Essential Afro-Latino/ Caribbean Current Events
- Thread starter Poitier
- Start date
I'm personally glad Baby doc is dead...
didnt take long 
idk why its so difficult to understand.
im a white dominican. if u call me white, i would be just as taken aback as that girl. im not fukking white, im dominican. we identify with our nationality before anything else. we are proud of being dominican and that is who we are before religion, skin color or anything else. ya really need to learn how to look past your own perspective and try to understand other group's pov.
america is the only country where the answer to "what are u?" is a color.
ask any latino "what are you?" and he/she will PROUDLY say to u what nation they are from.
ignorant ass fakkits
idk why its so difficult to understand.
im a white dominican. if u call me white, i would be just as taken aback as that girl. im not fukking white, im dominican. we identify with our nationality before anything else. we are proud of being dominican and that is who we are before religion, skin color or anything else. ya really need to learn how to look past your own perspective and try to understand other group's pov.
america is the only country where the answer to "what are u?" is a color.
ask any latino "what are you?" and he/she will PROUDLY say to u what nation they are from.
ignorant ass fakkits
She didn't have that type of reaction when she was asked if she was Indian. She smiled and said, "No, but I get that a lot." The bytch looked like she was going to throw up when black was brought up.didnt take long
idk why its so difficult to understand.
im a white dominican. if u call me white, i would be just as taken aback as that girl. im not fukking white, im dominican. we identify with our nationality before anything else. we are proud of being dominican and that is who we are before religion, skin color or anything else. ya really need to learn how to look past your own perspective and try to understand other group's pov.
america is the only country where the answer to "what are u?" is a color.
ask any latino "what are you?" and he/she will PROUDLY say to u what nation they are from.
i dont have the same type of reaction if im called polish or russian either. we rather be mistaken for another nationality than just a race. white and black is an american thing. i guess we dont wanna be associated with americans
but to say we, as a whole, are ashamed of our african roots is ridiculous. dominican culture is like 80% african influenced and we love it.
im not saying that dominican self hatred doesnt exist at all, but if u truly get to know us u will see its ridiculous to label all of us as self hating c00ns just like its ridiculous to label all black men as ignorant rap loving thugs.
World Bank says remittances to Caribbean to grow by five per cent
WASHINGTON, (CMC) – The World Bank says remittances by international migrants from the Caribbean and other developing countries are on course for strong growth this year.
The bank also says at the same time forced migration due to violence and conflict has reached unprecedented levels.
The World Bank in its latest publication said remittances to developing countries are expected to reach US$435 billion this year, an increase of five per cent over 2013.
It said remittances to developing countries will continue climbing in the medium term, reaching an estimated US$454 billion in 2015.
The report says remittance flows to the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region are “likely to bounce back this year, following a weak 2013”.
It says that remittances to the region are expected to reach US$64 billion, an increase by five per cent this year, compared to one per cent last year.
The World Bank said the figure should rise to US$67 billion in 2015.
Global remittances, including those to high-income countries, are estimated at US$582 billion this year, rising to US$608 billion next year.
“Remittances remain an especially important and stable source of private inflows to developing countries, as they bring in large amounts of foreign currency that help sustain the balance of payments,” the report stated.
It says that, in 2013, remittances were significantly higher than foreign direct investment (FDI) to developing countries and were three times larger than official development assistance.
WASHINGTON, (CMC) – The World Bank says remittances by international migrants from the Caribbean and other developing countries are on course for strong growth this year.
The bank also says at the same time forced migration due to violence and conflict has reached unprecedented levels.
The World Bank in its latest publication said remittances to developing countries are expected to reach US$435 billion this year, an increase of five per cent over 2013.
It said remittances to developing countries will continue climbing in the medium term, reaching an estimated US$454 billion in 2015.
The report says remittance flows to the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region are “likely to bounce back this year, following a weak 2013”.
It says that remittances to the region are expected to reach US$64 billion, an increase by five per cent this year, compared to one per cent last year.
The World Bank said the figure should rise to US$67 billion in 2015.
Global remittances, including those to high-income countries, are estimated at US$582 billion this year, rising to US$608 billion next year.
