Page 76 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 5

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his decade has begun for instance, these attacks have ital of Britain is inhabited by a
with a growing air of come most frequently from those collection of culturally colorful
frenetic activity that within the world of learning as characters – from gun runners
Thas engulfed Britain’s well as the mass media corpus to pill poppers; erotic dancers
capital, London, triggered per- who uphold the misplaced claim to exotic chancers; Yardies to
haps by the growth in volume that White is right and Black is bent coppers. However in the
and acceptability of xenophobic wrong. These media clusters, present context, London also
discourses on migration, and on appear to agree with one of Brit- represents a place where, ac-
foreign nationals including refu- ain’s foremost cultural scholars cording to Zambian scholar and
gees in social and print media. Paul Gilroy’s hitherto hypothet- UN’s special rapporteur Profes-
Needless to say, British politics ical proposition that ‘race is an sor Tendayi Achiume, “structural
has for decades been infused unhelpful fiction best set aside racism is still an everyday reality
with hostility to migrants, with and kept out of respectable pol- for black people”. Considering
both left and right governments itics’. that 44 % of London's 8.6 million
pushing scapegoating narra- Of late in British dailies, there people come from an ethnic mi-
tives. The ructions in Westmin- has been an increase in the nority, this remains worrying, to
ster at the end of January 2020 number of articles written mostly say the least.
when Britain finally exited the by senior political advisors and Professor Achiume pointed out
European Union took on historic former policy makers that are further that “the environment
proportions that saw the British calling for the re-colonization of leading up to the referendum,
pound fall as well as a rapid rise Africa all over again. Proponents the environment during the ref-
of death threats to ethnic mi- of this view rightly appreciate erendum, and the environment
norities, all the while politicians that a new form of colonial dom- after the referendum has made
have continued to quote poetry ination is being instituted as part racial and ethnic minorities more
with a Powellian racial inflection. of a heavily militarized globaliza- vulnerable to racial discrimina-
On the same note,and not to my tion process. However, they are tion and intolerance”. Achiume’s
surprise, while ethnic minorities wrong both when they fail to rec- report noted that across the
make up 14% of Britain’s popula- ognise that the ambiguities and board, black workers in Britain
tion, a sizeable number of black defects of past colonial relations
people amounting to 73%in to- persist and when they fail to
tal, voted for Britain to remain appreciate that those enduring
in the EU, as did 67%of Asian consequences of empire are di-
voters. The figure was 53% of rectly implicated in creating and
whites who voted in favor of Brit- amplifying many of the current
ain to leave the EU. Since the societal problems succumbing
UK’s exit was finally approved Britain today.
by the EU in January, it’s safe
to say that as far as race, cul- Singing Myself Up
ture and justice are concerned, In this brief polemical note, us-
things appear murkier than ever. ing Afrikology’s conceptual lens,
For me,the recent past has I want to try and Sing Myself Up
seen me more concerned with as I engage the age old question
quarrels, battles, conflicts and of race and culture in relation to
at times controversies concern- justice albeit in a post-Brexit en-
ing African people in Africa and vironment which I find more rep-
elsewhere in the diaspora. More resentative of an emerging new
specifically, I have found myself form of racism.
actively engaged in opposing My intention starts from a van-
those who attack Africans and tage point partially situated
attempt to belittle or deny the at home and partially thinking
value and importance of Afri- about contemporary represen-
cans to humanity. In today’s Brit- tations of Blackness in London.
ain, under the aegis of Brexit, London, need I say, as the cap-

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