I picked Akala’s memoir-slash-searing social analysis up almost accidentally. It was included in a couple of 2020 round-ups and although I hadn’t heard of him* or the book before, the excellent reviews made me add it to my own list. Based on the reviews, I expected it to be good, but not THAT good.

I am far from being an expert on race (or class or colonialism, for that matter), but I do read on this topic constantly, across different genres. So when I say I loved it as much as my absolute favourite books on racism, I’m not saying this lightly. I say it after having adored Claudia Rankine’s Just Us and Citizen; after James Baldwin’s genius Fire Next Time and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s rightly praised Between the World and Me.

I am not claiming that Akala is a better writer than these giants or has more piercing insights, although I think that the book is excellent by any standard. But in addition to showing extremely convincingly – if you did need convincing – that today’s Britain is a racist society haunted by a colonial past that has never been properly processed or confronted and illustrating this with personal experiences that make you want to punch something, his book does a couple of things I happen to value a lot.

First, he puts (British) racism in a broader global context. It is not easy to find mainstream texts that would look at racism in a more structural way, not just as an issue in one specific country or very similar countries. My intention isn’t to diminish the problems that need to be tackled in the US and the UK, but I think it’s difficult to fully understand any phenomenon when we look at it in isolation. The Americans in particular tend to focus on the US only (British books at least usually refer to the US), which is understandable, but not helpful in my quest for a more comprehensive understanding of racism.

There has been slavery through the ages across the globe and there is racism and colourism today in Asia and Africa and elsewhere. Obviously, the fact that ‘others did/do it too’ is not an excuse, but in my view it’s a prerequisite for properly investigating the root causes of things. This broader view is also helpful when one tries to tease apart racism, xenophobia, religious intolerance, classism and other ills – or to show how they interact.

To be clear, Akala’s focus is very much on Britain, but through historical references and his own experiences across the globe, he contextualises the specifically British brand or racism in a useful way. He shows how the exact same skin colour (his) means different things in England, Scotland, US, Jamaica, Brazil and Australia. And how it means something different again when people know who he is (hi, class!).

Second, I also very much appreciate his style, which is fresh, but also almost aggressively analytical. He likes to come up with counterarguments that he then counters again or perhaps he concedes a small point here to win a larger one there. Akala wouldn’t like that (he is not a fan), but this approach reminds me of Obama, who can analyse anything to death – although his brilliance is somewhat gentler. On one hand, I simply appreciate Akala’s aim to get to the very bottom of things, on the other, I hope this would be an effective way to talk to people who aren’t yet total converts to the anti-racist cause. The fact that he has much sympathy for all poor people, regardless of skin colour or other characteristics, potentially broadens his base as well.

And third, I like how he speaks about the role of the environment we function in and how that shapes who we are and how we act. When he describes the pressures and dangers young black men face, you realise it’s frankly a fucking miracle any of them emerge on the other side as whole human beings. While my life experience is dramatically different, I identify strongly with the point that we all adjust to our circumstances, and not always in positive ways. When Akala says it’s not just a certain kind of boy who becomes violent and troublesome, it’s also not just a certain kind of person who becomes a bigot or a white supremacist. We all have the capacity for evil (I’m no longer paraphrasing the book here) – out of ignorance, convenience, fear, ambition. It’s important that the logic of our society makes it less likely for that evil to emerge, not more. And even then, constant vigilance is needed.

I don’t always agree with the author, in particular towards the end of the book: while I agree the West’s distrust of China has racist elements, I would assign less importance to them than Akala does – compared to some other very valid reasons of that distrust. I am not as enthusiastic about Cuba as he is (you can probably see a pattern emerging here, indicating my upbringing under Soviet occupation – which does, I admit, create its own blind spots). But me agreeing with everything isn’t, obviously, the point and the text remains intelligent and illuminating throughout.

Highly recommended.

*Let it be noted, however, that I had heard of his sister, Ms Dynamite.