Black

TW: This post contains racist language

Before I post next week about the Black Lives Matter movement and protests, I feel I must first share with you my own history and experiences with racism.  I use language that has been directed at me not to be sensationalist, but to give an authentic account of how life in the UK is for people like me.  If it makes you feel uncomfortable, well, it should do because it does me.  Challenge what you see and hear, because no one person can face these issues alone, we need everyone to come together to put an end to racism.

My first memory of a racist experience was when I was about 5 or 6 years old.  I grew up in a mining town in Nottinghamshire that is noted, from the Windrush to now, as being a particularly racist part of the country. My parents had divorced and we had been placed by the council a few miles away from my mum's family, necessitating the use of a car to travel to see them.  With some of the proceeds from the sale of the family home, my mum bought a white Vauxhall Astra.  Within a few weeks of us moving in it was spray painted in blue spray paint "FUCK OFF YOU NIGGERS" and "FUCK OFF YOU BLACK BASTARDS".  Now, I wasn't old enough to understand what that meant, but I could read the words well enough, they remain imprinted on my brain.  It took weeks to scrub that off and we had to continue driving around in it in the meantime.

Besides the name-calling - "paki", "nigger", and "gollywog", to name a few, being told to "go back where you come from", which I never understood because I was born here, there were incidents and common occurrences of what most would term as rather benign and passive in relative terms.  This was things like white women and young teens thinking it was ok to grab a handful of my hair, without my consent, as I passed them in the street - proclaiming "Oooo, isn't it soft and fluffy!"; people never being sure which black person in my town was my parent (my black father being one of nine siblings) and when I would inform them of who it was, the individual arguing with me that that was NOT my dad; and my personal favourite - being told exactly what I should refer to myself as being of both black and white heritage.  The way in which this question is asked always riles me in the first instance - "Where are you from?" - because the answer given was always my home town and this didn't appear to be the question they were asking.  Over the years, the political powers that be have told me what is correct for me to be referred to as half-caste, coloured, M3, mixed race, dual heritage, white/black Caribbean (note how white comes first even thought alphabetically that is incorrect?), BME, BAME, person of colour - and those are just the ones I can remember.  How about just plain Naomi and see me as an individual instead of a statistic?

Then of course there is the history of  physical violence and again this started young.  I remember riding my bike happily down the street near my grandma's, when an older boy (no idea how much older) just walked up and punched me in the face.  I was about 6 years old.  It was the most immense pain I'd ever experience and I thought my eye was going to explode.  That was just start of a long history of having to be able to defend myself, which I did mainly through creating an air of intimidation so that no-one would want to start a fight with me.  It closed me off from the world and contributed to the many factors that made my childhood miserable and traumatic. We had dog shit through our letter box, abuse in the street, my sister and I even had an air rifle pointed at us in our own back garden.  There are reports (try as I might they are not in any newspaper archives available on the web for links) that there was a local chapter of the KKK operating in the suburb where I lived and that they used to have cross burning ceremonies on the park behind my primary school.  The National Front, British National Party and English Defence League all have had a major following in my home town, with the BNP holding their "party conference" in a town less than ten miles away for years.

I became acutely aware of my ethnicity and did my best to fit into a predominantly white community, being (until my last three years of schooling) the only ethnic child in my year group.  I loathed the colour of my skin, my afro hair, myself in general, and just wanted to be like everyone else to escape the bullying.  I became a prolific liar, living in a fantasy world to soften the harsh reality I was living in.  Yet through all this, I was only aware of the surface racism, the brutality of words and violence.  I was completely unaware of the seething undertone of events and attitudes that discriminated against me.

Now that I'm older, wiser and more reflective of my past, I see it all - Not being cast in the lead role of a school play, told that although I gave the best audition, the role required a family around the character, and it wouldn't be believable for me to play a role in a white family.  Being allowed to physically fight, without being excluded, when racist incidents occurred because the school did not have any policies in place to tackle racism and didn't know how else to manage it, or me.  "Friends" thinking it was okay to call me "nigger" because they listened to Tupac; and they are but just a few.  

It sickens me to think that a child should have to go through all of this just because they have non-white skin.  Of course, I was told "oh, they're just jealous" or "ignore them and they'll get bored".  THIS IS BULLSHIT!!!  No-one ever got bored and there is never, ever an excuse to justify this behaviour.  White privilege is no more a choice that being black or brown, but it does exist and is as deeply entrenched as systemic racism.  If you are not sure what all of this means, or feel too self-conscious to ask the question there's plenty of material out there to read, learn, reflect and grow.  

Many have spoke about how the time has come where it is no longer enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist.  The inequality, discrimination and racism that is faced daily is killing us.  Black women are are five times more likely to die in child birth than white women, and this isn't in a country with poor healthcare or limited resources, this is in the UK!  We are more at risk of contracting COVID-19 and twice as likely to die if we do.  This terrifying statistic made the decision as to whether or not to attend the Black Lives Matter protest an extremely difficult one for me.