HISTORICAL AMNESIA

Britain is a country steeped in history, and it is home to ancient cathedrals, royal palaces, castles, museums, and UNESCO World Heritage sites. The British have a deep love and fascination with their past, and it’s not uncommon to see on most Sunday evenings, much of the nation glued to their television sets, engrossed in the latest historical or period drama. But what you are not likely to see, despite the country's rich diverse past, is any portrayal of Black faces, although we know that Black people were in Britain, at least since Roman times, and even before.

Even in the 18th century, The Gentleman’s Magazine reported that there were around 20,000 Black servants living in London, brought there by West Indian plantation owners. They worked as household slaves, cooks, maids, and pages. Others arrived after the American Civil War as freed slaves, settling in the East End of London. Yet, you would hardly know any of this from programmes showing Britain's past.

During this period, there were also well-known and prominent Black people, with Ignatius Sancho and Olaudah Equiano to name two, but they, like others, are often overlooked as contemporary portrayals miss an opportunity to present a more accurate and nuanced picture of Britain’s past. This selective view continues today. For example, over three million people from the Empire came to Britain to fight for King and country, yet their contributions remain largely overlooked, as exemplified by the scant presence of Black soldiers at any of the Memorial Services held annually at the Cenotaph in London.

Some say it's because of racism, whether conscious or unconscious, for this omission and selective view of the past. They cite many examples to support their claim. One is the way Caribbean people who came to Britain after the war to work and help rebuild the country were treated by the Anglican Church when they themselves were Anglicans. It took Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in 2019, to recognise this and apologise for the church's unchristian behaviour.  

But where did this racism come from, and why did it manifest itself so strongly within the church and the wider society in Britain? To try and understand this question, it’s helpful to see what racism is.

At its core, racism is the belief that a person's racial characteristics determine their place in society and their opportunities in life. It's a belief rooted in power dynamics, where those in control use race as a means of subjugating others.

This type of control, often brutal, was evident during Britain’s colonial period, particularly in the Caribbean, where between 1761 and 1807, over three million African enslaved were brought to the Caribbean to work plantations producing sugar, enriching both the settler class and Britain itself. Sugar in the 18th century, was as valuable as oil is today, and it was the profit earned from sugar that made cities like London, Liverpool, and Bristol rich.

The church in England played its part in this power dynamic with its support of slavery, and it endorsed many of the pseudo-scientific theories banded about at the time, which said that Black people were inferior to white people, seeing them as “heathens,” thereby justifying their enslavement. The church also supported the claim that Ham, the son of Noah, was cursed to be "servants unto servants, " and this meant Black people, although in the bible, there's no mention that Ham was Black. It was merely a narrative to rationalise slavery and reinforce Black inferiority.

For four centuries, these racist views permeated British society and its empire, and when Caribbeans came to Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, they expected to be treated with the same respect they had for white people in their own countries. They were shocked, however, to find that being Black in Britain often meant encountering negative stereotypes and racism—stereotypes that had been internalised by many white people, including those within the church.

Black people themselves were not immune to stereotyping, for they often associated whiteness with goodness, purity, and prosperity, for that is how they saw white people in the West Indies, where in Britain, they found that it was all very different. However, like the depiction of Black people in the past, it would take years before a 'true' and nuanced representation of Black people in Britain reaches our screens.