Kehinde Nkosi Andrews (born January 1983) [1] is a British academic and author specialising in Black Studies.
Andrews is a Professor of Black Studies in the School of Social Sciences at Birmingham City University. [2] He is the director of the Centre for Critical Social Research, founder of the Harambee Organisation of Black Unity, [3] and co-chair of the UK Black Studies Association. [4] Andrews is the first Black Studies professor in the UK and led the establishment of the first Black Studies programme in Europe at Birmingham City University. [5] [6] [7]
Andrews is of British African-Caribbean heritage. [8] He earned a PhD. in Sociology and Cultural Studies from the University of Birmingham in 2011. His thesis was entitled Back to Black: Black Radicalism and the Supplementary School Movement. [9]
Andrews regularly appears in the media discussing issues of race and racism, colonialism and slavery, and British nationalism. He contributes to The Guardian , [10] [11] The Independent , [12] New Statesman , [13] CNN, [14] OpenDemocracy, [15] and often appears as a guest on the BBC [16] [17] [18] [19] and Good Morning Britain . [20] [21] [22] [23]
In 2016, Andrews criticized universities in the United Kingdom for institutional racism, specifically the lack of diversity in students' assigned readings. [5] The following year, Andrews spoke at the Oxford Union, arguing that British education perpetuates racism. [24] He also gave a TEDxYouth talk in Birmingham entitled "How to Stay Radical within an Institution", exploring how Black Studies can exist within the historically racist institution of the university. [25]
In 2019, Andrews took part in a debate on whether or not the West should pay reparations for slavery at Intelligence Squared, arguing in favour of reparations. [26] He also spoke about his book Back to Black in the John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies at Duke University [27] and gave a talk at Tate Liverpool on the role of Black radicalism in the United Kingdom and the United States. [28] In that year, Andrews appeared on Good Morning Britain, where he argued that the Royal Air Force bombing of Nazi Germany constituted a war crime [29] and equated the racial views of Winston Churchill to those of Adolf Hitler. [30]
Andrews narrated the film The Psychosis of Whiteness, which explores race and racism through cinematic representations of the slave trade. [31]
In July 2019, Andrews criticized the idea that prominent non-white members of the Conservative Party automatically represent racial progress, saying that a "cabinet packed with ministers with brown skin wearing Tory masks represents the opposition of racial progress". [32]
In May 2020, Andrews was a guest on Russell Brand's YouTube channel discussing racism in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd. [33] He was also interviewed by the Los Angeles Review of Books discussing Malcolm X and the question of violence in Black radicalism. [34]
In August 2020, Andrews joined calls to drop "Rule, Britannia!" and "Land of Hope and Glory" from the Last Night of the Proms, stating that the lyrics contained "racist propaganda from a time where Britain was the leading slave-trading nation in the world". [35]
In June 2021, Andrews described Elizabeth II as "the number one symbol of white supremacy in the entire world". [36] Following her death in September 2022, he called for the abolition of the monarchy. [37]
Reparations for slavery is the application of the concept of reparations to victims of slavery or their descendants. There are concepts for reparations in legal philosophy and reparations in transitional justice. In the US, reparations for slavery have been both given by legal ruling in court and/or given voluntarily by individuals and institutions.
Bernard Alexander Montgomery Grant was a British politician who was the Member of Parliament for Tottenham, London, from 1987 to his death in 2000. He was a member of the Labour Party.
White guilt is a belief that white people bear a collective responsibility for the harm which has resulted from historical or current racist treatment of people belonging to other ethnic groups, as for example in the context of the Atlantic slave trade, European colonialism, and the genocide of indigenous peoples.
Black British people are a multi-ethnic group of British people of Sub-Saharan African or Afro-Caribbean descent. The term Black British developed in the 1950s, referring to the Black British West Indian people from the former Caribbean British colonies in the West Indies, sometimes referred to as the Windrush Generation, and Black British people descending from Africa.
David Harewood OBE is a British actor, presenter and the current president of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He is best known for his roles as CIA Counterterrorism Director David Estes in Homeland (2011–2012), and as J'onn J'onzz / Martian Manhunter and Hank Henshaw / Cyborg Superman in Supergirl (2015–2021).
Reparations for slavery refers to providing benefits to victims of slavery and/or their descendants. There are concepts for reparations in legal philosophy and reparations in transitional justice. Reparations can take many forms, including practical and financial assistance to the descendants of enslaved people, acknowledgements or apologies to peoples or nations negatively affected by slavery, or honouring the memories of people who were enslaved by naming things after them.
