 2016
300 pages
Paperback ISBN: 9780995526808

Elizabeth N. Anionwu, CBE, Emeritus Professor of Nursing
University of West London

Memoirs of Professor Elizabeth N Anionwu CBE FRCN

Foreword by Malorie Blackman OBE, Writer & former Children’s Laureate

It’s 1947 and a clever, sheltered Catholic girl of Liverpool Irish working class heritage is studying Classics at Newnham College, Cambridge. She is the first one in her family to go to university – and then she discovers that she’s pregnant. The father is also a student at Cambridge, studying law. And he is black.

The fallout from their affair is dramatic, but despite pressure to give up her baby for adoption, the young woman has other ideas. Their daughter Elizabeth grows up to be a Professor of Nursing at the University of West London – but there are many twists and turns along the way. What does it mean to be mixed race in Britain? Who are you when told that your origins are ‘half Nigerian, half Irish’? Who are you, growing up as a child in care for nine years and without knowing your father?

This incredible story charts a roller coaster journey from the English Midlands to Nigeria, and from suburban health visiting to political activism and radical nursing. At the same time it brings social history to life – think ‘Philomena meets Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father’! This is a heart-warming and inspiring book about childhood, searching for identity, family, friendship, hope and what makes us who we are.

The reality of being black in today’s Britain

The Guardian
2016-10-29

David Olusoga

David Olusoga at El Mina, a Portuguese-built fort in Ghana. ‘Many black British people, and their white and mixed-race family members, slipped into a siege mentality.’ Photograph: BBC

David Olusoga grew up amid racism in Britain in the 70s and 80s. Now, in a groundbreaking new book and TV series, he argues that the story of black Britons, from Afro-Roman times to the present, is key to showing the depth of their Britishness. And, while we exult in black Britons’ success in culture, fashion and sport, discrimination still blights their lives

When I was a child, growing up on a council estate in the northeast of England, I imbibed enough of the background racial tensions of the late 1970s and 1980s to feel profoundly unwelcome in Britain.

My right, not just to regard myself as a British citizen, but even to be in Britain, seemed contested. Despite our mother’s careful protection, the tenor of our times seeped through the concrete walls into our home and into my mind and into my siblings’ minds. Secretly, I harboured fears that as part of the group identified by chanting neo-Nazis, hostile neighbours and even television comedians as “them” we might be sent “back”. This, in our case, presumably meant “back” to Nigeria, a country of which I had only infant memories and a land upon which my youngest siblings had never set foot..

Read the entire article here.

The pioneer black manager who became Don Revie’s ‘superspy’

The Telegraph
2016-10-20

Jim White

Tony Collins became England’s first black manager at Rochdale in 1960 Credit: Jon Super for The Telegraph

When he managed Rochdale back in the early Sixties, Tony Collins earned £1,500 a year. Fifty-four years on, as he sits reminiscing in a care home in Manchester, there are two managers in the very city where he is speaking who each earn £10 million a year. But he is not remotely resentful.

“I don’t begrudge them getting good money,” he says. “Because we were exploited. Oh dear, were we exploited. When I was a player, if Stan Matthews was in town, you could guarantee the gates would be locked. The crowds flocked to see him. Or Tom Finney, or Wilfy Mannion. What players they were. Artists, entertainers. But they never got the money.”

Things might have changed financially from his day, but one thing has not: ethnic minority managers remain a scandalous rarity. In that respect, Collins was a pioneer. The assumption has long been that Keith Alexander was the first black or mixed-race manager in the Football League when he took charge of Lincoln City in 1993…

…Collins’s story, told in a new book co-authored by his daughter Sarita, is an extraordinary one. He was born in Kensington during the general strike in 1926, his 17-year-old mother refusing to identify his father on his birth certificate. One thing was immediately obvious, however: his dad was black. Mixed-race children were an unusual sight in London in the 1920s. But his mother’s parents adopted him and brought him up in the then tough environs of the Portobello Road…

Read the entire article here.

Tony Collins, Football Master Spy

Book Guild Publishing Ltd
2016-10-27
270 pages
Paperback ISBN: 9781910878934

Quentin Cope & Sarita Collins

The English Football League’s First Black Manager

This is the story of the English football league’s first black manager. Tony Collins was a young man, born into disadvantaged circumstances, in a time period between two world wars where nothing was certain, except the kind of reception a black man would receive when attempting to move into a slightly brutal but reserved world of top class white sportsmen. After becoming the very first Black English Football League manager in history, Tony went on to be one of the most influential ‘backroom boys’ the game has ever seen, being labelled ‘The Teacher’ and football’s ‘Master Spy’ by the National Press. The story falls naturally into three distinct parts:

• Part I: His early life as a child in London, his schooling and army life in Italy.
• Part II: His career as a football player and time as a manager.
• Part III: His time as a chief scout for the top teams of the day and the England side under well-known names as Revie and Atkinson.

