“In Britain the education system is rigged.” An unsurprising comment, but it’s from Zadie Smith, formidable novelist and supreme essayist, talking about why British Black, working class, women novelists still aren’t happening.
“You need an education to write.” Can’t you get one at a state school? Not really. But didn’t she go to comprehensive? Well, it only goes so far: “Class swallows everything.”
She’s probably right. Basil Bernstein’s theories of language still seem to pertain. The acquisition of elaborate interior codes, without which novels can’t happen, still stifles working class expression. Novel writing is still predominantly an upper/middle class, predominantly White activity.
What the Black working class do is music, magnificently, “a monument to the ages”. That’s where their creativity mostly goes, because you don’t need money or a degree.
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