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What makes for Black Success in Britain today?

John Root offers this review of Black Success—The Surprising Truth by Tony Sewell, published earlier this month. Sewell was recently chair of the UK’s government’s Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, the recommendations which are now the foundations of the government’s policy on tackling racial inequalities.

At the time in early 1970s that Tony Sewell was attending an Anglican Sunday School in south-east London, I was leading a Pathfinder group of 60 or so of his mainly black contemporaries in north-west London. So reading his book at times generated nostalgia, often strong appreciation of his perceptions, and resonance with his positivity and love of reggae.

It is a book of two halves. Part 1 is ‘Education’, referring both to his own experience and his work as an educationalist. He describes his childhood and early education; his involvement in responding to life in Britain, especially writing regularly for the ‘Voice’ black newspaper; his work on The Hackney Learning Trust, and overturning the shibboleths surrounding the education of black children; and setting up the Generating Genius project to develop STEM capabilities amongst, initially, black teenage boys.

Part 1 has already included capsules on what underlies black success, such as Jamaican sprinting gold medallists. Similar exemplary stories are the theme of Part 2 on ‘Black Success’, where he looks at Nigeria, not just at the curious fact of it being the home of world Scrabble champions, but also at the role of faith. A chapter on the famous Jamaican nurse Mary Seacole imaginatively links her with her with the white Jamaican record producer, Chris Blackwell. Sewell flips the narrative of seeing her as being a racialistically overlooked equivalent of Florence Nightingale to instead having the qualities that Sewell is foregrounding—readiness for adventure and the risk-taking utilisation of whatever resources life has presented us with. Instead of being seen for this, in the contemporary debate ‘she is made fit for the needs of modern white guilt and black historic racial trauma’ (page 170).

The chapter on ‘The Housing Lark’ shows how the racism of landlords led the early immigrants to buy their own houses, creating long-term financial benefit. The final chapter utilises once more his love of stories, of ‘Odysseus and the Five Talents’, and exemplified in the success of the 1976 West Indian cricket team, his central role in the highly controversial Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparities, and his late life move into developing a ‘wellness’ farm back to his Jamaican roots.

Characteristics of the book—and of Tony Sewell

What are the characteristics of this book, and of Sewell’s approach, and what makes it such a compelling narrative? For me, six things stand out.

Imagination

Sewell was an enthusiastic English Literature scholar at the University of Essex. As I have already mentioned, his book abounds in love for stories and imaginative connections. Thus he connects the Jamaican folk-lore stories about the spider god Anansi with D H Lawrence’s observation in The Rainbow about the gargoyles on Lincoln Cathedral—they are