Features

Continued from page 1. So many of us don't even know what books to start reading to push the boundaries. The Free Black University is a space which is meant to encourage people to push the boundaries. It's not about, is my supervisor going like this? Am I going to pass this? I limited my voice in order to pass exams many, many, many times because that's what is necessary within traditional institutions. So, what happens when that necessity is taken away and people are truly engaging with knowledge? We create knowledge that is meant to take us into the future.

As of today, the Free Black University GoFundMe had reached £126,415. How does it feel to have received such overwhelming support? Do you think that the events of the past year have contributed to your fundraising success?

It’s incredible. It’s the radical redistribution of wealth and it's just the start. It's a lot of money but in terms of creating an organisation, we need to get so much more, and we will get so much more. Of course, timing has a lot to do with it. There has been a lot going on this year with coronavirus, with George Floyd, with the Black Lives Matter movement. I think it has allowed people to recognise, who wouldn’t otherwise have recognised, that we're not going to change the world by doing very small, incremental things. There needs to be radical Black-led organisations to push us into what's next.

Are there any individuals or groups who have been critical of the Free Black University? Why do you think they have reacted this way?

I think it's the lack of imagination and the lack of desiring more. I'm a young person, I'm of this new generation and I haven't become jaded by the institution in the way that a lot of people have become jaded. I think that people get scared. Sometimes we can become so accustomed to our own subjugation, to our own oppression that the idea of exploring liberation becomes terrifying. Too often we limit ourselves and we limit our imagination. We try and be safe within this Western world, but everything is crumbling around us. What are we building in place of that? We need to create our own things.

How do you feel about starting your PhD in epistemic justice at the University of Cambridge this October? Are you apprehensive about the challenges of studying at one of the most exclusive and elitist universities in the world?

I was the only person to go to a Russell Group university from my high school. I went to a very underprivileged, underperforming high school. To be now going to Cambridge, recognising that, in terms of this Western system, any of us can do anything within it. We can master this system. But once we’ve mastered this Western system, how do we disrupt it? How do we tear it apart from its core? How do we make it crumble? My intention in going to Cambridge isn't to become part of the institution. It’s to be in the institution but not of the institution. I take my work as fugitive study. What can I gain from that institution that’s going to further the cause of Black liberation? They’re paying for me to study for three years! Think about the possibilities for Black liberation.

Could you tell me about your time at the University of Leeds? What were some of your biggest achievements and what lessons did you learn?

I enjoyed my time at Leeds a lot. I started doing a lot of activism and decolonial work. One of the things that spurred me into doing that was the deep, deep lack that existed within my degree. I studied philosophy and politics, and in my entire philosophy degree, three years, three whole years, I did not once read somebody who wasn't White. I would fnd myself going to write my essays and I'd have to forget things that I knew to be true within my physical body, within the world, in order to pass that degree. It didn’t make any sense to me. It takes a level of cognitive dissonance; you have to separate yourself from the person who was going to write that exam. It's a fracturing of the Self. Mentally, it's incredibly, incredibly harmful. I couldn’t move within that discipline. I felt I needed to change it and that's what I want to do with the Free Black University.

How do you think universities have changed after the Why is My Curriculum White campaign? Do you think they have changed?

They've changed in terms of rhetoric. They've changed how they speak. They’ve changed how they engage with issues of race. However, they're still colonial institutions. They have managed to institutionalise decoloniality and change what decoloniality means to diversity work and diversity work doesn't change anything apart from making us part of the system we’re trying to disrupt. Yeah, they’ve changed. They’re able to have a more of a conversation across the higher education sector. It’s not a conversation they were having at all 10 years ago. But that change that needs to happen? We haven’t even touched the tip of the iceberg.

What is the most important thing that universities can be doing to dismantle institutional racism and create a safe learning environment for Black students?

Funding projects like the Free Black University. We believe that each university across the UK should give us a yearly 50K donation, which is less than two undergraduate degrees, to support Black students in radical ways. Universities need to recognise the direct mental health support that will be given to Black students across the country but also the fact that the content of Black student’s degrees can literally cause that mental distress. It can be so harmful not seeing yourself, not seeing your people, not seeing what resonates with your soul in your degree course. That’s why it’s so important to create resources for students which universities currently can’t produce because there's such a lack of Black staf members and a lack of knowledge within that space. We're collectively bringing together Black people across the country and across the world to start producing radical knowledge. So supporting and Free Black University fnancially is defnitely key.

Melz is holding an event called Radical Possibilities of Change at the Union as part of Black History Month. The event will take place on the 21st of October and will be held over Zoom. Sign up through the LUU website.

Image: BBC Newsbeat

The struggle of teaching Black history in British schools

Image: BBC / Getty

A lack of Black history in our schools’ curriculum means that many important contributions and events in our society’s past are being overlooked. Following the impact that the Black Live Matter movement has had when it comes to considering racism in the UK, what needs to change?

