Paul Gilroy
There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack: The cultural politics of race and nation
London and New York: Routledge, 1992

We turn to nation. Gilroy writes in his introduction: 

‘All this means that we should not over-accentuate the positive nature of developments during the last fifteen years. Indeed there are many good reasons why any pressure to exaggerate the progress that Britain has made in its chronic battle against institutionalised racism should be resisted. I suspect that one reason this book is still read is because, though things have changed around British racism, the sad sources, unhappy contents and depressing vehicles of that racism have not altered beyond recognition. This durability could mean that some of the more general arguments explored in There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack remain stimulating and useful because they are still an approximate guide to the points at which the arterial system of the political body had been blocked by immigration, imperialist nostalgia and post-colonial melancholia.’ p. xvii. 

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The group met to discuss reading this book between September and December 2020

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