Daniel Burdsey on the Sussex Coast and English seaside.
Read this interview to get a sense of how Englishness, seaside-ness, coastal-ness (in England) and whiteness come together. These themes get developed in Burdsey’s book and I’m picking them up in Worthing, as I go along. For more detail, you can also read this article which sets out the book’s themes.
Could Worthing initiatives like Women’s Hub and the One Love Festival be signalling our desire for something different to happen here?
Are Worthing’s ‘white English’ folks brave enough to face our own pasts and the entangled and painful histories of what has gone before? Are we ready to learn about and work against our white privilege?
Can we engage across lines of cultural and ethnic diversity without an omnivorous sense of entitlement and appropriation or engaging in a titillating exotic ‘otherness’?
Finally, then – what might be some ground-spaces where we can truly meet each other?
Walking, talking, listening and working ………. keep reading.