nine - ‘Who controls the past controls the future’: Black history and community development

Summary

Introduction

What role does ‘Black history’ play in community development? This chapter discusses the ways in which Black and Asian minority ethnic (BAME) communities have been excluded from contributing to national and local histories, depriving them of resources that would enable them to develop coherent alternative perspectives on the British narrative. It focuses on the intersection of history and community development. It concentrates on local people and organisations and how they have used Black history in a variety of community-based activities in collaboration with the University of Huddersfield. Huddersfield, in the North of England, has a population of around 165,000, of which 76 per cent is White, 15 per cent is of Asian origin and 4.2 per cent is of African and African-Caribbean origin. This chapter explores how Black history impacts on community development bearing this demography in mind.

The term ‘Black’ as used in this chapter can be contentious and complex. The historian Onyeka states that:

The term “Black” has been used in recent history to define individuals, communities, nations and their histories, etc. It has sometimes been applied to people that would define themselves in other ways…. “Black” is a political, ideological, term used in reference and in opposition to “white” as a racial or ethnic construction because this has given rise to manifest destiny, white man's privilege, white power … colonialism, imperialism and neo-colonialism. However, some academics and others use the term “Black” only to apply to people of African descent, but that has not always been the case. A corrective is to use the term African or “African descent” when referring to people of African descent, and “Black” when describing a resistance or opposition to the white power just described. (Onyeka, 2017)

Black history has tended to be linked to the history of people of African descent. However, academics described as Black historians tend to describe their own ethnicity as African or/and African American, African (British), African Caribbean, or by other descriptions they feel reflect their identities. Not only is there a myriad of perspectives on Black identity but also differences in Black historical methodologies. In this chapter we take account of but do not concentrate on those differences, but on how local community groups use Black history to challenge mono-ethnic white narratives of British history.