What some
people have said about the book Changing
Generations.
‘It’s
not relevant to me!’
‘It’s all
about Black people’. I don’t think I did a good job of explaining
what I meant to say. What I meant to say was, ‘We need practical
ways to get rid of poverty and injustice in UK and the world. A major
change in Western culture in my lifetime has been the move from
modern to postmodern in thinking and culture. How valid are my ways
of thinking as a white, modern, middle class man in a multicultural
world? How can I find ways to critique my thinking and so find better
ideas about how best to change the world? ‘
Andy Hickford
says you need someone from outside your culture to critique your
culture. He suggests postmoderns should critique modern thinking.
From the context of his writing, he seems to only refer to men and
white people, since women and people of other ethnic backgrounds are
not specifically mentioned. I find that white postmodern men are not
able to critique white or male thinking and behaviour. A recent
campaign has been ‘Every Action Has Consequences (EACH)’ where
one man’s drinking habits and consequent inability to control his
actions led to another man’s death. I feel we need women to
critique male thinking because
they have experience of and have to live with the consequences of male behaviour. I believe we need Black and Asian people to critique white thinking because they daily have to engage with the results of white men’s thinking and behaviour. This reflects my finding that people’s experience of oppression is a better guide to finding solutions to oppression than using traditional Western scientific objectivity to find solutions.
they have experience of and have to live with the consequences of male behaviour. I believe we need Black and Asian people to critique white thinking because they daily have to engage with the results of white men’s thinking and behaviour. This reflects my finding that people’s experience of oppression is a better guide to finding solutions to oppression than using traditional Western scientific objectivity to find solutions.
So I believe
Black and Asian and women’s thinking needs to be listened to and
learnt from if we are to find solutions to world poverty and
injustice. And it’s also crucial if we are to find solutions that
benefit everyone rather than just a few people. A criticism of the
women’s liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s was that it only
uplifted white women of middle and upper class background. It did
nothing for white working class women or for women of other
ethnicities. It is only by uplifting people at the bottom of the UK
and world’s social strata that all the other levels above will be
raised up. If we are white and working class we need Black and Asian
working class people to be raised up or they will always be trying to
get things we have because they, rightly, feel they are entitled to
the same privileges in life that we have.
So this book
is really about white people. It gives the other side of the story,
how Black and Asian people and women feel about what white men do to
them on a daily basis and how they want them to put wrong things
right, in UK and the world. And it looks at the barriers that white
people put up, whether they realise it or not, to keep power over
Black and Asian people.
