The question from aggrieved blacks is never ‘Are we good enough to make it on our own merits?’ but ‘Why is the white establishment so institutionally racist?’ Yet as we see, the establishment graciously displays high levels of positive discrimination in the arts, even in the face of ongoing criticism from ever-angry BAME citizens. The fact that African-Caribbean Britons seem to stand out for such unquenchable demands for ethnic justice requires some explanation. One hears far fewer such pleas from Jewish, Asian, Chinese, Sikh, or Polish Britons for example. It could be that black Britons are the most visibly oppressed and overlooked due to racism, or that their history is filled with greater pain and injustice than that of other ethnic minorities. But the suspicion is inevitably that many blacks hang on to and exploit grievance rather than developing a stronger work ethic and achieving socioeconomic mobility on merit. What if it turned out to be the case that a lower percentage of blacks might ever become prominent in the arts, media and academia in the UK compared with other ethnic minorities? At the same time, we hear little about the over-representation of rich black musicians, athletes and footballers.
Calls for ethnic equality in the domains of housing, crime, and higher education were coming in thick and fast in 2017, with the MP David Lammy often leading them. Lammy is a Guyanese-heritage man who grew up in Tottenham and whose father abandoned the family of five children. Lammy went on to study at the School of Oriental and African Studies and Harvard University, then moving rapidly into law before becoming an MP at 27, and being fast-tracked in Labour politics. As well as selectively inferring from evidence that blacks get unfair treatment in the British criminal justice system, Lammy has complained since 2010 about the very low number of black entrants to Oxbridge, going as far in 2017 as accusing Oxford University in highly inflammatory terms of practising ‘social apartheid’ (Adams & Bengtsson, 2017). Oxford replied that 15.9% of its 2016 undergraduates were from BAME backgrounds but Lammy wanted this broken down further, presumably knowing that Asian and other ethnicities were relatively successful. Indeed, about 27% of all Oxford students are of ‘BAME’ identity (Chinese students being a large component) but ‘only’ 15.9% are domestic BAMEs, and some colleges have only 1.5% or even no recent black students. By some reckoning, the black population of the UK is 3% (although the figure is confused by definitions and obfuscations).
Quite clearly Oxford has been bending over backwards and spending millions to encourage BAME and other non-traditional students to apply for its courses (University of Oxford, 2016). Yet at the same time, it is known that 33% of Premier League footballers are of BAME identity (indeed, mostly black) and earning vastly more than they would as politicians, managers or academics. The subtext of protests like Lammy’s is always about negative discrimination and institutional racism, yet nothing seems to hold back black footballers or Asian doctors and academics. In addition, as in reports on secondary educational attainment, young working-class whites do more poorly than most other groups, but Lammy shows little or no concern about them, his focus being like most on his own kind. Indeed, Lammy was named Hero of the Year in the 2017 European Diversity Awards for his tireless contributions to critiquing the criminal justice system, university admissions, and the response to the Grenfell Tower disaster among other presumed offences of whiteness.
Lammy has previously remarked that if Harvard University (where he gained a Law degree) can enrol substantial numbers of non-white students, surely so can Oxbridge. Here he shows no awareness of the controversy that has raged for decades over the affirmative action strategies used by Harvard and other American universities to boost ‘diversity’ in the 1980s. According to Professor Bernard Davis’s exposé of Harvard Medical School’s methods for increasing diversity of entrants and graduates: ‘The entire faculty of Harvard Medical School colluded in this terrible devaluation of its MD degree without a hint to anyone outside the faculty that any changes in requirements had been made’ (cited by Farron, 2014). Harvard uses the now familiar argument that its students ‘must have the ability to work with people from different backgrounds’ (which is typical code for non-white), and according to Farron Harvard uses favourable selection procedures, grade inflation and sometimes condoning of failure to achieve its ends. The consequences of allowing substandard doctors to become licenced to practise are grave, as Farron argues, citing a 1994 figure of 63,000 deaths in the USA due to inappropriate medication. Fernandes (2017) shows that today Harvard boasts an intake of 50.8% non-white students, a trend that has triggered an official complaint from famously high-scoring Asian Americans that they are now being discriminated against, not only by Harvard but other Ivy League institutions.
