Under their Skin

These two books make a most interesting complementary study. In one, a social-minded Congregationalist minister analyses in almost statistical detail the variants of racial discrimination with which people of African or Indian descent must contend in present day Britain; in the other a woman novelist describes in vivid detail the unusual course of events which led to her finally becoming an adviser and ‘mother’ to the chief of the Bakgatla tribe in Bechuanaland.

Mr Hill’s book impresses me as a fair and necessary survey. I will not comment on its various case histories and careful generalisations except to say that the book proves to the hilt that while legislation for racial equality will always be essential, the frightening irrational prejudices of individuals are in Britain, as in New Zealand, the biggest permanent stumbling block:

. . . When he [the manager of a labour exchange] was shown into the director’s office, he exclaimed ‘I think my journey is unnecessary as I see that you already employ coloured labour!’ Whereupon the director vehemently denied that he employed any coloured men. The manager of the labour exchange moved across to the window and pointed out the two Indians at work in the yard. ‘Oh them!’ said the director, ‘they’re only wogs. We don’t mind the wogs; it’s the niggers we won’t have!’

This kind of statement evokes either brotherly agreement (from another racialist) or, in those whose sense of reality has not atrophied, a burning sense of rage and frustration which can last a lifetime. It is to Mr Hill’s credit that his cloth has not protected him from these flames.

Naomi Mitchison has written a strange and gentle book. Her relationship to Linchwe, the young Chief of the Bakgatla who had stayed with her while he was being educated in Britain, seemed to me at first a trifle sentimental and naïve. But, on consideration, it became clear to me that she had broken through the cultural barrier (her book is concerned with the real barrier between cultures, and of racism except when her Chief is humiliated during a visit to South Africa) – she had broken through by the only means possible, by becoming a functioning member of the tribe, and Chief ’s subject and, as it happened, also his ‘mother’.

Though her account is moderately emotional I do not think it is illusory. Such things can happen more easily than we might suppose, if we have the courage to throw overboard completely a semi-conscious racist heritage. By abandoning the European intellectual lens she gains great peace of mind. One can envy her. But such adjustments are inevitably rare. I remember talking with a Marxist Indian novelist in Delhi, and earlier with a Marxist Chinese businessman in Hong Kong. Both men had endured racial humiliations in Britain, and the trauma had fixed their emotions in a deep and lasting page 114 anger. Despite the evidence of intelligent liberals such as Mr Hill, and the rare personal adjustment to a vanishing tribal reality experienced by Naomi Mitchison, we are now beginning to pay the heavy penalties of racism, and may still be paying them a hundred years from now.

1966 (404)