‘I hoped brutality and violence weren’t involved within my lineage’
Journalist Charlene White talks to Danielle de Wolfe about her programme Empire’s Child
By her own admission, broadcast journalist Charlene White doesn’t often find herself overcome with emotion.
Instead describing herself as someone brimming with “fight” and “resilience”, the ITV News and Loose Women anchor says she has long dealt with online abuse in the only way she knows how.
“With humour,” says White. “It’s going to sound awful, but I have been faced with social media racism for so long – oh God, longer than a decade now – that I’ve had to build an armour against it.”
However, it’s the anchor’s latest on-screen project, Charlene White: Empire’s Child, that saw her stoic facade slip. Part of ITV’S celebration of Black History Month, the documentary sees the presenter delve into her ancestry and its links to the British Empire, investigating what it really means to be black and British.
Retracing her roots across the British Empire, White’s journey unearthed a number of shocking revelations. Recounting how the lighter skin tone on one side of her family paired with an old photograph of her uncle had always led to the assumption her great-grandfather William Stanbury was white.
“Through the process of looking for him, I travelled down to Devon, and Devon does have a lot of links where slavery is concerned and the Empire,” says White, 41. “So, I was really excited, saying ‘yes, I have found him!’ – only to realise that actually, he’s not English at all, he was born in Jamaica. And that’s when the fear sort of set in.”
Describing how new evidence pointed her towards an altogether more sinister side of the British Empire, White recalls the moment she conceded a direct link to slavery was increasingly likely.
“I really hoped brutality and violence weren’t involved within my lineage, and then I realised at that point that it definitely was, and it probably went back a lot further than I had anticipated.
“To not be able to know what this man was capable of, or how he came to be able to have two children by black women in Jamaica, it does leave a bit of a horrible feeling there.”
A revelation that marked the start of a long journey aided by researchers and historians, White describes the deep-dive into her family’s past as a “pretty big moment”.
“There are so many of us, as immigrants, who live our life being so displaced and trying to find exactly where home is,” says White.
“My lineage crosses three continents; it crosses Africa, it crosses the Caribbean, and it crosses Europe. So, you sort of have these three continents – but where within that do I sit and where within that do I belong?”
A journey that culminates in a transatlantic voyage to Jamaica in search of answers.
“I don’t feel any less British because I’m black,” says White.
"I won’t allow anybody to take that away from me at all. I definitely feel like I know more about me and I think it’s made me stronger.”
● Charlene White: Empire’s Child is on ITV on Thursday, October 21