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| Akala in 2014 |
Here is a section of the Wikipedia entry for Akala:
"Kingslee James McLean Daley (born 1 December 1983),[1] known professionally as Akala, is a British rapper, writer and activist from Kentish Town, London. In 2006, he was voted the Best Hip Hop Act at the MOBO Awards[2] and has been included on the annual Powerlist of the 100 most influential Black British people in the UK, most recently making the 2021 edition.[3][4]"
Make no mistake - Natives is a vital book for understanding our society and our history. David Olusoga (see my blogpost link here: Rob Donovan - Author: FRUITS OF THE MARAZION QUAKER LIBRARY (8) - DAVID OLUSOGA (2020) 'BLACK AND BRITISH - A SHORT, ESSENTIAL HISTORY') wrote in the Guardian: 'Part biography, part polemic, this powerful, wide-ranging study picks apart the British myth of meritocracy'. The Independent noted that Akala's 'Natives' was 'A potent combination of autobiography and political history which holds up a mirror to contemporary Britain.
Akala explains that the purpose of his book is to examine how the seemingly impersonal forces of race and class have impacted and continue to shape our lives, and 'how easily I could now be telling you a very different but much more common story of cyclical violence, prison and part-time, insecure and low-paying work'.
In Chapter 1, Akala provides a devastating analysis of Britain in the 1980s, the decade of his birth. We were and are a racist society and he lays the historical reasons bare. Such racism cannot be understood without grasping the power of class. In short, 'whiteness', to quote James Baldwin, 'is a metaphor for power'. Those who have exercised power in the world have been and still largely are white. Blackness is bad; whiteness is good. This was why, in spite of all the sufferings of poor people in Britain, there was a 'Keep Britain White' campaign that sections of the working class supported. Akala's maternal granddad
