Sewell Black Success

The Surprising Truth
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-80075-227-6
Verlag: Forum
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 288 Seiten

'Resounds with all the energy and enthusiasm of a man on a lifelong mission . . . This is a book for our time' The House Magazine 'A must-read for anyone trying to understand race, racism and social mobility in Britain today' Munira Mirza, CEO Civic Future 'As a black Briton with Caribbean heritage, this book spoke to my heart' Katharine Birbalsingh 'A game changer . . . Tony Sewell debunks the myths without ignoring the harsh facts of the black experience in Britain, and shows how we are all moving forward. Excellently researched and deeply motivating' Michael Dobbs, author of House of Cards In this truthful and often surprising book, Tony Sewell weaves together memoir and argument to explore the drivers of black success. He traces black people's hard-won achievements back to their source: family, education, hard work, discipline and the property market. He argues in favour of rejecting victimhood and low expectations and embracing high ambitions, drawing on a range of interviews and stories to offer a more exciting, sometimes visionary, new view of black life in Britain today. Five Star Reader Reviews 'Inspiring, uplifting and excellently written' 'The recipe for success ... A call to the Black British community to focus on where we want to go' 'Essential reading ... It gets five well-earned stars from me.

Born in Brixton, Lord Tony Sewell CBE has been a journalist, teacher and education expert. He was part of the team responsible for driving the transformation of Hackney's education outcomes in the early 2000s, and his charity Generating Genius has helped hundreds of young black people into STEM in business and academia. He was recently chair of the UK's government's Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, the recommendations which are now the foundations of the government's policy on tackling racial inequalities. He was awarded a CBE for his work on education and was elevated to the House of Lords in 2022. That same year he began his latest project, a farming enterprise in Jamaica.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Sewell, Tony

Leseproben

Introduction

from Brixton to the House of Lords

For black people of my generation, those three days and nights in April 1981 are defining. The Brixton Riots were nothing less than a black youth rebellion.

From the beginning of the month, the police had been using (and abusing) laws allowing them to stop and search people if they suspected wrongdoing. In so-called ‘Operation Swamp’, they focussed on areas with large numbers of black residents. Places like Brixton. There was an obvious point of friction between black unemployed youths and a police force that deliberately targeted them using the full force of the law.

At the time, I was in London – back from Essex University, where I was in my third year of a degree in English Literature. On the morning of Sunday 12 April, my brother and I were in church in Penge. Penge is just a few miles south of Brixton, but that day it felt like it belonged to a parallel universe. Our church had a predominantly white congregation. The riots were ongoing and, both at church and on the streets, people looked at me as though I were one of the rioters.

This was the biggest social justice issue of the day. But my church had no comment to make. As the sermon rang in my ears, I felt conflicted. Jesus, surely, would have been at the front of the crowds just a couple of miles down the road, screaming for fairness. He wouldn’t be here, praying for a better world from the safe cloisters of a church in Penge. He would be out there, making it happen.

After the service, my brother and I left the church both physically and emotionally, as we took the 20-minute bus ride to Brixton. The details of that weekend are well documented: injuries to police and civilians; buildings damaged; vehicles torched. The pictures are still terrifying: rows of police with riot shields, upturned cars, burning buildings, crowds of angry, frightened people.

That night, we met a policeman from Yorkshire. The Met had been bringing in police from all over the UK. He was in Brixton, and he was hopelessly lost.

‘Do you know how to get to Railton Road?’ he asked, in a thick Yorkshire burr. Of course I did. Railton Road, scene of the most violent clashes, was just a stone’s throw from my birthplace. Our exchange summed up the madness for me. People like this officer, probably well-meaning enough in their own way, were being brought in from distant parts of the country to police places and communities they had no understanding of.

When the dust settled, Lord Scarman was commissioned by the Conservative government to investigate the causes of the uprising, and race disparities in the UK more generally. His report was published in November 1981, and it can be seen as the first attempt to understand some of the issues facing the children of the Windrush Generation.

Out of the ashes of the riots came reporting of another kind, a different attempt to understand and sort through these issues: newspaper. This publication gave the descendants of the post-war generation an opportunity to speak about all the things that mattered to them most: love, humour, music, politics and money. Speaking to and for British-born African-Caribbean people, became one of the most successful black businesses in Britain, and one of the clearest examples of disadvantage being turned into advantage. I worked for the paper as a reporter, arts editor, commissioned historian and columnist spanning 15 years. Many top journalists have said to me that I was lucky to have such an exciting apprenticeship.

