Failing Black history
LAST APRIL, THE LABOUR MP CLAUDIA WEBBE tweeted a link to a petition demanding that Black British history be made compulsory in schools. The petition has nearly 300,000 signatures. One of the signatories, Kaydeann Young, gave this as his reason for signing: “I want to know my history and I don’t wanna to learn things that are useless to me like king Henry and his 6 wives.”
Next, Webbe posted a map of the African colonies after the Berlin Conference of 1884, together with the message: “This map has been hidden from you all your life. This is how they carved up Africa.” In fact, the scramble for Africa is already taught in schools as part of Key Stage Three and Black History already has a place in the National Curriculum. This is not enough, say campaigners, who have produced two recent reports on the subject. Neither is authored by an historian.
Jason Arday, author of Black British History in the National Curriculum (Report, 2021), is an associate professor in Durham University’s sociology department; and inasmuch as he can be described as an historian at all it is on the strength of a slim volume (108 pages) of oral history, Cool Britannia and Multi-Ethnic Britain: Uncorking the Champagne Supernova (2019) about popular culture and race in the Blair years.
Arday’s report is very