Racism in the United Kingdom has a long history and includes structural discrimination and hostile attitudes against various ethnic minorities. The extent and the targets have varied over time. It has resulted in cases of discrimination, riots and racially motivated murders.
Doreen Delceita Lawrence, Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon, is a British Jamaican campaigner and the mother of Stephen Lawrence, a black British teenager who was murdered in a racist attack in South East London in 1993. She promoted reforms of the police service and founded the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust. She was appointed to the Order of the British Empire for services to community relations in 2003, and was created a life peer in 2013.
Good Morning Britain is a British breakfast television programme that is broadcast on ITV. It first aired on 28 April 2014 and is broadcast live every weekday from 6:00 am to 9:00 am across the United Kingdom. The programme features a variety of news, interviews, politics, sport, entertainment, competitions and weather as well as local news bulletins delivered by the ITV regions. The programme is currently presented by Susanna Reid, Kate Garraway, Charlotte Hawkins, Ranvir Singh, Richard Madeley, Ed Balls, Adil Ray and Robert Rinder.
Anti-racism encompasses a range of ideas and political actions which are meant to counter racial prejudice, systemic racism, and the oppression of specific racial groups. Anti-racism is usually structured around conscious efforts and deliberate actions which are intended to create equal opportunities for all people on both an individual and a systemic level. As a philosophy, it can be engaged in by the acknowledgment of personal privileges, confronting acts as well as systems of racial discrimination and/or working to change personal racial biases. Major contemporary anti-racism efforts include the Black Lives Matter movement and workplace anti-racism.
David Adetayo Olusoga is a British historian, writer, broadcaster, presenter and filmmaker. He is Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester. He has presented historical documentaries on the BBC and contributed to The One Show and The Guardian.
There have been incidents of racism in the Conservative Party since at least 1964. Conservative shadow defence minister Enoch Powell's "Rivers of Blood" speech in 1968 was both influential and widely regarded as anti-immigrant with racist overtones; the party's leader at the time, Edward Heath, condemned it, although some Conservative MPs defended Powell's speech. Since then, accusations have been made about several leading members of the party and its policies; these have related to prejudice against non-white people.
Priyamvada Gopal is an Indian-born academic, writer and public intellectual who is Professor of Postcolonial Studies at the University of Cambridge. Her primary teaching and research interests are in colonial and postcolonial studies, South Asian literature, critical race studies, and the politics and cultures of empire and globalisation. She has written three books engaging these subjects: Literary Radicalism in India (2005), The Indian English Novel (2009) and Insurgent Empire (2019). Her third book, Insurgent Empire, was shortlisted for the 2020 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding.
Bellavia Janet Ribeiro-Addy is a British Labour Party politician who has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Clapham and Brixton Hill, previously Streatham, since 2019. In 2020, she was briefly Shadow Minister for Immigration. She chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Afrikan Reparations.
Barbara Makeda Blake-Hannah is a Jamaican author and journalist known for her promotion of Rastafari culture and history. She is also a politician, filmmaker, festival organiser and cultural consultant. She was one of the first black people to be an on-camera reporter and interviewer on British television when, in 1968, she was employed by Thames Television's evening news programme Today. Hannah was sacked because viewers complained about having a black woman on screen. She later returned to Jamaica and was an independent senator in the Parliament of Jamaica from 1984 to 1987.
Aggrey Washington Burke FRCPsych is a British retired psychiatrist and academic, born in Jamaica, who spent the majority of his medical career at St George's Hospital in London, UK, specialising in transcultural psychiatry and writing literature on changing attitudes towards black people and mental health. He has carried out extensive research on racism and mental illness and is the first black consultant psychiatrist appointed by Britain's National Health Service (NHS).
Christopher Kapessa was a Welsh boy who died at the age of 13 in the River Cynon on 1 July 2019. He was pushed from a height of 2.5 metres into the water and declared dead on the same day.
Eve Pitts is a British priest who was the first black woman to be ordained as a vicar in the Church of England. She is known for being outspoken against discrimination. She is a supporter of Emancipation Day.
In the United Kingdom, racial segregation occurred in pubs, workplaces, shops and other commercial premises, which operated a colour bar where non-white customers were banned from using certain rooms and facilities. Segregation also operated in the 20th century in certain professions, in housing and at Buckingham Palace. There were no British laws requiring racial segregation, but until 1965, there were no laws prohibiting racial segregation either.
The New Age of Empire: How Racism and Colonialism Still Rule the World is a 2021 book written by black studies academic Kehinde Andrews.