More reflections (www.wcmt.org.uk)

A few days to go and more reflections creep into my consciousness. I discovered recently that African American sociologist E. Franklin Frazier was born in Baltimore. His work has been very important to me in terms of my academic studies and raising my confidence in terms of grappling with the rigours of my PhD studies.

However, this morning I had a deeper questioning reverberating in my head. Namely, why are so many black scholars, historians, and thinkers absent from the wider public consciousness. W.E.B. Dubois published ‘Souls of Black Folk’ in 1938, E. Franklin Frazier published ‘the Black Bourgeoisie’ in 1936, and Ken Pryce published ‘Endless Pressure’ in 1979. Yet in 2010 we have an overrepresentation of black men languishing prisons, an increase in the numbers of black men in both care, mental health institutions, and gang affiliation, combined with an ever increasing deterioration of the current social positioning of young black men in education and employment. What is both disappointing and disheartening is how the wisdom, insights, and lessons to be learned from the previously mentioned writers are largely absent in the hearts and minds of the community I reside. Dubois’s work the subject of much debate and speculation demonstrated his unswerving commitment to responding to the plights of black people in the US as a social commentator, as well as playing a major role in answering key questions concerning black criminality in his role as a sociologist.

E. Franklin Frazier’s attack on the black middle classes although written from an African American perspective, is prophetic as black Britons are following close behind the asssertions made in his book. Ironically, Frazier’s work, in spite of being a key figure in US sociology has been written out of the current criminological discourses. An indictment of epic proportions. We then come to Ken Pryce, a sociologist from Trinidad, who based himself in St Pauls, in Bristol for a period of 4 years, where his use of participant observation of that community gave one of the most telling and ‘insider’ views of Britain’s black community, in the last 40 years. In spite of the age of his work, Pryce’s work could have been written in 2010. His insights, understandings, and detailed observations demonstrate that little has changed since he was around.

These books highlight a possible covert conspiracy to disjoint the black community from finding solutions to its mounting problems. It also highlights how complacent, apathetic, and ignorant many people in the community are, in regards to the valuable contribution of black scholars in unpacking the complexities of black social life in the UK. Instead we have become characters in a narrative written by those who have little understanding of the journey travelled by most of us. Several questions emerge; ‘will my work be destined to the shelves of a charity shop (where I found Pryce’s book), Amazon, the library basement, or placed in the hands of a community activist who will bring it out during heated debates during black history month. Reading the works of Dubois, Frazier, and Pryce, I am saddended why much of the work written by black scholars has been rendered invisible in textbooks, screens, and airwaves. It is now down to those of us who have remained silent or have been silenced to expose the conspiracy, or try and infuse future generations with a passion for investigation of the past, as a way of navigating and negotiating the future.