- Title: Fear and pride: New Tory leader leaves Black Britons divided
- Date: 12th November 2024
- Summary: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM (NOVEMBER 5, 2024) (REUTERS) BUS DRIVING AND PEOPLE WALKING IN STREET IN SOUTHEAST LONDON NEIGHBOURHOOD OF PECKHAM PEOPLE WALKING NUTS STORED IN BOTTLES/PEOPLE WALKING SIGN IN CAFE READING (English): "NIGERIAN PUFF PUFF & BUNS 2 FOR £1" EXTERIOR OF CAFE AND PRODUCE STORE (SOUNDBITE) (English) NIGERIAN-BORN LONDON RESIDENT, ABEL FAYEMI, S
- Embargoed: 26th November 2024 07:58
- Keywords: Britain Conservatives Kemi Badenoch politics race
- Location: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM
- City: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM
- Country: UK
- Topics: Europe,Government/Politics,Elections/Voting
- Reuters ID: LVA001781806112024RP1
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: In Peckham, a vibrant south London neighbourhood home to one of the largest Nigerian communities in the country, Kemi Badenoch becoming the first Black woman to lead a major British political party is a source of hope and pride.
But not everyone is celebrating. Some fear Badenoch, who was born in London to Nigerian parents but lived in Lagos until she was 16, will undermine progress towards racial equality.
The 44-year-old former software engineer represents the right wing of the opposition Conservative Party and was elected its leader on November 2, after it lost power in a July election.
A defender of meritocracy, she said she prefers not to focus on her race, arguing she would like the colour of her skin to be no more significant than the colour of her hair or eyes.
For Nigerian-born Abel Fayemi, who has lived for more than two decades in Peckham, Badenoch's election by Britain's most successful political party was a "remarkable achievement".
"It has given us hope," said Fayemi, one of the the nearly 300,000 Nigerians in Britain.
Nigerian Ajofoyinbo Oluwajuwon, 24, has lived in London for six years and sees Badenoch as someone to look up to: "A Black woman doing something like that (is) definitely an inspiration."
However, some of Badenoch's remarks have caused alarm among some within the Black community and anti-racism activists in Britain.
At the Conservative Party conference in October 2023, she said she tells her children that Britain is the "best country in the world to be Black because it's a country that sees people, not labels".
She has described calls for reparations for slavery, which advocates say are crucial to overcome racial discrimination today, as a "scam", and has opposed the teaching in schools of critical race theory - a concept that rests on the premise that racial bias is baked into Western institutions.
Badenoch has previously argued that critics were trying to "silence people like me" as they believe all Black people should have the same views.
"There is a left-wing view of racial politics that's assumed to be the Black view of politics," she told the Spectator magazine in 2020.
The Conservative Party did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Badenoch, who has said she has a hard-nosed view on immigration, supported a plan to deport asylum seekers arriving in Britain without permission to Rwanda, which has since been scrapped by the new Labour government.
She said in September it should not be assumed that "all cultures are equally valid" when it comes to deciding who should be allowed into the country, and said those moving to Britain should accept its values.
She told the BBC she was referring to "cultures that believe in child marriage, or that women don't have equal rights".
British-Nigerian writer Nels Abbey, one of many who criticised Badenoch on social media following her appointment, said he believed she has and would continue to pander to Britain's "most racist instincts".
Some would feel they can "convey racism without having to deal with the baggage of actually being labelled a racist" as the rhetoric would be "outsourced" to a Black person, he said.
Annabel Sowemimo, of British-Nigerian heritage and founder of Reproductive Justice Initiative, which aims to address health and racial inequalities, said Badenoch pointed to her own success as something she achieved on merit but did not acknowledge obstacles such as racism that others might face to accomplish the same.
According to Britain's equality regulator, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, unemployment rates are higher among Black people, they earn less, are more likely to live in substandard and overcrowded accommodation and face tougher rates of prosecution and sentencing.
(Production: Ben Makori, Catriona Demony) - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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