In the first pages of his autobiography, Darcus Beese, former president of Island Records, writes about growing up Black in mid Twentieth Century London. “Generally, it was a non-issue – he writes –; until it became an issue.” (p. 28)

“Sometimes I’d be out on the street with a group of mates and a white kid – one of your white mates in the group – would say something offensive and racist and it would kick off. You just had to have it out, even if the kid was twice the size of you. I just couldn’t let that hit slide … But I was prepared to die on that hill because I wasn’t just standing up for myself; I was representing my people. White kids never had that burden of expectation.” (Beese & Matthews 2024: 28)

I like this quote because it clearly illustrates a couple of important features of social identity.  As Beese explicitly indicates: what categories we inhabit are sometimes a non-issue, but other times, they definitely are, and when they are, they demand action. In his understanding of his own racial identity, it was because he was black that he had had a special ethical obligation to fight racism. And this “burden of expectation” was not something he shared with his white mates. Furthermore, he also understands that when he fought, he did not fight for himself, but for his people. His action was not fully personal, but inherently social. He fought because he understood his personal fight as part of a larger collective fight. A few pages later, he writes:

“And on and on it went. Slur after slur. Conflict after conflict. Fight after fight. While the likes of Mum and Dad were the generals and field marshals strategising against racist Britain on the battlefields of the courts, parliament and public institutions, black kids were like boots on the ground engaged in adolescent urban warfare, clearing schools, youth clubs, dancehalls and shopping precincts one racist at a time.” (Beese & Matthews 2024: 41-2)

In this passage Beese makes it clear that the actions that constituted his racial identity, his inhabiting the category of Black in his historical context, were not mere personal behavior, but engaged political action. 

It is important to notice that these actions do not manifest some more-basic private inner ontological fact. This is so, because actions can be of the appropriate ontological kind because of a large set of factors, some internal and other external. Beese’s personal relation with his family and the subjective feelings elicited by the continuous harassment of people of color in his school and neighborhood were not enough. None of these motivations made him Black, until he acted on them in a politically significant way. He felt the need to fight, but not was the fight that made him Black. The discomfort with social expectations might be already there, but what this discomfort generates is not the revelation of an inner identity but the circumstances that call for the relevant avowal. The discomfort may motivate you to act in defiance of the relevant social expectations, but it is these actions that would have the right ontological effect.

Avowals have some first person authority, but this authority is not the first person epistemic authority of our avowals being immune to error, but the polito-ethical authority of it being only us who can perform the ontologically relevant actions. If one of Beese’s white mates had come forward to defend him from racial harassment, that would have been a good things, but it would not have had the same ontological significance and Beese’s standing for his people – because, again, remember that Beese did not think he was only standing for himself, but representing his people. To inhabit a category is not to have some kind of feeling or any similar internal state accessible only to ourselves in a privileged direct way. It is to act in a responsible and coherent way ourselves and our situation vis a vis the structures that determine the socio-historical content of those categories we inhabit. 

Beese, Darcus & David Matthews (2024) Rebel with a. Cause: Roots, Records and Revolutions, Nine Eight Books.