THREAD My dads account on the #racism he experienced in the UK

#BlackLivesMatterUK

I thought it would be good to get his story out there. Share and comment your experiences

@guardian @Independent @TheNewEuropean @DavidLammy @mrjamesob

My Dad’s Experiences Of #racism

1/ My parents came to England from Jamaica in the mid-fifties. My Dad came first, he was attracted by the call “your queen needs you”. Although his name in Jamaica was Bevat Baccas, he was given the name of Arthur Dougall when he went to get a passport.

2/ This was the name of the sugar plantation owner where he worked. It was a remnant of the way things were done in the days of slavery. He got a job on London Transport. Jamaica was still part of the Commonwealth then.

3/ My Mum followed shortly after and I was born shortly after that.
As far back as I can remember racism has been a part of my life. My earliest recollections are from primary school when the white children used to call me “w*g”, “ni**er”, “ni*-n*g”, “p*ki”.

4/ There weren’t many of us (Black or Asian) in the school and we were often made to sit separately from the white children. The white children used to say we were smelly and dirty.

5/ I often ran home after school so that I could get into the bath to scrub myself clean and to wash the “brown” off. There was a particular boy, his name was (I won’t use his full name) G Newton, often waited for me in the alleyway beside the railway tracks on Railton Rd.

6/ He’d kick and punch me because his Dad said I should go back to where I came from. I never understood what he meant at the time because I was born here. In the end my mum told me to hit him back, which I did. He stopped waiting for me after that.

7/ We lived in Herne Hill in those days, at the top of the hill, and there was a small parade of shops on the main road.

8/ My mum warned me not to go into one of the shops because the owner threatened her, told her he didn’t serve “colo**ed” people and had told her to go back to where she came from.

9/ I did quite well at primary school (St Jude’s on Railton Rd) and won a scholarship to a Grammar School. I went to Wilson’s Grammar in Camberwell where I was one of three black boys. We were constantly being picked on and challenged to fights.

10/ One particular prefect took a particular dislike to me and kept on putting me in detention. A teacher who noticed this asked me why I was always in detention. When I explained that it was because the prefect didn’t like my colour he laughed and thought it was just a joke.

11/ During my first two years I did well, I was in the top 10 in both years but never selected for the top sets. Entry to the 3rd year required that we select specialist subjects. I chose the ones I had particular interest in and which I had done well in so far.

12/ I didn’t get any of them, neither did either of the other black boys. It’s hard to say whether it was due to colour, but certainly there were boys that had performed less well than us that did get their choices.

13/ Unfortunately this put me in a negative mode at school, and combined with the rise of the skinhead movement meant that I spent the majority of the next three years fighting or getting beaten up because I wasn’t white.

14/ During this time my mother and father split up and we moved to Brixton. People said lots of racist things about the area, you were likely to be mugged by black people, your home was more likely to be broken into, it was run down, smelly, dirty. For me though, it was safe.

15/ I used to spend a lot of my school holidays in Brockwell Park. I was with a friend walking toward Herne Hill, just beside the lido, when a gang of white boys came up behind us.

16/ One of them hit me on the back of my head with a bottle and told me to go back to where I came from. Another time, I was with a friend over on the Tulse Hill side when a white boy with an air gun fired at us. He missed us and we chased him, caught him, took the gun off him.

17/ We bent the barrel, gave it back to him and made him drop it down a drain. Nothing like this ever happened to me in Brixton.
I used to walk to school along Coldharbour Lane and never felt threatened until I got close to Camberwell.

18/ It was quite common for boys from my school to just come up behind me and punch me and run on to school. One day, on leaving school, I was walking along Camberwell Church St when a boy from school just came up to me and punched me in my face and broke my glasses.

19/ I went to school the following day but couldn’t see the board properly so couldn’t do the work. The teacher asked me what had happened. I explained and he had a word with the boy who punched me. The boy told him he just didn’t like “colo**ed” people.

20/ Eventually, I’d had enough of this treatment, and when I was in 5th year, just before my “O” levels, I got into a fight with another prefect and was expelled from school, even though he was the one who started the fight by calling me names.

21/ In a way, it was a relief, I hated virtually every day of going to that school. My mum felt she couldn’t do much about it because we were poor and black.

22/ The one thing she did say however, which has stuck with me ever since is that the only way to overcome this problem is to be better than white people. You couldn’t be the same, you had to be better.

