Akala

'A potent combination of autobiography and political history which holds up a mirror to contemporary Britain' Independent 'A history lesson of the kind you should get in school, but don't' Stylist 'Powerful ... The kind of disruptive, aggressive intellect that a new generation is closely watching' Afua Hirsch, Guardian 'Part biography, part polemic, this powerful, wide-ranging study picks apart the British myth of meritocracy' David Olusoga, Guardian A searing modern polemic and Sunday Times bestseller from the BAFTA- and MOBO-award-winning musician and political commentator, Akala. From the first time he was stopped and searched as a child, to the day he realised his mum was white, to his first encounters with racist teachers - race and class have shaped Akala's life and outlook. In this unique book he takes his own experiences and widens them out to look at the social, historical and political factors that have left us where we are today. Covering everything from the police, education and identity to politics, sexual objectification and the far right, Natives will speak directly to British denial and squeamishness when it comes to confronting issues of race and class that are at the heart of the legacy of Britain's racialised empire. 'A book bristling with intelligence and insight' Irish Times

Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire

Natives

Cassandra Tang

It is especially odd in a nation where much of the population is apparently proud of Britain’s empire that critics of one of its most obvious legacies should be asked to get over it, the very same thing from the past that they are proud of.

I was not born with an opinion of the world but it clearly seemed that the world had an opinion of people like me.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE JAMES TAIT BLACK PRIZE | THE JHALAK PRIZE | THE BREAD AND ROSES AWARD & LONGLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING 'This is the book I've been waiting for - for years. It's personal, historical, political, and it speaks to where we are now' Benjamin Zephaniah 'I recommend Natives to everyone' Candice Carty-Williams From the first time he was stopped and searched as a child, to the day he realised his mum was white, to his first encounters with racist teachers - race and class have shaped Akala's life and outlook. In this unique book he takes his own experiences and widens them out to look at the social, historical and political factors that have left us where we are today. Covering everything from the police, education and identity to politics, sexual objectification and the far right, Nativesspeaks directly to British denial and squeamishness when it comes to confronting issues of race and class that are at the heart of the legacy of Britain's racialised empire. Natives is the searing modern polemic and Sunday Times bestseller from the BAFTA and MOBO award-winning musician and political commentator, Akala. 'The kind of disruptive, aggressive intellect that a new generation is closely watching' Afua Hirsch, Observer 'Part biography, part polemic, this powerful, wide-ranging study picks apart the British myth of meritocracy' David Olusoga, Guardian 'Inspiring' Madani Younis, Guardian 'Lucid, wide-ranging' John Kerrigan, TLS 'A potent combination of autobiography and political history which holds up a mirror to contemporary Britain' Independent 'Trenchant and highly persuasive' Metro 'A history lesson of the kind you should get in school but don't' Stylist

Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire - The Sunday Times Bestseller

sina (she/her) 

It is America's biggest contradiction that the country is perhaps the best example of a successful multi-racial polity in the world today, and also a brutal white-supremacist empire at the same time. Which of these trends shall win?

Yes, you have survived, but it is bittersweet; some of the best minds of your generation have been wasted, the children that grew up with the safety blankets of money and whiteness have gotten twice as far working half as hard, they are still having the same cocaine parties that they were having twenty years ago and they still have not ever been searched by the police once, let alone had their parties raided or been choke-slammed to death.

I shit myself and I learned to screw up my face instead of smiling, I learned to shout instead of crying and I learned to fight my peers even when I really wanted to hug them.

There is no equality before the law. The whole of society knows this to be true, yet they pretend otherwise. When you meet your own powerlessness before the institution that claims to be protecting you, you feel both stupid and cheated. 

