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Monday 21 May 2012

Yes, Mary Seacole was Black. So what?

Friday, 2nd October 2009

I confess that until recently I had never heard of Mary Seacole. But, like Boris Johnson, who found himself in this position a few years ago, that reflects poorly on me, not on the redoubtable Seacole.

Brother Liddle says that her inclusion upon new lists of eminent Victorians can only be explained "solely and utterly because she was black". That she was and doubtless that does indeed have something to do with her renewed prominence. But what of it? (I say renewed prominence, incidentally, because it is quite clear that her contemporaries regarded her as a figure of some stature.)

And if she is only remembered today "because she was black" then, who knows, perhaps her disappearance from history for a century or more also had something to do with the colour of her skin. Perhaps not. I don't know. Nor do I much care.

Only a fathead could imagine that there's some kind of competition between Seacole and Florence Nightingale, but only a fathead would assume that it's only legitimate to learn about one of them. Clearly, I think, Nightingale's work in the Crimea was more important than Seacole's. But that doesn't mean the latter's efforts were inconsequential. Besides, her story is interesting for other reasons beyond the ups and downs of what was, by any estimate, a pretty remarkable life.

If Seacole receives more prominence today than might strictly be thought her due then that doesn't seem so very terrible after a century of neglect. Besides, history isn't immutable and, just as novelists drift in and out of fashion, so do historical figures.

Actually, Seacole's story seems worth rescuing from history's bin of discarded celebrities. That's because I don't think it takes too much imagination to appreciate that, taught well, her life has a useful bearing on this moment in British history. (And that's another thing about history: our perception and understanding of it is inevitably informed by present circumstances and concerns.)

Now I'm not, as you may have gathered, black. But it doesn't take much empathy to understand that the story of a half-Scots, half-Creole woman, who became something of a heroine and a celebrity in Britain 150 years ago might be a useful way of helping black (and for that matter asian) kids in inner-city comprehensives appreciate that this island's story is much more multi-coloured and textured than is sometimes appreciated.

Mary Seacole may have been born in Jamaica, but she certainly considered herself British. Her life story - in the Caribbean, Central America and the Crimea - is a useful introduction to questions of Britishness and of Empire, reminding us that both were and are complicated, sometimes contradictory, things. But they were also, at least some of the time and in some ways, inclusive things. That's a useful lesson for our multi-ethnic society to appreciate too.

I daresay that a lot of the time Seacole's subsequent anonymity is explained as the result of prejudice. I'd trust - though I'm not an expert on her - that this isn't the only way the story is approached. Not least because she was honoured in her own time. Bu even if this is all her story is reduced to then one hopes it at least shows kids in inner-city London or Birmingham that a) you can be British and Jamaican or British and Pakistani and b) that race is not an insurmountable obstacle. This too seems a useful lesson. Now obviously there's much more to 19th century British history than Mary Seacole and it would be grotesque if her story was elevated above all others and removed from all context or subject to a too certain 21st century interpretation. But that doesn't mean it can't or shouldn't be a part of the mosaic.

Maybe this is, as Rod suggests, all just a "symbol" of "politically correct stupidity". But I'm not so sure. Here's one reason why. Earlier this week Radio One's Newsbeat interviewed a pair of young BNP supporters. Here's how it went:

Do you think it's OK for people who aren't white in this country to call themselves British?
Joey: Civic-ly British they are. You cannot say they are ethnically British. It's denying our heritage. It's taking that away from us.

At what point do they become ethnically British? How long do they have to be here?

Joey: Well I think it would be an awfully long time before someone would become ethnically British.

So when you see someone like Ashley Cole play for England, are you happy to watch him?

Joey: If he wants to come to this country and he wants to live by our laws, pay into society, that's fine.

But if he wanted to call himself British that would be a problem?

Joey: He cannot say that he's ethnically British.

Why is the idea of races mixing such a bad thing?

Joey: If everybody integrated it would take away everybody's identity.

Mark: I would be upset if there were no more giant pandas, I'd be upset if there were no more lions, if there were no more tigers, so equally I'd be upset if white people weren't here any more.

