Post-imperial Britain grieves its lost power into racial phobia
Evidence
Postwar black migration, beginning in earnest with the arrival of the Empire Windrush in 1948, transformed the face of British society and brought British identity itself into question. It touched a deep reservoir of negative and stereotypical attitudes in Britain about racialized difference—a legacy inherited from Britain’s imperial role and brought to the surface by the arrival of significant numbers of black migrants from the Caribbean on the “home territory” of a society which imagined itself to be liberal, tolerant, and racially homogeneous. Paul Gilroy calls the pathological response of an old imperial society like Britain to the decline of its power a form of “post-colonial melancholia”—the unrequited grieving for a lost object that easily turns phobic. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1055 (
#corroborates, via linked claim)
Thus they develop the outlines of an analysis of what Paul Gilroy later called the forms of “postcolonial melancholia” characteristic of an ex-imperial society, bemused by its own declining status in the world and on the lookout for convenient scapegoats to explain away its problems. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 969 (
#expands, via linked claim)
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
Related
- Postwar Caribbean migration exposed Britain’s latent imperial racial stereotypes (similarity 0.91)
- Post-imperial Britain’s declining status fostered collective melancholia and scapegoating of minorities (similarity 0.83)
- Britain’s imperial legacy turned black migration into phobic post-colonial melancholia (similarity 0.81)
- Post-imperial anxieties span material competition and injured national pride. (similarity 0.79)
Broader Connections
- Britain’s imperial legacy turned black migration into phobic post-colonial melancholia
#corroborates(0.90) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1055 - Declining ex-imperial societies scapegoat minorities to explain their problems
#expands(0.85) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 969