political blackness

The notion of "political blackness" arose in the United Kingdom in the 1970s, advocating for "black" as an umbrella term to refer to all people in the UK who were likely to experience discrimination based on skin colour; i.e., anyone who was not white.

History

Following increased immigration to the United Kingdom after the Second World War, most non-white immigrants were designated as "coloured".{{cite news |last1=Mohdin |first1=Aamna |title="Political blackness": a very British concept with a complex history |url=https://qz.com/1219398/political-blackness-a-very-british-concept-with-a-complex-history/ |work=Quartz |date=3 March 2018}} The notion of "political blackness" became a popular concept from the 1970s onwards, but began to fall out of favour by the early 1990s.{{cite news |last1=Appiah |first1=Kwame Anthony |author-link=Kwame Anthony Appiah|title=What We Can Learn From the Rise and Fall of 'Political Blackness' |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/07/opinion/political-blackness-race.html |work=The New York Times |date=7 October 2020 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20201008162520/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/07/opinion/political-blackness-race.html |archive-date=8 October 2020}}

Although seen as an important frame of reference in Britain in linking prejudice against British Asian and Black British people (especially British African-Caribbean people), its applicability was criticised by some as an imposition not allowing for specific British Asian or Black British prides, or implying that the situation of Asian and Black African-Caribbean British people were the same.{{cite journal |last1=Modood |first1=Tariq |title=Political blackness and British Asians |journal=Sociology |date=1994 |volume=28 |issue=4 |pages=859–876 |doi=10.1177/0038038594028004004 |s2cid=143869991 |issn=0038-0385}}{{cite journal |last1=Andrews |first1=Kehinde |author-link=Kehinde Andrews|title=The problem of political blackness: lessons from the Black Supplementary School Movement |journal=Ethnic and Racial Studies |date=September 2016 |volume=39 |issue=11 |pages=2060–2078 |doi=10.1080/01419870.2015.1131314 |s2cid=147057939 |url=https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/141205255.pdf}}

Responses

In 2016, students of the University of Kent criticised its student union for promoting UK Black History Month with images of Zayn Malik and Sadiq Khan, who are of Asian heritage.{{cite news |title=Student union promotes Black History Month with Zayn Malik picture| first=David|last= Batty|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/26/student-union-black-history-month-zayn-malik-sadiq-khan-kent-university |newspaper=The Guardian |date=26 October 2016}} Similarly, Riz Ahmed – a British actor of Pakistani heritage – also used the term "black" to refer to "ethnic minorities, of all backgrounds" in a video for Operation Black Vote. The term is also used in this sense by the Black Female Professors Forum, a primarily-online informal network for highlighting both the presence and absence of senior women professors who are not white.{{cite journal |last1=Alexander |first1=Claire |title=Breaking black: the death of ethnic and racial studies in Britain |journal=Ethnic and Racial Studies |date=3 May 2018 |volume=41 |issue=6 |pages=1034–1054 |doi=10.1080/01419870.2018.1409902 |issn=0141-9870|doi-access=free }}

The Black Students' Campaign is a group that uses the term "black" to refer to all non-white students; in recent years, there have been calls to change the group's name because of this.

political blackness

History

Responses

See also

References

Further reading