Brit(ish) summary

Before we open the can of worms called “Brexit,” we should note that generalizations about the referendum should be taken with a grain of salt. The demographics and rationales behind who voted Leave and Remain are complicated. Any generalization is therefore an oversimplification, and there are bound to be exceptions to any tendency we observe. 

With that caveat in mind, we can say that Leave and Remain voters had broadly different conceptions of Britain’s national identity. Remain voters tended to have a more inclusive conception – one that welcomes immigrants to the UK. Leave voters tended to have a more exclusive conception – one that rejects immigrants. 

While there’s been a resurgence of anti-immigration rhetoric in the wake of Brexit, it’s certainly not a new phenomenon in British society. As far back as 1573, Queen Elizabeth I lamented the fact that immigrants were coming to England in search of work. 

The conflation of immigration, race and religion isn’t new, either. For example, in 1905, the UK passed the Aliens Act, which was primarily aimed at curbing the immigration of European Jews. In support of the act, a British newspaper editor warned against the possibility that the “sickly and vicious products of Europe” might be “grafted onto the English stock.” 

At this point, we’ve only scratched the surface of the UK’s fraught relationship with immigration and race. But even with just the evidence we’ve looked at so far, there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of the “official” national narrative that many British people tell themselves. 

This is the story promoted by mainstream politicians and media outlets of the political center-right and left, and it goes like this: whatever it may have been or done in the past, the UK is now a tolerant, pluralistic nation that welcomes everyone, regardless of their race, religion, origins or any other differences. People who believe this story often claim that they “don’t see race.” In other words, they claim to be racially color blind.

Even if you’re not British, you’re probably familiar with the name of the London suburb in which Hirsch grew up: Wimbledon. Yes, that Wimbledon – the one where the annual tennis championship of the same name takes place. It’s an affluent and quaint-looking part of the city, replete with elegant Edwardian homes surrounded by prim gardens and oak-lined streets. 

Here, the author enjoyed a privileged childhood in terms of material comforts, resources, advantages and opportunities. For example, she attended a private school from the age of seven onward. When she was 12, the school took her class on a ski trip to the Italian Alps. When she was 15, it arranged for her to gain work experience at a major global advertising agency. 

As a result of experiences like those described in the previous blink, Hirsch developed a sense of otherness early on in her life. She didn’t just feel different from her classmates, in the way that a redheaded or an unusually tall child might feel. She felt a much deeper sense of separation. It made her feel like an outsider – someone who didn’t belong to the society in which she lived. 

By the time she reached her 20s, Hirsch’s sense of otherness had become so pronounced that she no longer felt British. But there was much more to her loss of a sense of national identity than just a series of negative personal interactions with the white people she grew up around. To fully understand her loss, we need to zoom out and look at the broader context in which it occurred. 

While her classmates’ mean-spirited comments about her body had a deep impact on Hirsch, they certainly weren’t the only source of her sense of otherness. The mass media also played a major role. 

As a child and teenager, Hirsch saw white people playing most of the starring roles in mainstream movies and tv shows. She also saw their physical features being held up as the exemplifications of beauty. In magazines, adverts, music videos and even the packaging of consumer products, the female models and stars had bodies that stood in stark contrast to hers. The women tended to be slender, with button noses and fair or suntanned skin. Hirsch was curvy, with a pronounced nose and brown skin. 

Of course, Black people aren’t the only ones who internalize white beauty standards. White people internalize them too – and in combination with racist stereotypes and prejudices, they play a major role in shaping how white people view and interact with Black people. 

Consider, for example, the toxic consequences of the idea that Black women are hypersexual and the view that their bodies are sexually undesirable or somehow taboo. On the one hand, this leads some white people to fetishize Black women’s bodies as “forbidden fruit.” On the other hand, it leads some to become averse to dating Black women, even if they’re open to the idea of sleeping with them. In 2010, a study of the Yahoo! Personals website reported that only seven percent of its male users were willing to date Black women.  

So far, we’ve looked at some of the sexual stereotypes and prejudices that Black people face in the United Kingdom and around the world. But, of course, there are plenty of other stereotypes and prejudices that plague this demographic as well. 

Again, Hirsch’s childhood experiences provide a springboard for looking at these larger phenomena. First, remember how she was unwelcome at the local boutique because the manager thought “Black girls are thieves”? Here, she was encountering a common association between Blackness and criminality. It’s an association that afflicts Black males in particular. 

By her early 20s, Hirsch’s sense of British identity was so eroded that she decided to move to Ghana with her partner, Sam. There, she hoped to reconnect with the maternal side of her family’s roots and find a sense of belonging.  

To cut a long story short, it didn’t work out that way. Remember, she is biracial. In the UK, people saw her as Black and therefore “other.” But in Ghana, they saw her as white and therefore “other” as well. This perception was compounded by the fact that she couldn’t speak the local language of Twi and didn’t know much about Ghanaian culture, outside of what she’d read in books. 

Before she moved to Ghana, Hirsch reasoned that if she didn’t feel British, then she must be Ghanaian. Meanwhile, to the extent that she identified as Ghanian, she didn’t feel British. It was as if the identities of being British and Ghanaian were mutually exclusive. 

In reality, though, there’s no inherent contradiction between being British and Ghanaian at the same time. Yes, each identity draws from its own distinct heritage. But while it’s a difficult challenge to navigate, it’s possible to embrace both identities. They can complement, rather than contradict, each other. 

In both the 1995 movie Dangerous Minds and the 2007 movie Freedom Writers, a white teacher is presented as swooping into an inner-city school and saving the Black students from lives of crime, drugs or poverty. Similarly, in the 2011 film The Help, a white Southerner comes to the rescue of a group of Black nannies. 

While these are American movies, the conventional British national narrative about slavery has been spun into a story that’s similarly centered on a white savior – in this case, the eighteenth-century British MP William Wilberforce. He was the leading white British abolitionist of his time, and his role in the abolition of the slave trade has been celebrated in many British books and movies, such as the 2006 film Amazing Grace. 

To round out this story, we should note that the author comes from a privileged background, in sharp contrast to many people of color living in the UK. Her partner Sam’s story provides a case in point. 

The son of first-generation Ghanaian immigrants, Sam grew up in Tottenham – a part of London that he referred to as “the hood.” Despite living in the same city, he and Hirsch inhabited very different worlds as children. Hers was one of safety and comfort. His was one of overcrowded housing, chronic unemployment, entrenched poverty and rampant crime. Just a few weeks after they first met in their early 20s, one of Sam’s friends was killed by crossfire in a turf war between local gangs.