My personal experiences and thoughts on Racism

Lately the whole world seems to have woken up to racism, yet for me, it has been there ever since I leant what it meant. Why? I guess because I am not obviously ‘English’ due to the colour of my skin. My concerns regarding the demostrations at the moment, is that for many (English people) it’s was let’s jump on the bandwagon. Change can only happen if it is continuous, not a one-day fad. We don’t call Asians brown or English people white when describing someone, so I have always wondered why we say black people and they are not even black. When I was in primary school, there were only three Asian children in my class including me. I remember being called a ‘Paki’ and being told to “go back to your own country” so many times. The first time I heard it, I went home and asked my mum what Paki meant. She said let’s look it up in the dictionary. So, we did, and the definition says, ‘not white.’ I told my mum that is true as I am not white. From that day on, and even today, if someone were to call me Paki, it does not upset me, as I am proud to be brown. When I asked my mum why children in my school hate our skin colour, my mum said it is not their fault, it’s their parent’s that think it, and so they grow up in that environment, not realising at that age what it means. However, what did affect me and still does today is when we used to go out as a family in the evenings. My parents never drove, and public transport was not 24 hours and nor were there so many buses going to every part in London. Cabs were not 24 hours or a long wait and no such thing as an uber. Those nights were the scariest nights I have ever encountered, so much so, that I can still envisage all of it, even though I was young. When we got the tube, men would make racist comments, take the piss out of my mum’s nose ring and hound us. When these became re-occurring, my mum decided to take it out. You can still see the closed mark hole on my mum’s nose. I remember feeling upset about why something so significant to mum, had to be taken out because people had an issue, their issue. And now I see anyone, from any ethnicity wear them, and think how times have changed and if only they knew. But these incidents on the tube were mild in comparison. It was when we had to walk home, which was usually a thirty-to-forty-five-minute walk. It was always dark, and these incidents were a regular occurrence. We would be just be walking, when groups of men would follow us and start with their racist comments. Sometimes they had things in their hands. My parents would literally pick us up and run. Sometimes, depending on which bus we got, we had to cross a big roundabout and jump over a railing, so my parents would carry us over the railing, give us the key and say run and don’t look back and don’t wait for us. Keep on running till you get home and ring the police and ring aunty Grace, our neighbour. Because it would take time for them to get over the railing, they always said this to us. I will never forget running, fearing for our lives and then it got to the point where our parents didn’t have to say anything, and we knew we had to run. Sometimes all of us, ‘literally’ just made it to our front gate. I could never get over these events, even today, I don’t like travelling home in the dark alone, and if I have to, I am always looking over my shoulder and being hyper vigilant. I don’t like going to areas that are predominately English as I don’t feel safe as when I see a group of English people, it takes me back to those nights. And by English, I guess I mean white. We were lucky as we only had Paki scribbled on our fences, others would get dog-pooh through the letterbox. I will never forget watching the news one night; some racist had put a firework in an Asian family’s home and none of them survived. Of course, this was always somewhere in the back of my mind. In school, there was never a ‘brown’ baby representing my race. In the Nativity play, I was always chosen to be one of the three wise men or the sheep, never chosen for the main role. I remember my brother being chosen for a main role once and I was so happy for him but only realising many years why. He played Aladdin! School didn’t teach us about The British Raj and the atrocities that happened, but happily taught us about the Germans regarding the Holocaust, and the Americans and black slavery, and rightly so, but why never about what the British did? Recently I have experienced racism regarding me and Layla. I have had people come up to us in broad daylight in the city and say, “fuck off to your own country and leave our people alone.” I have learnt that if a white person adopts a child of a different ethnicity, they are seen as having ‘saved the child’ (due to other countries being poor supposedly) but if a different ethnicity adopts a white child, it is why didn’t you adopt your own? And of course, the media are biased. When the Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal was in the news, the media reported heavily about British-English girl victims but didn’t report that Asian girls were also groomed. Looking back, do you remember hearing that Asian girls were involved? When terrorism became more widespread around the world, I was stopped in Italy. My friend who was also Asian but very fair-skinned was travelling with me. She went through border control within a second. However, mine took about 10 minutes. The staff were typing on the computer and kept checking my photo, but I guess they have to do their job. I now get stopped when Layla is with me, asking to see the adoption certificate. My mum went through racism at work too and it was horrific, especially when she got promoted and became the ‘boss’ to her English colleagues, but she stuck it out with help from one of her close English friend who worked with her, and supported her through it all. We will always be grateful to that friend. My dad was told by his English work colleagues that he should have given us English names, the reasoning being, that at least on the telephone, people couldn’t see us and so would think we were English. We would have problems getting a job they told my dad. I think that’s why I kept Layla’ birth name, identity is everything. Yet I like to look at the other side of the coin. If I were to have an Indian flag hanging from my window, no one would assume anything, except that I support India, but if a British flag was seen hanging, a lot of people automatically think a racist. Why? Is that because of the past, and how the flag was used? As a sign of power and control when Britain was the British Empire? I will never be fully accepted in this country, even though I was born here, due to my skin colour; “Where are you from? and India will not accept me as I born here! Why do so many black and Asian people want to be lighter skinned? So many adverts on how to be lighter. There again, looking from the other side, many British people want to look darker! Why is it seen that if a foreigner can’t speak English in their country; they are not educated? Who made English more prestigious than any other language and why do people in other countries, like India, give the English language more importance? Why are Africa and India always portrayed as poor third world countries when they are not, and why only focus on the poor parts of those countries and then the rich / good parts in America and U.K. After all, America has one of the highest rates of ‘poor people.’ I also feel COVID has shown America and the UK up, as not the powerful rich countries people are led to believe, where everything is perfect. America has struggled to control the virus. It had to make a deal with India to get the drug hydroxychloroquine, which not long ago was promoted to help fight the disease. In the UK, mortality deaths rates are higher in ‘deprived areas.’ Why does the UK call their areas deprived, and similar areas in India poor? The use of language is so important as both words means the same but have a different effect. Why are people, who are from India or Africa, so quick to put their own country ‘down,’ but will happily ignore the corruption in politics that happens here. The black lives movement is a good example. I see corruption in my workplace, yet we don’t name it as that; it’s called ‘keeping the professionals happy and turn a blind eye.’ I feel there is an over-emphasise our colour which demeans our humanity. Why do we look for what divides us, but not what binds us? Skin colour is not actually divisive, just a different shade of the same colour. I think all of us need to change how we think. “Be the change we want to see” as Gandhi said.