Attacks on the alleged institutionalised racism of Oxbridge also include criticism of its curriculum. A black student, Lola Olufemi (2017), co-ordinated a campaign that got a hundred or so signatories to a letter to Cambridge University, claiming that its English literature courses are ‘unbearably white’ and in need of decolonisation (Turner, 2017). Olufemi and others appear to have won the first stage in this battle, with Cambridge seriously considering putting more ‘purposefully forgotten’ BAME and postcolonial texts into its curriculum. Olufemi noted that this was a ‘step forward’. She has also voiced criticisms of white people holidaying in Africa as selfishly ‘fetishising African culture’; and she agitates for more transwomen to be admitted to Cambridge, including its all-women colleges. I do not recall, even in the early 1970s, my or other universities readily bowing to such student demands. I have not heard of any calls for more white working-class literature to be inserted into the curriculum. I wonder why those like Olufemi who are so concerned about Africa do not study in Africa, and lend their energy to its improvement by raising the standard of its universities instead of seeking to ‘decolonialise’ British universities. Acts of cultural terrorism like these are increasing; indeed this Olufemi-led letter promises to ‘disrupt, disrupt, and disrupt again’. A Cambridge PhD student followed up with a disingenuous, Britain-hating piece dripping with anti-colonialist rhetoric (Jilani, 2017).
An institution like the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London) by its very name invites such attacks, as the call for far more African and Asian authors on its philosophy courses has shown. Given the still relatively small proportion of Britain’s BAME community, one good-fit solution for the concerns of Olufemi and others might be studying English literature at the University of Bedfordshire, where Monica Ali, Benjamin Zephaniah and other BAME writers are already on the curriculum. Its Bedford campus is only 30 miles from Cambridge, and Luton, where it has another campus, has 55% non-white residents. Birmingham City University is another good option. Another possibility might be to create a handful of British BAME universities, mirroring the American model of around 100 historically black colleges and universities like Howard University. None of this will happen, however, because the politically correct expedient will soon ensure that more BAME students are shoehorned by quota into Cambridge and Oxford and their courses adapted accordingly. Okundaye (2017), in defence of Olufemi, argues that since 83% of white students get a first or upper second class degree at Cambridge but only 68% of black students do, this ‘educational gap’ might start to be bridged by ‘diverse, inclusive and relatable curricula’. Jason Osamede Okundaye is a gay black activist Cambridge student. Actually, I see no reason why Cambridge should not allow him some space to study James Baldwin, Marlon James, Audre Lorde or Alice Walker but that in itself is no guarantee of a higher grade.
Presumably, we should now also await calls for a BAME-friendly medical (and other STEM subjects) curriculum. We may have to wait some time, however, given one estimate that only 1.1% of ‘global scientific knowledge’ comes out of Africa (Kariuki, 2015). This is based on figures showing that Africa has 79 scientists per million inhabitants, compared with the USA’s 4,500 per million. And these figures are based on current head count rather than significant historic achievements. Western capitalism, colonialism and slavery are
of course usually blamed for this situation. But a longstanding lack of African contributions to modern knowledge, architecture, and commercial products, is surely embarrassing. Bernal (1991) tried to argue that Afroasian sources underpinned much of early Greek and Phoenician civilisation — and hence Western civilisation generally — but his critics found his case far too flimsy. Although the Egyptian pyramids are often cited as a major, early African achievement, arguments persist as to Egypt’s true standing as straddling North Africa, the Mediterranean and Asia. Nor can Africa offer anything to match India’s distinctive contributions to religions like Hinduism and Buddhism, and associated philosophy, or indeed progressive atheism. Natural resources are abundant in Africa, and the origins of musical polyrhythm are found there. That some noted people of African ancestry have made outstanding contributions to the arts and sports in the West unfortunately leaves unanswered the question of Africa’s presumably unrealised potential. While inspiring, a film like Hidden Figures, depicting three female African American mathematicians contributing to NASA’s 1961 space mission, also does not answer this question. White supremacy is the charge invariably fired off at anyone even raising this matter, but perhaps we should investigate persistent black underachievement and do so without invoking white privilege and a need for affirmative action. Braun (1990) reports that in contrast to anti-racist Western liberals, most black Africans he met simply accepted that whites are on average cognitively superior to blacks. But none of this can be said in public when issues concerning Oxbridge admissions are raised.
