Entries by Richard Knight

Black people and morality

Images of Black people are pressed on us so insistently these days, usually as models of some kind, that it is natural to ask just how admirable Black people are. For example, are they especially moral? Are they especially industrious, especially respectful of other people’s property, especially reliable, especially good to children, especially merciful, especially […]

Thoughts on love and hate

The last time I saw the word “love” it was in the phrase “Love is love”, which, being meaningless, gave me no idea what it was supposed to be promoting. I thought it must be homosexuality because I’d heard Stephen Fry say the words, which was depressing enough. How could an intelligent man do something […]

Black people and begging

In 1843 an explorer named Sir William Harris wrote that all classes of Africans were most pertinacious beggars.[1] How true was this and how true is it of Black people today? Sir William Harris’s statement was well corroborated in the 19th century. Reporting on his time in north-east Africa, a German missionary described Africans as […]

Review of Black Britain  

Black Britain Chris Mullard London: George Allen and Unwin, 1973 Black Britain, published in 1973, is the memoir of a Black man born in Britain in 1944, when Black people were a rarity here. It contains much evidence that as a boy Chris Mullard was encouraged by all around him, but he could not accept […]