Race, Heritage and Epistemic Violence: What Brexit is for Africa and British-Africans

By Dr Foluke Ifejola Ipinyomi, Teaching Associate (University of Bristol Law School).

black_britain400In my personal blog, I examined in detail why many British-African voted Leave. It is my contention that the campaign failed to address the concerns of African citizens of the Commonwealth and those of African descent living in the UK. This was quite a considerable section of the electorate whose concerns were ignored or presumed. In fact some members of the Leave campaign petitioned to have this section removed from eligibility to vote, presuming that they would vote to Remain in the EU. Personally, I had an interesting time trying to counter presumptions made by various African friends about why they wanted the UK to leave the EU. I do wish I had said more when there was still time, but no one expects the unexpected. Ultimately, Africans voting to leave the EU was the result of badly run campaign, an enormous amount of misinformation and a glaring disregard of the history of Africa-Europe relations. The two primary issues that should have been addressed with regard to British-Africans were immigration and financial concerns. (more…)