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June 8 - June 17, 2020
“I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct
‘Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.’10
In February 2014, political magazine The Economist published an excited editorial on the rise of mixed-race Britain.
Mixed-race people were the fastest-growing ethnic group in Britain since 2001,
6 per cent of children under the age of five identified as mixed race, a higher number than any other black and ethnic minority group in the country.
mixed-race friendships and relationships are now routine rather than controversial.
Although nowadays people are much less afraid of living with and loving each other, the problems of racism aren’t going to go away.
White privilege is never more pronounced than in our intimate relationships, our close friendships and our families.
‘These are difficult conversations to have. It’s quite raw,’ she says. ‘I’ve grown up mainly around my white family. The black side of my family has been affected by domestic violence, which has affected how involved that side of my family has been. For the majority of my thirty years, until the age of twenty-eight, I just didn’t talk about race with my white family. My mum’s white and my dad’s black, and really both my mum and my dad have brought me up in a kind of colour-blind way.’
they pretended like it wasn’t an issue. When I’ve been talking to my mum about it, she said she never thought it was an issue, because I never seemed to have any problems growing up.
They see me talking about race as if I’m a problem,
‘I remember once she made a comment about black men, and the size of their penises, and how it was true, because of my dad. I was like, Mum, you don’t know how fucked up [saying] that is.’
My family just didn’t consider what my needs would be as a mixed-race child.
They never did anything to address my cultural needs,
‘I’ve had these feelings about my identity and I’ve just pushed them down, deep down, and I do think they have affected my mental well-being.
needed. I think, for white people who are in interracial relationships, or have mixed-race children, or who adopt transracially, the only way that it will work is if they’re actually committed to being anti-racist. To be humble, and to learn that they are racist even if they don’t think that they are.’
I hear from adult children of other mixed-race families who tell me that as children, they’ve been stopped and questioned in the street when out with their parents, and have endured insults and slurs when their family is travelling out as a group, the tamest being ‘rainbow family’.
And there is very little talk of white privilege in transracial adoption
But when race regularly collided with my life I was ill prepared.
and, as I grew older, the disconnect with my African heritage became more of an issue. I’ve spoken to many black people of similar upbringing and they often talk of the same experiences.’12
2012, in the ultimate act of colour-blindness, former Prime Minister David Cameron laid out his plans to remove the legal requirement for local authorities to consider a child’s racial, cultural and linguistic background during the adoption process.
‘If there is a loving family ready and able to adopt a child,’ said the then education secretary Michael Gove, ‘issues of ethnicity must not stand in the way.’13
‘state multiculturalism’
we do live in a world riddled with racism, and these waits indicate another blow to a black child’s life chances.
think white people get defensive when you call them white,’
‘because they’ve internalised a message that goes it’s rude to point out somebody else’s race, and it’s dangerous territory because you might inadvertently be racist, because they could take offence at that mention of race. There’s a really bizarre circuitous logic that doesn’t touch on any of the underlying issues.’
‘Originally,’ she says, ‘I just thought you shouldn’t use certain words. Colour-blindness was something that was definitely taught to us in school.
‘Growing up, I would have told you that racism is about calling people slurs. Or that racism was about laws about segregation. Or that racism was a two-way street, that anyone can be racist. I probably would have said that words like the N word were worse than someone calling somebody a cracker, for example, but I would have said that cracker is still racist.
That racism was individuals, and I would not have seen...
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may be overtly racist,
‘I’ve lost a lot of sensitivity about being told I’m wrong. That’s a massive gain, on a personal level. I haven’t lost my white privilege. It hasn’t reduced because I suddenly understand what it is.’
‘I discuss [racism] with family, with friends, in a work context, although those discussions can be really difficult,’
So many white people think that racism is not their problem.
book, I don’t mean every individual white person. I mean whiteness as a political ideology.
To me, it is like yin and yang. Racism’s legacy does not exist without purpose. It brings with it not just a disempowerment for those affected by it, but an empowerment for those who are not. That is white privilege. Racism bolsters white people’s life chances. It affords an unearned power; it is designed to mai...
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‘In this country in fifteen or twenty years’ time, the black man will have the whip hand over the white man.’
Enoch Powell’s speech has consistently been earmarked as one of the most racist speeches in British history,
doors. There is a worry the ever-disappearing essence of Britishness is being slowly eroded by immigrants whose sole interest is not to flee from war or poverty, but to destroy the social fabric of the country.
‘The fact [is] that in scores of our cities and market towns, this country in a short space of time has frankly become unrecognisable. Whether it is the impact on local schools and hospitals, whether it is the fact in many parts of England you don’t hear English spoken any more. This is not the kind of community we want to leave to our children and grandchildren.’3
a black planet
You are multiculturalism. People who are scared of multiculturalism are scared of you.
This was cloaked in a conversation about the ‘strain’ immigrants put on the NHS, but I’ve heard this discussion before.
‘anchor baby’
It suggests a t...
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Britain is not innocent of this kind of ...
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considering passport checks for non-emergency patients – including pregnant women – befor...
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“what do you mean indigenous?” You wouldn’t dare go to North America and say to an American Red Indian “what do you mean indigenous? We’re all the same.”’ He continued: ‘The indigenous people of these islands, the English, the Scots, the Irish and the Welsh . . . it’s the people who have been here overwhelmingly for the last 17,000 years. We are the aboriginals here . . . The simple fact is that the majority of the British people are descended from people who’ve lived here since time immemorial. It’s extraordinarily racist, it is genuinely racist when you seek to deny the English. You people
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accommodating difference was akin to erasing white Britishness.
Even more insultingly, he used the struggles of black and brown people who were colonised, raped and beaten by white British people to preserve white British culture.
policies stating that my mixed-race family is an abomination.
