{"id":17247,"date":"2011-10-24T00:28:58","date_gmt":"2011-10-24T00:28:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=17247"},"modified":"2011-10-24T00:28:58","modified_gmt":"2011-10-24T00:28:58","slug":"sun-uses-it%e2%80%99s-arsenal-to-divide-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=17247","title":{"rendered":"Sun uses it\u2019s Arsenal to divide us"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sun uses it\u2019s Arsenal to divide us<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Lester Holloway<\/a>
\n2011-08-17<\/p>\n

Lester Holloway<\/a><\/strong>, Liberal Democrat Councillor, Journalist & Equality Campaigner
\nLondon Borough of Sutton<\/em><\/p>\n

Top footballers are good at what they do but the Government does not turn to Ashley Cole<\/a> or John Terry<\/a> for economic advice. By the same token, their views on race shouldn\u2019t set the agenda. That was my first reaction to the full page devoted to Theo Walcott\u2019s experiences in today\u2019s Sun<\/em><\/a>.
\n\u00a0
\nI have no issue with the Arsenal<\/a> and sometime England<\/a> winger<\/a>\u2013his history and childhood memories are his own\u2013but when a few paragraphs in his new autobiography are plucked out and spun into a full page in Britain\u2019s biggest-selling newspaper you have to ask: \u2018what it going on?\u2019…<\/p>\n

…Let\u2019s start with the headline:\u201dPeople call me black but I\u2019m mixed race.\u201d Again, he\u2019s perfectly entitled to that view, but it\u2019s not one shared by all who recognise that being \u201cmixed race\u201d means you are seen as a person of colour just as those who have two black parents. The political term \u2018black\u2019 has never excluded the \u2018white side\u2019 of the family, but is in part a uniting umbrella term recognising shared African ancestry.<\/strong> That makes it a term of power\u2013power in numbers and from the spiritual and cultural legacy of the continent.
\n\u00a0
\nFracturing a united black community by prizing away \u201cmixed race\u201d people is really about breaking up that power, dividing and ruling. Some of the worst apartheid and colonial regimes have been built upon a colour and shading heirachy, while shadism and the caste system still blights the world today. Clearly Walcott wasn\u2019t trying do advance any of these notions! But I strongly suspect The Sun\u2019s<\/em> aim was to reduce the size, and therefore the influence, of the black community by emphasising \u201cmixed race\u201d as being seperate from black.
\n\u00a0
\nI\u2019m not entirely clear what \u201cmixed race\u201d is anyway. I am of mixed parentage, and therefore dual heritage, but I am not a member of any distinct \u201cmixed race\u201d; indeed there is no such thing. Pick two mixed people at random, and I will put money on them having less ancestry in common than if you compared them to any randomly picked person with two black parents.<\/strong> If \u201cmixed race\u201d people are grouped together exclusively on grounds of skin shade, that is quite insulting and not a little \u201cracist!\u201d…<\/p>\n

…Walcott is not an activist; I have no expectations of him apart from delivering pinpoint crosses from the touchline (and Lord knows, Arsenal will need plenty of them this season!) It matters not that he grew up in a small Berkshire<\/a> town and is dating a white young woman. What matters is that we have an holistic debate, and that if papers such as The Sun are going to get excited about a footballer declaring himself mixed race as opposed to black, they should give other perspectives an airing too.
\n\u00a0
\nFailure to do so can only reinforce suspicions that they\u2013or certainly the rich and powerful in Britain\u2013wish to ensure that the rapidly growing numbers of people of mixed parentage do not identify black. After all, creating difference, tension and envy between black people on the basis of skin colour is a tactic that has been tried and tested for many generations…<\/p>\n

Read the entire essay here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sun uses it\u2019s Arsenal to divide us Lester Holloway 2011-08-17 Lester Holloway, Liberal Democrat Councillor, Journalist & Equality Campaigner London Borough of Sutton Top footballers are good at what they do but the Government does not turn to Ashley Cole or John Terry for economic advice. By the same token, their views on race shouldn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1196,8,394,10],"tags":[8036,8035],"class_list":["post-17247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","category-uk","tag-lester-holloway","tag-theo-walcott"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17247\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}