Brit(ish) Buchzusammenfassung - das Wichtigste aus Brit(ish)

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Zusammenfassung von Brit(ish)

Name: Brit(ish)
Rating: 4.4 (42 reviews)
Author: Afua Hirsch

Afua Hirsch

On Race, Identity and Belonging

4.4 (42 Bewertungen)

33 Min.

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What’s in it for me? Learn about the complexities of racial and national identity in the modern UK. 

Afua Hirsch is British. Her parents, partner and daughter are British. She grew up in an upscale suburb of London, attended Oxford University and writes for the Guardian. And yet, despite all of the unmistakably British aspects of her life story, she often gets asked the same question: “Where are you from?”

That’s because Afua Hirsch is biracial. Her father is white, of German-Jewish descent and her mother is Black, of Ghanaian descent. She has a brown complexion and tightly-curled hair. In the eyes of many white British people, that alone makes her nationality seem either un-British or at least uncertain. Hence the recurrent question.

The people who ask it are usually well-meaning and simply curious, but the question is nonetheless surrounded by a host of problematic assumptions and implications about what it means to be British, who belongs in British society and how British national identity intersects with the various racial identities of the UK’s diverse population.

In these blinks, we’ll unpack, dissect and interrogate those assumptions and implications by following a narrative that weaves back and forth between Afua Hirsch’s personal story and the UK’s national story.

Along the way, you’ll learn

the many subtle ways in which racism unfolds in the modern UK;
the relationships between British racism and xenophobia; and
the untold history of Britain’s relationship to slavery.

Identity is complicated.

“Who are you?”

As we move through our lives, each of us carries around a multifaceted answer to that question in our minds. Think of the nouns and adjectives you use to describe yourself. Think of the stories you tell to make sense of your life. For example, one of those nouns might be your profession, and one of those stories might be the tale of how you chose your career.

These answers form our identities – the ways in which we define ourselves as human beings. Now, as human beings, we are both separate individuals and social creatures at the same time. We therefore define our identities on both an individual and a social level. For instance, individually, you might define yourself as having certain personality traits, hobbies and interests. Socially, you might define yourself as belonging to a particular political party or ethnic group.

Each of our identities represents an intricate blend of both types of characteristics. This makes identity a complicated phenomenon. On top of that, the social groups to which we belong also have identities of their own and unique ways of defining themselves. And to make things even more complex, those definitions are often contested and contestable.

The identity of Britishness provides a case in point. Insofar as people identify themselves as being British, they’re confronted with a whole slew of thorny questions. What does it mean to be British? What sort of values does British society uphold? What is the national story of Britain? Who belongs to that story? Who counts as being British?

In short, British people have to answer the same basic question with which we began – only now the pronoun has shifted. It’s no longer “who are you?” Now it’s “who are we?”

But while it might be unifying on a grammatical level, the question of British national identity can be pretty divisive on an ideological level. Bring it up with two different British people, and you might receive two very different answers – especially if one of them voted Leave and the other voted Remain in the 2016 referendum on whether the UK should leave or remain in the European Union.

This “Brexit” referendum brought to the surface a host of simmering social tensions, which we’ll look at in the next blink.

Brexit revealed fissures in British national identity.

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.

Xenophobia has deep roots in British society.

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.”

Despite evidence to the contrary, many Britons think of themselves and their society as being post-racial.

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.

As a child, Hirsch had many negative formative experiences because of her race.  

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.

The negative experiences of Hirsch’s childhood point to larger issues regarding race.

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.

Women of color are negatively affected by white beauty standards.

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.

Black people are subject to pernicious sexual stereotypes.

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.

Black people also face stereotypes about criminality and professional marginality. 

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.

As an adult, Hirsch's sense of otherness persisted, driving her away from and back to the UK.

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.

There’s more to the story of Britain’s participation in the slave trade than is usually acknowledged.

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.

Black history is British history – and vice-versa.

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.

Hirsch’s story illustrates the problems of race in the modern UK.

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.

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Worum geht es in Brit(ish)?

Published in 2018, Brit(ish) is a wide-ranging exploration of the relationships between British national identity, racial identity and immigration. Combining history, journalism, social analysis, cultural commentary and personal memoir, it aims to help jumpstart a long-overdue conversation about the roles that people’s races and origins play in modern British society.

Wer Brit(ish) lesen sollte

Non-British people wanting insight into how race functions in the UK
British people wanting more context for recent debates about immigration
Anyone wanting to better understand the experiences of people of color

Über den Autor

Afua Hirsch has worked as a barrister, a broadcaster for Sky News and a correspondent for The Guardian. Today, she continues to write for The Guardian as a columnist, and she holds the Wallis Annenberg Chair in Journalism and Communication at the University of Southern California. Brit(ish) is her first book. It was a Sunday Times bestseller and won the Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Prize for Non-Fiction.

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