There Ain't no Black in the Union Jack
Thursday 7th October | 5.30pm-7.00pm | Zoom For our first meeting of the year, we are going to look at Gilroy's seminal 1987 book There Ain't no Black in the Union Jack . We will be reading Chapter two - '"The whisper wakes, the shudder plays": 'race', nation and ethnic absolutism' - pages 43-72 in the first edition. Gilroy's first book is centered on race and class, and caused uproar when it was first published for accusing politicians and intellectuals on both sides of the political divide of not taking race seriously. He argues that racism is deeply interwoven with nationalism in Britain, and Chapter two focuses on the capacity of racism to link discourses of patriotism, nationalism, xenophobia, Englishness, Britishness, militarism, and gender difference into a complex system that gives 'race' its contemporary meaning. This recent Guardian long-read article and the interview Gilroy gave after receiving the prestigious Holberg Prize i...