DECOLONISING KNOWLEDGE Expand the Black Experience in Britain’s heritage “Drawing on his personal web site Chronicleworld.org and digital and print collection, the author challenges the nation’s information guardians to “detoxify” their knowledge portals” Thomas L Blair Commentaries on the Chronicleworld.org Users value the Thomas L Blair digital collection for its support of “below the radar” unreported communities. Here is what they have to say: Social scientists and researchers at professional associations, such as SOSIG and the UK Intute Science, Engineering and Technology, applaud the Chronicleworld.org web site’s “essays, articles and information about the black urban experience that invite interaction”. Black History Month archived Bernie Grant, Militant Parliamentarian (1944-2000) from the Chronicleworld.org Online journalists at the New York Times on the Web nominate THE CHRONICLE: www.chronicleworld.org as “A biting, well-written zine about black life in Britain” and a useful reference in the Arts, Music and Popular Culture, Technology and Knowledge Networks. Enquirers to UK Directory at ukdirectory.co.uk value the Chronicleworld.org under the headings Race Relations Organisations promoting racial equality, anti- racism and multiculturalism. Library”Govt & Society”Policies & Issues”Race Relations The 100 Great Black Britons www.100greatblackbritons.com cites “Chronicle World - Changing Black Britain as a major resource Magazine addressing the concerns of Black Britons includes a newsgroup and articles on topical events as well as careers, business and the arts. www.chronicleworld.org” Editors at the British TV Channel 4 - Black and Asian History Map call the www.chronicleworld.org “a comprehensive site full of information on the black British presence plus news, current affairs and a rich archive of material”. SOSIG and the UK Intute also cite its “is archived history of Afro-Caribbean settlement in London, book reviews, a gallery of Afro-Caribbean art and links to news services and sites of general interest to the British Afro-Caribbean community”. International readers and educational institutes have emphasized the importance of the web site. German schools’ advisors on Immigrants in Britain, say “Chronicleworld.org Hier finden Sie viele News und Artikel über Black Britain”. British Council Germany tells its readers – “First for information, news and ideas shaping black life in modern Britain. Chronicle is the online magazine for Britain’s black community, with links to the best media on the web and lots of well written features”. The monthly top queries highlight the current topics driving traffic to chronicleworld.org, certified by search agency Alexa.com. January 2012, roman soldier head carving, promote technology in the black community, actors who have played Othello, the Stephen Lawrence murder inquiry, Black Britain stats, London demographics and Black and Minority Ethnic people. Publishing information Decolonising Knowledge: Expand the Black Experience in Britain’s heritage ISBN 978-1-908480-03-3 Editions Blair E-book Series ©Thomas L Blair All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the written permission of the author and copyright holder. The greatest care has been taken in producing this publication; however, the author will endeavour to acknowledge any errors or omissions. Please e-mail comments and enquiries to Thomas L Blair [email protected] The author Thomas L Blair is a cyberscholar and edits the Chronicleworld.org, the online journal of Black communities of African and Caribbean heritage. Founded in November 1997, he offers readers information and commentary on their problems, progress and prospects for creative renewal. In addition to Decolonising Knowledge, his other works in the Editions Blair E-book series debate serious topics in the public realm. The Audacity of Cyberspace – on Black communities crossing the digital divide Pillars of Change – Black youth and intellectuals challenge to la belle France 978-1-908480-00-2 Les Piliers du Changement – French translation of Pillars of Change 978-1-908480-01-9 FAIR MEDIA – on campaigns to end racism in the newsrooms and boardrooms of the media industry 978-1-908480-02-6 The right kind of spirit for a new generation Figure 1 Mary Seacole, Crimean war nurse and Olaudah Equiano, scholar and abolitionist The Voice, Britain’s top Black weekly, warns: “removing black heroes from the curriculum in primary and secondary school could deter undergraduates from gaining an interest in black history and have a knock-on effect on academic research”. Preface Optimistic. Quarrelsome. Trailblazing. Problem solving idealist? Call it what you may. However, I call it a manifesto to set the archival record straight. Libraries and information professionals must provide the best materials on Black communities and talents. What can you expect to find out? Evidence-based proposals that seek, in a diverse society, to embed the Black experience into Britain’s national heritage collections. Decolonising Knowledge brings digital and printed materials on Black Britain closer together. This could be a boon for far-sighted educators, researchers, rights activists, and the communities they serve. Forging new connections The best way to introduce this book is to explain how the idea it expresses came to be developed. With over 40 years of teaching from “the books”, I am one of a growing number of online scholars publishing for “minority interests and issues” ignored by mainstream information professionals. Notable examples are, of course, professors Abdul Alkalimat of the University of Illinois, Manning Marable of Columbia University and Naom Chomsky of MIT. The Eureka moment The crossover to the digital age came in 1997, when I struggled to bring “book-learning” and the internet together. I remember the failures and near misses as well as the triumphs. Finally, I found that I was looking at contemporary Black peoples in Britain in a different way. Not at them as replacement labour, welfare cheats or lesser breeds outside the law, as others do. But as hard working aspirers in the big city seen through their own urban experience and intellectual expression. I was beginning to think about the theme of Enabling Access to Black Britain Data sets, and creating a role for Library and Information Professionals Furthermore, as a sign of the times, their cultural production and reading habits have moved from print to pixels. As a result, communities and scholars have created millions of gigabytes that reflect themselves, and speak directly to Black people. “Internet power to the people, says professor Thomas L Blair,” wrote The Independent newspaper in London. Decolonising Knowledge identifies this alternative view based on my digital and print collection. It links to the cyberactions of the Black “net-generation” who typically address issues of politics and culture. The Thomas L Blair collection Decolonising Knowledge paints a picture of a minority heritage enhancement. My appended digital and print materials managed by the British Library puts this into sharp focus. Called the Thomas L Blair Collection, it offers the means to rate local, national and private library holdings against the collections searchable online database and cataloguing system. My online magazine The Chronicleworld is the basis of The Digital Collection. It has hundreds of articles, thousands of Internet pages and a dozen volumes of news and commentaries http://www.chronicleworld.org from 1997 to the present. They focus on issues central to the Black experience in arts, life styles, economy, politics and culture. Then, I assembled a print library collection as the web site developed. The scholarly references raise awareness of key topics, events and personalities. The collection includes over 1000 books, newspaper cuttings, journal and magazine articles, along with video and audio tape, posters, and ephemeral material. The geographical areas and timeframe cover peoples of the African Diaspora in Black Britain, the Caribbean, the US and Latin America, and regions of Africa South of the Sahara. Celebrating the life of the mind Decolonising Knowledge complements my view that it is time that Black intellectuals pass their scholarship, pride and purpose to the new Internet-generation. Decolonising Knowledge celebrates the life of the mind in idealistic yet practical pursuits. It recognises that Black people in Britain are the patent-holders of their own humanity. Modernised and transformed, they are integral contributors to the global societies they reside in. In sum, Decolonising Knowledge and the Blair Collection are natural extensions of classical Black intellectual thought and action. But not in thrall to them. The book brings fresh and corrective narratives to scripts that have been based solely on western perspectives. The result is a useful wake-up call to Britain’s heritage enhancement institutions. Thomas L Blair January 2013 England Acknowledgements Thanks to all who helped bring this E-book into being. First to the Social Welfare Portal at the British Library, which manages the Thomas L Blair Collection. I owe a great deal to the research of various disciplines undertaken by others; these include the Third Sector Research Centre’s research identifying the special contribution and impact of diverse community