Reevaluation of the Influence of Appearance and Reflected Appraisals for Mixed-Race Identity: The Role of Consistent Inconsistent Racial Perception

Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
October 2016, Volume 2, Number 4
pages 569-583
DOI: 10.1177/2332649216634740

Jennifer Patrice Sims, Adjunct Visiting Professor of Sociology
University of Wisconsin, River Falls

Developed from Cooley’s looking-glass self, the theory of reflected appraisals is frequently used to explain how appearance influences the racial identity development of mixed-race people. However, postulating that racial identity develops via the internalization of the perception of what race one thinks others assume him or her to be rests on the assumption that others consistently perceive the individual in the same manner. Although true for many people, the appearance of mixed-race people is often ambiguous and changeable and is perceived differently depending on context, which results in mixed-race people’s being ascribed to, and interacted with as if a member of, a variety of different races and ethnicities. This fact illuminates a gap in our knowledge of how appearance influences racial identity absent consistent perception by others. Drawing on 30 interviews with mixed-race adults from a variety of racial backgrounds in the United States and United Kingdom, the author examines not only the particular experiences with differential racial perception that mixed-race people have but also the mechanisms by which appearance influences identity when one experiences varying perceptions from others. This work ultimately extends the theory of reflected appraisals by advancing the idea that, under certain conditions, identity can form from experiences being consistently inconsistently perceived when that consistent inconsistency itself functions as a reflected appraisal of a particular identity.

Read or purchase the article here.

Helping mixed heritage children develop ‘character and resilience’ in schools

Improving Schools
November 2016, Volume 19, Number 3
pages 197-211
DOI: 10.1177/1365480216650311

Kirstin Lewis
Educational Studies
Goldsmiths, University of London

Recent UK government policy suggests that all schools have a key role to play in building ‘character and resilience’ in children. This article draws on data from a wider research project, exploring the school experiences of mixed White/Black Caribbean and mixed White/Black African children in two London secondary schools. Because data from this project suggest that many children experienced adversity at school, a theoretical framework previously developed by Ungar et al. was used to assess how they coped with adversity and to what extent their schools supported them with it. Findings revealed that although positive relationships with adults were essential, teachers could not offer the necessary support and guidance because they were unaware of mixed heritage children’s needs and any challenges they faced. This article asks whether such a framework might prove useful in supporting teachers to understand what factors develop ‘character and resilience’ and the ways in which they might therefore support children to cope.

Read or purchase the article here.

Focus on world’s first black football star

The Voice
2016-10-16

Poppy Brady

Dr Tony Talburt decided that a book on Guyanese-born footballer Watson was seriously overdue, so he set about researching the background of this exceptional pioneer of the beautiful game

HE WAS the world’s first black football superstar, but the name Andrew Watson is not on every football fan’s lips – and that is why a book has been written about him to give him the spotlight he deserves.

Writer and education adviser Dr Tony Talburt decided that a book on Guyanese-born footballer Watson was seriously overdue, so he set about researching the background of this exceptional pioneer of the beautiful game.

As Dr Talburt so eruditely puts it in his book Andrew Watson – the World’s First Black Superstar, had Watson been born more than 100 years later in the 1980s, he would most certainly have been considered a sporting celebrity.

“What Watson achieved in the 1880s was probably the equivalent of contemporary legends such as Lionel Messi of Barcelona or Cristiano Ronaldo of Real Madrid, captaining both club and country” said Dr Talburt.

“In more ways than one, Andrew Watson was truly a remarkable footballer and sporting hero.”…

Read the entire article here.

An Intimate Look at Race: Growing Up Biracial in a Racially Torn World

Wellesley Centers for Women
Book Reading \ Panel \ Conversation with Author Sil Lai Abrams
Clapp Library, Lecture Room
Wellesley College
106 Central Street
Wellesley, Massachusetts
Tuesday, 2016-10-25, 16:30-17:00 EST (Local Time)

Presenters: Author Sil Lai Abrams with Linda Charmaraman, Ph.D., Layli Maparyan, Ph.D., Linda M. Williams, Ph.D.

For more information, click here.

Andrew Watson: The World’s First Black Football Superstar

Hansib Publications
2016
136 pages
216 x 138 mm

Tony Talburt

Foreword by Lord Herman Ouseley

Today, seeing Black footballers playing the game at the very highest level is considered very normal. This, certainly, was not the case one hundred and forty years ago, and this is what makes the story of Andrew Watson so remarkable.

It seems hard to imagine that a Guyanese-born Black man could head the Scottish national football team in 1881 in a game against England. Not only was he captain, but he also led them to a 6-1 victory in London – an achievement that still ranks as England’s heaviest ever defeat on home soil. If this were all that Watson had been able to accomplish, most people would agree that he should be commended for being the world’s first Black person to captain a national football team. But there was so much more. He was the world’s first Black football administrator, as well as the first Black player to win three national cup winners’ trophies.