But we're the same species which makes it a bit different, doesn't it?

Mark: You could say that but if all of a sudden there weren't any sparrows and there were only crows, I'd still be sad there weren't any sparrows.

Can you understand that some people are happy to mix?

Mark: No, I think people have been brainwashed. I think the media, the government, have forced it down people's throats and they've indoctrinated people.

You don't think people are bright enough to decide themselves?

Mark: I think when people are bombarded 24 hours a day to force multiculturalism upon them, people are going to succumb to that. We shouldn't have to bend our ways to people who've been here five minutes.

The New Statesman's Mehdi Hasan complains that this interview was "so staggeringly soft, woefully weak and uncritically unchallenging that I feel sick to my stomach". I'm not so sure. In fact I think I disagree. I think that this is a pretty useful interview precisely because - and remember it's for a Radio One audience of, one presumes, young people who don't pay too much attention to politics - it reveals the BNP's supporters as the bigoted morons they are. Debbie Randle hands them some rope and they're obliging enough to hang themselves with it.

This is where Mary Seacole's story comes in to bat. Kids who learn about this nineteenth century black Briton and her splendid, even inspiring, story may be less inclined to give the BNP the benefit of the doubt. (Not, admittedly, that I think many of them would anyway.) Because Mary Seacole's story refutes the BNP's propaganda quite effectively. (It refutes the Monday Club too, of course.) The BNP would deny a heroine of the Crimean War her Britishness. Shame on them for doing so. Shame too on yahoos who think that Seacole's story has nothing useful to say today.

This is a complicated country and Britishness is a complicated construct. Seacole's story demonstrates that quite effectively, I think, and so, yes, it's daft to think that teaching her story is simply another example of - harrumph! - political correctness gone mad. (In any case, that's such a lazy formulation that it can do few people much credit.)

Then again, I'm only surprised that Brother Liddle's most recent post on this subject didn't also object to the ghastly prospect of yet another Scottish person's story being imposed upon the English without the English, poor lambs, being given an opportunity to stand athwart the curriculum and shout No.

Filed under: Britain (737 more articles) , Education (348 more articles) , Empire (27 more articles) , Race (35 more articles) , Seacole (1 more articles)

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Austin Barry

October 2nd, 2009 7:56am Report this comment

A little bit patronising and possibly even slightly racist Alex. It assumes that Black and Asian (i.e. Pakistani) kids need some corrective historical role models while presumably the Chinese, Filipinos, Polish etc. do not.

Cuffleyburgers

October 2nd, 2009 8:56am Report this comment

Alex - good post.

There have been been black and coloured people mixing in these isles for many years, a point which is rarely made is the sheer numbers of indian soldiers would fought and died in the trenches fro example, and the fact at the close of hostilities in 1945 there were more men of empire (British, Australian, Canadian Indians and Ghurkas and NZ among others) under arms than there were Americans (by around 8m to 7m).

Because any relatively impartial history of the Empire is a no-go area in schools infants do not ever come to confront these facts.

Empire is usually thought of as the ultimate racst construct - in truth it was much more subtle than that.

I am hardly an expert on the empire still less on the racism industry, but it seems to me people rubbed along pretty well - and an individual's colour rarely got in the way of basic decency on a person-to-person level.

Politicians and statesmen (as they are today) are excluded from any requirement to decency because what they do is so Important but even then decisions were generally taken for expediency (either political, economic or strategic) rather than being informed by racism.

I think British children would benefit much more from learning about Empire than from the obsession with Hitler for example.

It has far more to say about the origins of our culture.

Gilbert Rosenkrantz

October 2nd, 2009 9:28am Report this comment

I'm afraid, Alex, there's a glaring error in your logic here: you say that Ms (Mrs?) Seacole would set a good example to those children with a high or higher skin melanin content than the average in the UK. Indeed. Why shouldn't she? But, equally, why should 'she' and not others? Millions of people have emigrated to these shores over the course of our history, yet you, and other colour-conscious, pigeon-holing, unwittingly racist anti-racists pick her out, not because of her achievments, but because of her skin melanin content. You've swallowed the pernicious and racism-encouraging narrative that people need role models that match certain characteristics, most notably their skin colour; Sikhs 'need' Sikh policemen; British children whose great grandparents (yes, some 3/4 generations now) were born in Bangladesh are referred to as Bengali rather than British and 'must' learn Bangla.