Farron (2014) writes in highly critical terms about the policy of affirmative action. One striking illustrative example is that in 1911 to 1922 at Yale University, 19% of students had been born in eastern Europe and spoke with Yiddish accents. A high proportion of Jews at that time were very poor yet highly motivated and very intelligent, and 45% lived in New York, with one consequence being that Columbia University at the turn of the twentieth century had a preponderance of Jewish students and admissions staff felt they had to readjust the balance by utilising alternative admissions criteria. In 1924 Harvard had about 30% Jewish students and even after changing their criteria to bring the figure down, in the 1930s it was 15%, which still represented five times the size of the Jewish population of the USA. Farron is adamant that affirmative action (or positive discrimination) policy is fraudulent, having switched attention from an anti-discriminatory focus to increasing diversity as a good thing in itself. Political agitators like Lammy and Andrews (below) insist that universities are acting in both a discriminatory manner (possibly influenced by so-called unconscious racism) and in a way that discourages black students from applying for courses. But the early American experience with Jews suggests that minority applicants who are highly intelligent and motivated, especially when predominant in certain localities, are likely to flourish. We might accordingly expect to see high levels of British BAME students in universities based on sheer intelligence and motivation, especially in or near cities with a high concentration of BAME residents. Another argument for positive discrimination put by Lammy, Andrews and others is that black people need positive role models like professors, but Farron shows that American Jewish students did very well even when hardly any Jewish professors existed in American universities; and by 1970 the faculty of Yale was 22% Jewish, of Harvard a third Jewish, and of Columbia over a half.
Espinoza (2015a) shows that in fact all ethnic groups in Britain have been surpassing whites for entry to higher education, and yet African British surpass Caribbean British, and both groups are surpassed by Indian and Chinese student numbers. Such trends may change over time and depend on shifting economic factors, but discrepancies probably cannot be laid at the door of racism, and affirmative action remedies are of questionable value. Parris (2016) argues that potential BAME students may suffer from comparative lack of confidence and polish, and from selectors’ and interviewers’ unconscious bias. Farron (2014), however, suggests that many American blacks seem to have unrealistically high self-esteem and confidence, and university admissions staff if anything bend over backwards to recruit BAME students. It could remain the case that most blacks lack the ‘polish’ possessed by British public school applicants but this is also true for white working-class applicants. It has also been suggested that African-Caribbean boys in particular prefer hustling to studying (Richardson, 2011).
A black American professor is reported as pushing the case for black Americans to carry guns in order to protect themselves. Tommy J. Curry, an academic philosopher specialising in black topics, applies the Second Amendment to the right of blacks to bear arms for self-protection, in a context in which some innocent blacks have been killed by police. A past colleague of Curry’s says that ‘he liked nothing more than pissing white people off’ (Kolowich, 2017). Curry has assumed and welcomed the idea of ‘white capitalism’ collapsing under its own weight, when ‘black unionists would help build a more egalitarian society in its ruins’. He was stimulated by the film Django Unchained, in which blacks get to exact revenge, and about which the principal actor Jamie Foxx joked ‘how great it was that he got to kill the white people in the movie’. Around the same time in the UK, Jason Osamede Okundaye (as above), head of Cambridge University’s Black and Ethnic Minority campaign, accused all whites of being racist. In response to the death of Rashan Charles during a police chase, and ensuing riots, he posted comments that all whites ‘can geddit’ and that ‘watching these middle-class white people despair over black people protesting in their colonised Dalston is absolutely delicious’. The Okundaye and Olufemi affairs rumbled on for some weeks, The Telegraph and others being accused of inciting racial hatred in their reporting. We should not be surprised at such contempt when we remember the Black Panthers (1966–1982) and Black Lives Matter (initiated in 2013), and indeed exhortations to decolonising by violence associated with Franz Fanon and others. In the USA in 1969, the underground group The Weathermen’s provocative slogan was ‘we are against everything that is good and decent and honky in America’. These trends combine some justified reactions to racism and entrenched counter-racist vehemence.
