Language, Black exceptionalism and the multiplicity of Black Britishness
Responding to There is Rice at Home: Voice of the People by Alegría Adedeji
For Black people, our acquisition of English was the function of a linguistic imperialism; a psychological conquest that seized our known languages, consequently maiming us of the tongues our ancestors knew as mother. It was through our struggles for independence and self-actualisation, that we remoulded this colonial product in a way that calls on the familial, proverbial, and rhythmic spirit that guided our own languages. Patois, Pidgin, AAVE are decolonial praxis.
Black British people, however, stand at a crossroad whereby our identity and etymology intersect with West Indian and African cultures, due to our migration from these regions. For many it begets confusion over what constitutes being Black British, because culture is ‘distinct’ and from an outsider's perspective, Black British identity appears derivative of its West Indian and African influences - not valid as its own category of identity. Nonetheless, it is the combination of these influences, coupled with our otherness in white Britain that ‘Black British’ communities emerge as a site for belonging. Filmmaker Alegría Adedeji tackles these layers of Black Britishness in her mini-series there is rice at home and from our stories, blends the absurd to create complex characters that are relatable, flawed and uncompromising.
For a start, the title; “there is rice at home” are the cruel words that echo in the backseat of the car as your parents drive past McDonalds, words that build up the kind of resentment that shows in the face, and will eventually lead to a threat of “fix your face”. This same language in adulthood takes on a new form. It becomes the angel on your shoulder, the language that conceptualises our parent’s economic insecurity as working-class immigrants in white Britain. It is a plea that there is rice at home because rice is what we have. In Adedeji’s own words, there is rice at home is “philosophical”. “You can always remind yourself that there’s rice at home before you do something really chaotic or commit absolute mayhem. It’s also a love letter to us as non-white Brits. Amongst the home we are in, we can make rice at home. We can make great stuff out of nothing,” she tells gal-dem.
The first episode of the series, Voice of The People, is on the set of low budget programme TLDR, produced by the fictitious Wasted Media. The show features Luke and his co-host Lio, Tory MP Sade Obafemi-Balogun – who goes by Sam – and journalist Chanté Joseph as herself. All of them, bar Lio, are Black. Sam’s politics, speak to the those of Shaun Bailey and Dominique Samuels. When Labour MP Dawn Butler shared her experience of systemic racism in the Metropolitan Police (MET) after a stop and search, Shaun Bailey, the Mayor of London Conservative candidate, denied the existence of racism in the MET police, promising that as Mayor, “I’ll back our police. I’ll never defund them like Sadiq Khan”.
Similarly, in Voice of The People, when Sam is asked about stop and search by an exasperated Luke, she dismisses his concerns with a statement about the shackle mentality in Black communities. The episode is polemical and highlights the banality of Black British Tories by providing us with a social commentary true to the tokenistic anti-Blackness that riddles their politics. This brand of ‘exceptional Blacks’ believe that, like mythological phoenixes, they have risen above the ashes of the institutionalised racism that has submerged Black British lives presently and historically. They are, as Angela Davis succinctly put it, the kind of Black people “we do not want to be in unity with”.
In the episode, humour is an opposing duality. It is trivial and confrontational, funny and cruel, shady and explicit. We watch as Luke inappropriately asks Sam when the last time she had sex was - here Adedeji highlights sexual harassment in media spaces - and Sam counters by asking him what floor on the council estate he lives on – an obnoxiously classist insult. Neither parties are innocent. In Chanté Joseph, we meet the voice of reason, a comrade in our fight. Equally repulsed with the complicit media platform which continually gives space to the wayward of our communities, as well as with the Black Tory woman striving for success at the expense of her own communities.
Amidst all the chaos that ensues in the episode, Lio, the white co-host appears disinterested, passively scrolling through his phone and only showing an inkling of attention where jokes were involved. For Lio, Blackness in his world is merely a source of entertainment evident in his silence, his dismissal of Luke by referring to him as “Big Shaq” and his mispronunciation of the names of the two Black women guests on his show.
In the 1970’s and 1980’s, English football fans regularly chanted the words “There ain’t no Black in the Union Jack, send the bastards back!”. These words reflect how race is so close-knit to nationalism in Britain. It is why Chanté referring to Sam as “Sade”, is such a pivotal act of protest and an explicit reminder of her place in White Britain. Ultimately, we do not belong here nor are we wanted here. The culture, language and spaces we construct for ourselves as Black British people are crucial sites for belonging - a mechanism for self-definition outside the hegemony of whiteness.