“Remittances remain an especially important and stable source of private inflows to developing countries, as they bring in large amounts of foreign currency that help sustain the balance of payments,” the report stated.
It says that, in 2013, remittances were significantly higher than foreign direct investment (FDI) to developing countries and were three times larger than official development assistance.
An Uplifting Story: Brazil's Obsession With Plastic Surgery
by LOURDES GARCIA-NAVARRO
October 07, 201412:11 PM ET
Janet Tamal, 47, (right) stands with her niece Thairine, 21. Janet has had a tummy tuck and a breast augmentation and helped her daughter pay for liposuction. "The ideal is to be able to put something on, to sit down and not have your belly jumping out. Here in Brazil it gets hot and the less clothes, the better," says Janet.
Jimmy Chalk for NPR
Janet and Jaqueline Timal are 40-something-year-old sisters, and they have what they call a plastic surgery fund.
"I'm always saving money. When I see I've gathered up enough money for another surgery I do it," Jaqueline says.
She has had breast implants put in and also a tummy tuck. She's visiting the plastic surgeon's office again to do a famed Brazilian butt lift, which is the same as a breast lift, but on your backside. Janet has had a tummy tuck, she's now doing her breasts, too. Between then them they will have had five surgeries.
Janet and Jaqueline aren't rich – far from it. One works at a retirement home, the other owns a small shop.
Explore The Series
The Changing Lives Of Women
They both say this isn't about bankrupting themselves for beauty but rather the opposite – Jaqueline says she sees the procedures as an investment.
"I think we invest in beauty because this is very important for women here. You can get a better job because here they want a good appearance, a better marriage because men care about the way you look," she says.
Brazil has just surpassed the U.S. as the place with the most cosmetic surgeries performed in the world even though it has fewer people and collectively less disposable income than Americans.
Last year, according to the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery there were 1.5 million cosmetic surgeries carried out in Brazil, 13 percent of all the elective plastic surgeries done all over the world.
One reason is that there are simply more plastic surgeons per capita than the U.S. There's a healthcare crisis in Brazil that has led the country to import doctors from Cuba to work in rural and poor areas. Yet there's a surfeit of plastic surgeons.
The other reason is women's increasing financial power. In the last 10 years, Brazil has grown economically and salaries have gone up as has disposable income. Women, like the Timal sisters, have overwhelming chosen to use that money on their appearance.
While in the U.S., people may hide that they have had plastic surgery like it's something shameful, in Brazil they flaunt it. The attitude is that having work done shows you care about yourself and it's a status symbol.
But even though people have more money and greater access to credit, many of the poor wouldn't be able to afford to pay for all their cosmetic procedures unless they got a helping hand.
'The Right To Dream'
The Ivo Pitanguy Institute in Rio de Janeiro is named after the famous Brazilian plastic surgeon who is renowned for saying"The poor have the right to be beautiful, too."
Maria da Gloria de Sousa, 46, has had six surgeries at the Pitanguy Institute. "First off, I do this for me. These kind of things you need to do for yourself. And second, there's nothing better than getting a compliment, right? That you're good, that you're sexy, it's really good. I like it."
Jimmy Chalk for NPR
Here the ethos is beauty shouldn't just be a privilege of those who can afford it.
The Institute's lobby is packed as attendants call out the names of women – and a few men – who are waiting to be evaluated for cosmetic surgeries. This is a charity and teaching hospital and the surgeries given are either free of charge or heavily subsidized.
They offer all the usual fare: breast implants, breast lifts, Botox, nose jobs, face lifts and of course, the ever-popular butt implant.
This is where the Timal sisters are having their surgeries. The price for Jaqueline's butt lift? It's 3,800 reals, about $1,600 dollars. At a private hospital it could run over three times that.
Francesco Mazzarone who now heads the institute, explains why it's important to provide cosmetic surgeries to the disadvantaged.
"This is about equality, which is the philosophy Pitanguy created. Equal rights to everyone. The patients come here to get back something they lost in time. We give to them the right to dream," he says. "What we do here is altruism."
And the women NPR spoke with are grateful, but they also acknowledge there is a lot of pressure in Brazil to conform to a physical ideal.
Jaqueline Timal says her 21-year-old daughter has already had liposuction.