During the 1870s and 1880s, when Watson played, he was regarded as one of the finest players in Britain. The word ‘pioneer’ is often used to describe certain players, but this would certainly be a most fitting expression to encapsulate the remarkable achievements of Andrew Watson.

This book reflects upon the legend, legacy and pioneering endeavours of a truly great Black British football superstar.

Black Lives Matter

Wonderland
2016-10-11

As the Black Lives Matter conversation continues to unfold the world over (BLM crowds stormed London City Airport as Wonderland went to press), we asked Emma Dabari, a teaching fellow at School of African Studies, to organise a debate between a few of London’s most independently-minded young creatives.

Emma Dabiri, Fellow, SOAS: What are all of your experiences with Black Lives Matter and the differences between the UK and the US? Capres, you organised the recent London protest [which was meant to be for 30 people, and closer to 3,000 turned up].

Capres Willow, protester, Black Lives Matter: The reason I organised the protest was because I was online and I came across one of the killings. I was like: “This isn’t the first one, this isn’t the last one. It seems like all people are doing is typing about it online.” Okay, that’s great, show your opinion, but we need some real action. So I just organised a protest, not expecting much from it and then 3,000 people turned up. After that I thought: “Okay, now I’ve got responsibilities.” I’m not an activist and I’ve never been to a protest before, but from that I was like: “Alright, what’s next?” Do you go about it in a political way? Do you approach the government and say: “This needs to change”? Then you look at the fact that it’s an institutional problem within the police. I’m not saying a policeman is racist, but the police as an institution is a racist institution…

E: Do you think that police brutality is one of the main issues affecting black British people? We know it’s not to the same extent that it is in the US…

Mischa Notcutt, a stylist who runs the clubnight PDA: That’s because they have guns! That’s the only reason we’re different from America. Brexit proves that we’re not as forward as a country as people think…

…E: I’m not in any way trying to suggest that the UK is better than the US, that’s not what I think. But what do you think some of the differences might be between how racism manifests itself here and there? I actually think British people are a lot more sophisticated in the way racism operates. I think there are issues that are specific to the UK, that are maybe harder to unpick.

Ronan McKenzie, fashion photographer: Exactly, it’s more undercover.

M: It’s a lot more insidious here. People are more scared about being called racist.

E: Precisely. In Brazil they had a policy called “The Whitening”. Unlike in England where there was generally a fear of so-called “race mixing”, in Brazil they had this huge African descent population in the late 1800s/early 1900s. It was this actual policy where they thought if they could just dilute the black population enough, through mixing with the white, they could eventually rid Brazil of the “Negro problem”… Obviously the whole forbidding mixing thing didn’t work here, but we’ve said racism is more insidious here. Have you read those articles that say that the African Caribbean group will be the first group to disappear in the UK? It’s regularly reported and the articles always finish in, I think, a quite gleeful tone. I just feel like: “Oh, is that what you want to happen?” I wonder if the more softly integrative, assimilate approach in the UK is maybe a low-key whitening thing.

R: You can see that in fashion, for example, where people will be talking about diversity but they won’t cast any dark-skinned girls. That’s not really diversity, if really you only like your black girls light-skinned.

Mischa: That’s interesting, because when I was younger, me and my sister would aways be like: “But we’re the future! Everyone’s going to be like us eventually!’ The Jamaican side [of my family] always see us as the white cousins, and the white side always sees us as the black cousins. So we always felt in the middle. We always thought: “The more mixed-race people, the better”, because that would give us more things to identify with being mixed race and dual heritage.

R: I think it depends on where you are, as well. I’m from north east London and if you’re mixed race you’re like, the gods. Everybody wanted to be mixed race, everybody wanted to have lighter skin, curly hair and look mixed race, and all the mixed race boys in my area were so sought after.

Munroe Bergdorf, model: It’s almost fetishised.

R: But it wasn’t a celebratory thing… It was more like: “I don’t want to be dark-skinned. I want to be more beautiful. I want to have lightskinned babies, so they look better and be respected more.” It’s not because you thought it would be great mixing… I remember, when I was younger — maybe even up until a few years ago — when I didn’t want to tan, I’d put factor 50 sunscreen on because I didn’t want darker skin. I never looked at my dad thinking: “I don’t like his colour.” I just didn’t want to be darker skinned myself.

E: I think that’s a difference I’ve experience between white environments and black environments. In addition to the racism that often occurs in white environments, there’s the more liberal, celebratory, “Oh, one day everybody will be brown like you! This is the future!” If you put that in black context, and you see the way colourism operates, and the way there’s all this pressure, and desire to be lighter, and to have more mixed, European features, then that kind of celebratory narrative seems quite perverse! In that context, it gets really gross… What do you see as the role of non-black people?…

Read the entire article here.