The BNP are a tiny organisation. Many of their supporters and members are obsessed by 'race' and 'ethnicity'. However, their race obsession is dwarfed by that manifested by the state and racist, anti-racist pigeon-holers like yourself.

The logical conclusion of skin melanin content matching, religion-matching and 'culture'-matching, in a supposedly multicultural, multi-ethnic society is social breakdown and further, state-enforced atomisation.

Take a good look at yourself for a moment and, for instance, what or 'who' made you refer to Mary Seacole as 'black'? Why not 'white' if she had a Scottish parent? Ask yourself if you'd make the same colour-prejudiced, race-obsessed illogical gymnastics for a 'white' British child? If Sikhs require police and public services that 'reflect' their culture, religion, skin colour et al., why not 'white' children?

I'm afraid that, contrary to fashionable, misguided and popular opinion, those most obsessed with 'race', 'skin melanin' and 'difference' are people like yourself: most likely a piss-poor linguist, few if any friends with higher/lower skin melanin, and a dearth of experience living abroad in a country where you're effectively an 'ethnic' minority.

Wake up! Before it's too late...good blog from you though ;-)

tommyt

October 2nd, 2009 12:13pm Report this comment

Interesting to note that there are 3 wings in the Home Office HQ in Westminster.

One named after Elizabeth Fry, one named after Robert Peel and one named after Mary Seacole.

I always preferred the Seacole wing as it was closest to our sandwich shop (and pub) of choice.

Verity

October 2nd, 2009 2:43pm Report this comment

Well, if she was half-Scots and half-Creole, she certainly wasn't "black" - unless you go by the old American south definition of anything over one-sixteenth Negro made you black by definition.

Creoles are themselves usually (not always) octoroons. At the least, they're one-quarter black. So, referring to this lady as "black" because it suits today's political elite is just plain crazy.

I know nothing about the lady, but today's manipulated Britain has got to be the most obessive country in the world about race. Apparently, our ancestors, quite rightly, were not so focussed because this lady rose to national prominence.

Frankie Heywood

October 2nd, 2009 3:47pm Report this comment

Rod is, as usual, on to something: I have heard it argued (by people who are not very interested in British history other than asserting that it has been 'oppressive' and 'colonialist')that the fact that not many people have heard of Mary Seacole until recently goes to 'prove' racism. The fact that Florence Nightingale (white, British, part of the establishment) has been celebrated, and Mary Seacole has not, just confirms that most history as taught in schools is racist. Therefore, to redress the balance, her story is being heavily promoted in schools. There is nothing wrong in learning about Mary Seacole's good works, but when the story is used as a vehicle for promoting social engineering and political correctness, then it becomes highly questionable

Cato

October 2nd, 2009 3:58pm Report this comment

Part of the difficulty here is that the BNP youth are in many ways parroting the very views they purport to despise, those of the multiculturalists. If they see their identity as wrapped up with their "ethnicity" than their statements are hardly surprising. But that is exactly the worldview multiculturalists support.

Particularly reflective of this is the question "how long do they have to be here to be British?" It is properly assumed that the answer should be if they live in Britain and identify with Britain then they are British. Yet, Americans whose ancestors arrived a century and a half ago are told they cannot consider themselves "Native Americans." People who have spent their entire lives in Africa, because their skin contains insufficient melanin, are told that they are not truly "African." And on and on.

It just shouldn't surprise anyone when a mirror image of the multiculturalists' illogic is reflected back at them.

Verity

October 3rd, 2009 12:04am Report this comment

Cato - Not to detract from your post in any way, but you write: "...Yet, Americans whose ancestors arrived a century and a half ago...".

A century and a half ago, America was well settled, with big, bustling and sophisticated cities in the NE and smaller towns and cities all the way out to the West Coast. The original settlers you refer to landed on Plymouth Rock in around 1620. So almost four hundred years ago,

De Rigueur

October 3rd, 2009 10:44am Report this comment

Mr Rosenkrantz,

Terrific post.