Yasmine Moro Virion

In the wake of Black Lives Matter rallies across the country, the government is facing increasing pressure to include Black history in primary and secondary school education.

This proposal has been brought forward by The Black Curriculum, an organisation created in 2019 by Lavinya Stennett, to bring attention to the issue of Black British History not being taught in UK schools. Their mission states that “[they] are working towards changing the national curriculum and building a sense of identity in every young person in the UK.”

This initiative took an important step towards the inclusion of Black history in the National Curriculum thanks to their open letter sent to the Secretary for the Department for Education, Gavin Williamson, back in June.

The letter appealed to the political figure to include the teaching of Black history in classrooms. The organisation explained that it would facilitate the process thanks to their wide range of programmes aimed at young people and “tailored CPD [Continuing Professional Development] training for teachers and leaders”.

Through its website, The Black Curriculum shows the impact of their mission with their workshops consisting of activities related to Black history. The groups of students who participated expressed appreciation for the subject and “91% of 15 year olds feel like they have a better understanding of society and would like to learn more”.

There are also other initiatives that are trying to expand the knowledge about Black history and portrays its importance. For example, to raise awareness about the Transatlantic Slave Trade, a project called The World Reimagined planned to expose globe sculptures across the UK in the summer of 2022.

The pieces of art will be erected in public spaces and they will be created by popular artists as well as local schools. Once the public display period finishes, the organisation will auction several of these sculptures and donate the money to groups helping to diminish racial injustices.

The discussion around Black history being taught in schools has come under new scrutiny as October is recognised worldwide as Black History Month and also due to recent rallies against police brutality. These were sparked after American citizens George Floyd and Breonna Taylor (just to name a few) were killed by white police officers.

Police wanted to arrest George Floyd after an employee reported to the authorities that he gave a counterfeit $20 bill at a local shop. Officers then attempted to put Floyd in their patrol car but struggled. After keeping him pinned to the ground whith a knee in his neck for almost eight minutes, while Floyd repeated the infamous phrase “I can’t breathe”, Floyd was pronounced dead. Derek Chauvin, the police officer who kept him on the ground, was arrested on the charge of murder, but has since been released on a $1million bail bond.

Breonna Taylor was killed when authorities entered her house for a drugs investigation thanks to a noknock search warrant, which allows officers to go into a property without permission. Taylor’s partner, Kenneth Walker, feared it was a burglary and, using a legal firearm, shot one of the officers. The police and Mr Walker exchanged shots and Ms Taylor was killed in her home.

Both killings have sparked a global movement of anti-racism protests which continued all summer. Many of the UK protests have been organised by the All Black Lives UK organisation. The platform states that “We believe in a world where everyone belongs.”

Individuals protesting for racial justice have also been kneeling on one knee as a sign of protest against racism. This emblematic body language attracted attention from the American football player Colin Kaepernick who started ‘taking a knee’ in 2016 when NFL athletes were required to stand up. The earliest recognition of this gesture goes all the way back to the era of Martin Luther King, during the Civil Rights March when he knelt for prayer.

Prominent politicians from across the political spectrum have voiced their support for the message that Black Lives Matter, but as always, actions speak far louder than words. The time for discussion has passed; what is now needed, inside schools and throughtout the rest of society, is real, concrete change.

Image: PA

Image of David Oluwale: Leeds Inspired

Rethinking Black History Month

Perry Blankson calls for a new interpretation of Black History Month, one that acknowledges the ongoing presence of racism this side of the Atlantic.

Perry Blankson

In early June, the statue of local philanthropist and slave trade profteer Edward Colston was toppled from its plinth and rolled into the nearby Bristol Harbour. It was a small justice that his statue would share the fate of many of his victims who lie nameless and forgotten at the bottom of the Atlantic, choosing death over a life of bondage in a foreign land.

The removal of the statue occurred in the wake of the reinvigorated Black Lives Matter movement following the murder of George Floyd in May and catalysed the toppling of controversial statues worldwide. One would be forgiven for thinking the removal of the monument to a human trafcker would be welcomed by a nation that proudly espouses its commitment to freedom.

Still, the response of the British political elite was the opposite. Commenting on Colston’s removal, Home Secretary Priti Patel claimed that “it speaks to the acts of public disorder that have become a distraction from the cause people are protesting about.”

Far from a distraction, the uproar from the political establishment and sections of the British public has once again demonstrated that Britain has been either unable or unwilling to reconcile the dark, brutal history of the British Empire and post-colonial Britain with modern race relations.

The modern celebration of Black History Month has treated the problems of racism and race relations as issues experienced either across the Atlantic or in the distant past, rather than an ongoing struggle that has a long and storied history in Britain.

