Race in the UK

October 6, 2015 5:42 PM

What resources (books, blogs, articles) should I read to learn something about how race/ethnicity operates in the UK?

I'm especially interested in England, and I am especially interested in reading about the experiences of Black Muslims and White immigrant groups (i.e. Polish people), but general overviews/histories are also useful.

FWIW, I live in the US. I lived in (the Republic of) Ireland for a while and while I was there I took a class on the history of racism, and it was super interesting! The perspective of folks in that class was so different from what I'm used to.

posted by goodbyewaffles to Society & Culture (3 answers total)

Best answer: What 'Black Lives' Means in Britain was on the NYT website last week. It had the ring of truth for me, as a Brit living in the US.
posted by caek at 6:42 PM on October 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I'm glad I clicked caek's link above since I was coming in here to recommend Paul Gilroy. Seeing that's covered, I'll say that the work of Stuart Hall is essential (the documentary made about him around the time of his death is pretty good), though he's best known for essays and interviews/talking head appearances (like this BBC joint and his work with Sut Jhally and the Media Education Foundation) rather than a book proper. His cowritten work, Policing the Crisis, isn't about race per se, but about how British media constructed a panic (not in the absence of race, of course).

I found a lot of interesting-looking resources by searching the phrase "We are here because you were there," referring to the legacies of British colonialism around the world. This includes this list of resources for white leftists, many of which are US-centric, but the Kundnani and Carole Boyce Davies books seem useful.

The London Review of Books would be a great place to look for learned and leftist critique that isn't necessarily academic. Here's an example--a piece post-7/7 about how "the war on terror" looks in the UK.

Also Sara Ahmed's On Being Included provides a really interesting critique of how institutional "diversity" functions from a UK perspective.
posted by kickingthecrap at 7:55 PM on October 6, 2015 [4 favorites]

Best answer: Not maybe specifically about race, but Zadie Smith's White Teeth is an excellent novel that brings to life the experience of a range of immigrant cultures in London, mixing black, white, and south Asian.
posted by amusebuche at 1:59 AM on October 10, 2015