Tomiwa Owolade

Tomiwa Owolade is a London-based British journalist, critic, and author. He is an assistant comment editor at The Telegraph and wrote “This Is Not America: Why We Need a British Conversation About Race,” a book arguing for a British-specific conversation about race and Black British identity.

Britain’s Race Debate Is Importing the Wrong American History

In a Hoover Institution conversation with Andrew Roberts, author and columnist Tomiwa Owolade argues that Britain’s race debate has become distorted by American categories that do not fit British history or demography. Owolade’s case in This Is Not America is not that Britain lacks racism, but that treating black Britons, American descendants of slavery, immigrants, Jews, Muslims, and other groups through a single imported racial framework produces bad analysis and weaker civic life.

Hoover InstitutionJun 16, 202614 min read