23/ It took me quite a while to get a job, but in the end I found one working for a company just a 10 min walk from where I lived. It was a good thing that it was nearby as it wasn’t well paid.

24/ I started in the factory making ultrasonic test probes for non-destructive test equipment. The Works Manager was feared by everyone on the factory floor. My immediate manager, who was white, told me that the Works Manager disliked black people.

25/ In fact, most of the people who worked there told me the same thing. I decided to take my mum’s advice and be good at what I did, I couldn’t afford to lose the job.

26/ Interestingly, 4 years later, the company hit hard times and most of the factory closed down, and most people were made redundant, but the Works Manager took me aside and told me that he was keeping me on as long as possible because he trusted me and liked me.

27/ I learned a lot from that experience, not least of which is that the people who tell you that they aren’t racist probably are.
From there I joined a security company in Kensington.

28/ They were overtly racist and made it clear, after I joined that there was little chance of progressing, no matter how good I was at the job. I only stayed for 6 months before leaving to join a life assurance company to become a self-employed salesman.

29/ I decided to take this route because I didn’t want to be judged by the colour of my skin but my performance and ability. I was fortunate in that my managers/trainers, although white, were very conscious of the disadvantages ethnic minorities faced.

30/ They taught me a lot about how to deal with racism because I had to expect it in this line of work. I was 21 when I joined these guys and we worked together for the 14 very successful years.

31/ I learned a lot from them, they also introduced me to activities that a person from my background would never normally encounter, more about that later.
Throughout this time I remained in Brixton.

32/ I lived through the Brixton riots, I experienced police cars blazing right outside my front door, riot police on my road forcing back protestors.

33/ I don’t know what exactly triggered the riots, but I do know it was common to be stopped in the streets and searched and questioned for no apparent reason. I was stopped several times walking along the street and in my car.

34/ I avoided confrontation in these situations, I’d learned it was better to just answer the questions and let them search me. I know that others however, were not so calm and this led to individuals being beaten up and being imprisoned for very little reason.

35/ I guess there’s only so many times this can happen before people react.
Due to work I’ve moved out of Brixton now and my life has been through a number of changes, much the same as anyone else, but racism has always been a feature.

36/ I really don’t want to recall every occasion when I felt that I have been discriminated against, every person from an ethnic background can do that, but a couple of experiences have occurred that have highlighted to me a couple of interesting facts.

37/ I mentioned earlier activities that I’d been introduced to by the guys I worked with when I moved into sales. One of those activities was skiing. I first went back in the season 1981-82. I have been every year since, normally 2-3 times per season. I love it.

38/ I love the snow, the sun, the mountains, the food, the wine, the skill. For many years I found myself being the only black person in the resort. When I tell people I ski there is often a look of surprise, “black people don’t ski!” or similar expressions.

39/ Interestingly I’ve experienced very little overt racism in ski resorts. The only significant time was in Val D’Isere. My friends and I were in a bar and it was my round. I stood at the bar for ages trying to get served, the barman just ignored me.

40/ Eventually, one of my friends came to the bar to find out what was going on, he asked why the barman why he wasn’t serving me. The barman, who was English, replied, without any qualms “I don’t serve black people”. My friend, who was white, was shocked.

41/ He learned a lesson that day. Although the expression wasn’t in use at the time, he discovered “white privilege”.

42/ Another occasion when a white friend received an insight into the racism black people feel occurred a few years ago when I was out with another friend (also white). We were standing outside a shop waiting for some other friends to arrive.

43/ A group of children playing nearby saw me and decided to run over to where we were. They began calling me ni**er, black b*****d and other names. My friend was totally shocked and was amazed that I had remained calm.

44/ I had to explain that I’ve grown up with it, I’m used to it and the best way to deal with it is to ignore it. He simply didn’t believe that things like that actually happened in real life.

45/ These days most people acknowledge that racism exists, it’s not a figment of the ethnic minorities imaginations. Those of us from a minority tend to build racism into our lives in order to cope. Take for example, job applications.

46/ We accept that many of our applications will be rejected purely on the grounds of race. We accept that we’ll have to take lower salaries.

47/ We accept that we may not be able to get very far up the career ladder, or that we’ll have to work twice as hard as a white person to achieve the same results. We accept that we may not be able to rent or buy certain homes.

48/ The recent statistics on the Covid outbreak show a higher propensity for BAME to catch and die from it.

