I wrote this late last night. I am not changing it in the cold light of day.
I don’t think anyone can truthfully say that we are completely free of racism for I believe that it a feeling that lurks within our minds – the fear of something strange and not quite like ourselves. It doesn’t have to be white v black, it could be Yorkshire v Lancashire and that goes back a long way. And it is certainly alive and well, in Wales v England, at least for the Welsh. The English of course don’t give a shit.
I read somewhere once that this was natural. If you kept the pack tight and did not allow intruders, then interbreeding would allow the good genes to multiply quickly and spread and the baddies would be quickly disposed of. That makes some sense but then there are very good arguments for promoting the diversity of the gene pool. I am not a geneticist so I shall leave it.
To me it seems that racism is shaped by the events of your youth. In my case, it was all positive. I was raised in a small, almost totally white little town. The only brown kid we knew was Tommy Godden from down the road. We did of course ask my mom why Tommy was darker than us and she said he’d got sunburned as a child. You may mock this but it was good enough for us kids and anyway, Tommy was part of the gang. I think that says a lot for although we saw that his skin was different, he was just a part of us.
Then I went to University and met people of every description, the only unifying factor being the possession of 3 ‘A’ levels. The only issues that existed between us were things like ‘can he hold his drink?’, ‘is he a swot?’ and matters like that. As with all people, there are some you like and some you don’t, some you respect and some you don’t – it has nothing to do with race.
So on to London for my first job and a flat on the Finchley Road. The folks up above were from Trinidad, Ronnie & Myrtle without a doubt, the two best friends of my life. So many hours we spent together and Myrtle’s roti was second to none and available 24/7. They had a couple of kids and we had wonderful times together. Later, I moved, married and had kids and we still mingled. Still adore the picture of Ronnie carrying Peter on his shoulders in front of the Natural History Museum.
Sadly Ronnie died early and we lost touch. Ronnie gave me my first copy of Mahler’s 2nd Symphony.
Then there was Merrill, the Jamaican guy who lived downstairs when I got married. Soul mates me and him. Dear God, we nattered for hours and this man introduced me to Beethoven’s 9th Symphony for which I am eternally grateful.
So life moved on. All sorts of people have crossed my path and my evaluation of them has been based on their merits and nothing else.
And then we moved into the 90’s and that was when I really became aware of positive discrimination. Sure, I read about it but then I experienced it too, face to face. Suddenly, important roles in GM were being filled with young black females who were completely out of their depth and being advised by their young white male juniors. It was embarrassing on all sides. It did nothing to enhance the self confidence of those young ladies. On the contrary, it probably reinforced feelings of inferiority.
And then in the 2000’s, I had a relationship with a black girl from Baltimore – we are still buddies but we fight like hell but that’s another matter and it has nothing to do with race.. She hated positive discrimination because she felt it demeaned her, she hated sporting and pop star blacks being held up as icons to black youth. She simply wanted to be treated like the rest of us, a normal human being, that’s all. I love her to bits.
And that’s it. All these ‘Black History Weeks’, ‘Asian Women’s Resources Centres’ and all the other crap only serve to reinforce the divide. I am sure that they are well intentioned and probably conceived in cosy white middle class homes but they make the ‘darkies’ feel different and they are not. They have all the feelings and aspirations of the whites and they should be treated as equals.
Go to fucking Africa and see them. The kids’ thirst to learn is way and beyond anything that I have seen in British kids. Sit with them and chat or just kick a ball about and then you will understand that they are no different. So do not treat them differently nor put them on show like we did in Victorian circuses.
The best thing we can do to fight racism is very simple. Just show black and coloured people that we respect them as equals. And if some white kid says they are not, then quietly correct him. And if he doesn’t listen, then smack the shit out of him because a ‘Black History Week’ sure isn’t going to change his opinion.
When I wrote down my retirement reflections back in Dec 2007, this was one of them:
284. People say 'don't get down to their level' when you are dealing with assholes. Why not? Getting down to their level is the only level they understand. That is why ASBO’s are not written in Latin.
Think about it
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