Race

‘I can’t breathe.’ When those chilling words were uttered by George Floyd in 2020, they provoked global outrage. The combination of the horrific manner of Floyd’s choking by the police officer Derek Chauvin, the pressure cooker of lockdown and the historical tensions around American race relations led to worldwide protests; despite Floyd’s death being 4,000 miles away in Minnesota, Keir Starmer felt compelled to take the knee in solidarity. ‘I can’t breathe.’ These were also the dying words of Henry Nowak, an 18-year-old student in Southampton murdered by the 23-year-old Vickrum Digwa. Nowak was coming back from a night out when he was stabbed by Digwa five times with a ceremonial knife. When the police were called, Digwa accused Nowak of having been racist.

Black in the day A new book claims William Shakespeare’s works were really written by a black woman and were stolen by a semi-literate chancer from Stratford-upon-Avon. Other historic figures who have been claimed to be black: — Queen Charlotte, wife of George III. Was born Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz in 1744, and was thoroughly German, unless you happen to believe that she was descended from 13th-century Portuguese king Alfonso III and his African mistress. — Beachy Head Woman. Skeleton of Roman-era young woman discovered near Eastbourne in the 1950s. A study of her skull claimed she was the first known black person in Britain, until DNA analysis found she probably came from southern England. — Inventor of the lightbulb.

I think it was Zadie Smith who I first heard point out that race is in America what class is in Britain: the conversation underneath every conversation. When I first heard that remark I slightly baulked. Not least because one had rather hoped that class would be less of a thing in Britain in the 21st century. I suppose it is, although you do still meet people who treat the English language as though it is a minefield in which one incorrect vowel will suddenly take them out. But if the class stuff still lingers in Britain, the good news is that we now have the American race obsession too. For anyone who hasn’t lived in America, it is hard to describe just how permeated race is into every conversation in the culture.

Sarah Pochin’s gonna take a lot of coachin’. You can’t just turn up on the telly and say you’re sick of all the blacks everywhere. And the Asians. Un-accountably, perhaps, you will be accused of racism, the definition of the term having been extended rather further than my interpretation: to discriminate against an individual on the grounds of his or her race. There will be outrage among the deluded; there will be faux outrage among the opportunistic. Your own party leader will slap you down by saying, in effect: ‘Well, she’s right, obvs, but you can’t say stuff like that.’ And her own leader is not wrong. The Overton window may have shifted but it hasn’t yet been smashed.

We hear a lot about white supremacy these days. But for some reason we rarely hear about black supremacy. I wonder why? There’s a lot more of it around. For Butler, describing someone as white or as trying to be white is clearly a great insult While it is vanishingly difficult to find an overt white supremacist in British public life, it is extremely easy to identify their black counterparts. As exhibit A I would present the Labour MP Dawn Butler. I have written about her once before, in 2020, when Ms Butler was in a car that was stopped by police. At the time I speculated that the coppers may have pulled the vehicle over in the hope of reclaiming the whirlpool bath that Butler had treated herself to at taxpayers’ expense a few years before. But it was not to be.

In the summer of 2019, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were visiting their friends Elton John and David Furnish in the south of France when they were introduced to the barrister David Sherborne. This ‘chance’ meeting would be a massive coup for the man known as the ‘barrister to the stars’ (he represented Coleen Rooney in the Wagatha Christie trial and Johnny Depp against Amber Heard, among many others. Many years ago, he also acted for Harry’s mother, Princess Diana). The encounter led to Prince Harry becoming the star witness against three newspaper groups. ‘It was partially down to Elton and David,’ Harry later wrote in Spare.

The Labour MP Rupa Huq, of Pakistani heritage, has been suspended for suggesting that Kwasi Kwarteng, of Ghanaian heritage, was only superficially black and did not sound black on the radio. The ancients would have been baffled by her comment. They were fascinated by their world’s many different cultures, but colour held no significance for them. People’s beliefs, however, were a matter of great interest. The widely travelled Greek historian Herodotus (5th century bc) produced a fine example (among many others): while Greeks expressed utter revulsion at the Indian idea of eating their dead, an Indian tribe also did so at the idea of burning their dead. Conclusion: there was no right and wrong way to do it. It was simply a matter of custom.