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This book recounts the little-known history of the mixed-race children born to black American servicemen and white British women during the Second World War. Of the three million American soldiers stationed in Britain from 1942 to 1945, about 8 per cent (240,000) were African-American; the latter’s relationships with British women resulted in the birth of an estimated 2,000 babies. The African-American press named these children ‘brown babies’; the British called them ‘half-castes’. Black GIs, in this segregated army, were forbidden to marry their white girlfriends. Up to half of the mothers of these babies, faced with the stigma of illegitimacy and a mixed-race child, gave their children up for adoption. The outcome for these children tended to be long-term residency in children’s homes, sometimes followed by fostering and occasionally adoption, but adoption societies frequently would not take on ‘coloured’ children, who were thought to be ‘too hard to place’. There has been minimal study of these children and the difficulties they faced, such as racism in a (then) very white Britain, lack of family or a clear identity. Accessibly written and illustrated with numerous photographs, this book presents the stories of over forty of these children. While some of the accounts of early childhood are heart-breaking, there are also many uplifting narratives of finding American fathers and gaining a sense of self and of heritage.
In May 1958, and four years into the Algerian War of Independence, a revolt again appropriated the revolutionary and republican symbolism of the French Revolution by seizing power through a Committee of Public Safety. This book explores why a repressive colonial system that had for over a century maintained the material and intellectual backwardness of Algerian women now turned to an extensive programme of 'emancipation'. After a brief background sketch of the situation of Algerian women during the post-war decade, it discusses the various factors contributed to the emergence of the first significant women's organisations in the main urban centres. It was only after the outbreak of the rebellion in 1954 and the arrival of many hundreds of wives of army officers that the model of female interventionism became dramatically activated. The French military intervention in Algeria during 1954-1962 derived its force from the Orientalist current in European colonialism and also seemed to foreshadow the revival of global Islamophobia after 1979 and the eventual moves to 'liberate' Muslim societies by US-led neo-imperialism in Afghanistan and Iraq. For the women of Bordj Okhriss, as throughout Algeria, the French army represented a dangerous and powerful force associated with mass destruction, brutality and rape. The central contradiction facing the mobile socio-medical teams teams was how to gain the trust of Algerian women and to bring them social progress and emancipation when they themselves were part of an army that had destroyed their villages and driven them into refugee camps.
of him; secondly, Potter’s world-view which cast the British monarch and government in a favourable light compared to the brutal and bloodthirsty Tsar would not have struck a chord with the decidedly Anglophobe ideology Rafter, Irish journalism before independence.indd 55 28/07/2011 11:23:41 Irish journalism before independence 56 of Irish nationalism which regarded British and Russian tyranny as equally oppressive and, thirdly, he had included just about every racist stereotype of China in his account (though it is fair to add that such caricatures of east
imagination, to affect prevailing racist stereotypes and nurture black self-image.27 Claudia Jones was immersed in the culture of resistance and racially conscious grooming that thrived in Harlem. In her tributes to fellow race campaigner Ben Davis, Jones referred to his practice of visiting beauty and barber shops to mobilise the captive audiences of waiting black consumers who were to be found there.28 In London Jones continued to target beauty salons, as she no doubt had done in Harlem, seeking to capture the attention of an audience of black women and men devoted to the
lifestyles creating the conditions for a localised HIV/AIDS crisis also allowed the ‘AIDS capital’ label to function as a warning. In a British newspaper article from 1989 which attempted to instil fear in its readers by using racist stereotypes alongside melodramatic descriptions of urban decay, New York’s status as the ‘AIDS capital of the world’ was offered up as a dire warning of future calamity. New
asserted his place in this community at the same time as extending its scope to include Aboriginal people. Viewed comparatively, the oppression of the Aborigines had much in common with the African experience of slavery. 42 Furthermore, by calling himself a hardworking black man, Fernando countered contemporary racist stereotypes of black men as lazy and dishonest. 43 Official responses to his case, however, persistently described him as ‘a negro who claims to have been born in Australia and who is interned as a British subject’. 44 (Was
Despite frequent allusions to Indochina’s large population in French propaganda, racist stereotypes of most Indochinese belonging to ‘non-warrior races’ that were effeminate or unable to withstand cold European winters kept French military leaders from raising Indochinese troops during the first two years of the Great War and making full use of them later on. 29 Ironically, other military officials were
natives’ at a lower level of existence, as the children of Mankind, Eyre respects Aboriginal culture, territories and customs (at least as far as prudent to protect the interests of his small expeditionary parties). Utilising, perhaps ironically, the racist stereotypical language of the day, he even suggests that ‘the genuine hospitality of the untutored savage, may well put to the
racist stereotypes are not entirely absent in a less openly imperialist age may be seen from the Thuggee-style heavies featured in Steven Spielberg’s xenophobic film ‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom’ (1984). On the whole, however, the Indian stories in the halfpenny papers were not so Manichaean but took care to provide a ‘good’ Afghan or Pathan who is sympathetic to the British civilising mission
reproduced common racist stereotypes about Native Americans as filthy and wretched: The Cheyennes are the Indians I like … braver – cleaner and more manly in every way than any I’ve seen in the Northwest and I’ve seen nearly all of them – the Nez Perces are too much like the Crows and of all horrible cowardly wretches the Crows are the worst – the Nez Perces are not cowardly but in stature, appearance, dress, hair and filth they are very much alike – the Yanktonais Siouxs don’t pan out well or