British African-Caribbean people
British Afro-Caribbean people or British Black Caribbean people[5] an ethnic group in the United Kingdom.[6] They are British citizens whose recent ancestors originate from the Caribbean, and further trace much of their ancestry to West and Central Africa or they are nationals of the Caribbean who reside in the UK. There are some self-identified Afro-Caribbean people who are multi-racial. The most common and traditional use of the term African-Caribbean community is in reference to groups of residents continuing aspects of Caribbean culture, customs and traditions in the UK.
The earliest generations of Afro-Caribbean people to migrate to Britain trace their ancestry to a wide range of Afro Caribbean ethnic groups.[7][8][9] Afro-Caribbean people descend from disparate groups of African peoples who were brought, sold and taken from[10][11] West Africa as slaves to the colonial Caribbean.[12] In addition, British African Caribbeans may have ancestry from various indigenous Caribbean tribes, and from settlers of European and Asian ethnic groups.[13] According to the National Library of Medicine, the average African Caribbean person has on average 20% European Admixture.[14][15]
Arriving in small numbers to reside in port cities in England and Wales since the mid-18th century, the most significant wave of migration came after World War II, coinciding with the decolonisation era and the dissolution of the British Empire. Known as the Windrush generation, they had arrived as citizens of United Kingdom and Colonies (CUKCs) in the 1950s and 1960s owing to birth in the former British colonies of the Caribbean. Although those who settled in the UK prior to 1973 were granted either right of abode or indefinite leave to remain by the Immigration Act 1971, a series of governmental policies had caused some to be erroneously labelled as unlawfully residing in the UK in the 2000s and 2010s, which subsequently became known as the Windrush scandal.[16] The population has a diverse background, with origins in Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Barbados, Grenada, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Lucia, Dominica, Montserrat, British Virgin Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, Cayman Islands,
Anguilla, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Guyana, and Belize.
In the 21st century, Afro-Caribbean communities are present throughout the United Kingdom's major cities, and the surviving members of this generation, sometimes called the Windrush Britons, and their descendants, constitute the multi-ethnic cultural group residing in the country. As there is no specific UK census category which comprehensively covers the community, population numbers remain somewhat ambiguous. 'Black Caribbean' (under a 'Black British' heading), and 'Mixed: White and Black Caribbean' (under a 'Mixed' heading) denote full or partial descent, and recorded 594,825 and 426,715 persons, respectively, at the 2011 United Kingdom census. 'White: White Caribbean', 'Mixed: Caribbean Asian' and 'Mixed: White Caribbean' are census categories which were also utilised.[17][18] In this regard, and illustrating complexities within African Caribbean peoplehood, there are notable examples of those with a parent or grandparent of African-Caribbean ancestry identifying with, or being perceived as, white people in the United Kingdom.[19][20][21][22][23]
Genetics[edit]
Genome-wide studies[edit]
Genome-wide research of Afro-Caribbean people have shown that the grouping, on average, have 77.4% African, 15.9% European, and 6.7% Asian DNA. This 2010 study represented African Caribbeans living within the Caribbean.[118] Within the United Kingdom, men and women of African Caribbean origin or ancestry were also found to have around 13 percent of their DNA from sources other than Africa. In the research, only volunteers who had all four grandparents of Afro-Caribbean origin were sampled.[13] Researchers have been able to attribute this partly to historic European males' sexual exploitation of enslaved African women.[12]
Notable contributions[edit]
Academia[edit]
There are a number of African-Caribbean academics who are especially prominent in the arts and humanities. Professor Paul Gilroy, of Afro-Guyanese and English heritage, is one of Britain's leading academics, having taught sociology at Harvard as well as Goldsmiths College and the London School of Economics.[119] The Jamaican-born cultural theorist Professor Stuart Hall has also been a highly influential British intellectual since the 1960s.[120] Dr. Robert Beckford has presented several national television and radio documentaries exploring African-Caribbean history, culture and religion.[121]
Other prominent academics include Guyanese born Professor Gus John, who has been active in education, schooling and political radicalism in Britain's inner cities such as Manchester, Birmingham and London since the 1960s. He was involved in the organising the "Black people's day of action", a response to the 1981 New Cross Fire. In 1989 he was appointed Director of Education in Hackney and was the first black person to hold such a position. He has also worked as an education consultant in Europe, the Caribbean and Africa. John was the co-ordinator of the Black Parents Movement in Manchester, founded the Education for Liberation book service and helped to organise the International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books in Manchester, London and Bradford. He has worked in a number of University settings, including a visiting Faculty Professor of Education at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow and is currently an associate professor of the Institute of Education at the University of London. Dr "William" Lez Henry works with young people, particularly black boys. He is the founder of Black Liberation Afrikan Knowledge (BLK Friday) a platform for people to give presentations to the community. In 2005, he received an Excellence in Education Award at the Challenging The Genius: Excellent Education for Children: "Our Future is Not a dream", Conference in Chicago, USA. He is one of the founding members of the National Independent Education Coalition (NIEC). Henry previously hosted a fortnightly talk show on popular London pirate radio station Galaxy 102.5FM (formerly 99.5 FM) and who is also a former lecturer of Goldsmiths College. Prof. Harry Goldbourne is a former member of the radical group the Black Unity and Freedom Party who went on to teach at the University of the South Bank.
Social and political issues[edit]
Discrimination and racism[edit]
Historically, community centres have sought to address issues that arise within the community, including problems of police harassment and concerns about the housing of African Caribbeans, which was viewed as discriminatory during the early decades of mass immigration. One such community centre was the Gloucestershire West Indian Association, which was formed in 1962. The formation of this group was in response to a number of issues that arose within the community at this time. These included problems around police harassment and concerns about the housing of Black people on certain council estates in the city, which was viewed as discrimination and segregation.[269] The centres also allowed African-Caribbean peoples to socialise without risking the potential racial discrimination and aggression of "unfriendly pubs".[224] Many of these associations appointed a Community Relations Officer whose role was to liaise between the community and wider British society including the establishment.
Although the community does not face any official or informal restrictions on political participation, Britons of Caribbean origin are under-represented in local and national politics.[63] British African-West Indians have long asserted that they encounter discriminatory barriers to most middle- and higher-status occupations, as well as discrimination in hiring practices at all levels of employment. There is also considerable evidence that African-Caribbean people experience differential treatment at the hands of public officials, the British courts and penal system, and the police.[63] Studies have proposed that the isolation of certain regional urban areas by financial institutions such as insurance brokers disproportionately affects the community to its detriment.[63]
Britain's school system, despite efforts to address issues of discrimination,[270] has often been accused of being racially biased to a perceived lack of representation of Black history and culture in the cirricula.[271] Grenadian author Bernard Coard published How the West Indian Child Is Made Educationally Sub-normal in the British School System in May 1971. For example, the distinct Caribbean dialects, creoles and patois (patwah) spoken by many African-Caribbean immigrants and their descendants, have been problematic in the field of education. In a study by language and education specialist professor Viv Edwards, The West Indian language issue in British schools, language – the Creole spoken by the students – was singled out as an important factor disadvantaging Caribbean children in British schools. The study cited negative attitudes of teachers towards any non-standard variety, noting that: