Black Boys and Negro Problems
is a powerful meditation on what it means to grow up Black and male in Britain today. Drawing on history, personal experience, and the voices of leading Black thinkers, Emmanuel B. traces the chains that bind Black boys long before they take their first steps into classrooms, playgrounds, and workplaces.
From the legacy of slavery and colonialism to the Windrush generation, from school exclusions to police surveillance, from the stereotypes of the media to the silences of absent fathers, this book asks hard questions about how Black identity is shaped - and mis-shaped - in modern Britain. Yet this is not a story of despair. It is a story of survival, resilience, and resistance. It is a story of boys who grow into men despite the weight of suspicion, of mothers who hold families together against the odds, and of communities that build joy and culture out of struggle.
With clarity and compassion, Emmanuel B. draws on the insights of W. E. B. Du Bois, Frantz Fanon, James Baldwin, bell hooks, Stuart Hall, Angela Davis, Akala, and many others - but he also honours the everyday wisdom of brothers, friends, fathers, and sons whose lives rarely make it into books. He shows that the struggles of Black boys are not marginal, but central to understanding what kind of country Britain is, and what it might yet become.
is both a testimony and a call to action: a demand that we see Black boys not as problems, but as people - complex, creative, and capable of defining themselves beyond the narrow scripts society has written for them.
For readers who care about justice, identity, and the future of Britain, this book is essential.