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

sina (she/her) 

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. 

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.

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.

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?

Cassandra Tang

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

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.

Natives quotes

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