Last showing - "I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO" documentary film
In only 1 location: Electric Cinema - Shoreditch, 64-66 Redchurch Street, Shoreditch, London E2 7DP,
Sunday 16th July 2017, at 14:45
Click on link for additional info
NEWS
Yesterday, I attended the official launch of the DVD “Look, How Far We’ve Come: Commentaries on British society and Racism?” organised by BTWSC, a pan-London voluntary not-for-profit organisation, at Porticullis House, the Houses Of Parliament designed to analyze, assess and discuss the achievements, shortcomings and issues of British society dealing with racism since the Race Relations Act 1965.
Amongst the numerous invitees I knew attended Margaret Noel, Descendants’ charity founder and director; Panafrican student Jaggs, I met at a Kwanzaa celebration back in December; activist, poet and artist Zita Holbourne co-founder of Barac, panellist for the occasion alongside Councillor Nana Asante, former Harrow Mayor.
After the preliminaries, the floor was opened to host shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, MP from the Labour Party.
We sat through the full length of a draft version of the DVD featuring over five dozen interviewees from A to Z, drawn from diverse backgrounds and ethnics (English, Afro-Caribbean and Indian) with various levels of reputation. It was touching to see men and women who were once in their prime now grey-haired and elderly, evoking the circumstances leading to the Race Relations Act 1965, the first legislation in the United Kingdom to address racial discrimination when colour prejudice was the norm against the migrants from the Caribbean islands who had come to find work under British government’s invitation.
Undoubtingly, views in this British history footage expressed experiences, frustrations, contentment, scepticism and lassitude oscillating between a variation of “We have not come far enough”, “How far back we have gone” and “We have come a very long way”. One English man’s brief comment about having no ground for complain caused a stir in the room, for what was regarded as either unawareness or contempt.
One contributor's view, for example, is “the Race relations Act could not have happened before the 1950s-1960s when waves of black immigrants colluded in more ways than one with the white British population” and even assimilated.
To another ‘racism’ has a history found in “the theory of European superiority coming not from the profitability of the slave trade but to numb their conscience about ill-treating one like themselves; for they had been taught in churches about a Creator who created mankind."
One just has to remember the murder of UK student Steven Lawrence in 1993, actor Will Smith’s protest over lack of diversity at the Oscars, and police abuse of power in the homeland and the States to notice that nothing has really changed in spite of multiculturalism, “accepted co-existence with African people” and a “growing population of mixed heritage”. The latter should be seen as a sign of progress in race relation but is it?
Wishes emerged, for example, a Black Prime Minister; a building to our name, in reference to White people exporter of their names and their buildings; getting a fairer share of the British economic development, reparations payouts.
Bearing this in mind the glory days of the Race relations Act 1965 occurred in a time when everything was in the shaping and building, using what people had to offer, their time, resources and enthusiasm for they looked forward to a better future in a promising and booming economic climate when the line of the horizon seemed always further away. That time has gone, gone to dust. Conversely and disappointedly, as put forward, the Act led many to progressively produce more “intense, subtle and vicious racism by a population that learned to hide their feelings”, demonstrating the limitation of, one on hand, legislation and on the other hand, policies. How can “55% black young men are unemployed, more than in the States” be explained? Added to the “feeling of regression” imposed by “austerity cuts hitting hard the Black community” and the “rise of [physical] attacks in 2013”. One interviewee failed not to highlight internal inequality in the black community in that “Legal access to justice [being reserved] for the rich Black” of British society showing the ambivalence of the system failing to deliver a just society for all, a lingering and vain aspiration in a self-seeking civilisation.
On this basis, this ground-breaking Act could not and “would not happen today, not under any party” stated an interviewee. Besides, it gave the impetus for “numerous anti-racism organisations”, buttressed by the Commission for Racial Equality (currently Equality and Human Rights Commission), itself established by the Race Relations Act 1976, of which tasks include documenting, investigating, exposing and fighting racist practices, through various initiatives and campaigns.
The last part of the gathering was reserved to two youth who exposed what they faced in their schools after which they recommended that “young people in schools should push the issues at Young People Parliament.”
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Racism and prejudice coming later in education;
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Disproportions of exclusions of Black youth;
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Teachers punishing non-English students more severely.
I want to leave politician Kingsley Abrams’ statement for the end: "Young people under 40 are part of the problem. So, be part of the solution [of] tomorrow’s society, their society.”
See details in Lifestyle to buy the DVD.
Links
LOOK, HOW FAR WE'VE COME: COMMENTARIES ON BRITISH SOCIETY AND RACISM?
February 24 2016 - Michelle Rondof
