Free Thinking - Black British History.
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 9 November 2016
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Bernardine Evaristo, Keith Piper, Miranda Kaufmann and Kehinde Andrews consider the question what it means to be Black British and how should a wider history be taught and reflected in literature. New Generation Thinker Nandini Das presents.
Kehinde Andrews is at Birmingham City University where his research includes looking at black activism. He is series editor of Blackness in Britain with Rowman and Littlefield International
Miranda Kaufmann is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London. Her book Black Tudors will be published by Oneworld in autumn 2017.
Bernardine Evaristo is the author of prose and poetic novels including The Emperor's Babe and Mr Loverman. She teaches creative writing at Brunel University.
Keith Piper's exhibition Unearthing the Banker’s Bones, in partnership with Iniva, is at Bluecoat in Liverpool and runs until 22 January 2017.
Producer: Torquil MacLeod.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right? |
| 0:23.3 | It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream. |
| 0:28.8 | Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.0 | Welcome to the arts and ideas download from the free thinking team. |
| 0:36.4 | Hello, and on Free Thinking Tonight, |
| 0:39.0 | paused at the end of this year's Black History Month |
| 0:41.6 | and the beginning of the BBC's Black and British season, |
| 0:45.7 | we explore where and when a Black History of Britain actually began. |
| 0:50.9 | Well, believe me, I am speaking broad-mindedly. |
| 0:55.0 | I am glad to know my mother country. |
| 0:59.0 | I've been travelling to countries years ago, but this is the place I wanted to know. |
| 1:05.0 | London, that's the place for me. |
| 1:08.0 | That was Lord Kitchener, one of Trinidad's top Calypso musicians singing London is the Place for Me, composed during his voyage to Britain. |
| 1:18.8 | Kitchener, or Kitch, was one of about 490 Caribbean men and women who arrived at Tilbury Docks on 22 June, 1948, aboard the Empire Windrush. |
| 1:32.9 | Does black British history begin at that windrush moment? Or would a search for black presence |
| 1:39.6 | in British history take us into a mistier and much more distant past that has been largely forgotten. |
| 1:47.0 | And what does it mean to talk about a black history of Britain anyway? |
| 1:53.0 | I am joined by four guests whose work rummages in the archives, rakes, fraught histories of debate and activism, and re-imagines into existence |
| 2:04.2 | what history cannot recoup by using the medium of literature and art. Miranda Kaufman is Senior |
| 2:11.8 | Research Fellow at the Association of Common Mouth Universities and has a forthcoming book on Black Tudors. |
| 2:19.2 | Kehinde Andrews is Associate Professor in Sociology at Birmingham City University, |
| 2:24.7 | where he has recently introduced a Black Studies degree and researchers on race, racism and black |
... |
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