Black British communities must unite and swim or remain divided and sink

The worsening economic crisis is particularly bad news for black businesses in the UK, which already face barriers raising finance and will struggle to stay afloat in the current climate. That is why it is time for black communities to unite and swim or remain divided and sink.

Last month the New Nation newspaper and Eastern Eye, both owned by Ethnic Media Group, went into administration. Yet whilst Eastern Eye has been purchased by the Asian Media and Marketing Group, the New Nation remains unsold and has ceased publication.

It´s ironic that the last edition of the New Nation celebrated the inauguration of Barack Obama, America´s first black president, who demonstrated how to harness the political and economic power of the African American community who not only contributed vast sums to his campaign, but 96 per cent of whom voted him into the White House.

Yet here we are in the UK seemingly unable or unwilling to come together as a community to save one of our few remaining black newspapers. Ionie Benjamin´s The Black Press in Britain published in 1995, in documenting the history of the black British press was rather optimistic about the future of black newspaper publishing in Britain.

In the past, as Benjamin´s well-research book reveals, black publishing began as early as the nineteenth century with journals from the likes of Frederick Douglas and newspapers that openly opposed racial injustice such as The Pan African and The African Telegraph.

But in recent years, newspapers such as the West Indian Gazette, Caribbean Times, West Indian World and many others have come and gone and we have yet to see the emergence of a collaborative African/Caribbean entity in the media and publishing world.

It´s sad that we do not see the value in harnessing the power of our own media in preserving our cultural values, promoting education and enterprise, speaking out against injustice and celebrating our achievements.

The fragmented structure of not only black media organisations but many other types of businesses, community and voluntary organisations is unsustainable and many will not weather the current economic storm unless social capital, economic resources, business knowledge and potential markets are pooled to create much larger entities.

As Amos Wilson observes in The Falsification of the Afrikan Consciousness, sometimes "The fear of trusting and uniting with each other, the fear of coming together and solving problems together, the belief that it is just not in us to unite and solve our problems ... becomes part of the problem..."

But we´d better get over these fears soon, or we will sink as we remain fragmented, instead of swimming safely to shore.

Copyright © Deborah Gabriel 2009 All Rights Reserved