Letter to Beryl Gilroy

Letter to Beryl Gilroy Fred D’Aguiar (bio) Dear Beryl Gilroy: In the late 1980s I argued that the separation of black from British, that hyphen on special status within the nation, was a ghetto for blacks based on what I had seen born here and growing up from my teens to adult life here: first that books written by black authors were grouped together and lumped in a corner whereas authors who were white and working in similar genres were given prominence in high shop windows; second, that the usefulness of separation in order to develop a critical voice without interruption from whites or qualification offered to them as participants was long past its expiration date; third, that the US model of separate and equal really meant separated in order to underscore the continued inequality of black and white, applied to the UK as well; and fourth, that the psychology of separation made it impossible to imagine ourselves as integral to the nation (our dreamlike consigned to an apartheid of idealism). Beryl Gilroy, your autobiography, Black Teacher (London: Bogle-l’Ouverture Press Ltd, 1994), describes a city still under reconstruction more than a decade after WW2. You characterize the English and their capital with a ventriloquist’s zeal. Some of them really thought you could scrape off the black, that if they touched your skin their hands would be tainted with your brown. They thought where you came from was Africa—the place you named as somehow in Africa. You were great with them—patient and understanding. You sought to win them around by your example of patience and civility, of never showing insult or injury unless pushed and pushed to a natural breaking point and, even so, your riposte never matched the harm of the insult you sought to redress. There aren’t many like you from that time. You left Guyana for the UK in the mid-1950s, in your mid-twenties. You attended the University of London. You trained and qualified as a teacher. Then what? You bumped up against that glass ceiling of race. No one in the capital of your dreams would employ you because you were a black woman. The English voiced outrageous prejudices about black people and voiced them with confidence and you were always on the ropes fighting their insolence and cheek and brazen ignorance. You even made it sound as if ignorance by its very definition could not be faulted because the carrier was blissfully unaware of the affliction and acted blindly out of it rather than with any malicious design. You were generous beyond belief and yet believably generous in your consistent behavior towards the English—your biding of your time waiting for a day to push back and stake your claim of equality with the English; your difference, yes, but no inferiority, no. You even showed undue respect to any sophistication and good manners that you came across and reciprocated in kind with the kind of Caribbean charm and good manners [End Page 757] that make the culture almost like a finishing school of decorum. In short you provided for those of us coming after you a perfect model for how to conduct ourselves in the city and how to act surrounded by the English. The sense of being outnumbered, or of being overwhelmed, never entered the frame of your mind. You simply acted towards people as you found them and as a result you met many surprises and uplifting moments to match the gross insults and transgressions. There is a name—or there should be—for the life spent in adversity but conducted with dignity. It shouldn’t be sexist or effete. It should recall the aggression, grace, beauty, and precision of a hummingbird. Like one, you nested in the open and displayed your colors for all to see. Like one, you could match adversity with a stand against it never mind your solitary status in the middle of an army or your sex faced with male aggression. Like one, you came back to sources of kindness and remembered the locations of sustenance in the city. And conversely, steered clear of obstructions. You are a wife and

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