Black Scottish identity

Black Scottish identity is the objective or subjective state of perceiving oneself as a black Scottish person and as relating to being black Scottish. The identity has been researched academically, particularly within the arts, as well as social sciences, and has been reported on and discussed in the media of Scotland.

Background

Black Scottish identity has been researched and reported on within a range of contexts and intersecting dimensions. The identity is usually connected with black African and African Caribbean heritage or cultural association in Scotland,^[1] and academic research in social sciences has focused on perceptions of competing identities:^[2]

To some, it’s obvious that the two are not mutually exclusive. To others, Black Scottish identity is a contradiction in terms: either you’re of this place, Scottish and therefore white, or Other, Black.

In scholarly publications with a focus on literary works, the writings of Maud Sulter,^[3] and Jackie Kay in particular, have produced study into the subject in Scotland.^[4][5] Kay's work and commentary is preeminent in the portrayal of black Scottishness and identity.^[6] Academics, such as professor Alan Rice, have analyzed how the writer's 1998 novel Trumpet harnessed African-American music and traditions in order to explore black Scottish identity.^[7]

History

In 2013, Scottish playwright David Greig, who was brought up in Nigeria, wrote that increased awareness of black Scottish identity was a positive result of the policy and cultural debates ahead of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum.^[8]

A 2017 study into Scottish Somalis living in Glasgow detailed how monolithic black identity in Scotland had created cultural identification issues. University of Edinburgh research-fellow Emma Hill's analysis detailed the potential conflicts created by the identity and its tendency to exclude the group's religious faith as Muslims.^[9] Queen Margaret University's Dr Rebecca Finkel, Dr Briony Sharp and Dr Majella Sweeney explored the identity and its ethnocultural expression in Scottish society in their 2018 Routledge research-series.^[10]

Academic research

The works of Jackie Kay have been widely examined in the emergence of a black Scottish identity in the nation.^[11] Carole Seymour-Jones's 2009 Disappearing Men, which analyzes Kay's black character (Joss Moody) in Trumpet, argues that black Scottish identity is a form of inclusive declaration which defies oversimplified categorisation.^[12] University of Zadar assistant professor, Vesna Ukić Košta, has written of black Scottish identity, examining another Kay work (The Adoption Papers) and its intersection with parent-child relations.^[13]

Dr Minna Liinpää's 2018 Nationalism from Above and Below, published by the University of Glasgow, examined nationalism and racialised society in Scotland. The thesis, which studied the experiences of black Scots,^[14] analyzed perceptions of contradiction between blackness and Scottishness.^[2] In Gerry Hassan's 2019 Scotland the Brave? Twenty Years of Change and Devolution, University of Edinburgh professor Dr Nasar Meer explores the political challenges for ethnic minorities, and specifically black Scottish people, in expressing their Scottish national identity.^[15] Dr Francesca Sobande and Layla-Roxanne Hill's 2022 Black Oot Here: Black Lives in Scotland, published by Bloomsbury focuses on a wide range of experiences of education, work, activism, media, creativity, public life, and politics, to present a vital contemporary account of Black lives in Scotland.