"I told her she should wait but to be very beautiful, we push ourselves – and also society pushes us. I think she is too young for that, but as it was her great desire, I supported (her) so she can be happy," she says.
Some in Brazil though balk at the idea that happiness can be achieved at the end of a scalpel.
Being a feminist is a lonely business in Brazil, says Karen Polaz, a blogger and women's rights activist. She says despite the fact the Brazil has a female president, it's still a very sexist country. She says beauty as a right sounds good in principal what that means in practice is that a very narrow view of what is beautiful is being pushed onto people here.
"Before accepting the idea that everyone has the right to be beautiful, we have to understand the image of beauty that is being sold, because this is an industry, an extremely lucrative industry. They transform women into consumers," she says.
And in Brazil, that transformation has a racial component.
What's Sold As Beautiful
“If you look at the traditional body type of a Brazilian, you would see a woman with dark skin, curly hair, small breasts and a larger bottom, a body that is very different from the body marketed as desirable.
- Marcelo Silva Ramos, anthropologist and social scientist
Marcelo Silva Ramos is an anthropologist and social scientist. Brazil imported more slaves, some 4 million, than any other country. Today, it is a primarily a mixed-race country, but you wouldn't know that if you look on TV and in magazines here, which rarely feature people of color.
"If you look at the traditional body type of a Brazilian, you would see a woman with dark skin, curly hair, small breasts and a larger bottom, a body that is very different from the body marketed as desirable," he says. "
He says what is sold as beautiful here is someone like Brazilian model Gisele Bundchen: a woman who is tall, thin, blond with straight hair, bigger breasts and fewer curves. That has meant he says people who don't look the right way – and by this he means "the white way" – are often excluded.
"In our culture, the view is women who look acceptable get money, social mobility, power," he says.
Take for example the popular Miss Bumbum contest, which annually crowns Brazil's best backside every year. All the contestants this year are lighter skinned.
Claudia Alende, the 22-year-old front-runner of this year's competition, looks like actress Megan Fox, right down to the blue contact lenses she wears over her natural brown eyes. She says she is competing for a simple reason.
"The contest is famous around the world, and I want to be recognized around the world and become famous, too," she says, laughing.
She says the contest is a way for her to become a TV presenter or an actress. The rules of the contest allow for plastic surgery anywhere but on the backside. She openly admits she's had work done.
"It was [because] everyone was doing [it] so I did [it]," she says.
Previous Miss Bumbum contestants have indeed gone on to arguably bigger and better things. One became a TV presenter others have become actors and professional dancers on TV. But they are among the few.
"Plastic surgery starts to become an addiction. You're born perfect, but then you have children and you know what having children does. Then suddenly comes the rebirth: plastic surgery. You can be beautiful, even more beautiful than you were before." — Maria da Gloria de Sousa, 46.
Jimmy Chalk for NPR
Maria da Gloria de Sousa is 46 but looks 30. She's unemployed but has had six surgeries at the Pitanguy Institute and speaks about her procedures with characteristic Brazilian humor and openness.
"I'm almost an android! I had done my breasts three times. I didn't stop there. I did a tummy tuck and then a lipo, and, lastly, I did my bottom," she says.
She says she's spent the equivalent of the cost of three cars on her operations.
"I'm much happier, there is no doubt about it. My bottom will never sag, my breasts will never sag. They will always be there, hard, It is very good to look at the mirror and feel fine," she says.
When I ask her if it was all worth it, she tells me she has a 21-year-old lover.
"Things have gotten a lot better," she quips.
She waves goodbye and smiling, she sashays down the beach — and nothing jiggles.
You can follow NPR's South America correspondent Lourdes Garcia-Navarro@lourdesgnavarro
by LOURDES GARCIA-NAVARRO
October 07, 201412:11 PM ET
Janet Tamal, 47, (right) stands with her niece Thairine, 21. Janet has had a tummy tuck and a breast augmentation and helped her daughter pay for liposuction. "The ideal is to be able to put something on, to sit down and not have your belly jumping out. Here in Brazil it gets hot and the less clothes, the better," says Janet.
Jimmy Chalk for NPR
Janet and Jaqueline Timal are 40-something-year-old sisters, and they have what they call a plastic surgery fund.
