"Afro" is the slang abbreviation for African, while a Saxon is one of a north German people that conquered most of Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries, according to "Chambers 20th Century Dictionary."
Lord Taylor of Warwick has been a peer for only a few weeks, but his face is known to everyone in the House of Lords, Britain's upper parliamentary chamber."I'm difficult to miss," he explains.
Lord Taylor, a barrister, a Conservative Party member and a black, says he intends to use his elevation to the chamber to proclaim "Afro-Saxon" attitudes. Soon he'll be backed up by a magazine.
Afro-Saxons are not black people trying to be whiter than white, he says. "We don't all wear bowler hats. We are hard-working, ambitious and know that whites don't owe us a living. What concerns us is what we can do for Britain."
Did he invent the term?
"I think so. It just came to me in a flash. I'm concerned about the future, not the past. I wanted a term that describes all the black people who want to contribute to Britain, who aren't scroungers or muggers."
Until recently, Lord Taylor was best known in this country as the defeated Tory candidate when a byelection was held in Cheltenham, in western England, in 1992. His biggest problem then was not his opponents but a vociferous faction in his own party who felt he was not quite right for Cheltenham. Nothing to do with his color, you understand, just not the right sort of chap.
He took it on the chin and seemed set for respectable obscurity until the peerage beckoned. He doesn't mind his color being mentioned. "Obviously I'm black. But I'm not an angry man running around with a spear."
He is fed up with people prattling on about racism. "I know all about slavery. It was wrong, but it doesn't mean my mind has to be enslaved."
Lord Taylor is married to a Jew and is inspired by the example of her grandfather.
"He came here from Eastern Europe with nothing, started as a tailor and made something of his life. In those days it was unthinkable that a Conservative Cabinet would be dominated by Jews. But Lady Thatcher filled her Cabinet with them. That's what will happen with Afro-Saxons."
A new tabloid, New Nation, has hit British newsstands, and its target audience is respectable, affluent, ambitious - and black.
Tetteh Kofi, a Ghanaian-born, public-school-educated entrepreneur, is the publisher. He's miffed, in the nicest possible way, with Lord Taylor. "I invented `Afropean' and thought it would really take off. Now he's come up with Afro-Saxon, which is snappier. Both mean someone ethnically African but European in attitude."
Others are less sure about the term. Ade Fabunmi-Stone fits it to a tee - Nigerian-born, managing director of a telecommunications company, doing well through effort and hard work. He hates the description.
"I heard it at a dinner party three months ago. Let's say there was an interesting debate between those who call themselves `black British' and others who liked the new label. Me? I'm a Nigerian who does the best he can. When I'm doing international business, I use my full name. In the U.K. I stick with Stone. I don't like labeling."
Lorna Beckford, a senior executive with British Telecom, had never heard the term, but she loves it. "The newspapers label all muggers `yardies' and the idea gets around that all young black men are trouble," she says. "It's rubbish and we need more positive images. The more Afro-Saxons, the better."
There have been blacks in Britain for centuries. In 1787 there were 20,000 in London, but it wasn't until after the 1950s that the black population really began to grow, enticed from the West Indies with the promise of jobs.
Tariq Modood of the Policy Studies Institute, a London think-tank, researches how ethnic minority people define themselves. "It's all about trying to express a cultural heritage," he says. "People need a sense of identity. For black people it has been a problem. Since the '50s we have had West Indian, black, Afro-Caribbean, African-Caribbean and now Afro-Saxon."
Modood says his research shows "black British" to be the most popular term but thinks the American experience is illuminating. "Jesse Jackson said he would not use the term `black' because it only indicated skin color. He opted for African-American because that stressed a heritage."
Barbara Campbell, editor of the Weekly Journal, a black newspaper, is scathing about Afro-Saxons: "They are in denial. They want to be English but are black and can't accept that. It's sad."
At least she's polite.
A group of young black boys in east London, asked for their views, mainly laughed, but one or two came out with abuse that is probably outlawed under Britain's Race Relations Act. They had never heard of Lord Taylor or of "Afro-Saxons," but they knew about "Buppies" (black Yuppies) and had the vocabulary to describe them: "They are ... coconuts. Real Uncle Toms."
Cydney Thompson, a student, is young, black and upwardly mobile. "If anyone called me an `Afro-Saxon,' I would be offended. It's denying your blackness. I'm going to get on, but not by pretending I'm something I'm not."
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)