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Introduction
Kehinde Andrews is Professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University and has become a familiar face to British television viewers through his numerous appearances on Good Morning Britain. There he has pontificated on why “racist propaganda” like ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ should be dropped from the Proms, claimed that our primary schools teach “White supremacy”, claimed that whiteness is a “psychosis”, alleged that the British Empire “did more damage” than the Nazis, and argued that portraits of the Queen in government buildings were like having “monuments to confederate heroes”.
Despite those incendiary comments, he has been offered numerous platforms: talking about xenophobia on BBC Ideas, calling for Britain to pay reparations on Channel 4, part of a short documentary on George Floyd for Sky News, making a documentary on the British Black Panthers for BBC Radio 4, offering a masterclass on subjects like the “British Black Power movement” with the Guardian (only £28 a ticket if you’re early!), answering children’s questions on racism for BBC News, and discussing black history for BBC Bitesize (some might question why the BBC’s educational website chose to let him describe the riots following the death of George Floyd, which have been the most expensive in US history and led to at least 19 deaths, as “rebellions”).
What does he think?
Andrews argues that Western economic achievement is built on the “genocide” of the Amerindians, on slavery, and on colonialism; therefore the current “global political economy” is still formed by “White supremacy” (he is uninterested in the rise of the Asian economies). That people in Britain think the empire was good or that Britain can be proud of abolishing slavery is proof, in his view, that whiteness is a “psychosis”.
To say this is a “prejudice” but not “racism”, as “there is no such thing as reverse racism”. He argues that you can only have racism if you have to power to enact your prejudice on a social level: so the lynching of black men was racism because that was done with the support of the law, whilst Malcolm X describing whites as “devils” is merely prejudiced. Indeed, he claims that the Nation of Islam labelling whites as “devils” was “anti-racist” in motivation; this might come as news to the victims of the Zebra murders, who were murdered by a Nation of Islam associated group which required the murder of “blue-eyed white devils” in order to become a full member.
His political idol is Malcom X, to the extent that his son dressed up as Malcolm for school, and he founded the Organisation of Black Unity (OBU) to pick up the “political legacy” of Malcolm’s Organisation of Afro-American Unity. He argues that Malcolm was not a civil rights leader and that the whole notion of civil rights is a “fantasy”. Nor does he accept the Nation of Islam’s belief that Allah would wipe “White people off the face of the earth”, although he only cites as his reason that it “prevents action in the present” (it being a genocidal racist fantasy goes unmentioned). Instead he sees Malcolm as a Pan-Africanist, seeking freedom for the “Global African diaspora”.
He argues that Malcolm was correct that the “trick of the civil right gains” was to let the black middle class succeed to “create the illusion that equality is possible for all”. He decries black people who have joined the Conservatives and UKIP as “Uncle Toms”. Instead he calls for “Black nationalism”, which means “political and economic control of our communities”. That would involve getting black people to support black businesses, so they can hire unemployed black people. In doing so black people in the West, which he calls “the Masters House”, can become a “cohesive unit” which can help other members of the diaspora in Africa and the Caribbean, finally leading to the “unification of all people of African ancestry”.
Once united, he believes they could turn Africa into a superstate. In a bizarre film for BBC Ideas he promotes the idea of a unified Africa, now a single country without any borders, which has rejected all foreign aid and become wealthy by nationalising their resources. In contrast, non-Africans are forced to struggle through border control to find jobs in Africa, whilst the non-African elite compete to attend African universities. The diaspora who are “trapped” by racism and poverty in the West will be offered the chance to return to the African “promised land”. It is hard to see this as anything but a fantasy rooted in crude identity politics; he doesn’t seem very worried about inequality or borders in this prospective future, so long as it is to the benefit of Africans.
Two recent articles based on his travel to South Africa give a better idea of what that might look like in practice. Visiting the post-1994 Afrikaaner settlement of Orania, he complains that the locals are too polite, calls their language “frankly ugly”, suggests that Nelson Mandela was a “sell out” suffering from the “psychosis of Whiteness”, and intimates that the locals do dreadful things at a memorial to Afrikaaner heroes “when the sun goes down”. He follows this up by claiming that the ANC only “put Black faces at the head of a white system” and calls for the country to be replaced with Azania.
When it comes to Azania, he cites the example of the Pan Africanist Congress party, who are black nationalists who split from the ANC over multi-racialism and whose vision of Azania is black-only. He also cites the party AZAPO as an example of not “selling out”; the group had an armed wing who were trained by communist China, Libya, and Syria during the Cold War. Both parties have never won more than a handful of seats in the post-1994 elections and lack any real popularity.