Dontcha think darling Verity?

pedar Macodagh

October 3rd, 2009 12:51pm Report this comment

Sory, but I cannot see how the answers given by the two young BNP supporters show them to be 'morons'.
Their comments are perfectly sensible.

daniel maris

October 3rd, 2009 2:14pm Report this comment

Well, yes we go to Liddle for the jokes and to you for something more reflective it would seem.

I agree that the Seacole business though overplayed is justifiable in that for the best part of a century she was written OUT of the story (as Darwinesque racism got a hold of the European imagination).

I would justify the Radio 1 interview on the basis of free speech. I think the best defence against totalitarianism is free speech - so we have the right to mock prophets but also the totalitarians have a right to put their views.

You refer to Britishness as a "construct" and that post modern sounding idea actually is not so far removed from the older idea of the political community.

It seems to me that what we require of citizens in this country is a minimal commitment to its political (in the widest sense) institutions. People who do their duty as citizens are as British as those who ancestors have been living in these isles for the last 2000 years. Equally people of "long descent" who are prepared to betray those institutions do not seem to me to be British at all - people for instance prepared to surrender us to an undemocratic Euro superstate, people seeking to establish a global Islamic caliphate, people who formerly woudl have subordinated us to the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany.

A. MacAulay

October 3rd, 2009 4:56pm Report this comment

Why is it still respectable in our "Post-Modern" world to read, write and accept as given a "Modernist", mainly Marxist interpretation of history, and especially of the British Empire? This empire grew up in the C18th, the Enlightenment, reached its zenith in the 19th and was ground down by the rise of "Modern" industrial states, in particular Prussia, with absolutist or totalitarian aims.

If Mary Seacole has been neglected, then this can be redressed without turning her memory into a reparations icon. If further reading is required then try Kipling's Gunga Din.

Simon Stephenson

October 4th, 2009 11:30am Report this comment

"Now obviously there's much more to 19th century British history than Mary Seacole and it would be grotesque if her story was elevated above all others and removed from all context or subject to a too certain 21st century interpretation. But that doesn't mean it can't or shouldn't be a part of the mosaic."

Come on! You know you're being disingenuous here. Rod's argument is not that Mary Seacole doesn't deserve to be part of the mosaic, nor that maybe some people are mistaken in giving her too large a part. It's that the decision to give her such a large part is a symptom of the concerted attempt to subordinate historical education to the cause of encouraging "good" citizenship today. What Rod is suggesting is by all means tell the story of Mary Seacole in citizenship lessons, but don't corrupt the teaching of history by aggrandising makeweights who are useful to modern social conditioning, and trivialising the big hitters who aren't.

It shows little faith in humanity to believe that people will only reach "good" conclusions if they are prevented from reaching "bad" ones.

A. MacAulay

October 4th, 2009 12:16pm Report this comment

Perhaps to clarify my own comment and in thankful response to Simon Stephenson whose contribution was more succinct, I meant that the British Empire cannot justly be compared with "Modern" ideologically driven utopian states, such as the 3rd Reich, Soviet Union, Fascist Italy, Imperial Japan, etc. Institutionalised public contrition as practiced (rightly) in Germany, or assiduously avoided by Japan, is not required of us, and certainly not as a sort of flagellant, anti-imperialist penance.

Beer Moth

October 4th, 2009 4:24pm Report this comment

Only one problem Doc: she wasn't black.

Is she still worth utilising now?

Geoff Miller

October 22nd, 2009 7:19am Report this comment

Ashley Cole is a British citizen but not ethnically British.

What's your problem.

Do the native British have no right to exist?

If it's racist to assert the existence of the native British people and their rights to land, culture and religion then surely every assertion of race is racist - like Black History Month, home rule for India etc etc.

The fact is, by attacking people who are proud of being native British and speak out to defend their right to exist and be recognised, YOU are the racist.

We live in a country where the native people are officially designated as "White - other".

What better proof of institutional racism is there that the native population is not even officially recognised whilst ALL others are.

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