Image - ingrained white privilege by Stuart Garske
Race is hard for a white person to talk about… WE SHOULD BE LISTENING
I dont feel its my place to talk about racism. TALK ABOUT Homophobia… sure I have that lived experience, i have been through that type of persecution, that kind of hatred for something in you that you have no control over.
Instead I want to share my experience of moving from ‘white australia’ to england where i lived with my partner in Peckham Rye SE15. (SOUTH EAST LONDON) ‘BLACKER THAN BRIXTON’ WAS COMMON SLANG AT THE TIME WHEN TALKING ABOUT PECKHAM.
Now I had no idea of peckhams history and how it was perceived by people, yet when I told people where i was living, their faces just dropped and said ‘good luck!’ and ‘stay off the high street!’ even the absolutely fabulous jamaican bus ticket lady on my Number 12 bus, would look at me, CLACK HER MONUMENTAL ACRYLIC NAILS, shake her head and say ‘what you doing here white boy ?’
So after a while i believed them, i started getting scared. everything i encountered in my daily life in london fed this dangerous narrative back to me. Black cabs wont take you south of waterloo station. No one would come and visit me at home. i stopped going to the high street, and i stopped taking walks around the neighbourhood.
There was another side to this though, the side that unfortunately confirmed alot of these narratives, we had a black gang living next door, 2 armed men in a car outside the house 24/7. NINE men were shot in a ‘yardy’ gang related dispute just 2 minutes walk from our house.
i saw a side of life and humanity that i never thought existed and it made me cry - alot, i got very depressed over time. The harshness of the life some of these people lived, the tough, violent attitudes of kids no more than 6 or 7 years old out on the streets after dark.
The final straw, and one of the catalysts for me moving back to sydney was the murder of 10 year old Damilola Taylor. he was stabbed and died hiding in a stairwell at the primary school that was literally across the road from where we lived.
It was devastating for the community and broke a little piece of my inner child that has never healed. While remembering this I looked for the incident online and found this article. a documentary had been made about Damilola and the friends he left behind. how they grew up and succeeded beyond what was ‘expected’ of them. bucking the mythS of what was ‘expected’ of people who grew up in this area. The fact that some of them still to this day avoid telling people where they grew up.
Such is the power of ideological stories that they beCOME internalised by those who have known and lived the reality instead of the myth. back then in my early twenties and if im honest till very recently i was blind to my privilege. blind to how i had bought into the narrative. i have a very long way to go, still the curtains have lifted a little and to quote a favourite film “the sleeper must awaken”
I write this in memory of Damilola, he was a victim of our complacency and a casualty of ideology.
I felt you then but i see you now. And i am sorry.
