United Kingdom-based rapper and actor Richard Blackwood again finds himself at the centre of controversy this time for defending his ‘Britishness’ after his Jamaican accent was mocked as inauthentic. 

Blackwood, reacting to backlash to a TikTok video hours earlier, mused that the criticisms were unfair and claimed that he and others of Caribbean descent would have had a harder time in British society if they didn’t speak the ‘Queen’s English’.

The 50-year-old comedian, who confirmed he was born to Jamaican parents in London, argued he has never wanted to be fully Caribbean, and that he is ‘blessed’ to be a British passport holder. 

“Ladies and gentlemen, Richard Blackwood here. I wanna do a quick rant—don’t know if it’ll be quick but I’m gonna do a rant anyway because it needs to be said,” he began.

“I did a post on TikTok…I posted a video from my old Richard Blackwood Show when I did a Jamaican accent blah blah blah; my parents are Jamaican, born in Kingston,” Blackwood noted.

“People commented on it but, you know, you’re always going to get one or two idiots—one that’s obviously born in the Caribbean, who is going to say ‘Oh! His accent is not really spot on. Sound Bajan to me’, and I’m like, first of all, let’s not do that,” the former Hollyoaks star added.

The root of the social media contention started last week, when the comedian shared a clip from a past staging of the once-popular Richard Blackwood Show where he joked that Jamaicans ‘weren’t good at organised crime’.

The chat show aired between 1999 and 2001 on British television station Channel4, with Blackwood being the host and presenter. 

In response to the backlash, Blackwood conceded that his accent could use some work but was not as ‘Bajan’ as his detractors suggested. 

The stand-up comic said he was inspired to address the ‘rarely confronted’ stigmatisation British-Caribbean people experience from their West Indian counterparts, based on how they speak. 

According to him, their accent or lack thereof is a reflection of the mixed but predominantly English society that British-West Indians have to navigate daily. Blackwood retorted he and his peers sound ‘that way’ intentionally. 

“It made me think about this ongoing thing that we don’t talk about, and we need to, and I’m going to address it today, and some people might get offended! Caribbeans out there—Jamaicans, Bajans, whatever you are—that live here but were born here and hear us, as British people of Caribbean descent doing the accent and it’s not spot on, laugh ‘That’s not very Jamaican is it? It sounds more English’. It’s supposed to be!” Blackwood said.

“We don’t want to be from the Caribbean. We’re actually glad we were born here! I was born here and I’m f@*%ing proud, right? I’ve said it. And we are all proud, the ones that are born here,” he argued further.

Blackwood, in his nearly five-minute rant, declared he would not allow critics to make him “feel bad” that he, and others like him, were raised to be British by their parents. 

Through his eyes, it was done “for a reason”—so he could be British—and with his state-issued passport, he could travel “anywhere inna di world”.

Continuing, the Clapham native called out the ‘accent analysis mob’ for being hypocrites themselves, as they are aware that speaking a certain way could land one out of a job in Britain.

“News flash. When you go to work, do you speak fully Caribbean? Do you go Jamaican and say, ‘Yow sir! Let mi tell yuh sumn right now!’ when you’re in the office? I bet you don’t. You know why? Because your manager would go, ‘Sorry mate, lost in translation. Dunno what that means’. But let me translate something for you: You’re FIRED!

“Until you can speak English, you’re fired. How ’bout that? Queen’s English mate. So, even you have to go in to work and say, ‘Good morning sir’, even you! But you’re gonna cuss me for not sounding authentic?” he asked.

Blackwood wants his detractors, who he referred to as “twits”, to get over themselves and accept that some British-Caribbean people are different and will stray from ‘ethno-normative’ expectations. 

While many of his 21,800 TikTok followers seemed to agree with his line of reasoning, the rant has triggered a wave of fuss from British-Caribbean and West Indian Twitter users alike, who counterargue that the comic’s rhetoric reeked of a ‘superiority complex’.

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Blackwood was further accused of slamming Jamaicans/Caribbean people and putting Britain on a pedestal.