"I'm always saving money. When I see I've gathered up enough money for another surgery I do it," Jaqueline says.
She has had breast implants put in and also a tummy tuck. She's visiting the plastic surgeon's office again to do a famed Brazilian butt lift, which is the same as a breast lift, but on your backside. Janet has had a tummy tuck, she's now doing her breasts, too. Between then them they will have had five surgeries.
Janet and Jaqueline aren't rich – far from it. One works at a retirement home, the other owns a small shop.
Explore The Series
The Changing Lives Of Women
They both say this isn't about bankrupting themselves for beauty but rather the opposite – Jaqueline says she sees the procedures as an investment.
"I think we invest in beauty because this is very important for women here. You can get a better job because here they want a good appearance, a better marriage because men care about the way you look," she says.
Brazil has just surpassed the U.S. as the place with the most cosmetic surgeries performed in the world even though it has fewer people and collectively less disposable income than Americans.
Last year, according to the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery there were 1.5 million cosmetic surgeries carried out in Brazil, 13 percent of all the elective plastic surgeries done all over the world.
One reason is that there are simply more plastic surgeons per capita than the U.S. There's a healthcare crisis in Brazil that has led the country to import doctors from Cuba to work in rural and poor areas. Yet there's a surfeit of plastic surgeons.
The other reason is women's increasing financial power. In the last 10 years, Brazil has grown economically and salaries have gone up as has disposable income. Women, like the Timal sisters, have overwhelming chosen to use that money on their appearance.
While in the U.S., people may hide that they have had plastic surgery like it's something shameful, in Brazil they flaunt it. The attitude is that having work done shows you care about yourself and it's a status symbol.
But even though people have more money and greater access to credit, many of the poor wouldn't be able to afford to pay for all their cosmetic procedures unless they got a helping hand.
'The Right To Dream'
The Ivo Pitanguy Institute in Rio de Janeiro is named after the famous Brazilian plastic surgeon who is renowned for saying"The poor have the right to be beautiful, too."
Maria da Gloria de Sousa, 46, has had six surgeries at the Pitanguy Institute. "First off, I do this for me. These kind of things you need to do for yourself. And second, there's nothing better than getting a compliment, right? That you're good, that you're sexy, it's really good. I like it."
Jimmy Chalk for NPR
Here the ethos is beauty shouldn't just be a privilege of those who can afford it.
The Institute's lobby is packed as attendants call out the names of women – and a few men – who are waiting to be evaluated for cosmetic surgeries. This is a charity and teaching hospital and the surgeries given are either free of charge or heavily subsidized.
They offer all the usual fare: breast implants, breast lifts, Botox, nose jobs, face lifts and of course, the ever-popular butt implant.
This is where the Timal sisters are having their surgeries. The price for Jaqueline's butt lift? It's 3,800 reals, about $1,600 dollars. At a private hospital it could run over three times that.
Francesco Mazzarone who now heads the institute, explains why it's important to provide cosmetic surgeries to the disadvantaged.
"This is about equality, which is the philosophy Pitanguy created. Equal rights to everyone. The patients come here to get back something they lost in time. We give to them the right to dream," he says. "What we do here is altruism."
And the women NPR spoke with are grateful, but they also acknowledge there is a lot of pressure in Brazil to conform to a physical ideal.
Jaqueline Timal says her 21-year-old daughter has already had liposuction.
"I told her she should wait but to be very beautiful, we push ourselves – and also society pushes us. I think she is too young for that, but as it was her great desire, I supported (her) so she can be happy," she says.
Some in Brazil though balk at the idea that happiness can be achieved at the end of a scalpel.
Being a feminist is a lonely business in Brazil, says Karen Polaz, a blogger and women's rights activist. She says despite the fact the Brazil has a female president, it's still a very sexist country. She says beauty as a right sounds good in principal what that means in practice is that a very narrow view of what is beautiful is being pushed onto people here.
"Before accepting the idea that everyone has the right to be beautiful, we have to understand the image of beauty that is being sold, because this is an industry, an extremely lucrative industry. They transform women into consumers," she says.
And in Brazil, that transformation has a racial component.
