For two weeks, nine other UWM students and I immersed ourselves in a comparative study on Black life in the UK. The program originated at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement after the death of George Floyd.
The short-term study in London takes place in the first couple of weeks of January over the winter semester. As with most study abroad programs, it’s a life-changing experience for a student. However, even more so in this case because it provides an opportunity to engage with race and social justice from outside the American perspective.
We all returned home having gained knowledge, experience and stories from London, which students can compare/contrast with the United States to contribute to social justice causes in their own unique fashion.
This personal reflection essay is one of the ways I am bringing what I learned, heard and experienced in London back home.
A comparative study on the movements of Black life in the UK.
“Movements of Black Life: A Comparative Study in the UK” aims to study global resistance efforts and compare their history and effectiveness with those in the United States. The course uses an anthropological approach to examine race and Blackness.
In this course, the social construct of race is examined, and there is special focus on the different interpretations of Black in the UK compared to the United States.
Students received lectures and guidance from UWM Prof. Marquise Mays, as well as engaged with specific aspects of the art and culture in their own time. The methodology of researching the course’s topic varied from student to student, but included archiving, curation, activism, writing, film and policy reform.
Class-Day Field Visits During the Program:
Museums represent the victors, not the victims.
Historian, artist and educator Danny Thompson led our group through the British Museum, highlighting the African artifacts and histories that aren’t openly highlighted.
Many of the pieces in the museum were taken years and years ago through theft while colonizing and conquering areas of Africa. Therefore, much of the information presented is biased and does not paint the whole picture, as it neglects certain historical relevance to fit a specific narrative.
While on this tour, Thompson was interrupted by a passerby who was visiting the museum. They challenged what he was presenting about the racial demographic of early Egyptians and the historical evidence pointing toward Black African people making up the civilization.
The scholar diffused the situation by shutting down the conflict and turning it into an example of institutionalized and systematic teaching of a biased version of history. The passerby, who was White, claimed they were from and grew up in Egypt, which taught them that Black people never lived in Egypt.
Stolen artifacts clutter much of the British Museum, including the robbed mummified corpses of people who deserved to stay in their ritualized resting place. However, instead, they were stolen by a nation more interested in parading them in a museum as a symbol of their nation’s triumph and level of power.
Public museums or government-funded archives often guarantee that they are not going to paint their country in a bad light. Therefore, it’s essentially a careful curation of artifacts and stories that fit a government-approved narrative.
Before my studies in London, I never realized how deep the manipulated truths coming from a government can go. For a naive reason, I believed that if there was one place history and fact could be trusted, it was the museum.
This is not to say a museum or the people working there are inherently malevolent, but its purpose can be quite deceptive.
Thompson drove home the point to not be afraid to question and to search out all sources before concluding. He was well-researched and rigorous in his pursuit of bringing buried aspects of African culture to light.
Archiving the past to have a future.
An important aspect of our classes’ studies in London was exploring archiving as a form of resistance and remembering. Specifically, the importance of who is doing the archiving and what artifacts or pieces they are memorializing.
The British Museum was an archive, but it represents a deceptive image of the past. A successful archive understands the material it’s preserving and goes about to ethically collect artifacts. The archivist is concerned with getting artifacts that matter to more than just the dominating people in a society.
In London, the class visited June Givanni’s PanAfrican Cinema Archive, which holds a collection of archived material and media texts related to Black British culture and PanAfrican cinema.
It was in this space that BAFTA winner Givanni herself shared pieces of the collection and screened a selection of films, which included a documentary on Afrofuturism. Givanni, providing an intimate learning experience, showed us that no matter how big or small the team and space are, every level of archiving has value.
Without an understanding and a full picture of the past, there can be no work toward a better tomorrow. Work like Givanni’s is important to building a movement through education and the context of past forms of resistance.
There is a direct intersection between knowledge and power, which is why we see book burnings and other forms of censorship from the dominant authority to keep the subordinate class down. Epistemopolitics is a name for this intersection, and it’s important to understand it in relation to the archive.
Academic Raffaello Palandri says, “epistemopolitics within the archive is inseparable from political economy and state sovereignty.”
Palandri also notes in an article on the archive as a site for power, the following: “The archive, as both a concept and a material reality, operates not merely as a passive repository of records but as a dynamic locus where power, memory, and knowledge intertwine in intricate and often fraught relations.”
The idea of an archive possessing power is illustrated by the British Museum, who continue perpetuating certain narratives to keep control. Archives, like what June Givanni has curated, help build the narratives of marginalized peoples, often not being deemed worthy of preservation.
The different ways to resist and respond to injustice.
Brixton Town Hall and center in London, UK. Photo: Ethan Ainley Credit: Ethan Ainley 
A mural in Brixton says, “Stay in Peace.” Photo: Ethan Ainley Credit: Ethan Ainley 
The Brixton Market space. Photo: Ethan Ainley 
Sign in London, UK speaks to the cultural diversity of the community in Brixton. Photo: Ethan Ainley Credit: Ethan Ainley 
The outside of a department store in Brixton. Photo: Ethan Ainley Credit: Ethan Ainley
Zita Holbourne spoke with our class about her work in the UK and around the world. She has been an activist and artist, mounting campaigns to fight for human rights.
Resistance takes many forms, and not everyone is stepping foot on the frontline to contribute their part in the fight. Recognizing the capabilities and strengths of yourself will allow you the chance to strategically and effectively target the area of the movement best suited to your individual talents.