SHORTLISTED FOR THE JAMES TAIT BLACK PRIZE | THE JHALAK PRIZE | THE BREAD AND ROSES AWARD & LONGLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING 'This is the book I've been waiting for - for years. It's personal,historical,political, and it speaks to where we are now' Benjamin Zephaniah 'I recommend Natives to everyone' Candice Carty-Williams From the first time he was stopped and searched as a child,to the day he realised his mum was white,to his first encounters with racist teachers - race and class have shaped Akala's life and outlook. In this unique book he takes his own experiences and widens them out to look at the social, historical and political factors that have left us where we are today. Covering everything from the police,education and identity to politics,sexual objectification and the far right, Nativesspeaks directly to British denial and squeamishness when it comes to confronting issues of race and class that are at the heart of the legacy of Britain's racialised empire. Natives is the searing modern polemic and Sunday Times bestseller from the BAFTA and MOBO award-winning musician and political commentator, Akala. 'The kind of disruptive,aggressive intellect that a new generation is closely watching' Afua Hirsch, Observer 'Part biography,part polemic,this powerful,wide-ranging study picks apart the British myth of meritocracy' David Olusoga, Guardian 'Inspiring' Madani Younis, Guardian 'Lucid,wide-ranging' John Kerrigan, TLS 'A potent combination of autobiography and political history which holds up a mirror to contemporary Britain' Independent 'Trenchant and highly persuasive' Metro 'A history lesson of the kind you should get in school but don't' Stylist

Taha

Review
I listened to this via audiobook because Akala is an accomplished speaker and rapper, I thought it would enhance the experience. I was absolutely right, the intonation and rhythm in his narration captivated me. I found this to be a throughly eye-opening, educational and fascinating story of both Akala's own life and how that intertwines with the broader story of class, the British empire and racism.

I learned some incredibly shocking things about Britain and gave me a new appreciation for the structural issues that we face in the UK. I think we, the young, online generation spend too much time focused on the tribulations of the USA, letting the quiet racism of Britain destroy the lives of black and brown people in this country. I can see myself reading this book again in 6 months. 

An insane fact I learnt while reading this book is that the British government destroyed over a million documents to hide the fact that 20,000 Kenyans were executed in British concentration camps in the 1950s. A GENOCIDE AT THE HANDS OF THE BRITISH, 70 YEARS AGO.
Recommend to a friend? Yes
Read again? Yes 
Inspired me to create? No
Filled me with the inescapable dread that I will never be able to make something as good as this? Yes

Angbeen Abbas

hmmmm, not sure if this is because i'm reading this right after finishing insurgent empire, but i found this to be a bit of a tedious read simply because i'm already familiar with so many of the concepts and ideas that he talks about. i think i would've enjoyed this more if it was more autobiographical because those are the bits i really enjoyed. i still think though that if you're looking for an antiracism 101 book, this is pretty good.

priya

“Where we do discuss race in public, we have been trained to see racism – if we see it at all – as an issue of interpersonal morality. Good people are not racist, only bad people are. This neat binary is a great way of avoiding any real discussion at all.”

“we are trained to recognise the kinds of racism that tend to be engaged in by poorer people.”

“I was born into these currents, I did not create or invent them and I make no claims to objectivity. I find the whole idea that we can transcend our experiences; and take a totally unbiased look at the world to be totally ridiculous, yet that’s what many historians and academics claim to do. We are all influenced by what we are exposed to and experience; the best we can hope for is to try and be as fair as possible from within the bias inherent in existence.”

“The ‘stop making excuses’ clause is there to suggest that black people are not permitted to make use of the very same tools available to the rest of humanity to understand the shape of their communities today because their black skin and inferior culture are a sufficient explanation for any issues they might be having.”

“First, Britain never practised open white supremacy on domestic soil as it did in the colonies, so those of us who hail from the colonies have a different understanding of British racial governance, even if we were born here.”

“The teacher’s response was a characteristic mix of sarcasm, total dismissal and feigned concern. She declared to the whole class that we were having an official ‘be nice to Kingslee day’ or ‘BNTK day’ – yes, she did abbreviate it and even wrote it on the board in big capital letters – and that Kingslee would today be able to do and say anything he wanted without anyone speaking back in response. Of course, I understood what was happening and tried to stay silent that day, but she directed every question at me, insisting to the class that Kingslee had to be given the chance to answer first, as it was BNTK day today after all. I was ten years old.”