What's Sold As Beautiful
“If you look at the traditional body type of a Brazilian, you would see a woman with dark skin, curly hair, small breasts and a larger bottom, a body that is very different from the body marketed as desirable.
- Marcelo Silva Ramos, anthropologist and social scientist
Marcelo Silva Ramos is an anthropologist and social scientist. Brazil imported more slaves, some 4 million, than any other country. Today, it is a primarily a mixed-race country, but you wouldn't know that if you look on TV and in magazines here, which rarely feature people of color.
"If you look at the traditional body type of a Brazilian, you would see a woman with dark skin, curly hair, small breasts and a larger bottom, a body that is very different from the body marketed as desirable," he says. "
He says what is sold as beautiful here is someone like Brazilian model Gisele Bundchen: a woman who is tall, thin, blond with straight hair, bigger breasts and fewer curves. That has meant he says people who don't look the right way – and by this he means "the white way" – are often excluded.
"In our culture, the view is women who look acceptable get money, social mobility, power," he says.
Take for example the popular Miss Bumbum contest, which annually crowns Brazil's best backside every year. All the contestants this year are lighter skinned.
Claudia Alende, the 22-year-old front-runner of this year's competition, looks like actress Megan Fox, right down to the blue contact lenses she wears over her natural brown eyes. She says she is competing for a simple reason.
"The contest is famous around the world, and I want to be recognized around the world and become famous, too," she says, laughing.
She says the contest is a way for her to become a TV presenter or an actress. The rules of the contest allow for plastic surgery anywhere but on the backside. She openly admits she's had work done.
"It was [because] everyone was doing [it] so I did [it]," she says.
Previous Miss Bumbum contestants have indeed gone on to arguably bigger and better things. One became a TV presenter others have become actors and professional dancers on TV. But they are among the few.
"Plastic surgery starts to become an addiction. You're born perfect, but then you have children and you know what having children does. Then suddenly comes the rebirth: plastic surgery. You can be beautiful, even more beautiful than you were before." — Maria da Gloria de Sousa, 46.
Jimmy Chalk for NPR
Maria da Gloria de Sousa is 46 but looks 30. She's unemployed but has had six surgeries at the Pitanguy Institute and speaks about her procedures with characteristic Brazilian humor and openness.
"I'm almost an android! I had done my breasts three times. I didn't stop there. I did a tummy tuck and then a lipo, and, lastly, I did my bottom," she says.
She says she's spent the equivalent of the cost of three cars on her operations.
"I'm much happier, there is no doubt about it. My bottom will never sag, my breasts will never sag. They will always be there, hard, It is very good to look at the mirror and feel fine," she says.
When I ask her if it was all worth it, she tells me she has a 21-year-old lover.
"Things have gotten a lot better," she quips.
She waves goodbye and smiling, she sashays down the beach — and nothing jiggles.
You can follow NPR's South America correspondent Lourdes Garcia-Navarro@lourdesgnavarro
Didnt readdidnt take long
idk why its so difficult to understand.
im a white dominican. if u call me white, i would be just as taken aback as that girl. im not fukking white, im dominican. we identify with our nationality before anything else. we are proud of being dominican and that is who we are before religion, skin color or anything else. ya really need to learn how to look past your own perspective and try to understand other group's pov.
america is the only country where the answer to "what are u?" is a color.
ask any latino "what are you?" and he/she will PROUDLY say to u what nation they are from.
Black women in Britain – from the Romans to the Windrush
Black women have lived in the UK since Hadrian built his wall. A new exhibition chronicles the often hidden histories of Britain’s black foremothers
Call to action … the influential Lambeth community organiser Olive Morris, who died in 1979. Photograph: Lambeth Archives
The zoot suits. The neatly pressed skirt suits with matching pillbox hats and sensible court shoes. The gloves, the handkerchiefs, the reinforced cardboard suitcases (also known as “grips”) and the fixed, toothy smiles.
More often than not, when people talk of the arrival of black people on British shores, the narrative includes some or indeed all of the above. They almost always mention the following, too: Tilbury docks, Essex, 22 June 1948; the Empire Windrush; the West Indies and calypso music. Sometimes, the storyteller might mention the fact that the ship’s passenger list held the names of 490 men and only two women (there was a stowaway, whose fare was paid for by a ship-wide whipround). The arrival of the Empire Windrush was an important event not only for much of West Indian life in this country, but for British society itself – without it, what would the UK look like today?
