ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a narrative and experiential-based approach to wrestling with the nature of being Black in Britain and what it means to be perceived as an ‘enemy within’. The roots of this chapter are drawn from reflections first created over a decade ago, to show that the more recent ‘toxic environment’ against immigration is nothing new. This work draws on two personal reflections in which the dynamics of being perceived as the other, shaped by the toxic frameworks of Whiteness and superiority, have given rise to forms of contractual acceptance in which Blackness is viewed with suspicion and perceived as transgressive. The analysis in this chapter outlines how Blackness is perceived within a tightly constructed framework in which notions of respectability and the politics of acceptability are always at play. The latter is informed by imperial mission Christianity and how Black bodies are identified as problematic and in need of rehabilitation or punishment, depending on the extent to which those bodies are perceived as transgressive or supine.