49/ Whilst there are a lot of suggestions as to why this is the case, an obvious one that no one wants to discuss is the stress that ethnic minorities live under constantly due to having to deal with these problems.

50/ It is a medically proven fact that stress damages the immune system.
I attended a meeting recently where I was asked my opinion on the recent protests over the George Floyd murder. I didn’t want to get involved in the conversation but I was pressed for an opinion.

51/ In the end I asked the question “do you think the same thing would have happened if George Floyd was white?” I then went on to explain that the demonstrations were as much about the general, insidious oppression of ethnic minorities as about the murder of George Floyd.

52/ I then explained the issue of job applications and asked if they ever wonder, when applying for a job, whether their skin colour matters?
In the 21st century, many of us are born here, we are as much English/British as any white person. I’m not sure where the concept of…

53/ …white superiority has come from, why white english people felt they had the right to go to other countries and dominate them, but in the 21st century those concepts don’t exist anymore, however white privilege, which descends from those attitudes does still exist.

54/ Many white people don’t actually realise it because they live in a cocooned world where they receive automatic entitlement to jobs etc. The BLM movement is shaking some of these attitudes, it may even succeed in changing some of them, it’s difficult to tell.

55/ It was hoped that things would change after the Brixton riots, and there probably has been some small movements, but my concern is that rather than actually change attitudes, people simply learn how to conceal them better.

56/ There’s no doubt in my mind that Brexit will not help the BLM movement as a major motivation for Brexit was immigration, and most people associate colour with immigration, not race.
So what can be done about it?

57/ Well the first thing is don’t dismiss it as something that doesn’t really exist. It does, and in the most unexpected places, Brexit taught us that.

58/ How many of you are surprised by the number of people amongst your friends who voted leave, and even more surprised by their reasons? Racism isn’t just about colour, look at the racism displayed by the English toward the French and the Germans.

59/ The next thing is, decide whether you want to do something about it. Many people prefer to keep their heads under the parapet and not get involved.

60/ If you decide to get involved, acknowledge that people fall into three categories, those that recognise the problem and want to do something about it, those that are so deeply entrenched in their racist views they will never change.

61/ They are the ones that have the attitude “don’t confuse me with the facts, my minds made up”. The third group who go with the flow, they agree with whoever is shouting the loudest.

62/ Don’t waste time with those that won’t change, better to give them their voice so that they can be identified and located. That way they can be corralled and contained and their messages can be neutralised.

63/ Where the real work needs to be done is with those who just go with the flow. You’ve all got them in your group of friends.

64/ They’re the ones who sit there in the pub agreeing with you when you’re discussing the news, the next time they’re in the pub with you they’re agreeing with the loud-mouth who’s shouting “send them back to where they came from”.

65/ Take them aside, remind them of what they’ve just said, do they really mean it? Be prepared to lose some of your “friends”.
Black and other minorities can also help. Be honest and truthful.

66/ Just because you see white people lying or stealing and getting away with it doesn’t mean it’s ok for you to do the same. You will always be judged more harshly if you’re caught, at least until there is true equality. Protest peacefully and in a coordinated way.

67/ One of the reasons racism has been so successfully perpetrated in the UK is because it’s so well organised. Ethnic minorities are too disjointed.

68/ Protest effectively, if the police aren’t doing their jobs fairly amongst the community, write to them, meet with them, communicate with them.

69/ I am a supporter of the police, I think they do an incredibly difficult job and take the blame for many mistakes that politicians make, which is simply not fair. They also take the blame for things that are completely beyond their control, which is also unfair.

70/ Of course, there are the bad apples, as there is in every organisation, but don’t let your view of the police become jaundiced. Lobby your MPs, make his/her life difficult until they start taking things seriously, that’s what they’re there for.

71/ I don’t agree with damaging/defacing statues, but I do believe they should be re-signed to admit the atrocities the subject was guilty of, and they should lose the reverence they formally had.

72/ We can learn a lot from the sports world and the music industry, where generally talent and skill tends to rise to the top and transcends race and colour (although how did Ben Stokes beat Dina Asher-Smith for Sports Personality of the Year 2019?).

73/ Equality will take hard work, dedication and sacrifice (on all sides), but it can be achieved. If you don’t believe that we may as well all head for the hills.

Picture of my dad skiing in the 80s. His favourite thing.