MICHAEL HOLDING Why We Kneel, How We Rise. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
Michael Holding assembles a stellar array of champions to discuss their experiences of racism, Black achievements on and off the field, and finding a way forward.
Michael Holding was a champion fast bowler and a member of the all-conquering West Indies cricket team from 1975 to 1987, taking 249 Test wickets. He has spent most of his retirement as a respected cricket commentator. In July 2020, in a break in play due to bad weather in a match between England and the West Indies, Sky Sports broadcast a short film with Holding and Ebony Rainford-Brent, the first Black woman to play cricket for the English women’s team, talking about the Black Lives Matter campaign and their experiences of racism in sport. The film was made following the killing of George Floyd when a US policeman knelt on his neck, and the murder of Kentucky woman Breonna Taylor, shot in her own bed by police who broke into her apartment as part of a drug investigation.
After showing the film, Holding’s Sky Sports colleagues asked him how hard it had been to make. He said, ‘Well, I didn’t hold back. And from what I said, and the way that I said it, I think people saw anger, frustration and emotion. I just about managed to hold back tears.’ Both the film and the subsequent interview are available on YouTube and are highly recommended. To me, what comes through in the interview is Holding’s overwhelming sense of despair.
Subsequently, Holding was approached by other media outlets to talk more about the issue. His response: ‘I wanted nothing to do with it.’ But those in his circle urged him to continue to speak out. He received a phone call from Thierry Henry, the champion French footballer, who talked about instances of the racism he had experienced and encouraged Holding to continue with his nascent campaign. This did the trick, and motivated Holding to write Why We Kneel, How We Rise.
Michael Holding is not the first person to talk about racism in sport and in society more generally. What is novel here is the number of leading Black sports women and men, mainly from English-speaking nations, he has assembled to talk about their experiences: champion Olympic sprinter Usain Bolt from Jamaica; Grand Slam tennis champion Naomi Osaka from Japan; English footballer and one-time manager of the English women’s team, Hope Powell; African-American Olympic fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad; African American gold medallist Michael Johnson; Thierry Henry from France; South African fast bowler Makhaya Ntini; and Indigenous Australian AFL player Adam Goodes, winner of two Brownlow Medals and member of two premiership teams.
Holding’s material on Adam Goodes takes readers through the sorry story of his hounding out of the game and the vilification he faced for speaking about making Australia a more equal and tolerant society when he was declared Australian of the Year in 2014.
Holding says:
I want to educate people about why racism exists, how it works and what it is like to be treated differently just because of the colour of your skin. What does it feel like when you walk into the room as the only Black guy? What does it feel like to be eyed with suspicion? To be followed when you go into a shop? To know that your life is valued less? I want to show how the dehumanisation of a race of people began and was then encouraged in order to satisfy the narrative of inferiority and superiority. I wanted to educate people about the true history of mankind, which should dispel the myth of one or another race being inferior or superior.
Holding’s major focus is on racism in the United Kingdom and the United States, the two countries where he has spent most of his time since his playing days (he has a home in Miami, Florida, though he has decided he no longer wants to live in America). He devotes time to how the powerful in both nations benefited from slavery (and how, in the case of the UK (and France) the abolition of slavery involved both nations paying reparations to slave owners, which have only recently been paid off); the importance of colonialism to the UK (and other European powers); the UK’s discriminatory treatment of the West Indians, who they encouraged to come to the UK to fill labour shortages after World War II; and Enoch Powell’s infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech.
In the US, the American Civil War didn’t put an end to slavery, with state governments using vagrancy acts and police harassment to jail generations of African Americans, who were either leased out as labour for private interests, or set to work on behalf of local and state authorities; there was segregation and the practice of Jim Crow; and African Americans were denied access to loans for homes and businesses which confined them to poor areas (ghettos); lack of access to public facilities, substandard housing and education made it difficult for future generations to get ahead. Then there were the race riots, lynchings (which often drew large crowds), executions of unarmed blacks by police, and harassment by police backed up by public officials.
Why We Kneel, How We Rise also draws attention to the experience of apartheid in South Africa, and to Australia’s treatment of Indigenous Australians, including the stealing of land and the fiction of terra nullius, massacres, the removal of children from their families (the Stolen Generations), and Indigenous Australians not being counted as citizens until 1967.
Holding views history as something written by winners – those who wish to maintain the myth of white supremacy – and he wants to redress this. He points to examples of Black people who have made important contributions to the advancement of science and knowledge who have been written out of history, and documents the discriminatory treatment meted out to Black soldiers who fought for both the UK and the US and how their contributions have been ignored.
Following the dictum of Martin Luther King, Michael Holding wants a society in which a person’s worth is based on their character, not the colour of their skin. He wants a more equal society in which Black and white have the same opportunities to follow their ambitions and experience all that life has to offer. Denying such chances because of the colour of someone’s skin, he believes, is an attack on their soul and self-worth.
Each and every day history is on a turning point. Michael Holding’s hope is that his book will play a part in helping to bring about an end to racial discrimination; that discussing generations of leading Black thinkers and Black athletes will contribute to this process of change. It is conceivable that Holding’s status as a former player and commentator, and the status of the athletes he has contacted, will induce those who have been blind to such issues to take notice and help bring about change. The fear is that his book will only be of interest to those who are already on board. We need to remember the events that led him to speak up in the first place.
Michael Holding and Ebony Rainford-Brent’s film opened with a quote from the African American author James Baldwin: ‘Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.’
Why We Kneel, How We Rise will be remembered as Michael Holding’s most famous delivery.
Michael Holding with Ed Hawkins Why We Kneel, How We Rise Simon and Schuster 2021 PB 320pp $32.99
Braham Dabscheck is a Senior Fellow at the Melbourne Law School at Melbourne University who writes on industrial relations, sport and other things. He recently completed a review article on the Supreme Court of the United States and a report on a domestic transfer system in Australian soccer.
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A great man, Michael Holding.
I hesitate to comment further as justice would not be done to the book or my thoughts.
So I’ll just say thanks to Newtown and the excellent reviewer.
More lightly, any reference to Michael Holding revives the memory of cricket’s finest piece of commentary.
“The bowler’s Holding, the batsman’s Willey” occurred when Holding of the West Indies was bowling to Peter Willey of England in a Test match at The Oval, London in 1976.
The commentator Brian Johnstone had been waiting for years for the rare moment.