Race and Place
RACE AND PLACE:
Many people’s experiences of race are rooted to the places that they grew up in, as Maebh and Paul illustrate below. Racism was endemic in the USA and in South Africa during apartheid. However, some of these book choices also focus on less well-known racism in the UK and Vietnam.
Maebh Harding, Associate Professor in the Law School and the Director of the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee, suggested Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It addresses key questions about how our childhoods inform our conceptions of race.
"I am a little hesitant about putting forward Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, because it contains obviously problematic racist tropes (for discussion, see Chryl Corbin, ‘Deconstructing Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory: Race Labor and The Changing Depictions of the Oompa-Loompas’ (2012) 19 Berkeley Mc Nair Research Journal 47-63). However, I grew up in 1980s Ireland, which was overwhelmingly white. There were three high-profile people of colour in the whole country (Phil Lynott, Kevin Sharkey and Paul McGrath) and we were exposed to many images of starving Africa through Live Aid and various other Catholic fund-raising campaigns. Although my primary school was in inner-city Dublin, and so had a more diverse mix of students than the vast majority of Irish schools, we never really talked about race. However, I remember, when I was 9, our teacher asked us why all the children selected for the trip to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory were white and also why Willy Wonka’s entire workforce were a different race and paid in cocoa beans. It really made me think about things differently. Prior to that point, it had seemed entirely normal to me that all the major characters in the books that I read were white.”
Victor Tadros, Professor of Law and Deputy Head of School, moves us from Britain and suggests a Pulitzer-winning book by Viet Thanh Nguyen, entitled The Sympathiser.
"The book was important to me partly because it has an incredibly sharp and acerbic attack on racist attitudes towards the Vietnamese in the US in the wake of the Vietnam war, including a bleak but hilarious account of racism in the making of Apocalypse Now. But it also helped me to get to grips with understanding the Vietnam war as a war between different parts of Vietnamese society, with complex political motives, and their interaction with the US, rather than a US-focused war, as it is often portrayed.”
Paul Raffield, Professor of Law and Humanities, talks about his childhood experiences of reading Alan Paton’s 1948 novel, Cry the Beloved Country, which focuses on racism and apartheid in South Africa:
"It made a huge impression on me. Growing up in a very liberal, white family in South London (and educated by Jesuit priests, many of whom had worked in Africa, and had impressed on me the injustice of Apartheid), I had no idea at that age that such oppressive, political regimes still existed. My father had served in the RAF during the second world war, and I thought that horrors such as Apartheid had been eliminated with the victory of the Allies in 1945 ... in my defence, I was only a boy!””
Helen Riley, Academic Support Librarian for the Law School, recommends Brit(ish): on race identity and belonging, by Afua Hirsch.
“was struck by her description of growing up in the UK and how she felt when her friends told her “Don’t worry, we don’t see you as black”. Despite their attempts to make her feel accepted, she picked up that “being black is bad”. Afua also found that in Ghana she was perceived as being rich and British, so she did not belong there either, but at the end she expresses cautious optimism that we may be able to make things better. I must read this book again, to understand it better.”
She suggests a second book, Naught for your comfort, by Trevor Huddleston, which she read when she was about 15:
"It was my first introduction to the effects of racism and apartheid. Then, I thought Britain did not have such problems, but now I think the prejudices are the same. The Library has copies of both books.”
For Ana Aliverti, Reader, Paul Gilroy’s There ain’t no black in the Union Jack is a compelling read:
"I find Gilroy’s work incredibly useful for understanding the place of race in Britain. His powerful prose and clarity, and his ability to expose the crafting of racial thinking, is formidable. We often think about race and racism through outcomes or symptoms – police stop and search figures being the most obvious. Gilroy tells us what lies beneath those decisions and what makes them legitimate, how blackness becomes associated with disorder and crime, and ultimately how the very idea of race is socially constructed and is culturally reproduced. His work also reminds us of the centrality of race in nation building and the visceral attachments it inspires. The notion of postcolonial melancholia captures neatly how race and empire continue to shape dominant understandings of nation and belonging in contemporary Britain.”
Solange Mouthaan, Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies, suggests a book by an author who comes from her adopted hometown of Birmingham. Recommending Benjamin Zephaniah's Too Black Too Strong collection of poetry, she says:
"I have a lot of admiration for this man who takes us through his journey of what it is to be him (but also "all those who are treated 'Black' by the united white states") in Britain and in the World. His quest for social justice and for the recognition of his rights is unstoppable, and he has become an important voice in today's World and a force to be reckoned with. He is a Brummie, a city that has adopted me, so I feel a connection there. But, more importantly, this is someone with a great sense of humour; after all, he accepted a role in Peaky Blinders!”
Andrew Williams, Professor of Law, suggested the same book but for different reasons:
"This collection of poems was composed while he was writer in residence at a barristers' chambers in London not that long after the murder of Stephen Lawrence. With each poem, he unpicks the unrelenting racism that lay in the systems of state as well as on the streets. As he's still writing today on this theme, it's hard to see what has changed over the past twenty years.”
Mohsen Al Attar, Associate Professor of Law, has a keen interest in Third-World Approaches to Law. He suggests that we think about racism globally through re-examining the slave trade and international economic development and how these events have structured International law. He recommends CLR James’ The Black Jacobins and Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.
“James tells the story of the Revolution of San Domingo, perhaps the only successful slave revolution in history, detailing the many depraved ways England, France, and Spain intrigued so as to maintain the bondage of black people. Rodney is equally forensic, cutting to shreds the European narrative of development. Europe did not become Europe principally as a result of ingenuity or Rousseau or capitalism but because they plundered Africa of its resources, including the lands and lives of the natives. Coursing through every structure of every metropolitan European city, both metaphorically and literally, are the blood and bodies of black peoples.”
Jackie Hodgson suggested the song Sonny's Lettah by Linton Kwesi Johnson.
"As a student in Birmingham in the 1980s much of my interest in criminal justice and policing was provoked by the events around me. The 1981 riots in Brixton, Handsworth, Toxteth, St Pauls and elsewhere had led to the Scarman Report in 1981, which recognised the racist policing of inner city communities enabled by the infamous ’sus’ laws. In 1985, Handsworth saw a second period of riots. The politics of these events were expressed powerfully in the music of bands like Steel Pulse, Aswad, Black Uhuru, Misty in Roots and Linton Kwesi Johnson. The song Sonny’s Lettah by Linton Kwesi Johnson is a letter from a young man in Brixton prison to his mother, recounting the tragic events that led to his imprisonment. I still find it very powerful, as well as moving, and Sonny’s story is one that became increasingly familiar to me when I went on to do my PhD research with criminal defence lawyers."
Finally, in this section, I am also suggesting Taking Up Space: The Black Girl’s Manifesto for Change, by Chelsea Kwakye and Ore Ogunbiyi.
"Set in Cambridge, this book is important for all our BAME students who may feel that they don’t belong at the university. It offers a critique of universities as predominantly white spaces and offers strategies for thriving as a BAME student during and after university. As a BAME academic, I want to welcome you and reassure you that you belong here and you enrich the university in so many different ways.”