- guardian.co.uk, Sunday 3 June 2001 17.10 BST
This is black culture the way I'm accustomed to seeing it expressed. Celebration of My Sisters is a three-and-a-half-hour smorgasbord of black talent. It's not Jamaican. It's not Nigerian. It is black in all its varieties and hues.
It reminds me of home, which is America, where expressions of black culture are generally confident and celebratory. In the three years I've lived in Britain I have watched the same thing happen here. Black British culture is now not confined to an urban underground. It is having an impact on the mainstream.
But how is this cultural success translating into political success? Political parties bickering over who is the most racist is not really the same as parties debating about how to improve employment for ethnic minorities or policing or education. We are left with a strangely disembodied debate on race that has little to do with the daily lives of black and Asian people in Britain.
Witness the reaction to Oldham. Three days of rioting and the election campaign barely stops. It paused just long enough for Tony Blair to praise the police and the virtues of diversity and William Hague to say the riots were not his fault, and move quickly on. If this election were taking place in the US, it would look very different. We'd have Blair giving speeches from the pulpits of black churches while Hague would show off his Hindi.
In America we are fascinated by race. It is a fundamental part of the way in which we understand ourselves. Presidential contenders must be prepared to make some overtures to America's ethnic minorities.
The first stop on my journey to understand race and politics in Britain is a community centre in Northampton. Operation Black Vote has organised a meeting of black and Asian residents invited to ask questions of the three candidates for Northampton South, one of the constituencies where it is believed Labour's margin of victory is slim enough for black and Asian votes to make a difference.
'The black electorate is now becoming a lot more mature and beginning to recognise the clout it has,' says Simon Woolley, national co-ordinator. 'The maturity of the black vote is such that we are no longer asking, we are democratically demanding.'
About three dozen people are gathered in the community centre. The meeting opens with some remarks from Shantelle Brown, 13, a member of the United Kingdom Youth Parliament. 'We should take part in the election because we are fortunate not to be in a dictatorship,' she says earnestly. Voting is one of the most important rights - make your voice heard.'
Much of the discussion that follows is occupied by an argument between Conservative and Labour candidates over whether some comments were racist and a debate with the audience about whether teachers have an attitude problem when it comes to black pupils.
Towards the end Dionne Gravesande, executive officer of a black-led housing association, raises her hand: 'To be honest I don't vote because none of you hold my confidence. I came here with a hint of a hope that one of you would give me a reason.'
Shantelle's mother, despite her daughter's encouragement, seconds this idea. 'I don't vote and I'm not going to start,' she says.
After the meeting ends Gravesande vents her disappointment. 'This whole notion of one big, happy, ethnic minority family,' she says, 'is worthless. Asian people have their own issues specific to their culture. This vague term "politically black" - it's too huge.'
Even Tony Fairweather, who organised Celebration of My Sisters, does not believe there is any such thing as a black vote. Are blacks and Asians, he asks, really different to anyone else?
'We love our children. We want a roof over our heads. We want money in the bank. We don't want crime. And we don't want people seeing the colour of our skin,' Fairweather says. 'I personally don't believe that I would vote just for my colour. I would vote for what's right for me personally.'
I wanted to find a place where I could watch the fragmenting of ethnic minority politics. Bradford seemed a natural choice, more specifically, Bradford West. The MP is Marsha Singh, an Indian Sikh who won the seat for Labour by 3,800 votes. So, it's a marginal. His Tory opponent is Mohammed Riaz, a Kashmiri Muslim.
Months before the election, race had become an issue. Bradford West Labour party filed a complaint with the Commission for Racial Equality claiming that during a Conservative rally the editor of an Urdu-language paper was encouraging people to vote for a Muslim candidate.
Riaz says Labour is just grumpy because he managed to eat away at its lead in the last election.
'I think one of the biggest misconceptions is to try to see Asians and Afro-Caribbeans as homogenous. They are not,' he says.
Suddenly I am beginning to miss the relative stability of racial politics in America. Race is more complex here. In fact, Britain seems to sustain two opposing trends simultaneously. Some are trying to pull ethnic minorities in under a single banner, while for others, even the categories black and Asian are too broad. They would prefer to see people organised around religions or ethnicities.
The last stop on my journey is a drop-in centre in Bradford West where I am introduced to a group of six regulars. They are all Asian, all Muslim, all young men between the ages of 18 and 21. Imran, 18, tells me about a time when he was cleaning boots during football trials while the other hopefuls were on the pitch. When he asked why he was cleaning boots, the person in charge responded: 'That's the problem with your people. You haven't got any discipline.'
Osman, also 18, follows with a story about a time he was kicked out of class. He was standing outside the classroom when a teacher approached him and asked him what was wrong. When he explained the situation she said: 'All you Asian lads are the same. You never seem to do your work.'
But any stereotypes I arrived with about the apathy of youth are quickly swept aside. They know about Hague's troubles with MPs who spew racist rhetoric. One remembers what it felt like to watch Iraq being bombed during Ramadan. Another disapproves of the deference of British leaders to America. And as the conversation progresses I realise they understand a lot more about the politicians than politicians understand about them.
Election breakdown
· Asian and black voters total about 5 million.
· On Thursday there will be 16 Tory candidates from the ethnic minorities, 16 Labour, 25 Lib Dems and 20 socialists (mostly Socialist Alliance).
· In 1997, ethnic minority turnout was 54 per cent, compared with 72 per cent of the wider community.
· Of those who voted, around 95 per cent of blacks, 72 per cent of Indians, 55 per cent of Pakistanis and 83 per cent of Bangladeshis voted Labour.
· In the last Parliament there were 10 ethnic minority MPs - all Labour - and all are expected to keep their seats on Thursday.
