all the people they were ruling over were brown. and there were all these weird ideas to do with racial science that were emerging, and it turned into a proudly white supremacist exercise. but that was pretty much in the 19th century. it wasn t for the whole history. right. but, you know, there are a lot of people watching this around britain who will be finding that language hard to stomach. yeah, i think there s an amnesia about that. i think because we beat the evil, racist germans in world war ii and we abolished slavery, there s an idea that we are beyond racism in this country. but i think we have institutional racism in this country because our society was built on the racist institution of british empire. and again, words matter. you use the word genocide to talk about certain times, certain incidents in the british empire story. you re very sure? you really think it meets that standard of genocide? absolutely. the tasmanian genocide every historian i consulted called it th
and that is a pretty neutral thing. education is important here, so i want to go into a little bit of detail about what you learned and how you learnt it, because as you say, you were from a deprived part of wolverhampton in the west midlands and yet you were academically gifted and successful so you went to a predominantly white grammar school in a very different neighbourhood. and you say that that school, it had a huge impact on you. i think one phrase you ve used is that it sort of cleansed your mind , and not necessarily in an altogether positive way. what did it do to you? well, i guess it got me where i wanted to go, which is intojournalism and into the establishment. there s no way i would have got a job on the financial times if i hadn t gone to cambridge university. but at the same time, i think i lost touch with my ethnic background and being punjabi in that i didn t study a single brown author until my final terms at university. and i think that was a failure of education,
in your views now about how we need to use very specific language about, for example, the british empire. you call it a wilful, unapologetic exercise in white racial supremacy. britain was dehumanising black people on a super industrial scale. but i also say empire didn t start out as that. it didn t start out as a wilfully racist thing. it happened in the 19th century when britain suddenly found itself ruling a quarter of the planet and noticed that they were white and almost all the people they were ruling over were brown. and there were all these weird ideas to do with racial science that were emerging, and it turned into a proudly white supremacist exercise. but that was pretty much in the 19th century. it wasn t for the whole history. right. but, you know, there are a lot of people watching this around britain who will be finding that language hard to stomach. yeah, i think there s an amnesia about that. i think because we beat the evil, racist germans in world war ii and we abo
in the west midlands and yet you were academically gifted and successful so you went to a predominantly white grammar school in a very different neighbourhood. and you say that that school, it had a huge impact on you. i think one phrase you ve used is that it sort of cleansed your mind , and not necessarily in an altogether positive way. what did it do to you? well, i guess it got me where i wanted to go, which is intojournalism and into the establishment. there s no way i would have got a job on the financial times if i hadn t gone to cambridge university. but at the same time, i think i lost touch with my ethnic background and being punjabi in that i didn t study a single brown author until my final terms at university. and i think that was a failure of education, and i don t think my experience is untypical, in that a lot of our education, our curriculums are whitewashed and we don t study the role that empire had in so many things. and to take things that are very relevant to you
wanting to delete things out of the curriculum. but i think you can continue to teach things like the world wars and so on and just include black history and brown history. i suppose the question then is what sathnam sanghera would teach, because i look at your writings, including empire land, but yourjournalism as well, and you are very trenchant in your views now about how we need to use very specific language about, for example, the british empire. you call it a wilful, unapologetic exercise in white racial supremacy. britain was dehumanising black people on a super industrial scale. but i also say empire didn t start out as that. it didn t start out as a wilfully racist thing. it happened in the 19th century when britain suddenly found itself ruling a quarter of the planet and noticed that they were white and almost all the people they were ruling over were brown. and there were all these weird ideas to do with racial science that were emerging, and it turned into a proudly white