“In some cases, scholars were more willing to entertain the idea that aliens were responsible for African history than Africans!”

“despite Britain spending almost two centuries as the dominant transatlantic slave trader, with all the torture, rape and mass murder ... , despite Britain refusing to back abolition when other European powers had paved the way, despite Britain spending the 1790s warring to keep slavery intact all over the Caribbean, despite Britain trying to crush the only successful slave revolution in human history and then helping their French enemies attempt to do the same, despite Britain refusing to even recognise the first Caribbean state to abolish slavery, despite all of this, some ‘historians’, teachers and assorted nationalists are asking us all to believe the self-serving fairy tale that suddenly, in 1807 – just three years after Haitian independence – guided by William Wilberforce alone, Britain abolished slavery because it was ‘the right thing to do’.”

“To make the simple bald claim that Africans were docile or that they generally ‘sold their own people’, knowing that most West Africans of the time were not involved in slave trading at all, is like saying the English killed their own people when they invaded Ireland or fought the French, because today we see them all as white and European, and of course it’s not as if the English ruling class were treating their own people wonderfully during the period in question.”

“we identified with an idealised version of the island over and above the country that we had been born into – in fact, we identified with blackness over and above being British.”

“Britain, France and the USA had consistently blocked calls from the international community to impose an arms embargo on South Africa, even after the murder of schoolchildren and the banning of opposition political parties and groups; this is usually what the great powers call ‘supporting democracy abroad’.”

“It is one of history’s great ironies that the most extreme incarnation of white supremacy, the Nazis, did more to undermine white dominance, damage Western prestige and make space for ‘third world’ freedom struggles than any other force in the previous three centuries.”

“While black America’s particular racial history has produced a political tradition that cannot ... avoid centring the black–white dichotomy, it’s understandably hard to convince our Igbo homies that fled Biafra or those that fled the civil war in Sierra Leone that mighty whitey is the sole – or even in many cases the primary – issue. It’s notable that while black-American political scholarship has been grounded in critiquing race and white supremacy, continental African scholars and activists ... understand the legacies of colonialism and white supremacy ... have chosen ... to also focus their critiques on the failures, greed, corruption and murder of Africa’s own ruling elites.”

“Can we, the Caribbean and black-American descendants of racist chattel slavery who have been made ‘black’, tell the Yoruba people, of whom there are almost fifty million, that they must simply forgo their specific ethnic history of over 2000 years in favour of simplified black solidarity, simply because racism exists? Should Jamaican Rastas ignore the history of religious persecution, police brutality and class snobbery they have suffered in Jamaica, simply because ‘we are all black’?”

“Before we look at Brexit, I would like to make some obvious observations. By analysing the role that xenophobia and racism played in Brexit – a role much more ambiguous than in the election of Trump – I am not suggesting that everyone that voted leave is akin to the Grand Wizard of the KKK, nor that remain voters are a homogeneous group of revolutionary anti-racists. This should be so obvious it should hardly need stating, but given our national immaturity around discussions of race it perhaps does.”

“On 21 January 2017 the far-right parties of several major European countries met for the first time in the German city of Koblenz to outline their ‘vision for a Europe of freedom’ – I am entirely unsure who it is Europe is colonised by and needs to be free of, but again we see a clear articulation of a sense of victimhood.”

Andrew Sztehlo

An absolutely necessary read for this moment in time - especially if you are white. This book revises the accepted and false history of the British empire and looks at how it has continued to damage and erode race relations in the UK today, suggesting explicit links between both race and class. Akala adopts a conversational tone that makes the book an easy digestible read, even as he details brutal acts of violence committed in the name of British imperialism and white supremacy. We have a lot to fix in our country and this book is a good roadmap on how to start doing that, and to be a better ally.

Nadia

Our country really needs to teach us about the empire in schools. I learned nothing in school about this and it’s appalling.

Natives Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire

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