Further, its relegation to a single month contributes to the bifurcation of ‘Black history’ and ‘British history’, when the two are inextricably linked. It is for these reasons that I believe we must critically reexamine the modern implementation of Black History Month to integrate what we perceive to be ‘Black’ and ‘British’ history.

To achieve this, it is necessary to fully decolonise the curriculum from primary learning through to higher education, and re-centre the mid-twentieth century narrative of race relations from America back to Britain. However, before we can fully understand what is meant by decolonisation and how it relates to Black History Month, we must frst explore how the latter came to be in Britain, and how we celebrate it today.

Black History Month began in Britain in 1987 through coordination between Ghanaian-born Akyaaba Addai-Sebo and the Greater London Council. Addai-Sebo was stricken by what he termed an ‘identity crisis’ that black children faced in the 1980s, conficted between their British and Afro-Caribbean nationalities. Black History Month was intended to be “an annual celebration of the contributions of Africa, Africans and people of African descent to world civilization from antiquity.” Yet, its celebration today leaves much to be desired.

From primary through to secondary education my own experience of Black History Month, as well as that of my peers, was of Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1956. Ignored were the names of Roy Hackett, Owen Henry, Audley Evans and Prince Brown, and their organisation of the Bristol Bus Boycott in 1963. I knew all too well of the lynching of Emmett Till, the brutalisation of Rodney King and the landmark Brown v. Board case. At the same time, I was blissfully unaware of the murders of Stephen Lawrence and David Oluwale, as well as the trial of the Mangrove Nine.

It was not until many years later that I was able to educate myself, not only on these individuals but on the broader historical context in which they live and the material conditions that informed their socioeconomic positions in society.

“Decolonisation is a somewhat nebulous concept, and recent calls to decolonise the curriculum have been met with opposition from those who are not fully “ aware of the meaning behind the term.

As a child who had experienced frst-hand the racial injustices and prejudice endured by minorities in Britain, I found it bizarre that when we fnally did explore black history in a British context, the focus was often on fgures from what seemed to me to be ancient history compared to the American civil rights movement. The hagiographies of Mary Seacole and

Olaudah Equiano were de rigueur whenever October came around, to such an extent that I had memorised the annual assemblies detailing their lives and achievements. Our only departure from the distant past was to celebrate the arrival of the Windrush - a story of harmonious integration soundtracked by the jovial calypso of Aldwyn Roberts’ (stage name Lord Kitchener) London is the Place for Me.

To me, these token Black individuals, despite their exceptional accomplishments, signalled that racism and prejudice were problems that had been long overcome by a ‘tolerant’ Britain.

So how can the decolonisation of the curriculum address these issues? What exactly is decolonisation?

Decolonisation is a somewhat nebulous concept, and recent calls to decolonise the curriculum have been met with opposition from those who are not fully aware of the meaning behind the term.

A recent paper by Mia Liyange, Masters student at the University of Oxford, asserted that “decolonisation entails a fundamental re-evaluation of the existing forms of teaching, learning and pastoral support in higher education. It is about acknowledging how our institutions reproduce unequal social structures – so it is a larger project than simply the diversifcation of courses, for example.”

The removal of Colston’s statue briefy pierced the colonial veil obscuring Britain’s troubled past, forcing the public to confront the hard truth about the brutality of the Empire and its relationship to the present day. The decolonisation of the curriculum attempts to replicate this nationwide reconciliation within the education system by demonstrating the institutional and systemic inequalities that have been upheld by the state in every facet of society. In this way, a fully decolonised curriculum is the logical successor to Black History Month, which has become a cultural stopgap in addressing the turbulent past of race relations in Britain.

In the eyes of the government, my proposal would be at odds with their recent advice to English schools, instructing them against teaching “victim narratives” and “unsubstantiated accusations against state institutions” that “are harmful to British society.” “ “ Acknowledgement of the dark history of the British Empire and post-colonial Britain is a prerequisite to healing the deep racial scars present within our present society.

To the government and other critics, I would argue that decolonisation is not about perpetuating socalled victim narratives or assigning blame. Rather than contributing to “our cringing embarrassment about our history” and “self-recrimination and wetness,” in the words of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, decolonisation ultimately achieves the reverse.

Acknowledgement of the dark history of the British Empire and post-colonial Britain is a prerequisite to healing the deep racial scars present within our present society. The recent social unrest highlighting the racial inequalities in present-day Britain has demonstrated that for all its celebration of tolerance and diversity, Britain is a nation fraught with inequality and racial discrimination.

While Black History Month began with a positive motive, it is evident we need fundamental systemic change in order to reach what the original celebration set out to achieve.

Image: GetReading.co.uk

Image: CNN / Reuters

A statue commemorating Edward Colston, a merchant involved in the slave trade, was toppled and thrown in the river by protesters in Bristol. The statue was erected in 1895 to celebrate Colston’s philantorpy, 174 years after his death in 1721.