ARTICLE: What am I going on about?
by Benjamin Zephaniah
(This is an edited version of the introduction to the book Too Black, Too Strong).
Britain is a wonderful place. It is a nation of shopkeepers, aristocrats, farmers and animal lovers, all at the same time. It has the 'mother of all parliaments', its inhabitants enjoy 'free speech' and the right to vote in open elections and it is so confident that it doesn't need a written constitution. Its cities are havens for the young, they pulsate to the music of the world, and though the skies may be grey for much of the year the streets are coloured by its people who now talk about 'raving' just as much as they talk about the weather. The cities 'rock'. The same can be said for many of its towns, they may not have received the title of 'city' from the Crown or be the 'seat of a bishop', but they still have the attitude and the rhythm of the city. Above all the capital city shines magnificent through its pollution, it is amongst the heavyweights of cities, here it is estimated that over three hundred languages are spoken. But Britain is not just a collection of cities. The quaint beauty of the 'Lake District' continues to inspire poets, and the grandeur of the Scottish mountains is famous all over the world. I have always admired the splendour of the Welsh Valleys, it seems to me this area represents both the picturesque and industrial side by side, for it is here that many of the nation's coalmines are to be found. In fact many of those coalmines were closed down in the 1980's and they have now become tourist attractions, and a chosen few coal miners who were once doomed to a life of unemployment are now paid to show you what they used to do. The same fate has fallen upon coalmines all over Britain. But Britain is not just a collection of unused coalmines or museums, what of British culture? Well to date Britain has 21% of all major Oscars, 13% of television programmes shown at peak times worldwide are made in Britain, our pop music keeps conquering America, everyone knows of William Shakespeare and the Bronte Sisters, but what of the Teletubbies? Well they are one of the biggest single export products ever. All of the above represent an idea of Britain; we pick what we want to represent us depending on what type of 'subject' we are. The title of British means many things to many people, some choose to remain forever nostalgic for its 'days of former greatness' when Shakespeare was 'Top of The Pops' and the sun never set on the empire, whilst for others it's about the melting pot, bursting with vitality and smiling multiculturalism. The latter will tell you that it is the great British Indian curry that binds us together, these people are out to carve out a new idea of Britishness and feel hindered by those whose only purpose is to preserve the past. We are all imagining Britain, but that's a luxury, what's the reality?
It is a place where African-Caribbean women make up 14% of the female prison population, whereas African-Caribbean people as a whole only make up 1.3% of the population of Britain. African-Caribbean and Asian people together make up 5.6% of the population but 16% of the prison population. Anybody who knows anything about Britain knows that you are five times more likely to be stopped and searched by the police if you are African-Caribbean, it also worth knowing that over 130,000 racist attacks happened in the Year 2000. These figures weren't given to me by friends and family, these are official figures, government figures, the Commission for Racial Equality figures, and anybody who knows anything about official figures will also know they usually fall very short of the mark.
Many of us Brits are easily deceived, even I used to believe that the country was becoming overcrowded and that the reason why so many Asians open corner shops is because they don't have the education to do anything else. The truth is that in the Year 2000, 11,000 more people left Britain than entered, over half the people given work permits were from 'The United States of America' and one out of every five Asian shopkeepers has a university degree, when asked almost every one of them said they opened up their own business because of racial discrimination by employers.
What refugees? From being totally uninhabited Britain has constantly taken in new visitors be they Picts, Celts, Angles, Saxons, Chinese, Jamaicans, Jutes, Huguenots. All of them, with the possible exception of the Romans can be classed as refugees of one type or another. Some were fleeing religious persecution, others political persecution or racial persecution, some were even fleeing persecution from the weather e.g. hurricanes and floods, but we all came here from somewhere. So in theory Britain should be the last place on earth where you should find racism. But the reality is that many people are suffering from what I call the 'last of the boat syndrome'. They conveniently forget their journey here and now live in the fear that Britain will be flooded by penniless asylum seekers who would then drain our precious society of everything they hold dear. The reality is 30% of refugees have left professional jobs, 10% held managerial positions and only around 5% are unskilled. The reality is that refugees built the National Health Service, refugees built our roads, they clean our cars, and when given the chance new refugees contribute disproportionately to the economy because they have seen hardship and suffering and view economic success as a way of repaying their country of refuge.
