2.1 Undoing bias: labelling
We stereotype others all the time. When did you last look or listen to someone and give them a label? Was this helpful? Was it because it was easier to make a ‘shortcut’ about someone?
As Boakye says:
as a label [Black], it does the important job of confirming something already very obvious; that a person who isn’t white, isn’t white. But labels don’t just identify what something is; they create meaning. ‘Black’ people predate ‘white’ people, but ‘Black’ has existed only for as long as ‘white’ people decided to call themselves that.
As Jamaican Sociologist Professor Stuart Hall said of Britain’s imperialist past: ‘we’re here because you were there’. Black British history IS British history.
In the following video, Jumoke Abdullahi speaks about holding the mirror up to Britishness and what it feels like for Black and Minority Ethnic children to be schooled in the UK about Britain and Empire.
