Black culture
Sir: Roy Kerridge sees Rasta, reggae, etc, as nervous tics which stop English blacks from reaching fuller expression (1 December). Agreed, they don't always help. Jennings's mistake is to see them as cultural phenomena which exist for no special reason other than the intervention of progressive schoolteachers. For reasons connected both with their present conditions and their prospects of future improvement, young blacks in London are closing ranks. And one of the traditional ways for a group to close ranks is by overdefining its culture. As many blacks are aware, it's a dangerous response and a oad strategy. On the other hand it has a long and respectable history; one which goes back almost as far as Judaism. When Kerridge goes on to claim that black culture doesn't exist at all, he is throwing the baby out with the bath-water, I am a playwright, and often teach playwriting to young people, It's my experience that when young blacks read out dialogue they have written in London patois, the effect is often as though the lights had been switched on. Their prose is muscular, ironic and humane. It is quite differentfrom its white equivalent. It is black. Assuming that plays still count as culture, it's Hack culture. To reach Kerridge's perception that it doesn't exist, I'd have to shut my eyes and stuff wax in my ears. Kerridge is saying that if it's black, it shouldn't be different, and if it is it can't be English. He expects English blacks to concede their history and their language, While English whites concede nothing at all. Nicholas Wright 35 Leinster Square, London W2
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