“If you leave Sunderland, a day is wasted,” insisted Charlie Slater, a 1970s council leader and known to generations of the Mackem family as “Mr Sunderland”. did.
Actor and singer Cynthia Erivo is unlikely to agree. with social media clips In an appearance on NBC’s Amber Ruffin show, Erivo compared the different British cities she visited. She told an American audience that Manchester was “incredible because it resembles London”. But Sunderland… “When you go to Sunderland, you’re like, ‘Where the hell is this?'” The clip that went viral is cut here. In her full interview, Erivo continues: This is not where I live. ”
Born and raised in south London, Erivo was one of the preeminent talents of his generation, winning both a Tony Award and a Grammy Award for his role in the Broadway revival. the color purple. Ten days ago, she was appointed vice president of Rada, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
But over the past week, Erivo’s views on Sunderland have come under the spotlight. In Amber Ruffin’s clip,fashionable liberal metropolitan contempt” It was an expression of the North-South divide that led to Brexit.Others simply despise the criticism and simply someone is “joking”.
Erivo is neither a politician nor a commentator, so he accepted the interview with a lighthearted attitude. Even considering her new role as Radha’s vice president, we shouldn’t give too much weight to her comments. Nevertheless, the sentiments expressed by Erivo, and the debates surrounding them, have much to say about the complexities and contradictions in how we view towns like Sunderland and our understanding of class, race, place and belonging. is revealed. A friend said to me: “If I were a queer black woman growing up in Brixton, I might feel uncomfortable in some parts of the UK.” Similarly, F.T.Elizabeth Pierce tweeted “For someone who grew up in a city like London, Sunderland is going to look and feel a little different. If you’re not white, you’re going to feel this keenly.”
I grew up in a UK that was much more racist (and homophobic) than it is now, and racism was vicious and visible. Historian David Olusoga, who grew up in a working-class family in Gateshead, just outside Sunderland, recalls in his book: black and british In the mid-1980s, the family was forced to leave their home due to “continuous attacks almost every night” and the windows were “broken one by one, bricks and stones were broken” and the family was forced to live in darkness. What a terrifying experience. By racists. A few months later, Olusoga returned to his old home after finding new accommodation. A swastika and the slogan “NF Won Here” were painted on the front door.
Britain today is a different place. Discrimination and prejudice still exist, both in the labor market and in the police force, but thankfully there is far less deep-rooted racism than there was a generation ago. The NF and other far-right groups have certainly not won.
When I was growing up, there were many places and venues in the city that I couldn’t enter for fear of racial violence. That is not the case at all today. But there remains a strong sense that black people must always be wary of places like Sunderland. As one tweeter said In an interview with Erivo, he said, “I immediately took this as a comment about microaggressions and the discomfort of being a black person in a majority white area.”
I have never felt racially threatened when I have visited Sunderland. It’s certainly not whiter, older, poorer and more working class like London (or Manchester or Liverpool). Almost 95% of Sunderland’s population is white. Only 1% of her is black and 3% of her is Asian. A recent report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates that more than a third of the town’s children live in poverty.
But while Sunderland is not like London, it is not like the England of old. Far-right groups have certainly sought to capitalize on tensions in the town over asylum seekers and sexual violence. But there’s no reason to think that just because a town has more white people or working class people, it’s necessarily more racist. It’s ironic that we preach the importance of diversity and yet hate “places that don’t.” [like] It could be “where I live” or “it looks and feels a little different”.
Many people have an attachment to a particular place, whether it’s London or Sunderland, and see such an attachment as an important aspect of their identity. However, what should be noted is the omission of “place” and “race.” Many on the right believe that ‘white Britons’ have lost their ‘homeland’ due to ‘Britain’s ethnic transformation’ and that London is now a ‘foreign’ city because ‘white Britons’ are in the minority. I imagine it is.
Anti-racists should not despise a town because it is a “white majority” and indulge in the erasure of their own region or race. Challenging racism wherever it is expressed is not the same as disparaging that place because there are too many white people.
At the same time, contempt for towns like Sunderland is likely to be shaped as much by perceptions of class as by race. Particularly since Brexit, the view that the ‘white working class’ are particularly ignorant and bigoted has become even more entrenched.
But the majority of black and Asian people in this country are also working class, and a 2019 report from think tank Runnymede Trust and Class found that “‘white working class’ and ‘ethnic or Despite repeated assertions that the ‘immigrant working class’…are pitted against each other in mainstream media and political discourse…we discover important overlaps in their everyday life experiences. There was a “shared experience of precarity” and “prejudice and contempt” rooted in race, class, or both. Or, to put it another way, the experience of working-class people, whether white or minority, is different from the experience of middle-class people, whether white or minority, and working-class culture Contempt for is not defined by race.
Sunderland is currently undergoing a major regeneration process to update both its physical and cultural structures. Whatever the outcome, it will not be another London. But why should you?