When I was 8, I was called a monkey for the first time.
It was at my private school in Birmingham and we’d brought in baby pictures for a year 4 project. Suzy, the girl, saw my picture and laughed saying it looked monkey-like.
I laughed too because I thought it was funny, like being described as a giraffe or a butterfly any other bit of wildlife. Then she said, “You know who else really looks like a monkey? Alex and Niquita” – the two other black girls in our year.
I am mixed-race, so I assume this distinction was made with the word really.
The second time the word monkey came up was 13 years later. I was working in a pub in Birmingham. I served a man and his friend who, as I handed over their Carling, said, “You’re not a monkey, bab. I know everyone must take the piss out of you but I think you’re lovely. I have a half-caste missus myself.”
The third and most recent incident was this year, 2019. It was aimed at my friend, who I will not name. We were both working for an app in London when one of our colleagues, who I will name – Sami – called him a monkey. She wrote it in his notebook. My friend reported it to HR and when nothing was done, a group of five of us re-reported it.
It was the third HR complaint of racism against her. Our senior manager called our complaint a witch hunt. After a brief struggle from him, Sami’s contract was terminated. Three weeks later, my friend and I were both made redundant on the spot at the hand of the senior manager.
A closed conversation
Interestingly, I didn’t consider the first two incidents examples of racism until this year. It was only after the 2019 debacle that I reviewed my experiences and concluded that actually, I have been exposed to myriad examples of ignorance since I was at school. I was probably part of the problem. I existed in a very white world and didn’t recognise these things as racist because I didn’t think that they were.
I would have probably described them as being ‘not racist or anything but a bit bad’ before providing context to explain why they were more of a misunderstanding.
As a nation, I think we are more frightened of the word racism and the idea of being considered racist than we are open to understanding its modern nuances.
The phrase ‘I’m not racist’ – not to be confused with the common caveat, “I’m not being racist, but…” – has been the automatic response to the accusation of racism for as long as I can remember. This is a strange phenomenon.
When someone is accused of being rude, their response is rarely, “I’m not a rude person”. They might apologise, ask why the person thought that what they said was rude or maybe even deny it; however, it would be unusual for them to take the accusation as a threat to their long-term identity.
Why is it different for racism?
The reason, I think, is threefold:
- The historical perception of racism
- Racism in America
- The misunderstanding that you can say racist things without being ‘a racist’
Slavery, segregation and stereotypes
One of the barriers to accepting that we might occasionally say racist things is the feared tie with historical racism. Despite how clear it seems that touching a stranger’s afro is not the same as running a slave plantation, the fear of being associated with the latter prevents us from considering that the former is also a form of racism.
They are by no means the same level, but one does not counteract the other.
Bolstering this barrier is the accessibility to American history in the UK. Reni Eddo-Lodge (author of Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race which if you haven’t read, you must!) touches on the fact that we’re not exposed to the history of race relations in the UK. I took modern history for GCSE and A-Level covering the USA and the UK.
I can tell you in detail about American civil rights pioneers, landmark cases and the resulting legislation, but I only discovered that Malcolm X was in Smethwick nine days before his assassination by proof-reading an unpublished short story on an internship eight years later.
Without independent research, our context around racism in the UK generally comes from either centuries-old history or from a racial landscape thousands of miles away. It’s easy to be horrified by the fact that black people in the USA are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police than white people and, therefore, to presume that this means something comparatively about the UK.
But, it’s akin to comparing the cost of pears to the cost of t-shirts. They have different functions, they are made for different industries and they exist in totally different spheres.
Can we chat?
Blind fear of being racist is not productive. Neither is indignance that we couldn’t possibly be racist. We can all be guilty of small incidences of racism irrespective of our own race, background or experience. If this weren’t true, how could we have made any progress from centuries ago to today?
Saying something that someone considers to be racist does not automatically make you a bad person and nor does it equate you with those guilty of heinous crimes of inequality.
Being open to understanding how something you say might make someone feel and appreciating that their experience contributes to their perception of your words can go a long way.
In school, for instance, I wasn’t offended being identified in a crowd as “the mixed-race one” but I am offended today when friends still use this label despite knowing more things with which to identify me.
So, my advice? If someone calls you racist, don’t tell them that you’re not.
Dig a bit deeper to find out what they mean and open up the conversation.
Chatting is productive, denying ignorance is not.
