{"id":51195,"date":"2017-01-16T02:11:26","date_gmt":"2017-01-16T02:11:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=51195"},"modified":"2017-01-16T02:11:26","modified_gmt":"2017-01-16T02:11:26","slug":"britains-black-history-has-been-shamefully-whitewashed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=51195","title":{"rendered":"Britain\u2019s black history has been shamefully whitewashed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Britain\u2019s black history has been shamefully whitewashed<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Spectator<\/a>
\n2017-01-14<\/p>\n

Hakim Adi<\/strong><\/a>, Professor of the History of Africa and the African Diaspora
\nUniversity of Chichester, Chichester, West Sussex, United Kingdom<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nAuthor David Olusoga<\/a> (Photo: Getty)<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n

I have been researching and writing about black British history for over 30 years but never before have I been fortunate enough to review a 600-page book on the subject<\/a>, published to accompany a recent major BBC documentary. The book and the four-part series give some indication of the extent of a history which David Olusoga<\/a> presents as \u2018forgotten\u2019: the subject, he argues, has been largely excluded from the mainstream narrative of British history. Why it should be forgotten, and who might have forgotten it should give us all pause for reflection, since the denial of black British history by those who should know better could be considered tantamount to racism.<\/p>\n

Olusoga reminds us that Britain\u2019s<\/a> \u2018island story\u2019 cannot be understood in isolation from the rest of the world and certainly not from Africa and other parts of what was once the British empire. He also demonstrates that Africans were often a central part of Britain\u2019s history centuries before the empire, going back to the Roman period<\/a> and beyond. Indeed, he argues that black British history is not just about black people but about encounters between blacks and whites, including intermarriage or the \u2018mixed relationships\u2019 that have been commented on since Elizabethan times<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The latest archaeological techniques and historical research show that in Roman Britain<\/a> there were many individuals of African heritage of all classes. We are now becoming more familiar with the fourth-century \u2018Ivory Bangle Lady\u2019<\/a> of York<\/a> and \u2018The Beachy Head Lady\u2019<\/a> from sub-Saharan Africa<\/a>, thought to have lived in East Sussex<\/a> c. 200 AD. It seems likely that soon we will have more conclusive evidence that Africans were travelling to Britain long before the arrival of the Romans<\/a>…<\/p>\n

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

Britain\u2019s black history has been shamefully whitewashed The Spectator 2017-01-14 Hakim Adi, Professor of the History of Africa and the African Diaspora University of Chichester, Chichester, West Sussex, United Kingdom Author David Olusoga (Photo: Getty) I have been researching and writing about black British history for over 30 years but never before have I been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5,459,8,10],"tags":[25334,25999,8781],"class_list":["post-51195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-book-reviews","category-history","category-media-archive","category-uk","tag-david-olusoga","tag-hakim-adi","tag-the-spectator"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51195","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=51195"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51196,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51195\/revisions\/51196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}