'We will never eradicate racism'

BLACK Britons need to move beyond the rhetoric of white oppression and embrace a new rhetoric of flourishing and strengthening their own identity, according to a leading thinker and broadcaster.

As the world celebrates 50 years since Martin Luther King's iconic 'I Have a Dream' speech, Bishop Dr Joe Aldred of the Church of the God of Prophecy – a leading ecumenist and broadcaster on BBC's Thought for the Day  – made a rallying call to black people to move past the 'oppression liberation dialectic'.

Just last week Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby – on the anniversary of King's speech – said that racial unity needs to begin with 'repentance'.

'We need to start by acknowledging that we have been – and continue to be – mired in racism in one way or another.

'The Church spent hundreds and hundreds of years persecuting Jewish people when the founder of our faith was Jewish.

'But God is someone who is utterly indifferent about what ethnic background someone is from. In fact, quite the contrary, He gave His son to break down those barriers.'

But Bishop Aldred called for an end to such discourse.

'I think we have probably used this for long enough,' he told Lapido at the launch of his new book Thinking Outside the Box: On Race, Faith and Life.

'I would suggest we need to move on from that to talking about black flourishing and respect; and getting to know ourselves as black people – without feeling that we shall move beyond racism.

‘What we should be doing instead is strengthening ourselves culturally, spiritually, and economically to live in a world where actually racism does exist.'

Aldred, who grew up in rural Jamaica, also contradicted comments by outgoing Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks last week.

In an interview with The Times, Lord Sacks said 'multiculturalism has had its day' and warned against ethnic and religious groups 'putting our people's interest [ahead] of the national interest'.

Multiculturalism

Yet Aldred said that multiculturalism was 'alive and well' and argued he was very much in favour of it. He urged black people to own their own identity.

‘I am not in favour of fusing cultures so that you can’t see the distinction between them’ he told Lapido. 

‘God has created a world which is full of variety. Our challenge is to cohere that variety, not to diminish it or somehow dumb it down.'

Bishop Aldred admitted he had changed since writing for an angry magazine called Exodus in the 1980s, and ‘would not own up to hardly anything I wrote in those days.  It shows how much I have moved on.’

Jamaican High Commissioner, Her Excellency Mrs. Aloun Ndombet-Assamba before the great and the good among black Christian activists, including Speaker’s Chaplain Revd Rose Hudson-Wilkin and MP for Brent South Dawn Butler, commended Aldred for breaking the stereotype of the ‘black male Christian’.