Akala’s ‘Natives’ is one of the best anti-racist books you’ll ever read- here’s why
Well, maybe the title’s a bit of an exaggeration. I haven’t actually read anywhere near all the anti-racist books out there- so far I’ve clocked a grand total of five, and that’s only if you count fiction and autobiography. So it’s just possible that rapper Akala’s debut book isn’t quite one of the greats- but only just. At the absolute least, it should go somewhere near the upper end of the top 50. It’s one of those books that, once it’s medically safe to do so, I fully intend to quite literally press into the hands of every other human being I know, and deserves to be universally regarded as essential reading for anyone- especially white Brits- wishing to educate themselves on racism in the UK.
Akala’s CV includes founding The Hip-Hop Shakespeare Company, so evidently he’s no stranger to juxtaposition. This might explain why Natives stands out as being intriguingly genre-fluid, especially by non-fiction standards- and why it does so remarkably well. The front cover picture of Nelson’s Column and its subtitle, Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire, suggest a commentary on a specific chapter of history and its ramifications in the present day, and Natives is partly that. But it’s also part-autobiography, with its many history lessons interspersed with snapshots of the author’s life. It’s not unusual, of course, for a writer to get the ball rolling with a personal anecdote before delving into the wider issues it represents. Laura Bates, for example, does it with street harassment in Everyday Sexism, and journalists thrive on it for comment pieces. But those are usually brief, swiftly transcended and separate from the wider article/chapter/book; in Natives, Akala seamlessly interweaves his personal stories with historical and contemporary facts. It’s a pretty genius way to discuss modern, ongoing problems such as racism, because it’s one that allows the reader to get the best of both worlds. We’re given the hard, impartial facts about wide-reaching historical events and their broader contexts to facilitate our educations, while also seeing- and, crucially, empathising with- their impact on a single, individual human life decades or centuries down the line.
But while an examination of Akala’s use of form and transcendence of genre would make for an interesting English Literature assignment, that’s not why I think everyone should read this book. The book’s true appeal isn’t in how he structures his writing; it’s in what he’s writing about. To describe Akala as “spilling the tea” might be in bad taste considering that even the drink has roots in colonialism, but since the phrase is now synonymous with telling the truth, all I can say is holy crap is the tea exceptionally good in this book.
Or rather it’s bad. Very very bad, and depressing. Reading this book isn’t like school history lessons, where you learn about World War 2 evacuees, and the Tudors, and the Civil Rights Movement but only in America. This is the stuff that most of us aren’t taught and which, according to Boris Johnson, we needn’t feel the slightest bit bad about, if we do think about it at all. (The real problem is that ‘we are not in charge any more’, after all.) The entire book, up to and including its autobiographical detours, essentially consists of the guy who once threw some much-needed facts at Tommy Robinson dealing out harsh truth after harsh truth about the history of racism and white supremacy that has helped to shape British history and left an undeniable impact on this country in the 20th century. Slavery, which we’re told Britain heroically abolished for selfless, philanthropic reasons and was stopped all but single-handedly by William Wilberforce- neither of which is true. The fact that it is now ‘completely impossible to write a truly accurate history of the British Empire’, because during decolonisation ‘Anything that might embarrass the [British] government was hidden, buried or burned. The atrocities committed in the name of that empire- such as ‘the deliberate starving to death of millions of people in India’- all underscored by the basic fact that ‘no-one colonises a group of people out of love for them’. The segregation, discrimination and violence face by Windrush immigrants, followed by various immigration laws to ensure that the next generation of Caribbean-born workers would know their place and stay put, followed in turn by the New Cross fire, an epidemic of UK-based police violence such as the shooting of Cherry Groce, and the murder of Stephen Lawrence by racists and the years of police negligence that followed. The book goes further afield in the modern day, too: keep an eye out for everything from the thoughts of Indian academics on the nation’s colonial past to the time time its author was nearly shot by the police in Brazil, as well as some facts about Jamaica, Cuba and post-apartheid South Africa that will probably surprise you. And through the eyes of Akala’s childhood, as well as handy statistics like the fact that black students are ‘2.6 times more likely to be expelled [from school] even when control factors are taken into account’, we’re shown how all those centuries of racism have bled down to the way ethnic minorities (especially black people), from Olympic athletes to schoolchildren, are treated today. Or to use examples from the book, how the attitudes that influenced Winston Churchill to help build apartheid and to proclaim, ‘I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion’ also caused for the author a lifetime of police harassment and bullying teachers, including one with some… interesting beliefs regarding the Ku Klux Klan. (You’ll want to read the book and find out what they were for yourself, trust me.) Small wonder, then, that the Guardian‘s Afua Hirsch describes Akala’s as a ‘disruptive, aggressive intellect’: the word “aggressive” implies anger, and it’s clear he has a lot to be angry about.
And this book, without a doubt, is angry. I don’t say that to disparage Akala or to play up the “angry black man” stereotype- he has, as reading the book will hopefully show you, every right to be angry. I was angry reading it, and I’ve never experienced even a tenth of the things it describes. If this book was just wall-to-wall pessimism, that would be understandable: it wastes no time coldly deconstructing everything from the myth that Britain is a “meritocracy” where black students can have any future they want, to the sunny white liberal-painted, conservative-anointed picture of Nelson Mandela’s “reconciliation” policies. Yet the book remains anything but devoid of hope- partly because it is in itself proof that a resistance exists, but also because of the moments of warmth and defiance that permeate it. The author’s (white) mother, who built a life away from her sexist, racist father and stood up (sometimes pre-emptively) to racist teachers. The pan-African Saturday school that helped to counterbalance the heavily whitewashed mainstream curriculum. The relatives and family friends neck-deep in organised crime who ‘paid me pocket money to recite the theory of evolution to them as a child and even threatened to give me a bloody good hiding if I tried to be like them’. There are moments of humour, too, since a sure-fire way to undercut people who think they’re innately superior (from politicians to beat cops) is to take the piss. My personal favourite is a recollection of the author painstakingly spelling out to a police officer that maybe, just maybe, him driving at 5pm with a child in school uniform might mean something other than suspicious activity? And that’s without mentioning the multiple pages of beautifully condescending sympathy towards those who feel threatened by the achievements of Jesse Owens or Usain Bolt, with Akala pointedly remarking, ‘I can’t imagine watching The Lord of the Rings and thinking, Oh, white people being excellent again, what a bummer.’
Recent months have seen me pouring through lists with titles like ‘Make These 21 Books Part Of Your Anti-Racism Education’ and if memory serves- possibly because most of the sites in question were American-grown- Natives wasn’t on any of them. Perhaps it’s because of its Brit-centric perspective, then, that it’s flown relatively under the radar at an international level. And that’s a shame, because this book should be on all of those lists, given the recognition it deserves as an essential part of anyone’s anti-racism education. It’s both one of the best anti-racism books you’ll ever read, and one of the best books, period, that I’ve ever read. It forces its readers, especially those whose privilege has and always will shelter them, to look head-on at centuries of injustice and cruelty. It forces you to cut the elective blindness and admit just how very, very wrong things are while still offering, through the defiance it embodies, just a little bit of hope for the future.
Originally published at http://emmamcurzon.wordpress.com on September 11, 2020.