This book – and maybe my whole adult life – has been part of the process of exorcising the ghosts of 1981. We should never forget the terrible injustices; but at the same time, we need to clear a mental pathway for a new generation. We should avoid Pollyannaism, but we need to tell a new, positive story about ourselves. We need to be alive to injustice but celebrate our successes. All this requires skilful mental juggling. We must acknowledge the suffering of our parents and grandparents, but not be burdened with their trauma. Rather, inspired by their example of resilience and fortitude, we must create our own drive and agency in order to move forward.

is a perfect example of what I’m talking about. Out of the fires of the riots came a successful, forward-looking business. Despite the constant background hum of disadvantage, entrepreneurial people spotted an opportunity. When our mindset is driven by the great power of individual agency, by belief in our own abilities, we can achieve anything. This is what black success looks like. And here’s the surprising truth: it’s already happening.

*

In May 2020, George Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American man, was killed in Minneapolis. Police officer Derek Chauvin was later convicted of his murder. The video showing Floyd under the knee of a white policeman went across the world. In Britain, we staged copycat protests to the ones in America. Many of these protests were organised by Black Lives Matter and Stand Up to Racism. They quickly moved from the streets to companies, charities, local government and celebrities, all bending the knee in solidarity. All this happened amidst the first wave of Covid and the unprecedented UK lockdown.

When the dust settled, the then Conservative government commissioned me to write a report about race disparities in Britain. That report was published on 31 March 2021.

Two sets of disorders, two government reports, 40 years apart. There are enough similarities to make this the perfect moment to stop and reflect. What has changed? What real progress has been made since 1981? What are the differences between then and now?

There are some differences that I feel have been overlooked.

The Brixton disorders in 1981 were explicitly rooted in injustice in the UK. They were given international coverage, but nonetheless it was a local fight, arising out of distinctly British issues. The young people were predominantly African-Caribbean, the UK’s majority black population at the time. The protestors tended to be poor. They suffered from a lack of qualifications and high unemployment. The focus of their rebellion was heavy-handed police tactics.

The protests in 2020 were different. There were more white protesters, more students, more graduates, more professionals, more professional activists. Many of the young black people involved were not disaffected youth – unemployed, impoverished, pulled over by police time and time again. This cohort were at university or college, and they were protesting against ‘white privilege’ as well as police brutality. Anger was directed towards statues of nineteenth-century slave owners, names of school buildings, and the casting decisions of Hollywood movies. There weren’t specific laws or policies that protesters were seeking to reform – beyond changes to the KS3 curriculum.

The demonstrations were seen by some as a second, and long overdue, black awakening. During one demonstration, I saw a young black man dancing beautifully up the steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields in central London. The crowd was roaring him on as the loudspeakers played Diana Ross’s wonderful success anthem ‘I’m Coming Up’. To me, it summed up some of the complexity of that demonstration, and showed it was a world away from the uprisings of 1981. Did this protest of ‘black power’, inspired by events abroad, mean a new level of black militancy had taken over a new generation? No, this young man was more likely to be at university, heading to a great degree and a top job in the City. The numbers show that he was more likely to go into higher education than any low-income white youth in the north of England.

Some 40 years earlier, the Scarman Report had identified the Brixton disorders as a spontaneous eruption fuelled by a combination of general resentment and some specific incidents. Scarman placed them within a context of ‘complex political, social and economic factors’. He noted the problems of racial disadvantage and inner-city decline. Action was needed, and that action needed to be ‘urgent’. According to his report, ‘institutional racism’ did not exist, but there needed to be a policy of ‘direct coordinated attack on racial disadvantage’.

What made 2020 different? Instead of a recession, we had lockdown. Police actions triggered the protests, but those actions took place on the other side of the world. It wasn’t always clear how the American inciting incident fitted into the British context. Sometimes it felt as if we had borrowed another country’s racial tensions and added them to our own.

I was asked by the government to use this opportunity to have a serious conversation about race disparities in Britain. The rhetoric of the British protests needed to be tested against the facts and the data. What was the real situation of the black community? I became the chair of a new Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities. The remit was straightforward: to review racial disparities focussing on areas such as poverty, education, employment, health and the criminal justice system.

After a long period of research, we offered our findings. The Report made two particularly important observations:

• That there are indeed disparities for many groups relating to education, employment, crime and health – but that the majority of these did not originate from racism.
• That racism does still exist: the Report found that there are historic issues of trust, which remain real and important – but that things are improving, particularly in education and employment.

The Report was received by...