A LEADING history expert is calling for Pre-Windrush Black history to be made compulsory on the National Curriculum.
Dr Tola Dabiri is the Director of Electric Piers CIC and previously worked as one of the directors at Museum X CIC, which is home to the Black British Museum Project.
She believes the teaching of Black history must go back before the arrival of the Empire Windrush in 1948, in order to “tell the truth” about the presence of African and Caribbean people in Britain.
She told The Voice: “I think it is essential, otherwise we don’t understand our place in the history of this country and the contributions we have made for centuries and our presence here for centuries.
“Well millennia really, from the Romans and some people even argue before the Romans arrived there were Africans in this country.
“There have been people of African descent in this country for millennia, for as long as everyone else has been here, but we are made to feel like visitors all the time.
“The contribution that we have made is more than enslavement and it is more than Windrush.
“It’s important that children understand that they are not just visitors, they are not just guests and they are not just passing through, but they are part of a very long line of people of African descent in this country.”
Dr Dabiri said a “massive corrective” is needed when it comes to discussions around British history, to ensure it includes Black history and the history of people of South Asian descent – who have been in Britain since 15th and 16th Century.
She added: “This is a multi-cultural society and it has always been a muti-cultural society, but the people of colour in this country have been very successful at assimilating.
“So we seem to disappear and then a new wave of migration comes and if you are a person of colour you are very visible and then we assimilate and we disappear, this is a process that has been going on for millennia now.”
“Telling the truth needs to be compulsory.”
The history expert said any plans for the curriculum going forward must include stories of Black servicemen and women who played a pivotal role in Britain’s defences during the wars.
She said: “The Black sailors who fought with Nelson in the Battle of Trafalgar, who are commemorated around the statues of Nelson’s column but are never mentioned – so are forgotten and airbrushed out.”
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“Britain is the best country to be black in” says Kemi Badenoch as she argues the country sees people not labels in a rousing speech on race, gender and Brexit.
I have a lot of respect for Mrs Badenoch and for what she has achieved but i beg to disagree with every word of her above excerpted sentiments.
When Barack Obama became President of the USA, i like hundreds of millions of blacks around the world, was deeply elated. When he got a second term i was even more elated and i can remember chiding many people in the Caribbean that racism was no longer a problem and that they needed to move on. Now looking back at it, i was very naive and didn’t fully understood how racism operates. The Trump era tells us all that racism is here to stay. During the Brexit campaign, i was racially abused in the streets of the UK and quite recently i have experienced racism and microaggressions in the streets. The brilliant Journalist Clive Myrie puts it best: “Racism sleeps lightly, if ever it sleeps at all and to awake it needs the least provocation”
African history should be taught in all secondary schools, colleges, universities and work places in the UK and beyond. There is no excuse for ignorance in this era of enhanced accessibility to knowledge. Every human being should read all the volumes of the Cambridge History of Africa and the UNESCO History of Africa. The aforementioned are correctives to the entrenched ignorance on Africa that still plagues many around the world. African history is far more than the slave trade, imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, corruption and kleptocracy. Large strands of European history have their ontogenesis in African history.
This is ethnocentric narcissistic nonsense. The UK has never had significant populations of black people pre-Windrush. Of course, the number was not zero but that’s pretty much everything that needs to be said. We had bears at the Tower of London too.