Black British Intellectuals and Education

Multiculturalism's hidden history

Paul Warmington

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317752356
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Ask any moderately interested Briton to name a black intellectual and chances are the response will be an American name: Malcolm X or Barack Obama, Toni Morrison or Cornel West. Yet Britain has its own robust black intellectual traditions and its own master teachers, among them C.L.R. James, Claudia Jones, Ambalavaner Sivanandan, Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy. However, while in the USA black public intellectuals are an embedded, if often embattled, feature of national life, black British thinkers remain routinely marginalized.

Black British Intellectuals and Education counters this neglect by exploring histories of race, education and social justice through the work of black British public intellectuals: academics, educators and campaigners. The book provides a critical history of diverse currents in black British intellectual production, from the eighteenth century, through post-war migration and into the 'post-multicultural' present, focusing on the sometimes hidden impacts of black thinkers on education and social justice. Firstly, it argues that black British thinkers have helped fundamentally to shape educational policy, practice and philosophy, particularly in the post-war period. Secondly, it suggests that education has been one of the key spaces in which the mass consciousness of being black and British has emerged, and a key site in which black British intellectual positions have been defined and differentiated.

Chapters explore:

• the early development of black British intellectual life, from the slave narratives to the anti-colonial movements of the early twentieth century

• how African-Caribbean and Asian communities began to organize against racial inequalities in schooling in the post-Windrush era of the 1950s and 60s

• how, from out of these grassroots struggles, black intellectuals and activists of the 1970s, 80s and 90s developed radical critiques of education, youth and structural racism

• the influence of multiculturalism, black cultural studies and black feminism on education

• current developments in black British educational work, including 'post-racial' approaches, Critical Race Theory and black social conservatism.

Black British Intellectuals and Education will be of key relevance to undergraduates, postgraduates and academics engaged in research on race, ethnicity, education, social justice and cultural studies.

For Jeanette, Aisha and Eli, with much love

Contents

• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Black British intellectuals: race, education and social justice
• 2 Early black British thinkers
• 3 Post-war black education movements
• 4 The schooling of the black working class
• 5 Multicultural and anti-racist education
• 6 Black British cultural studies
• 7 Black feminism and education
• 8 New critical theories of race and education
• 9 ‘Post-multicultural’ education?
• References
• Index

Preface

This is a book about black life in Britain. It is not about gang violence. It is not about gun crime. It is not about transracial adoption, arranged marriages or any other of the problem-victim narratives through which black Britain tends to be depicted. In this book black people are not other and black children are not other people’s children. Instead, it casts black people in Britain as social agents: as thinkers and activists. It explores race, education and social justice through the vital work of black public intellectuals: writers, teachers and campaigners.

In Black British Intellectuals and Education black struggles are shown to have been integral to the shaping of education in post-war Britain, and education as integral to the emergence of black British identities. Sadly, the very idea of black British intellectuals is one that academics and media commentators still often fail to comprehend; witness the scrambling around for black talking heads that ensues when comments are required on urban unrest or the election of a black (American) president. Yet, as we shall see, Britain’s black intellectual traditions are powerful and longstanding. They encompass both the fragile ebony towers of black academia and the grassroots black education movements carved out in parents’ groups, supplementary schools and black bookshops.

Education is sometimes cited almost incidentally as central to the making of black Britain but it occupies surprisingly little space in the large-scale accounts of black British history. Moreover, where education has been covered, there has been little attempt to link together its multiple dimensions: to suggest how pre-war anti-colonial movements might have influenced post-war black community struggles around education, or how the growth of supplementary schools might relate to black arts movements or the emergence of black cultural studies.

While I hope that the book does not read too much as an elegy for independent black thought and politics, it did emerge out of a concern for lost links. In the 1980s and 90s I was lucky to work at Third World Publications in Birmingham, one of a now much diminished network of black and anti-racist publishers, distributors and bookshops. Third World’s makeshift warehouse was, for me, a second university and a first-rate library. I spent four years shelving, boxing and reading what seemed to be a boundless compendium of black writing: Cedric Robinson, Ron Ramdin, Amrit Wilson and Sivanandan. Yet some of the important work that was in circulation then is now less widely read and is, in some cases, out of print. I noticed this in the work of my students – excellent and exciting young thinkers who were well versed in bell hooks and could cite Malcolm X but for whom Una Marson, John La Rose and even C. L. R. James were hazier figures.

