Adjoa Andoh says schools should teach children more about slavery
Bridgerton star Adjoa Andoh says school curriculum should be changed to teach children more about slavery as she speaks on podcast recorded weeks before her Coronation comments branding Royal family ‘terribly white’
- Andoh says she tries to educate people about the truth of Britain’s history
Bridgerton star Adjoa Andoh syas the national curriculum should be overhauled so children understand the ‘flourishing of the nation’ was funded by slavery.
The 60-year-old actor, who prompted fury when she said on ITV that the Buckingham Palace balcony looked ‘terribly white’, insists the government must do more to combat racism.
In a podcast recorded before the Coronation, she said it is her job to challenge preconceptions ‘through a corset and a stately pile’, referring to her role as Lady Danbury in the Netflix costume drama.
Andoh, who grew up in the Cotswolds and whose father came from Ghana, says she tries to educate people whenever she can about the truth of Britain’s history in relation to slavery and trade, and treatment of people of colour.
She maintains that without educating people, the outcomes for black people will remain worse.
Adjoa Andoh stunned viewers by calling the Buckingham Palace balcony ‘terribly white’
Ms Andoh said on Saturday: ‘We have gone from the rich diversity of the Abbey to a terribly white balcony. I am very struck by that’
Speaking on the Snowcast podcast, issued today, the mother-of-three said: ‘If we understood all of our history there’s less conversations about, y’know “go back where you came from”… we’ve always been here in various iterations, we’ve contributed the science in this country, the literature, the music.
READ MORE: ITV maintains wall of silence over record 4,165 Ofcom complaints after Bridgerton star Adjoa Andoh called the Buckingham Palace coronation balcony ‘terribly white’
‘All these great discoveries for which Britain is rightly commended, much of it came from our trade, it was funded by trade, whether that was indentured, or enslaved, overseas adventurism, that’s what funded the flourishing of this nation.
‘So we have to fold all that history in.’
She agreed that ‘balance in the reporting of history needs to be rectified’, adding: ‘We need to have people in positions of ministerial educational power who don’t want to take us back to some halcyon period of education in the late 1950s but want to take us into a world where we know all the stuff all the time.
‘It will help us to flourish, it will help people to feel they can engage in the nation’s progress in a way that allows them to use all their talents.
‘I want girls to know about women scientists, I want them to know about DNA, I want them to know about all of that because there is still this thing that y’know ‘girls don’t do science’ – well that’s ridiculous.
‘We may have some brilliant scientists who are just not coming through because it’s never been on the radar that it’s a possibility for them.’
Asked whether her role in Bridgerton shows ‘w have arrived’, Andoh replied: ‘If we want to talk about the outcomes of black women experiencing maternal care in this country when we are four times more likely to die or have life-changing things happen during labour or ante or post-natal care, then those things are still real.
The mother-of-three said: ‘If we understood all of our history there’s less conversations about, y’know “go back where you came from”‘
‘Deaths in custody, of people of colour, the real lived experience out in the world… we haven’t arrived.
‘But I think story telling is a powerful tool and I think we have to have the conversations…
‘Melanin is not the whole story and we all have to be able to engage with each other as one human being to another, because all those preconceptions are what make people assume that black women have a higher pain threshold, or that we’re too aggressive or complain too much.
‘When actually a woman is in distress while trying to deliver her baby. We need to lose those lenses that make us not see the person and that’s really what I’m interested in all the work I do.
‘And so I come at it through a corset and a stately pile and someone else will come at it through legislation, but that’s the work to be done.’
Following coverage of the coronation of King Charles III, Andoh told ITV viewers the day’s proceedings had ‘gone from the rich diversity of the Abbey to a terribly white balcony’.
Media watchdog Ofcom then received 4,165 complaints – the highest amount of complaints for a TV broadcast this year.
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