References

1. Millsom Henry-Waring (2004). Moving beyond Otherness: Exploring the Polyvocal Subjectivities of African Caribbean Women across the United Kingdom (Volume 30 ed.). Hecate. At the group interviews, a video on Black Scottish Identity was selected as a focal point for discussions, as it questioned the nature of African Caribbean subjectivities in the UK.
2. Minna Liinpää' (2018), "Friendly and Welcoming?: Experiencing Nationalism in Scotland", Nationalism from Above and Below: Interrogating 'race', 'ethnicity'and belonging in post-devolutionary Scotland, University of Glasgow, p. 213
3. Jessica Homberg-Schramm (2013). Jonh Flint; John Kelly (eds.). Bigotry, Football and Scotland. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-0748670376. The negotiation of a Black Scottish identity will be exemplified on the work of two black Scottish Women poets, namely Jackie Kay and Maud Sulter.
4. Chiara Sestini (2015), "Constructing a Black-Scottish identity.", Being in-between in Jackie Kay's Trumpet, University of Padua, p. 131, Then I discuss how the author constructs Black-Scottish identities in Trumpet and how her Black-Scottish characters are subjected to racist prejudices.
5. Lars Eckstein (2016), "Singing with/as the "other"", Performing Jazz, Defying Essence, University of Potsdam, ISBN 978-3-8260-3365-0, Author's biography such as the riddles of a black Scottish identity, lesbianism, or the experience of adoption.
6. Michaela Schrage-Fruh (2009). ""The Multiplicity of What I Am": Black Scottishness in the Poetry of Jackie Kay"". Folia litteraria Anglica (Volume 8 ed.). University of Łódź. This remark made by Jackie Kay in 2002 vividly illustrates what she has elsewhere referred to as the "inherent contradiction" (Wilson 121) of her Black Scottish identity.
7. Alan Rice (2012). Creating Memorials, Building Identities: The Politics of Memory in the Black Atlantic. Liverpool University Press. ISBN 978-1846317590. For instance, Jackie Kay's novel Trumpet (novel) (1998) utilises the resources of the African American musical tradition to tell a story of black Scottish identity.
8. David Greig (4 August 2014). "Why the Debate on Scottish Independence Might Be More Interesting Than You Think". Bella Caledonia. Over the last few months I've seen Independence based discussions on topics as diverse as crowd sourced constitutions, peak oil, Iceland's collapse, arts policy in Finland, land reform, wildness as a concept, Black identity in Scotland, the function of defence forces
9. Emma Hill (2017), "Mapping whiteness, Somali voices and the spaces of Glasgow City", Somali Voices in Glasgow City: Who Speaks? Who Listens?An Ethnography, Heriot-Watt University: University of Edinburgh, p. 295, In the meantime, a whiteness-led categorisation of a Somali person as 'Black' would compound their racialised exclusion from Islam and disregard their self-defined racial identity. Under the white gaze in Glasgow City, Somali people were thus subject to 'hailings' that saw them as doubly Other or as partial subjects, and extended the same categorisations to their occupations of public space.
10. Rebecca Finkel; Briony Sharp; Majella Sweeney, eds. (2018). Accessibility, Inclusion, and Diversity in Critical Event Studies. Routledge. ISBN 978-0815350828.
11. Jessica Homberg-Schramm (2018). ""Black Scottish Writing" - A New Heritage?". 'Colonised by Wankers.' Postcolonialism in Contemporary Scottish Fiction. University of Cologne. pp. 109–120. ISBN 978-3946198284. Kay is constantly making and re-making that black Scottish identity, creating a black Scottish tradition, a space for herself " (Jones 2004, 200).
12. Carole Seymour-Jones (2009). "Between Being: Jackie Kay's Trumpet". Disappearing Men: Gender Disorientation in Scottish Fiction 1979-1999. Rodopi. p. 99. ISBN 978-9042026988. Doubleness can also describe Joss's racial identity, a black Scottish identity that is a declaration of an inclusive in-betweenness exceeding simple categorisation.
13. Vesna Ukić Košta (2019). "On Mothers, Daughters and Black Scottish Identity in Jackie Kay's 'The Adoption Papers'". Migrations: Literary and Linguistic Aspects. Peter Lang. pp. 109–120. ISBN 978-363178514-0.
14. "Artists: Claire Heuchan". Glasgow International. 2020. As a Blackwoman: On Black Scottish Identity
15. Nasar Meer (2019). "Race Equality and Nationhood". In Gerry Hassan (ed.). Scotland the Brave? Twenty Years of Change and Devolution. Luath Press. p. 71. ISBN 978-1913025021. The second is the more nebulous but no less relevant question of national identity, and specifically how this cultivates a certain kind of political environment in which black and ethnic minorities negotiate post-devolution Scotland.