In an A-Z series for his website he sums up his ideas: Democracy is a “mirage, a trick, a placebo”; Black radicalism is “built on an analysis that sees racism as the basis of society”; reparations are necessary as “true reparatory justice would destroy the West…revolution is the only way to deliver justice”; he wants revolution not reform, which means “uprooting the system to replace to it with something new”; the ultimate aim of this being “uniting Africa and the Diaspora into a nation, to make Black a country”; this new united Africa would be a “planned economy”; in achieving this “violence is likely to be necessary given the nature of beast we are facing” (although he frames it as reactive); this may require that “White farmers” be “forcibly removed” (he writes that this occurred in Zimbabwe to “much acclaim” but is unclear about his support for it); and he labels black people who oppose his ideas of Black radicalism as “Uncle Toms” (he names Thomas Clarence, Thomas Sowell, and Trevor Phillips explicitly).
What does he plan to do?
The Organisation of Black Unity, which he intends to achieve this goal, is supposed to have a central committee overseeing numerous departments, such as a Black Business Alliance. However, it appears to only consist of a handful of people, none of whom are full time; it has produced a brief guide on staying healthy during winter though, which recommends tinned pineapple and more sleep, as well as a guide on wearing African clothes to “increase your ‘swagger’”. In August this year he relaunched the OBU with an event co-organised with Birmingham City University.
He spends a lot of time taking part in events with fringe groups like the Global Pan-Africanism Network (which was still introducing former Tennessee doctor Arikana Chihombori Quao as an Ambassador a year after the African Union fired her), the Association of Black Psychologists (which posts presumed members wearing jewellery associated with the Hotep subculture who believe that Ancient Egyptians were sub-Saharan Africans), and gotKush TV (which also posts Hotep content). He’s also happy to work with the Labour party, supporting them in elections, appearing for interviews with their media outriders, earning the (reciprocated) support of Ken Livingstone’s disgraced former policy advisor Lee Jasper, and sharing a platform at associated events with unsavoury characters. He even has links to the 4Front Project, subject of a previous SW1 Forum investigation.
At the moment OBU are trying to rebuild the Marcus Garvery nursery in Birmingham, although less than £2,000 of the £15,000 needed has been raised. The story so far is an epic of large egos in small organisations, with bitter organisational battles. The intent is to turn it into a “Black supplementary school” which will host a “Malcolm Study circle”. Andrews has said that all the profits from his book will be used for the school.
Comment
It’s tempting to dismiss Kehinde Andrews as just a crank, pushing for a united African superstate which Africans have consistently failed to achieve or support. His efforts in the UK, where his organisation has been stymied in their efforts to open a nursery for years, seem similarly risible.
This would be to underestimate his impact however: even if his dreams are unlikely, he has repeatedly been given platforms to spread his views. Calling people “Uncle Tom” is racism, no matter how academic sounding his attempts to justify it. Similarly, although he is careful never to state that he wants his African superstate to be black only, his support for political parties like PAC which do, his hostility to non-black groups like the inhabitants of Orania, and his references to the “diaspora” (which it’s hard to imagine is defined on anything but racial lines) show in what direction he is thinking. If he’d like to go on the record and say that he wants the African superstate to be multi-racial, open to all the diversity of Africa, then we will be happy to issue a correction.
Meanwhile, in the West he spreads inflammatory and inaccurate statements. Take this Intelligence Squared debate, where he argues that reparations are necessary because the British Treasury was still paying off slave owners in 2015 (not true), that the reason for the rise of the West is that it is built on African slavery (also not true), and also that Europe was the only place in 1492 to still be in a “dark age” (which begs the question as to how Europeans were able to travel around the world and enslave people, if they were so backwards and their success built on African slavery they didn’t have access to yet). This, after all, is a man dedicated to researching black radicalism who in his book claims that the 1985 Broadwater Farm “rebellion” was sparked by the “police killing” of Joy Gardner - who actually died in 1993. He simply isn’t a very good academic.
As he has admitted that his “primary income comes from the state”, it is with taxpayer money that he has been allowed to teach and spread his radical views. This should be withdrawn and the organisations which have given him a platform, often knowing that his controversial views would be good for ratings, should reconsider. The second part of this investigation will be released soon, covering his further extremist links.
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