Two Figures of the Colonial: The Consistent and The Paradox

Rick Braithwaite's To Sir With Love has a memorable line, describing the state of the author in the postwar British society. The author discovers that the racial discrimination he faces is the result of being a 'British without being a Briton'. As a historian, my interest is piqued by this sentence.

1. How does someone become British without being a Briton?
2. What does it mean to be British without being a Briton?

Braithwaite was born in Guyana, an island nation in the Caribbeans. A black man by race, his ancestors were captured from Africa by the British slave traders and employed in the plantations. Braithwaite was raised British by his parents. He was English-educated and read the high literature of Shakespeare, Shelley and the rest of the canon. He got his master's degree in electrical engineering and worked in the oil fields of Aruba. Later, he migrated to British isles and served as an airman in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. Soon after the general demobilization, he started searching for jobs in Britain. To his shock and horror, he found racial discrimination instead. Nobody was eager to employ a black man, a qualified electrical engineer, over and above the whites. Braithwaite was as British as any other white man was, except for his skin colour. He fought for the British and its allies in the Second World War because he earnestly believed in the ideal of the British Commonwealth. During the war, as the author testifies, he didn't face the racism of any kind. He had forgotten about the colour of his skin as it became inconsequential in the defence of the realm. However, once the war concluded and the danger of Nazism passed away, the old prejudices surfaced again, in a society that was being rebuilt from the foundations. The presence of other races infuriated the native British and made them feel anxious about their place in postwar Britain. This anxiety was most pronounced on the 'problem' of racial miscegenation (Braithwaite was in love with an English colleague of his and they couldn't reveal their relationship to their colleagues because of the opprobrium it would invite). The native British couldn't accept the fact that non-whites could be as British as the whites. In a certain sense, the refusal to acknowledge the non-whites as equal is also their refusal to acknowledge the effects of the history they created i.e. the history of colonialism. The answer to the first question, how did Braithwaite and others become British without being Briton, is colonialism. It was the enterprise of British colonialism that brought Africans into Caribbean islands and converted them into Europeans in taste, ideas, and morals. When these black-British crossed the Atlantic again to reach Britain, they were shunned as outsiders. Nobody could legally oust them from Britain, but neither could anybody be forced to welcome them. These non-white British found themselves in the state of intimate strangers, a paradox to the consistency of white British.

From the experience of Rick Braithwaite (and countless others like him) we can abstract the two figures of the colonial, the consistent and the paradox. The colonial-consistent is the member of the native colonial race who initiated colonialism and subjugated others. They are the British and Britons. The colonial-paradox is the member of the future generations of the subjugated people who either demand to be recognized/or are already recognized as the de jure members of the colonial-consistent race. For the colonial-consistent, the colonial-paradox is an unexpected byproduct of their actions, the result of accidents of the history that was beyond their control. The paradox raises unsettling questions to the consistent. While the colonial-consistent is eager to claim a part of the legacy of colonialism, they are apathetic, if not hostile, to the other part of it i.e. the colonial-paradox. To be a British without being a Briton means to be the colonial-paradox before the colonial-consistent. It's disorienting for both because the paradox demands equality based on identity.

How could a former slave-race claim identity with their former masters? The colonial-consistent invaded and subjugated them for exploitation but few generations later the subjugated races are at their doorsteps demanding equal rights and fair treatment. They claim identity with the former colonial masters. For the colonial-consistent (the Briton-British), the most disorienting claim is this.  Usually, such claims are based on humanity and equality but I think, the claim of Braithwaite-like people are even more thoroughgoing because they demand equality based on identity with the colonial-consistent. For most, this is an indigestible claim.

Is there a solution to the problem of the paradox, and the problem of the consistent? Although the colonial-consistent refuses to recognize the colonial-paradox, it's obvious that their histories were intertwined from the moment one colonized the other. The colonial-consistent isn't as consistent as they thought to be and the colonial-paradox isn't as paradoxical as they are made out to be. The challenge before both is to break the stereotypes of self-perception and mutual perception and build up a new foundation that could treat both as one, and identical. Love and empathy are the foundations of mutual recognition, and they begin, as in Braithwaite, with a change of heart.