Living with the enemy
This year is my 21st year of living in London and I think I am finally able to articulate why I often find blacks who have grow up with racism are so very different from those who have not.
During a recent conversation with a few other people who grew up in majority black countries, I began to notice similarities in our perceptions of UK Blacks. Racism, real or just perceived looms large in their every thought.
Growing up in Jamaica I was convinced that what you grew up to be was only limited by your personal ambition. Any child could identify people not only of their race, but also shade, working and achieving in all walks of life. Once the higglas began making strong moves financially, almost no door was inaccessible to even those of the darkest shades . Sure we had our issues of class and shade, but it was no way comparable to the racism faced here in the UK by the average black person.
The level of racism here in the UK has taken a heavy toll of the mentality of many UK blacks. First many UK blacks can’t perceive that blacks can be racist. This belief is held not only by the uneducated (academically and politically) but also by those who are highly educated. This view is based upon the concept that only those with power can be racist. They will argue that in Jamaica we blacks had no power, but even if that is true it is not the point. The point is we felt and continue to feel we have power and perhaps that is why we know blacks can be racist.
However my reason for writing this note is not to point out the obvious, that anyone can be racist, but to explain how years of racist oppression affects UK blacks and can cause conflict between blacks who were not exposed to similar levels of racism or better yet have experienced none at all.
Take two boys one we will call P and the other D. P grows up in Jamaica while D grows up in the UK. In Ps class he is surrounded by kids of the same colour as him. His teachers are also his colour. Daily he reads from books showing his people in a positive light. Each day he sees around him black doctors, lawyers, shopkeepers and yes, thieves. He develops a view that his outcome is down to him and he is not hindered by his race. Yes, he sees a class system around him, but he has also seen people just like him cross over that class system.
D, is in a class with no other kids like him. He is subjected to ridicule because of his colour and maybe even about his class too. Teachers don’t care because they too dislike him purely because of his race too. His books have no sign of blacks in his society. Daily he sees people of his colour excluded from every walk of life and forced to engage in work well below their social and academic potential, just to survive. He may even watch his father abandon his family because in this oppressive society he no longer feels like a ‘real man’. D is fully aware his potential is limited by his colour and there is little he can do about it. Even those black that are wealthy are still treated in a substandard way and are never really accepted into higher society.
If D and P meet there views will be poles apart. P will have to learn that racism can hold him back, D already believes is does. D will see a racist motive behind every set back in his life, even when he is simply not good enough. D is conditioned to believe everything bad that happens to him is race based and soon race becomes his fall back position for ever failing. D can’t understand why P does not share his hatred of whites. In fact he concludes that if P does not hate whites it’s because he is deluded or a sellout. P on the other hand is just as confused at the baseless hate for whites based not on their actions, but rather purely on their colour.
OK these may be extreme cases, but not too extreme and I am sure you can see how each experience will shape P and Ds view on race and racism. More importantly we can see how Ds self esteem will be trampled upon. Low self esteem will affect every area of Ds life. No matter what he does achieve he will feel he was cheated out of more. P on the other hand is self assured.
I am no physiologist or psychiatrist, but I have observed these behaviours of over twenty years and I feel it is a reasonable conclusion that prolonged exposure to an oppressive system day in and day out for you entire life must reek havoc on a persons mind.
Your thoughts are welcomed.
2 comments:
Direct and indirect prolonged racism is highly damaging, but the internalised racism and self hate brought about by constant negative images and messages in every walk of society, and reinforced by the media, is responsible for more acts of violence death and destruction in our own community than any systematic and organized racism meeted out by the majority community.
I hate to hear black people say 'we cannot be racist' because it denotes such a helpless position; which is just no longer true.
Of course we still face racism, institutional and covert-however, there is nothing stopping us from setting up our own business and being able to hire and fire based on race; for instance.
We have a black US President-no door is shut, and if it appears to be, every individual, certainly in the West at least; has the power to kick it down.
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