Real with Rue

I have planned many ways I wanted to talk about what has happened over the past week, but educating others should not be my burden alone in the age of google. I think the phrase ‘experience is the best teacher’ can be used to describe this blog post, as I have composed Several Black peoples experience growing up in the ‘least’ racist country.

• I have decided to hide their names and only put their ages.

Whats one experience with racism that affected you, how did you respond and why?

Age:21

“One of my experiences with racism was in secondary school. I often switched up my hairstyles and one day I decided to change it during the school term, I was told to change it. I noticed that some of the other white girls who frequently switched their hair, did not get asked to do so. This made me so angry, so I decided to take it upon myself and write a letter to the headteacher saying that this was racist, since he was the one that told me to change my hair. After I sent this letter, he came barging into the classroom and I was immediately asked to see him in his office. Long story short, because of the letter and how I spoke out I was excluded.”

Age:22

“I was 17 years old working in Park Inn Hotel as a waiter and on this particular day the hotel was hosting an event for black entrepreneurs. An hour before the event started, we had a staff meeting in which the supervisor allocated us different tasks for the night. As she was allocating the tasks, she started giving us details about the event. She started off by saying “The event should at 7PM but because of the people we are dealing with they may not come in until 9PM.” Everyone started laughing and because I was the only black person in the meeting, I felt like I had to laugh too.

Then she said “We will be serving them steak which is surprising because I thought these people love chicken isn’t that right “she said my name’. Also, if a fight breaks out don’t worry just know we have ‘me’ here and I’m sure he has dealt with stuff like that before.” Of course, afterwards she said it was a “bit of banter”. I escalated it to the line managers but of course they took her side as she’s been with the company for 10+ years and I had only been there for a month.”    – 22 years old.

Age:21

 Racism is not a concept that is new to me at all. My experiences have had such a profound impact on my views but more importantly, how I interact with others.

“During my time in secondary education, I have witnessed and experienced all the stereotypical outlooks of black people such: one always eating chicken, a thief, a drug-dealer and troublemaker type ‘jokes’ from my white counterparts. However, there are three major racists incidents, one of which I will share which still resonates with me to this day. This event occurred whilst I was on my way back from school in Year 7. A middle-aged man pulled up next to me and repeatedly shouted “Hey chocolate boy!”. I was listening to music at the time and initially did not notice the abuse until he started signalling to me. I approached him and before I knew it, he pulled off for a couple of metres before stopping and resuming the abuse. This repeated until I decided that it was not worth my time and with having noticed that I was not reacting, he resigned and drove off.

As I walked home, I asked myself – why did was he hurtling about at me? Why me in particular? Then I looked at my hands and that was the first time I understood that I am different compared to most people. I was hurt and confused because I could not reason why everything that had transpired in that moment. My hurt became anger.

 I hated the injustice and I tied my experiences to white people in general. It did not help that my secondary school cohort was predominantly white. Only 7 students out of 153 students were black and I always knew that I had to fend for myself. I did not report the incident due to many reasons. Firstly, due to the manner in which I was raised, I was conditioned to persevere through situations and deal with it. I believe this is common attitude of African parenting however, this presents a danger as the abuse cannot be dealt with expeditiously due to the individual being unable to vent their experiences. I also believe that this attitude is perpetuated in everyday society where males are supposed to be ‘big’ and ‘strong’ – which is unfortunate as it leads to the expression of emotion as a sign of weakness. Moreover, I felt powerless in the situation and genuinely believed that justice could not be served. I did not know the offender or his registration plate at the time. Everything happened so quickly and I could not see any means of resolution.

Fortunately, I was freed from this way of thinking 5 years ago and I have never looked back. When I look back at this experience, I acknowledge that it was wrong of me to make such a generalisation based off of one experience and I have learnt from this. Nevertheless, I hope anyone reading this can understand how detrimental a 5 min encounter can be. When I now look at my black hands, I am in awe because black is beautiful. Black is my identity and without it there is no me. I am proud to be black and I am speaking up for anyone that subscribes to the black community because racism is pandemic and presents a generational issue that we must eradicate. Everyone is responsible if we are to enact change.”

Age:22

“First encounter with racism was when I moved from a predominantly ethnic mixed primary school in south London to one where I was the only black kid in Kent. Within my first week/month I was called ‘poo face’. Not reported. Clockwork. Fast forward to year 6 where I was called the n-word, that was my first racism experience and this one I did end up reporting to the school which ended up in, some sort of, justice being done with the perpetrator excluded. Maybe that gave me a false sense of justice growing up that the world is actually fair to black people when we go down the right route. Wrong. 100s of racism accounts from year 7-11, literally daily, none of which reported, and for a period (maybe year 9) I literally hated my own skin.

My ‘closest’ friend, who openly encouraged negative racial undertones in front of and behind my back (probably because he was mixed race), a fairer toned black and I could see the open difference in treatment between me and him. Maybe, this was because he was better looking, more popular, funnier ( but it was not the case), better at football etc. By him being fairer toned definitely played a factor and that was my focus, compounded by the literal daily micro aggressions and racial undertones, which led me to hate being in my own BLACK skin. There’s a bunch of in-betweens but fast forward to present times, or rather 2019 May, when I had returned from placement there was a poorly drawn Nazi sign physically outside my house Which was not reported and causally sweeper away, by non-black neighbours.

All of these recounts, to me, highlight the extra trauma that I, as black boy, adolescent and young man, have to go through relative to my non-black counterpart. And to answer why I didn’t report the ‘daily’ occurrences experienced from year 7-11 is because ‘daily’ is another word for micro (aggressions) with micro being the key figurative word in that my ‘teachers’ would’ve been too ignorant, programmed and socially blind to have noticed so I didn’t bother. Maybe I didn’t even realise the majority of them myself so I couldn’t of reported them if I wanted to because I wouldn’t know what I’d be reporting.”

Its been painful and tiring but real,

Rue x