The legacy of slavery

I was very puzzled the other day to receive an email from my union addressed to "..all UCU members who have self-identified as black or minority ethnic on their membership form." Shurely shome mishtake as the Private Eye Bill Deedes parody would have it. 

But then I recalled my no doubt infuriating and perverse habit of  refusing to tick any box which would define my ethnicity as "white..." (neither an ethnicity in any meaningful sense nor an accurate description of my skin tone). Faced with that invitation I routinely choose "other" and write "Anglo-Scottish-Irish" which is an accurate description of the ethnie(s) I have some reason to identify with. 

It's easy to dismiss this as the childish word-game of a privileged middle-aged, middle-class, white dude. But hey, if identities are socially constructed why  do I have to accept the box that someone else wants to put me in? I want the same freedom to identity construct that everyone else has. And why shouldn't I have it?

So by a perverse unintended consequence of bureaucratic stipulation I have become, for administrative purposes, part of an ethnic minority and apparently entitled to attend the conference for black members in November.

The more I thought about this the more intrigued I became. The UCU email has a footnote that elucidates the use of the word 'black'. The first part states: "UCU uses the word 'black' in a political sense to refer to people who are descended, through one or both parents, from Africa, the Caribbean, Asia (the middle-East to China) and Latin America." 

Bingo! My case is cast iron. My 5th great-grandmother Rebecca Delap was born in 1730 in Antigua and you can't get much more Caribbean than that. I did wonder however whether it mattered that Rebecca's father, Francis Delap (1690-1766) whose remains, as far as I know  still rest in Antigua, owned several large sugar plantations, was a slave owner and quite possibly a slave trader. That might be something I should keep to myself should I attend.

Then I read further and all hope disappeared. The UCU footnote goes on to say that 'black' "...refers to those from a visible minority who have a shared experience of oppression. The word is used to foster a sense of solidarity and empowerment." Ah. I doubt a somewhat freckled Celtic skin, that tends towards red in strong sunlight, is, in context, really visible enough. And despite the undoubtedly oppressive experience of growing up in Coventry in the 1960s and 70s I'm not sure that this is quite the sort of oppression that the drafter of the UCU footnote has in mind.

So, that's something else I can cross off my calendar. Just as well really since I instinctively dislike most forms of identity politics. But, at least for administrative purposes I remain, until reclassified, a marginalized minority.