I don’t feel any less British because I’m black
Broadcaster and journalist Charlene White uncovered some uncomfortable truths about her roots for the documentary Empire’s Child. learns more
BY HER own admission, broadcast journalist Charlene White doesn’t find herself overcome with emotion often.
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 41-year-old Charlene with a smile.
“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. I shouldn’t have to build an armour, but I have done, in order to be able to survive and enjoy the side of social media that I love.”
However, it’s her latest on-screen project, Charlene White: Empire’s
Child, that unexpectedly saw her stoic facade slip, giving way to emotion.
Commissioned as part of ITV’s celebration of Black
History Month, the one-hour 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.
“I’m a journalist, my heart tends to be cold most of the time,” Charlene initially jokes when asked about the emotional impact of the revelations.
“But there’s one point in the film where it suddenly just hit me in a way I wasn’t expecting, without me wanting it to.
“And that’s when I realised actually, it means so much more than we realise to gain more of an understanding of home.”
Retracing her roots across the British Empire, Charlene’s journey unearthed a number of shocking revelations linking the shadowy history of the Empire to the fundamental shaping of her own family tree.
Recounting how the lighter skin tone on one side of her family paired with an old photo of her uncle – who according to Charlene was “obviously of mixed heritage” – had always led to the assumption her great-grandfather William Stanbury was white.
The need for new information saw her venture to the south coast of England in search of answers.
“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 the 41-year-old.
“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.”
Charlene recalls when 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.”
Charlene describes the deep-dive into her family’s history as a “pretty big moment”.
A journey that culminates in a transatlantic voyage in search of answers, she says that despite regularly returning to Jamaica, the filming trip was the first time she ever truly “felt at home”.
“There is something wonderful about stepping foot in a country where you aren’t the minority, where you are the majority and that does fill my heart.
“I don’t feel any less British because I’m black. I won’t allow anybody to take that away from me at all. In the same way that I am no less Jamaican because I’m born here.”
Charlene adds: “As a result of doing this programme, I definitely feel like I know more about me, and I think it’s made me stronger.”
Charlene White: Empire’s Child airs on ITV on Thursday at 9pm