An example is with the Autograph: “I Still Dream of Lost Vocabularies” Exhibition and the protest artwork that was being exhibited. Each artist was making their own statement on social justice issues, as well as using that statement as a launching point for conversation and connecting people to causes.
To resist is to not stop, and to not stop is to always be moving. A movement must always be making ground, or it might face a stagnant point or worse, extermination.
Holbourne shared her vast experience with campaigns that go back decades. She encourages engagement with causes in the UK as we go back to the States. Part of the reason for this is that the United States’ social issues bleed over globally, but not the other way around.
The United States is also a world leader that other countries are looking toward for judgment and direction.
Whether it’s making art, writing someone’s story or filming important moments, there is a need for every aspect of a movement.
Cinema and the art’s role in sparking conversation.
The British Film Institute offers a mediatheque where the class spent time exploring the institution’s curated collection. Cinema has an important part in archiving, as well as spreading messages.
In the UK, there is more emphasis on public access to knowledge. Museums are often free, and areas like the mediatheque provide an accessible base of knowledge.
Holbourne would use her art skills to craft banners and designs for her campaign work. A movement of resistance can’t centralize around a message without the intersectional relationship it has with art.
An interesting experience that the class had in London was seeing “Hamilton” in the West End theatre district. This commentary on the United States and immigrants held extreme relevance to the topic of our study abroad.
The “American Dream” was paralleled with the promise of a palace that many migrants came to Britain looking for. These migrants came from the Caribbean and West Indies, looking to prosper in their motherland. Instead, they were met with discrimination and hostility.
This wasn’t a dream; it was a trap. The Windrush Generation is the basis of much of the UK’s current race relations, and it was a specific point-of-study for the program. The class visited places like the Docklands Museum and the Museum of the Home.
In those two locations, there were stories and history of the migrants who made London and the rest of Great Britain. Their stories were not curated by the government like the stolen artifacts they keep in the British Museum. Instead, people within the community had to ensure that their memories were safely archived.
Conversation around art from the Windrush Generation and the descendants of those people built a narrative and propelled a movement. Similarly, in the United States, there is art surrounding figures of the Civil Rights Movement and, more recently, the Black Lives Matter movement.
The next step in this connection is to tangibly pass legislation that restores and repairs the damage done to the oppressed. The jump from art, communication and protest to action and results doesn’t always land.
DIDO: Short Experimental Documentary
Dido Elizabeth Belle is a mixed-race English aristocrat from the 1700s, who was the daughter of Maria Belle and Sir John Lindsay, an aristocratic naval officer.
Belle’s mother was an enslaved African woman with whom Lindsay had a relationship. Lindsay brought Belle back to England with him.
In England, Belle was raised as a ward of Lindsay’s uncle, William Murray, which led to her integration into some of the highest social circles in society.
I first discovered her story after looking more into English musical artist Dido‘s discography during my time in London.
A 2013 film titled Belle was made about the story of this radical figure of English high society. It was written by Misan Sagay and directed by Amma Asante, both of whom are Black British women.
This story of a Black African woman trying to integrate into white society, especially during the time of slavery and legally being a slave herself, inspired me to contemplate my experiences with the Movements of Black Life in the UK program.
I enjoy experimenting with scrapbooking or collages of images that try to set a mood or elicit a feeling rather than providing narrative context. There is less information on Dido, and this is more of a portrait of the migrant African and Black British experience.
My short documentary features images of stolen artifacts from the British Museum, as well as art from an exhibition at the Docklands Museum in London. I included archived interviews of Black Britons from the 1970s and reggae music, combined with a live performance from Dido in the Brixton neighborhood.
REFERENCES AND MATERIAL USED:
- Blacks Britannica (1978) | Controversial Documentary on Racism in the UK
- Kenwood: The Story of Dido Elizabeth Belle
- Researching David Martin’s Portrait of Dido Belle and Lady Elizabeth Murray
- 1970s London, Brixton Street Scenes and Daily Life, Black British Archive, 16mm
- 1970s London, Reggae Dance Hall, Young People Dancing, Black British Archive, 16mm
- Early 1970s London, West Indian Dance Hall, Reggae Club, Black Britain
- People arrive for London reggae festival – 1970s Black British and early skinheads
- Dido – White Flag (Live at Brixton Academy)
- Dido – Thank You (Live at The Brixton Academy, 2004)
Call-to-action and what YOU can do.
Holbourne, Thompson and other educators we met along the way drove home the importance of enacting change here in the States. What we do can affect them greatly, as we hold so much dominance in the world.
Adventure outside of your comfort zone and expose yourself to new ideas. Even better, if you can travel and experience another culture outside of the United States. The mindset and scope of possibilities widen when going on these adventures.
Here at home, we face challenges such as division, oppression and censorship in the form of political parties, late-stage capitalism, widening wealth gap, ICE and limiting speech.
Find the resources you are passionate about and volunteer, or begin organizing yourself and pursuing solo projects. Uniquely interact with resistance and change. Don’t hold back on working toward the right thing.
Taking your own steps toward resisting or fighting for human rights should always begin at the hyper-local level. Everything else will branch out, and there will be a butterfly effect. Change your own community; change the world.
Read More:
“Reflecting on a Study Abroad in London: A Personal Essay & Experience” is part of a larger UWM Post special project titled “Movements of Black Life: A Comparative Study in the UK.”