The UK had a decades-long head start over the US in abolishing slavery, and until recently, if you’d asked a Brit about troubled race relations, they usually made it a conversation about American society.
The Brits have their own problems and they’ve been heating up. This month, there were race riots in northern cities; British whites fought British Asians and both sides took on the cops.
In Britain, whites and blacks intermarry at a far higher rate than in the US. Yet only nine members of Britain’s parliament are minorities, and no members of Tony Blair’s Cabinet are.
9Hosted by Dick Gordon)
Guests:
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, cultural critic, journalist, and author of Imagining the New Britain
Darryl Pinckney, poet and New York Review of Books critic
Julie McCarthy, National Public Radio’s London Correspondent
Jan Ziff, former BBC State Department correspondent