Can You Poet: Mixed Heritage Britain

Note: Contains some strong language. Viewer discretion advised.

The arrival of figures such as Meghan Markle have shown us all too well that the British establishment has a selective memory when it comes to the place of Mixed Heritage people in Britain. Her 2015 article provoked a reaction that continues to illuminate a much-needed wider conversation - the place of Mixed Heritage people in today's Britain as not new, but simply the latest chapter of a history that dates back to at least the days of the Tudors when Africans in Early Modern England lived, worked, and had (intimate and domestic) relationships with white people.

With Britain's history of cultural and racial mixing, organisations like the Mixed Museum exist to document and disseminate it to the public. Recent published work of authors and academics - including Afua Hirsch, Remi Adekoya and Natalie Morris - is predated by books like Mixed-Race Britain in the Twentieth Century (Caballero and Aspinall, 2018) and Mixed Race Amnesia: Resisting the Romanticization of Multiraciality (Mathani, 2014). The late historian Imtiaz Habib's Black Lives in the English Archives talked about this in a Tudor context, as does Onyeka Nubia's chapter "Blackamoores have their own names in early modern England' (Adi, 2019: 15-36).

The Black Georgians in the eighteenth century, the Black Victorians in the nineteenth century, and the Black Edwardians in the early years of the twentieth century - many of them married outside of their race. Many of the soldiers that came back from WWI also built families with white women. The same happened again when thousands of Black American GIs were stationed in Britain during the latter years of the Second World War, some left Mixed-Race children behind - a product of their relationships with white British women. Lucy Bland's Britain's Brown Babies discusses this further.

This is a small description that has focused on Mixed Black histories, but Mixed Heritage has plurality - also shown by organisations like 'Mixed Girl Meet Up' (@themixedgirlmeetup). With a good range of poets and storytellers, this event will also feature our guest Rhianna Garrett who will speak on her experience of being a Mixed Heritage woman in the UK.

Rhianna Garrett is a Chinese Mixed Heritage PhD researcher and race equity activist at Loughborough University, investigating the underrepresentation of racialised minorities in UK higher education. In her award-winning activism, she has focused on anti-racism within sports clubs and societies, Freedom School spaces for racialised minority students, and empowers students to enact their own activism within institutional spaces. She is passionate about telling stories of, and highlighting her Mixed Heritage experiences to represent the complexities of race in UK contexts that are often ignored.

Lineup

Ragz-CV - 2:07
Main Intro / CYP Background - 10:30
Louisa Adjoa Parker - 22:00
Red Medusa - 34:56
Feat. Speaker: Rhianna Garret - 47:20
Gemma Lees - 1:11:00
Jade Mutyora - 1:23:20
Rebekah Cheung Judge - 1:35:42
Lucas Fothergill - 1:47:37
Afreine - 1:57:38
Saira Ibrahim - 2:11:23
Conclusions - 2:23:36

Further Resources (incl. acts contact info) - https://padlet.com/treventour1995/can...