Natives: Race & Class in the Ruins of Empire

An absolute must read for everyone everywhere, but especially anyone British. This book is an introduction to the education we never had, an education that is the direct result of the British class system; embedded systemic racism and selective amnesia deriving from the age old history is written by victors. Akala writes with ease and depth, weaving his autobiographical narrative with history, politics and international relations. It’s an incredible insight into growing up black, male and British in London; a much needed context when reflecting on white fragility and supremacy. That Akala is brilliant, and defied many odds by becoming so successful is undeniable, but his passion for returning hard earned lessons into both his community and the wider British population is really striking. As someone born just less than a decade after Akala, the nature of his understanding and reflections on class and politics resonate with me and my immediate peer group immensely. Class systems in the UK, and especially in cities, are glaringly obvious -

The ‘golden age of capitalism’ had ended in 1973, and the 80’s saw the start of the rollback of the post-war welfare state, increased sell-off of public assets and the embrace of an individualistic ‘self-made’ logic by the very generation that had become wealthy with the support of free universities and cheap council houses, and had literally been kept alive by the newly constructed National Health Service.

The way in which racism has been been knitted so closely into our class system, welfare state, global policies, education system and much, much more is still somehow a contentious topic in many white families and communities. I feel ashamed - and angered - to accept that my education on race focused only the the KKK and Martin Luther King, on nazi regimes and glanced over the South African Apartheid without so much as a mention of the British Empire. It’s beyond belief that, growing up in rural Northern England, my first real understanding of the affects of racism first-hand was aged 24 having moved to London - when a black colleague told me that she would love to visit North Yorkshire but she was too afraid of the racist onslaught that would surely greet her.‘Paki’ jokes I’d heard at school, ‘Britain first’ adults, unconsciously bias peers and anti-immigration sentiment suddenly hit home for me in a way I’d never really acknowledged before. I started learning.

The government and the education system failed to explain to white Britain that, as the academic Adam Elliot-Cooper puts it, we had not come to Britain, but ‘rather that Britain had come to us.’ They did not explain that the wealth of Britain, which made the welfare state and other class ameliorations possible, was derived in no small part from the coffee and tobacco, cotton and diamonds, gold and sweat and blood and death of colonies. No one explained that our grandparents were not immigrants, that they were literally British citizens - many of them Second World War veterans - with British passports to match, moving from one of Britain’s outposts to the metropole.

You see, while the people in the colonies were being told Britain was their mother, much of white Britain had convinced itself that these undeserving niggers - Asians were niggers too, back then - had just got off their banana boats to come and freeload, to ‘take’ their jobs and ‘steal’ their women. Never mind that Britain has a German royal family, a Norman ruling elite, a Greek patron saint, a Roman/Middle Eastern religion, Indian food as its national cuisine, and Arabic/Indian numeral system, a Latin alphabet and an identity predicated on a multi-ethnic, globe-spanning empire - ‘fuck the bloody foreigners’.

Akala runs through the British penal system, experiences with police and with teachers that will make your heart break. He highlights the irrefutable importance of African Saturday School and communities that celebrate their heritage. He also explores the origins of racism, global perspectives on black communities, comparisons between the USA and the UK, and the current state of affairs in British Politics. All that in an easily read, 308 page paperback. Honestly, this book doesn’t need reviewing, it needs to be read far and wide, made mandatory in schools and produced for our white grandparents, parents and peers. Ignorance is the life force of stasis, and change must come. Please buy this book.

CW: Racism, graphic violence, crime, systemic abuse, slavery, murder