It is not invariably the case that blacks endorse left-wing politics but it is the default position, as is often pointed out by black American Republicans. In the UK it has always been assumed that blacks vote for Labour, hence the old racist adage ‘if you want a nigger neighbour, vote Labour’. Labour is considered far more immigration-friendly than the Conservative Party (Migration Watch UK, 2017a; Walker, 2017). The majority black perception is that Labour supports generous welfare benefits, social housing, positive discrimination, and social justice generally. The Jamaican-heritage Marxist sociologist Stuart Hall is still revered posthumously in the UK as one of the black community’s few outstanding intellectuals. Black Lives Matter has revolutionary aspirations well beyond its anti-police violence remit, and Thrasher (2017a) and others endorse the meme of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy to describe and condemn both British and American mainstream establishments. Espousing black radicalism and critiquing ‘racial capitalism’, Robinson (2000) in the American context argued for the inadequacy of Eurocentric Marxism to explain the predicament of and suggest political remedies for African diaspora peoples. The stereotype of African sloth and dependency on welfare and foreign aid remains a significant suspicion as to why blacks would support socialist politics. The vigour of past British industrialism and American capitalism is sometimes interpreted as being in decline precisely because mass immigration has swollen commitments to welfare spending, has undermined the Anglo-American work ethic and helps to lower average IQ.
Various American groups under the banners of Afrocentricism, United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors, Nation of Yahweh, and the early Nation of Islam, have promoted a belief in black supremacy and black separatism. Whites were seen as blue-eyed devils. Leader of the Nation of Islam Louis Farrakhan gave one notorious speech in which he mysteriously called Hitler ‘a very great man’. Activist
s like Langston Hughes and James Baldwin argued that whites could overcome their Afrophobia by learning from blacks to embrace their suppressed emotionality. The meme of black sexual supremacy is used by the Jewish novelist Saul Bellow in Mr Sammler’s Planet when a black thief intimidates the main character by exposing himself: ‘sexual niggerhood for everyone’ in Bellow’s terms refers to envy of the primitive. But not everyone catches ‘jungle fever’. This reminds us of something that should be obvious: that blacks cannot be defined as victims of whites, or vice versa, and do not hold identical views on all subjects. The Nobel Prize-winning writer V. S. Naipaul, originally Indian Trinidadian but a British citizen, showed just how complicated race relations can be, why everyone seems to hate or envy everyone else, and how tragicomic this all is (Naipaul, 2001).
Part of this tragicomedy is illustrated by a review of the quasi-horror film Get Out (Thrasher, 2017b). On the face of it, this is a fairly silly story like The Stepford Wives, about a young black man who is tricked by his white girlfriend into visiting her parents’ house and white community. He is then hypnotised and lined up for a lobotomy prior to being made into a servant, possibly a sex slave. But in Thrasher’s interpretation Get Out is about slavery, the ‘theft of the Black body’ (and something approaching a Nazi-style experiment on the main character). But much more insidiously, for Thrasher it plays on the theme of mandingoism — the legendarily priapic big lack penis. Citing black theorist Ann duCille, white men want to ‘project their own latent desire for the black male penis onto white women and punish back men for a desire that is finely their own: to fuck a black man, to fuck like a black man, to fuck white women with a black penis’. Get Out is also said to be liberals’ nightmare snub of their good intentions. In Thrasher’s cod-psychoanalytic, paranoid, reverse-racism projection, the film (highly acclaimed by most critics) is a mega-masterpiece of anti-racism. It shows that ‘whiteness needs to use up Black bodies for its continued existence’, somewhat like a vampire.
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