Now let's go global. We live in a world where one in four people live in a state of absolute poverty, 35,000 children die each day because they are born to poor parents, each year 24,000 people are killed and maimed by landmines and when you hear the information rich telling you that the world is 'wired' and getting smaller, remember that most of the people on this planet have never even made a phone call. Do we communicate more? Well the world stayed silent when the slave trade was making money, the world stayed silent when the Nazis started to kill trade unionists, disabled people, gays and jews, and now, in the age of the global village and mass communication, the world is staying silent as the Palestinians are being annihilated. Yet in real terms countries are ostracised, isolated and starved of funds if they do not allow 'McDonalds' to set up burger shops on their best spots on their best high streets, or if they do not allow the World Bank to dominate their poorest farmers.
It is important to me that the reader 'overstands' the political landscape that my poems are written in. I know that I risk being accused of being out of step with the current 'artistic culture' that is prevalent in Britain today, but the thing is I don't have an identity crisis, and I have no wish to write to win awards. I am told that things could be easier for me if I 'played the game' but I could never stand on a platform and honestly say that the height of my career was receiving an OBE, and in an environment where the artist is scorned for being political, I have to confess that I still believe that there are things that are more important than me or my poetry. We are allowed to shock, we can be outrageous, or if we want to act like we care we can do Band Aid, Live Aid and Comic Relief but when we want to confront the dictators, the arms traders and deal with the 'cause', we are confronted with a cut in our grants or a tearing up of our contracts. For the time being the poet is no longer the 'unofficial legislator', that's the guy who makes the commercials, the art that sells is now the art of selling. Most people don't care what the product is, but it must be delivered in the right package, you are a member of a target audience.
On one hand I think it my duty to travel the world for The British Council and other organisations, speaking my mind as I go, ranting, praising and criticising everything that makes me who I am, but this is what Britain can do. It is probably one of the only places that can take an angry, illiterate, uneducated, ex-hustler, rebellious Rastafarian and give him the opportunity to represent the country. On the other hand I also feel concerned that in the country of my birth my rights are ignored. In this multicultural, multiracial country, its prisons, its courts, even its hospitals don't recognise my religion or cultural heritage. Although I'm not a religious Rastafarian, if I am in prison, at a time when I would need guidance most, I am not allowed religious books, or visits from church elders, I am just not recognised. But The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 18 tells me that I have the right to believe in any religion - or none at all, and that I have the right to practise and teach my religious beliefs. If I can't practise my religion at home, in school or even in prison where do I go? Must I seek asylum in a foreign country?
I can't stay silent. I live in two places, Britain and the world, and it is my duty to question and explore the state of justice in both of them. When racists express their racism they do not make allowances according to our ethnicity, they do not beat one person harder than another because they have a darker skin. In Britain today many Kosovan refugees are being racially abused and attacked on our streets but they are not being let off lightly because they don't wear saris. This is why when I say 'Black' it means more than skin colour, I include Romany, Iraqi, Indians, Kurds, Palestinians all those that are treated Black by the united white states. I can hear cries of 'What?' already, but I have to say the suffering I have witnessed means that my conscience allows me to include the battered White woman, the tree dwellers and the Irish, the Irish after all they are the largest immigrant group in Britain and I still remember the notices that said 'No Blacks, No Irish, No dogs.' My Black is profound. I have been in parts of Africa where I have been referred to as 'coloured', how hurtful that would have been if I simply defined my struggle by the amount of melanin in my skin. In Jamaica we refer to people as brown or red yet we know that we are all Black. More importantly, on my first trip to South Africa just after the official lifting of apartheid, I was surprised to learn how many different groups of White people there were and how divided they were amongst themselves, but then when it came to dealing with Black people they were White people united. The oppressors know how to unite, the oppressed must unite. My 'strong' is the strength that we get when we stand up and get counted as opposed to sitting in 'workshops' and applying for lottery money. When I say 'Too Black, Too Strong', I mean unity is strength, I mean 'true' free speech, I mean no justice, no peace. In 1771, 106 ships from Liverpool transported 28,000 slaves 'to' Britain, but whilst Britain has tried to retrieve Nazi loot, bring aging Nazi's to trial, make the Japanese pay compensation and say sorry etc., it has never dealt with its own legacy of slavery. I would never claim to speak for the African-Caribbean community, I just happen to be one of them, but I want full recognition of how slavery raped, murdered and stigmatised us, and I know a few others that do. Africans around the world are still suffering from slavery today and, one day Britain will have to wake up and face the nightmare it induced. We are not going away.
As I grew up in the Rastafarian community in Birmingham, England, I dreamt of the day when I would be able to leave Britain (Babylon) and return to 'Africa' (Zion), the motherland. Ironically I now visit the motherland at least twice a year and the truth is that the more I travel the more I love Britain, and it is because I love the place that I fight for my rights here. If it were simply a case of hating the place and all that it stood for then I would have left when I first got expelled from school. I want the 'project' to work. The day will come when we move from the margins and come to the centre; I just want it to be today.
