I want to talk about commonplace racism towards people of colour, specifically black people as this is what the article I'm about to bring up has as its focus.
I go to Falmouth University in Cornwall, and it took me a while, but I started to realize something very different from the hometown that I've grown up in for 23 years straight - differences in racial diversity. My hometown in Berkshire is very diverse; actually, since coming home from uni for the summer, I've been actively seeing, for a laugh, if I can go a second without seeing a person of colour in the town centre. I cannot. Five seconds, tops? ;)
When I'm back 'home' in Cornwall, on a 'bad' day, I only see a handful of coloured people throughout the entire day. And when I say coloured, of course I mean people of colour, so this is inclusive of all racial minorities, not just black people....which actually makes this observation even more hard-hitting when it comes to diversity.
It took me a while to realize how 'different' I felt, even after I wrote and performed a - partly exaggerated - spoken word poem entitled I Am Different (based on Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners, a book specifically about how negatively black people were treated in London after World War Two). Maybe I was in denial? Maybe I refused to even acknowledge it because I wanted to fit in in a new location?
Anyway, back to the article I found.
The focus of the article is actually about a black woman, Martha-Renee Kolleh, who has put a sign up in her cafe window 'warning' customers that she is black, lest people unwittingly come into the shop and find out for themselves.
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| Martha-Renee Kolleh |
The reason? On several occasions she has had people come in, take one look at her, and walk back out again, presumably because they are faced with a woman who is black.
I felt like I identified more and more with this article as I read each paragraph, nodding my head with mutual understanding as incident after incident occurred against Lola Okolosie, the black woman responsible for the article titled, 'If you are allergic to black people, don't come in' – at first I balked …'
She mentions early on in the report: 'A few weeks ago, a trip to a popular Dales village reminded me of why being in all-white areas is increasingly something I am reluctant to do.' Then she recalls how she was ignored in public by ‘[t]wo white, middle-aged male cyclists’ after she asks them politely to move their bikes so she can park her car, yet when a white man in a sports car comes along and asks the very same, they easily comply.
They did acknowledge her presence, she was heard, they just brushed her off in favour of someone they thought was more worthy of a parking space.
She then goes on to say, 'I won’t even mention the number of stares I got just walking around the village and, no, it had nothing to do with my attractiveness or indeed lack thereof.'
That quote was what resonated with me most.
As Okolosie also mentions, it's difficult to 'prove' when someone is being racist, subtly or otherwise, without being accused of blowing it out of proportion, but then why do I feel that I'm being treated differently (because of my race) in a place where 96%-97.6% of the population is 'White British' (figure taken from a 2001 survey of select Cornish towns) and not in my hometown, which is about as diverse as London?
(This survey was taken over ten years ago, but the 2009 pdf says that 'the overall pattern of Cornwall’s population by ethnicity has remained essentially the same as in 2001')
It would be like walking through a town comprised of males and getting funny looks; I would then be inclined to blame my gender over anything else.
The horrible thing is that this commonplace racism is not only used by white people. I will openly admit that I've been prejudice against my own race because of the stigma that is attached to black people. It's awful, I feel disgusted with myself for the thoughts that are so deeply rooted in my skull because of the part of the world that I grew up in, the place that priorities people with fair, not dark skin.
The society that's telling people, telling children, to favour 'white' has in turn made me think less of myself and the way that I look.
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