Regardless of whether white Britons cared how black immigrants from British colonies referred to them in 1956, Colin MacInnes was keen to tell them.
Eight years after the Empire Windrush brought that first wave of Caribbean migrants to Tilbury Docks, his essay, “A Short Guide For Jumbles (to the Life of their Coloured Brethren in England)”, revealed that the “Jumble” of the title was a corruption of “John Bull”, used by West Africans to describe Englishmen “in a spirit of tolerant disdain”.
In his eagerness to enlighten the Jumble, the author seemed to be inadvertently confirming certain fallacies, as well as stereotyping both blacks and whites to a risible degree. He wrote: “What most differentiates the African from the Englishman is that our chief ambition is to put our lives into a savings bank, whilst he firmly believes that every day is there to be enjoyed.”
When MacInnes died, aged 61, in 1976, the obituary in the New York Times — a newspaper he contributed to along with British ma…