One the most powerful insights in @DavidOlusoga’s McTaggert lecture was his reference to being subjected to white views of ‘black authenticity'.

It’s a concept that’s rarely discussed, but he set out beautifully how he found it so psychologically corrosive + debilitating

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It is the paradox that - as it finally feel seems that your success show has avoided the disadvantages and setbacks that so often affect black people - you are dismissed as being ‘less authentic’. Your success means you are not black enough.

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In the lecture David describes educated black people being seen as ‘less authentic’ in media circles; white colleagues wishing he was the kind of black person they wanted to hang out with… like their weed dealer.

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This manifests itself in so many ways. You’re not black enough because:
- You didnt grow up in poverty
- Your parents were African students not bus drivers + cleaners.
- You haven’t been stopped + searched enough.
- You're light skinned/mixed race so…

etc

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Its sad when black people, in a dysfunctional way, attack each other over those petty differences.

But its so sinister when we’re attacked as inauthentic by the very white people who would also have no respect for us if we were their ‘authentic’ version of black.

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Need an example? Just look at current attacks on @KamalaHarris’s ‘black authenticity’ coming, bizarrely, from white Trump supporters and their cronies.

Many of us will also remember BBC broadcaster, @bonsuman being told by the BBC he was too intellectual back in 2006.

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When this issue is raised the usual response is to remind everyone that you remain ‘authentically’ black, as long as you are a victim of racism.

True.

But it’s an ultimately incomplete + unfulfilling response: there’s more to our black identity than being a victim.

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Whichis why @DavidOlusoga was so powerful on this

Being told (by white people) you’re not ‘authentically black’, is one of the most insidious ways to denigrate our black identity.

It’s the type of craziness that, in your darkest moments makes you gaslight yourself.

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It’s always special when black people articulate in public complex aspects of the black experience that not everyone sees or discusses.

@DavidOlusoga vividly did it in his lecture. He demonstrated what we should all aspire to do when we get the big platform.

Loved it.

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