But while this story, retold every October for Black History Month, is a part of the rich history of black people in the UK, it is by no means the whole story. There has been a black presence in the UK since the construction of Hadrian’s Wall (which began in AD 122) – a fact long overlooked.
Now the organisers of an exhibition at the recently opened Black Cultural Archives (in Windrush Square in Brixton, south London) are hoping to skewer some myths regarding black life in the British Isles. The archives’ inaugural exhibition, Re-imagine: Black Women in Britain, has brought together a number of black women who made the country their home over the centuries. The stories of these women and their contributions to British life are a necessary corrective to the idea that we are somehow “new” to Britain. Consider Mary Prince, an enslaved woman from Bermuda – whose personal account of slavery was published in 1831, and was the first account of the life of a black woman in Britain. “I have been a slave myself,” she wrote. “The man that says slaves be quite happy in slavery – that they don’t want to be free – that man is either ignorant or a lying person. I never heard a slave say so.” She eventually lived and worked at the home of the Scottish writer Thomas Pringle, secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society.
Adelaide Hall, who in 1941 became Britain’s highest-paid female entertainer.Photograph: Museum of the City of New York/Archive Photos/Getty
The exhibition features some well-known women: Crimean war nurseMary Seacole, entertainer Adelaide Hall (who in 1941 replaced Gracie Fields as Britain’s highest-paid female entertainer) and justice campaignerLady Lawrence among them. But it also has non-household names and stories. From slavery to the upper echelons of English society, across the naval service and the entertainment industry and in social and political activism, these women have left their mark.
Dr Suzanne Scafe, reader in Caribbean and postcolonial literature at London South Bank University has published several essays on black British women’s autobiographical writing. She suggests that the exhibition should act as a trigger for the visitor: the aim is to pique interest that will inspire further digging. “It prompts you to think about other stories,” she says. “I think no exhibition can be fully comprehensive. The purpose is really just to make a statement of our presence. It is important for people to recognise that Britain has always been a mixed society, that black women have always played a role in this society. I think it does that.”
A few of the women who could use a higher profile are the activist and publisher Jessica Huntley, who was also involved in the Black Parents Movement, and Claudia Jones, often described as the mother of the Notting Hill Carnival. There’s also the story of Seaman William Brown, which all but cries out for a film to be made: she was the first black woman to serve in the Royal Navy (the Annual Register 1815 remarked that “her features are rather handsome for a black”).
One of the women who left a huge legacy is Olive Morris, a Lambeth-based community organiser and activist whose name remains stubbornly unknown. She was born in Jamaica in 1952 and died in 1979, but in her short years achieved a staggering amount: she co-founded the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent and the Brixton Black Women’s Group. By the time she died of a non-Hodgkin lymphoma at the age of 27, she had also helped set up, in the city where she went to university, the Manchester Black Women’s Co-operative and the Brixton Law Centre, and was active in the Black Panther movement, too. One story tells of a 17-year-old Olive stepping into the fray after police stopped and searched a black man they suspected of stealing a Mercedes (he was a Nigerian diplomat who had stopped to do some shopping). She was beaten and arrested. By all accounts she was fearless – and committed to changing Britain for the better.
Seven years after her death, Lambeth council honoured Morris by naming a building after her (it is now a Brixton customer centre, where residents can make inquiries about council tax and benefits). She has also been commemorated in currency – an image of her, talking into a loudspeaker, is on the Brixton pound note. It’s time more people heard of her – and the other unsung foremothers in Black British history.
• Re-Imagine: Black Women in Britain is at Black Cultural Archives, London SW2, until 30 November
Black women have lived in the UK since Hadrian built his wall. A new exhibition chronicles the often hidden histories of Britain’s black foremothers
Call to action … the influential Lambeth community organiser Olive Morris, who died in 1979. Photograph: Lambeth Archives
The zoot suits. The neatly pressed skirt suits with matching pillbox hats and sensible court shoes. The gloves, the handkerchiefs, the reinforced cardboard suitcases (also known as “grips”) and the fixed, toothy smiles.
