Dr. Kehinde Andrews
Professor of Black Studies | Birmingham City University
Birmingham, UNITED KINGDOM
Kehinde Andrews is interested in the areas of race, ethnicity and racism, black studies and how communities overcome inequality.
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Biography
Kehinde is an academic, activist and author whose books include Back to Black: Retelling Black Radicalism for the 21st Century (2018). His first book was Resisting Racism: Race, Inequality and the Black Supplementary School Movement (2013).
Kehinde led leading the development of the Black Studies degree and is director of the Centre for Critical Social Research; founder of the Harambee Organisation of Black Unity; and co-chair of the Black Studies Association.
Areas of Expertise (8)
Scholar Activisim
Ethnography
Community Inequality
Race and Ethnicity
Black Studies
Racism
Marginilized Societies
Community Activism
Affiliations (1)
- Black Studies Association
Links (1)
Selected Media Appearances (3)
What Meghan Markle and Prince Harry's baby says about race
NBC News
2019-04-23
But Kehinde Andrews, a sociology professor at England's Birmingham City University who writes on race issues, is less sure that the royal baby indicates any improvement in racial equality. "Unfortunately, because racism is so bad and so historic and so entrenched, we tend to look at things, any things," he said. "So any symbol that could possibly be good we tend to over-celebrate: Barack Obama becoming president, the film 'Black Panther' got people excited, anytime we have someone which ... looks like a similar progress — unfortunately we get carried away. "But I think when we sit back and actively analyze what's happened and what's changed we realize that this is nothing, means nothing at all."
France is addressing black people’s invisibility in art. When will the UK?
The Guardian
2019-03-28
An exhibition taking place at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris is breaking new ground on race and representation in the arts. Black Models: From Géricault to Matisse displays masterpieces by some of France’s most important artists but renamed in honour of the black subjects who are in the pictures, yet absent from their narratives.
The big question: should museums return their treasures?
History Extra
2019-03-28
Kehinde Andrews: “This is not a complicated issue: the only ‘right’ to hold these artefacts was the dominion of empire” The empire may have crumbled, but British colonial arrogance towards the former colonies certainly has not. While colonising a quarter of the globe, Britain stole treasures and artefacts for the British public to marvel at in museums. There simply is no justification for holding on to these stolen goods.
Selected Articles (3)
Beyond Pan-Africanism: Garveyism, Malcolm X and the end of the colonial nation state
Third World Quarterly
Kehinde Andrews
2017 Pan-Africanism is an identifiable movement with its own history and historical and ideological roots. It formally began at the first Pan-African Congress in London in 1900 and has a distinct linage up to the present day African Union. Unfortunately, the movement has not presented a challenge to imperial domination in Africa, rather it has helped continue the exploitation of the continent. Accepting the colonial nation state has prevented any politics of liberation from developing in the movement. It is central to decentre Pan-Africanism from radical histories of resistance because the movement developed in parallel to and rejection of more revolutionary, anti-imperial politics. Garveyism developed a mass movement rooted on the global Black nation, shattering the boundaries of Westphalian sovereignty. Malcolm X picked up the work of Garvey, developing on some of its regressive weakness to form the Organization of Afro-American Unity. By unpicking this tradition from Pan-Africanism we can begin to chart a route to revolutionary concepts and practice of nationalism that can present a challenge to the imperial social order.
The Psychosis of Whiteness: The Celluloid Hallucinations of Amazing Grace and Belle
Journal of Black Studies
Kehinde Andrews
2016 Critical Whiteness studies has emerged as an academic discipline that has produced a lot of work and garnered attention in the last two decades. Central to this project is the idea that if the processes of Whiteness can be uncovered, then they can be reasoned with and overcome, through rationale dialogue. This article will argue, however, that Whiteness is a process rooted in the social structure, one that induces a form of psychosis framed by its irrationality, which is beyond any rational engagement. Drawing on a critical discourse analysis of the two only British big budget movies about transatlantic slavery, Amazing Grace and Belle, the article argues that such films serve as the celluloid hallucinations that reinforce the psychosis of Whiteness. The features of this discourse that arose from the analysis included the lack of Black agency, distancing Britain from the horrors of slavery, and downplaying the role of racism.
The problem of political blackness: lessons from the Black Supplementary School Movement
Ethnic and Racial Studies
Kehinde Andrews
2016 The Black Supplementary School Movement has a fifty-year tradition of resisting racism in Britain. Central to the movement is a construction of African Diasporic Blackness that is marginalized in British scholarship. ‘Political blackness’, based on the unity ethnic minority groups, is an important frame of reference in Britain. This article will examine the limitations of ‘political blackness’ in relation to research carried out in the Black Supplementary School Movement that involved interviews with key activists and an archival analysis of documents at the George Padmore Institute. Political blackness is based on an inaccurate understanding of the relationship between multiculturalism and anti-racism; a misreading of the complex and global nature of racism and a non-strategic essentialism. The concept also creates a form non-whiteism, which disempowers ethnic minority communities and works to delegitimize African Diasporic Blackness, which has a tradition of resisting racist oppression.
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