In addition to the gaps on bookshelves and in dissertations, there was also the frustration, outside specialist circles, of too many ‘square one’ conversations at academic conferences and in staff rooms, wherein ‘black’ educational issues were discussed, if at all, as if much of the research, debates and campaigns of past decades had not happened. A good colleague once informed me, for example, that restrictions on Muslim women’s dress in some European countries were not necessarily racist. That is true – but it is true at a level of vast abstraction. Whatever positions we take around race, education and social justice, there are back stories upon which we should draw, giant shoulders upon which we can stand. As this book shows, at root what black educators, parents and students want in terms of education is much the same as any of their neighbours want. However, time and time again black communities in Britain have shown willingness to act assertively in order to make educational gains. Moreover, historical conditions have given particular shape to black educational desire. Understanding something of these hidden histories helps to explain Britain’s recent educational history and to explain why debates over race equality and education remain contentious.

In short, I wrote this book not just to fill a gap but because I wanted to read it, and wanted my students and colleagues to read something like it. It is an introductory text that I hope will point in the direction of some black British giants. That said, it is neither biographical nor a roll call of black heroes, though it inevitably contains traces of both. Nor does it claim to be definitive; it is just one black British history out of many that will be told. Indeed, there are figures who, in the interests of the edit, receive only passing mention here but who merit whole biographies of their own. I remember an episode of the TV comedy Blackadder in which Dr Johnson, played by Robbie Coltrane, proudly touts his almost finished English dictionary, only to be thrown into apoplexy when, in the course of conversation, an acquaintance uses the word ‘discombobulating’ … or ‘sausages’. Pulling the strands of this book together has been a bit like that and I apologize for omitting or underestimating the place of particular actors and events. Lastly, I make no nostalgic claims for particular golden ages in black British thought and educational activism; new black intellectual spaces emerge constantly and continue to give hope and produce wisdom. Thanks to those who continue to educate and inspire.

Acknowledgements

Numerous friends and colleagues have provided tremendous help in the course of producing this book. I would like, in particular, to thank those who have either offered advice on the text, provided spaces in which to discuss and revise my ideas or made available research material. Many thanks to Gargi Bhattacharyya, Black Cultural Archives, Centre for Research in Race and Education at the University of Birmingham, Critical Race Theory Discussion Group, Max Farrar, George Padmore Institute/New Beacon Books, David Gillborn, HEA Centre for Sociology, Politics and Anthropology Race Group, Institute of Race Relations/ Jenny Bourne, Zeus Leonardo, Jane Martin, Jeanette McLoughlin, Nicola Rollock and Strange Fruit. I would also like to thank colleagues at Routledge for commissioning the book and supporting its production: in particular, Anna Clarkson, Clare Ashworth, Katharine Atherton and Rachel Norridge.

And thanks most of all to my family and friends for their support and endless patience. Thanks to my father Mack, my mother Bernice and my sisters. Love to Jeanette, Aisha and Eli. I know it’s been a long wait.

Parts of Chapters 1 and 8 were previously published in:

Warmington, P. (2009) ‘Taking race out of scare quotes: race conscious social analysis in an ostensibly post-racial world’, Race Ethnicity and Education, 12(3): 281–96.

Warmington, P. (2012) ‘“A tradition in ceaseless motion”: Critical Race Theory and black British intellectual spaces’, Race Ethnicity and Education, 15(11): 5–21.

Warmington, P. (2013) ‘Agents of critical hope: black British narratives’, in V. Bozalek, B. Leibowitz, R. Carolissen and M. Boler (eds) Discerning Critical Hope in Educational Practices, London: Routledge (in press).

I would like to express my gratitude to Taylor and Francis, and to David Gillborn and Vivienne Bozalek.

List of abbreviations

AYM

Asian Youth Movement

BME

black and minority ethnic

BPM

Black Parents Movement

CARD

Campaign Against Racial Discrimination

CCCS

Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies

CECWA

Caribbean Education and Community Workers Association

CRC

Community Relations Commission

CRE

Commission for Racial Equality

CRT

Critical Race Theory

DES

Department of Education and Science

DfE

Department for Education

DfES

Department for Education and Skills

ESN

educationally subnormal

GLC

Greater London Council

ILEA

Inner London Education Authority

IRR

Institute of Race Relations

IWA

Indian Workers Association

LEA

Local Education Authority

LCP

League of Coloured Peoples

NAME

National Association for Multiracial Education

NLWIA

North London West Indian Association

OWAAD

Organisation of Women of Asian and African Descent

WISC

West Indian Standing Conference

WASU

West African Students Union

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Frontmatter 1
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Black British intellectuals: race, education and social justice
• 2 Early black British thinkers
• 3 Post-war black education movements
• 4 The schooling of the black working class
• 5 Multicultural and anti-racist education
• 6 Black British cultural studies
• 7 Black feminism and education
• 8 New critical theories of race and education
• 9 ‘Post-multicultural’ education?
• References
• Index