More often than not, when people talk of the arrival of black people on British shores, the narrative includes some or indeed all of the above. They almost always mention the following, too: Tilbury docks, Essex, 22 June 1948; the Empire Windrush; the West Indies and calypso music. Sometimes, the storyteller might mention the fact that the ship’s passenger list held the names of 490 men and only two women (there was a stowaway, whose fare was paid for by a ship-wide whipround). The arrival of the Empire Windrush was an important event not only for much of West Indian life in this country, but for British society itself – without it, what would the UK look like today?
But while this story, retold every October for Black History Month, is a part of the rich history of black people in the UK, it is by no means the whole story. There has been a black presence in the UK since the construction of Hadrian’s Wall (which began in AD 122) – a fact long overlooked.
Now the organisers of an exhibition at the recently opened Black Cultural Archives (in Windrush Square in Brixton, south London) are hoping to skewer some myths regarding black life in the British Isles. The archives’ inaugural exhibition, Re-imagine: Black Women in Britain, has brought together a number of black women who made the country their home over the centuries. The stories of these women and their contributions to British life are a necessary corrective to the idea that we are somehow “new” to Britain. Consider Mary Prince, an enslaved woman from Bermuda – whose personal account of slavery was published in 1831, and was the first account of the life of a black woman in Britain. “I have been a slave myself,” she wrote. “The man that says slaves be quite happy in slavery – that they don’t want to be free – that man is either ignorant or a lying person. I never heard a slave say so.” She eventually lived and worked at the home of the Scottish writer Thomas Pringle, secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society.
Adelaide Hall, who in 1941 became Britain’s highest-paid female entertainer.Photograph: Museum of the City of New York/Archive Photos/Getty
The exhibition features some well-known women: Crimean war nurseMary Seacole, entertainer Adelaide Hall (who in 1941 replaced Gracie Fields as Britain’s highest-paid female entertainer) and justice campaignerLady Lawrence among them. But it also has non-household names and stories. From slavery to the upper echelons of English society, across the naval service and the entertainment industry and in social and political activism, these women have left their mark.
Dr Suzanne Scafe, reader in Caribbean and postcolonial literature at London South Bank University has published several essays on black British women’s autobiographical writing. She suggests that the exhibition should act as a trigger for the visitor: the aim is to pique interest that will inspire further digging. “It prompts you to think about other stories,” she says. “I think no exhibition can be fully comprehensive. The purpose is really just to make a statement of our presence. It is important for people to recognise that Britain has always been a mixed society, that black women have always played a role in this society. I think it does that.”
A few of the women who could use a higher profile are the activist and publisher Jessica Huntley, who was also involved in the Black Parents Movement, and Claudia Jones, often described as the mother of the Notting Hill Carnival. There’s also the story of Seaman William Brown, which all but cries out for a film to be made: she was the first black woman to serve in the Royal Navy (the Annual Register 1815 remarked that “her features are rather handsome for a black”).
One of the women who left a huge legacy is Olive Morris, a Lambeth-based community organiser and activist whose name remains stubbornly unknown. She was born in Jamaica in 1952 and died in 1979, but in her short years achieved a staggering amount: she co-founded the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent and the Brixton Black Women’s Group. By the time she died of a non-Hodgkin lymphoma at the age of 27, she had also helped set up, in the city where she went to university, the Manchester Black Women’s Co-operative and the Brixton Law Centre, and was active in the Black Panther movement, too. One story tells of a 17-year-old Olive stepping into the fray after police stopped and searched a black man they suspected of stealing a Mercedes (he was a Nigerian diplomat who had stopped to do some shopping). She was beaten and arrested. By all accounts she was fearless – and committed to changing Britain for the better.
Seven years after her death, Lambeth council honoured Morris by naming a building after her (it is now a Brixton customer centre, where residents can make inquiries about council tax and benefits). She has also been commemorated in currency – an image of her, talking into a loudspeaker, is on the Brixton pound note. It’s time more people heard of her – and the other unsung foremothers in Black British history.
• Re-Imagine: Black Women in Britain is at Black Cultural Archives, London SW2, until 30 November