In this lunchtime seminar from the Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE), Professor Stephen Small (University of California, Berkeley) shares his research.
ABSTRACT
Throughout the twentieth century the resident Black population of Britain increased substantially from an estimated 20,000 at the start of the century, to an estimated 50,000 in the 1950s; and to an estimated 400,000 by the 1970s. By 1991 the census reported it totaled almost 900,000. Throughout this period there were far more Black people with immediate origins in the Caribbean than in the continent of Africa. Unsurprisingly, most research on Black Britain in this period is focused on this population - the so-called ‘Windrush Generation’ – that is, West Indian settlers that arrived since the 1940s, developed family units with two West Indian parents, primarily in London, and with limited firsthand experience or collective memory of legacies of slavery and imperialism in England itself.
While Black Liverpool shared much in common with Black London and other cities in this period, Liverpool’s assemblage of features - what I denote as a racialised anomaly - was markedly different. There were more Africans than West Indians, more long-term citizens than recent immigrants, the highest proportion of inter-racial marriages and people of mixed racial origins in any city in the nation, more extensive first-hand experiences and a far more vivid collective memory and first-hand experience of imperialism in West Africa. These differences arose, inter alia, from the city’s unique involvement in imperial trade in West Africa, and the settlement in imperial Liverpool of overwhelmingly male seamen from West Africa.
In this presentation, drawing on research for my recently published book – Black Liverpool: ‘the real thing’ - I examine how the historical trajectory of Black Liverpool gave rise to unique configurations of Black cultural expression in that city in the final decades of the twentieth century. Specifically, how the Black community in Liverpool pursued, embraced and transformed waves of transnational Black culture from Africa, and the diaspora. I highlight in particular the influences from West Africa, and the novel forms that Black cultural expression took in the city. The role of gender ideologies, institutional practices and the agency and experiences of Black women are closely examined. One implication of this study is that an analysis of Black Britain based on a London-centered account of the so-called ‘Windrush Generation’ is unrepresentative and misleading.
RECORDING
This seminar will be recorded.
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