History In Colour
By: Lydia McDougall (Dual Frequency Contributor)
"We have existed in Britain and been pioneers, inventors, icons. And then colonialism happened, and that has shaped the experiences of black people - but that is not all we are." – Lavinya Stennett, founder of The Black Curriculum
It’s a quote that perfectly sets the tone for this piece, as the urge to raise certain points has become harder to ignore. Within the British education system the rhetoric has pretty much stayed with slavery and its abolition. This has meant that so many, particularly those who are privileged, have not sought to educate themselves further than the lessons the school system has afforded them. As a result the rest of history is largely ignored.
What do I mean by “the rest”? I mean way before the 11th century, an area that is not covered extensively by the British school curriculum. What lots of us don’t know, is that the Roman Empire was multiracial, and in fact stretched all the way to North Africa. There were African Roman Emperors, who not only voyaged to Britain, but also settled and raised their families here. During the Roman Empire, prejudice still existed, but it was never based on racial bias (see documentary by David Olusoga, Black and British: A Forgotten History, BBC iPlayer).
I was blown away by this fact. I realised that Britons are fed a narrative that’s always implied that all Roman Emperors were white. We don’t learn that cultural and racial diversity was very apparent in Britain, even during the Tudor reign.
A truth that has been denied and covered up for so long is that African people were already civilised long before Europeans settled on their continent. They had an established social repertoire way before Europeans arrived with the agenda of converting Africans from “savagery” to “civilised” ways of life. A vital fact to successfully unpick our centuries-long Ethnocentric socialisation, is that Christianity has been around in Ethiopia since the 4th century.
The point here is that while the Transatlantic slave trade is undeniably a vital part of Black History, teaching it as a central part of Black History only treats the symptoms of racism rather than the cause. It perpetuates the separation between white and black people, as white children can only relate to slave owners, while black children can only relate to slaves when in fact historically, Africans were so much more than commodities to be bought and sold.
Africans have always owned land, gold and the intelligence to negotiate. The separation between black and white people is surface-level, and the continued cycle of such will only reinforce “white privilege” and keep black people at the bottom as victims. This is not the same as giving a marginalised group equality - it dehumanises black people further, only with a softer pretence.
This is why I find issue with banners that read “I’m not black, but I see you. I’m not black, but I stand with you. I’m not black, but I will fight for you”. Statements like these ignore the fact that we are all from African descendants. Although it is meant well, it reinforces the fallacy that we are separate. Furthermore, if we examine our true history, we will find that interracial relations go back centuries to the beginning of time, meaning that nobody on this entire earth is “purely” white. To evolve socially, we must tell the whole truth, because freedom and equality are Eurocentric terms coined by white settlers and were never theirs to take, nor give back.
Lydia McDougall
Dual Frequency Contributor