Editorial

Nine writers interrogate the received wisdom of staying in their lane by questioning how they attempt to think beyond the parameters of their cultural identity.

by Colin Grant

7th September 2026

Photo: Missohio Studio

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Stay in your lane?

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"[To] 'think black', i.e. to try to put himself in the shoes of a black writer when he writes."

Twenty years ago, when I wrote a biography of the black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey, I was invited to answer questions about it on a BBC Radio phone-in. The first caller didn’t have a question: ‘I resent …’ his voice trembled with anger, ‘I resent the fact that the publisher got a white man to write a book about Marcus Garvey.’
‘What makes you think I’m white?’ I asked.
The caller paused. ‘Well, you don’t sound black!’

I hadn’t knowingly attempted to pass for white in the way I spoke. And why was the caller so angry, anyway? Why would it have mattered if the author of a book on a significant black subject had been white?

Perhaps it’s because colonial histories are littered with white men who took away everything from black people. And now a white man (or at least one who sounded white) had robbed black readers of the blackest of black heroes.

Stay in your lane? is inspired by Peter Fryer, whose book, Staying Power (1984), is one of the most important texts on the black presence in Britain, even though it was written by a white Marxist historian. Fryer was aware of his colour preceding him in how critics might judge his book. Pre-empting the likely criticisms in his preface to Staying Power, Fryer writes that he’ll attempt to ‘think black’, i.e. to try to put himself in the shoes of a black writer when he writes.

Is such a thing possible? WritersMosaic decided to test this hypothesis by commissioning writers Will Harris, Maggie Gee, Naomi Foyle, Hannah Lowe, Magnus McDowall, Taíno Mendez, Chitra Ramaswamy and Amy Abdelnoor to interrogate the received wisdom of staying in their lane by asking them how they attempt to think beyond the parameters of their cultural identity, or to address why they might find it problematic. In doing so, they reflect on the limits of empathy and the risks and rewards of straying from your lane.