As Gary Younge contemplates his son’s future, having once propagated the half-truth that New York and London are more similar than they are different, he now has to deal with the other half – ‘that they are more different than I have ever cared to acknowledge’.

The River Is Different and You Are Different

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THE day I brought my new-born son home to our Brooklyn apartment an article in the New York Times pointed out that ‘a black male who drops out of high school [in the US] is 60 times more likely to find himself in prison than one with a bachelor's degree’. These are the kind of statistics I often quote in my work. But this time it was personal.

Looking down at him as he snoozed in the brand new car seat, my first thought was:

‘Those are not great odds. I'd better buy some more children's books.’ My second was: ‘Maybe, we should think about going back to England.’ Such are the impulses of the migrant. Education is the ticket; opportunity is the destination. You move with the future in mind. These were my mother's priorities as she journeyed from Barbados to England. I'd barely changed my first nappy before I realised that her life is not mine and my son's chances and challenges would not be mine either. In the words of the ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus: You can't cross the same river twice. The river is different. And you are different.

So for now we take stock on this side of the river. 2020 will mark the beginning of Osceola's teenage years. By then I may have already lost him to America's vast cultural power - a vaguely familiar world of little league, dental braces and phonetic spelling. It’s a pull that my England of football chants, BBC comedy and hopeful picnics in hopeless weather can never counter from this distance. Having both bought into and propagated the half-truth that New York and London are more similar than they are different I now have to deal with the other half - that they are more different than I have ever cared to acknowledge.

Like many black Britons of my generation I was raised ambivalent to my immediate surroundings. The soil I stood on and was born onto was where I happened to be, not where I was from. We flew a flag of convenience - Barbados at home, England outside, black everywhere. Today neither of my two brothers lives in Britain -  in death my mother was shipped 'home' to be buried within earshot of the Caribbean sea.

I don't want that for Osceola. The sense of dislocation that makes you feel like a guest in your own home is debilitating. I used to think that alienation typified a certain British trait - the inability to envelop the new - one would not find in America. Then my niece and nephew asked for BECKHAM England shirts and I wondered whether maybe I had mistaken a fleeting generational experience for a fixed national characteristic.

I'm glad I grew up in England. We were a one-parent family comprising a mother and three black boys. When I was eight I had a hernia. The NHS fixed it. No-one went bankrupt. At school I got my 'A' levels and could go to any university I wanted so long as it wanted me. There was no talk of scholarships, loans or fees.

Had we been raised in the US, statistically one of us would be dead, in jail or on probation. My hernia could have been a recurring problem. My choice of university and subject would have been guided more by cash than intellectual curiosity.

After his first round of injections Osceola ran such a high fever I took him to the emergency room in the middle of the night. He was treated well. But a few weeks later we received a bill for over $1,000. We have health insurance. But I wondered what kind of choices a parent would have to make if they didn't. I wondered what my mother would have done.

So, for all the talk of the American dream, England gave me opportunities that the US would not have. The trouble is, for all the social mobility enabled by the British welfare state, too often the journey seems to hit racial roadblocks. Britain's professions either don't want to or don’t know how to attract or retain qualified, educated black people. Few in numbers and short on wealth, black professionals are unable to organise autonomously to break through barriers. The result is that black success often comes with a residual sense of atomised disaffection.  

Such frustration exists here too but is tempered by a strength in numbers and years. Black Americans have had a significant presence here for generations. They have the institutions to prove it. And, notwithstanding segregation, with those institutions and that history comes a middle class with both confidence and resources. My wife is African American and the fourth generation in her family to be educated. There is a sense of self-assurance she has that I will never know, but that I hope one day my Osceola will possess.

The trouble with these pros and cons is that my England exists in my memory and my America exists as the product of dreams and nightmares I have yet to live. They are as real as anything else in my life. But that does not mean they will be real for him. The next generation wears the England shirts, but when they come of age will have to pay for their university education. America does have a huge black middle class. But it is crumbling. Nearly half of those born into it in the wake of the civil rights era have descended into poverty or near poverty, according to the Pew Research Survey. In personal choices as in politics we build the future from our history - learning from the past does not mean you have to live in it.

So which side of the river will we settle come 2020? The one where he might get shot or might be president - or the one where he stands relatively little chance of being either? Let's hope by the time he is 13 such choices make no sense to him. My anxieties are my own. The future is his.