Being Black, Being (Un)Well: Health and Heritage, Keeping It Colonial?

Summary

Do claims of 'heritage being good for people’s health' reflect colonial white gaze? In Northants, for example, Black people are largely non-existent on heritage sites – often viewed under surveillance or suspicion. Further, as white visitors and staff have actively police Black people from them in different ways as they do not expect us to be there!

Terms like 'canteen culture’ (Macpherson, 1999: 46) are better placed to define our relationship to the occupational culture practiced by the heritage sector, a term that refers to the way in which people working in a certain environment can share sets of values like prejudices. It is a term that has been applied to the police since the Macpherson Report in the late 90s as an explanation for police racism. So, one must ask if commitments to wellbeing and health come from a provincial colonial epistemology of health?

Moreover, Black experiences of heritage show racism as overlooked topic, if not actively systematically avoided. In wellness provisions, is ‘racism’ included as a public health issue? Exposure to racism impacts health and this is an ongoing colonial legacy. As Black people, we are excluded at least twice over: in the white middle-class 'canteen culture’ that polices Blackness from it – further to heritage sites, within a rubric of the ‘green unpleasant land’ “…fiercely guarded site[s] of belonging” (Fowler, 2020: 18).

In the countryside, we Black people are watched always under suspicion. Yet, we have been in rural Britain for centuries (Caballero and Aspinall, 2018), but still viewed as 'invaders' – these everyday racisms impact health. From volunteering roles to employed staff to organisational leadership teams, clearly the sector still has problems of exclusion. Is it right to say work done in heritage is fit for the health needs of all?

This paper explores these contemporary experiences via my own (that others may relate to) within wider contexts of history and belonging – pertinently as Britain’s rural spaces exclude on a multipronged axis.


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