When I grew up I was Black. It wasn't defined as such in the 1970's in the Welsh Valleys but Nigga, Sambo, Wog were all words I became quickly aquainted with in the school yard of my nursery and infants school.
Being the only "Black in the village" with a 70s afro made me an obvious target.
But I was brought up white (whatever that actually means)..
Being fostered by a White Family in the small village of Ystrad Mynach in the South Welsh mining Valleys from pretty much birth in 1968 (a year after the National Front was established) to 1984 (a year before the Brixton Riots) meant they were the only family I've ever known.
My father, a former naval officer, based in Trinidad in the 2nd World War was working class and racist (when I was 15 he admitted he didn't want a fuzzy wuzzy in the house to begin with, but I'd done alright - but that's a whole story in itself).. My mother, the youngest of 13 had escaped her blitzed Coventry home and was as Middle Class as they come.
Having attuned myself to the onslaught of name calling. by the time I hit junior school, they were easily assuaged, that was,until Alex Hayley's "Roots" hits the BBC in 1977 and a whole new raft of epithets were suddenly found to call me from Chicken George to the ever popular Kunta Kinta.
But nothing bothers me more to this day as much as "Jungle Bunny" two words that have no reason to be put together other than for the benefit of an insult. Just writing the words has the hairs on the back of my neck going up and putting my whole body into fight mode.
A fact shared with comedian Reginald D Hunter when discussing what was to become of the film I was producing on race Colour Blind (2009) and why we decided to end it with the actor in Blackface to kick start the debate we were looking for.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Racism was clear when I grew up..
Name calling was just name calling. I was just as likely to be called the above names as the fat kid being called Piggy or the Ginger haired amongst us being insulted with the moniker of Duracell (the copper covered top).
Being beaten up for the colour of your skin - well that clearly was racist.
But the Robertson's Jam Jar Golliwog wasn't racist. How could it be there was no context to it. The Black and White Minstrel show was mainstream BBC Saturday night viewing (1958-78) and in stark contrast the racist Alf Garentt (played by the Jewish Warren Mitchell in Till Death Us Do Part 1965-75) was mocked mercilessly for his ignorant and idiotic viewpoints.
I never thought about race. Sure I'd been beaten up for the colour of my skin on the streets of Cardiff but that was both ways... White Racists in Rhwbina for being black and Somalians in Tiger Bay for not being black enough (all because I was hanging out with some white friends in the Custom House pub at the top of Bute Street).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
When I was still in nursery school some of the parents, within my earshot, would tell their children not to play with "the little blackie boy" because their children may catch something.
And as Lenny Henry had experienced himself and would often recall in a joke, I'd find myself offered a banana as a treat (now it should be noted these would be expensive and not easily accessible in the early 70s in Wales) as a genuine effort by friends' parents to be nice and welcoming.
However the one thing I'd been brought up not to do is be defined by the colour of my skin. My closest friends by the time I was 17 would refer to me as the most White Middle Class person they knew, because I went to the Opera, the theatre, enjoyed independent cinema, was well read, loved wine above beer (sacrilege in the Welsh Valleys - but a burgeoning trend in the Welsh Capital where I'd acquired my first flat to rent the year before) and would prefer good food like the Lexington Burger on Queen Street as opposed to Wimpy or McDonalds in Cardiff (my elder brothers have a lot to answer for)..
I loved being the only black face in a room, in a job or at a party. It held me out to be different, not the same as everyone else.
And why wouldn't I want that, my and all my white friends' heroes were Black, we just didn't see them that way.
Everybody had a copy of Richard Pryor's Here And Now, seen Stir Crazy and considered him the funniest man to have ever lived. Through television Floella Benjamin (Play School) had taught us in Nursery, Derek Griffith (Play Away) in infants school, Lenny Henry on a Saturay morning kiiling us with laughter on Tiswas and Trevor MacDonald in solemn severity read our news.
Eddie Murphy was the Bevery Hills Cop, Denzel Washingon had played Steve Biko in Cry Freedom, we'd seen Missipi Bruning, the Cosby's were mainstream on the newly launched Channel 4 and Wil Smith's the Fresh Prince of Bel Air was the biggest watched BBC2 show of all time just as I turned 20
Not to mention the likes of athletes Dayley Thompson, Booker WInning author Ben Okri and fashoin designer guru Bruce Oldfield and of course the greatest black role model of all time, the World Champion boxer, Muhammad Ali, who often graced the sets of our chat show hosts in the UK to inspire generations with his intelligence,wit and fabulous oratory skills. .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-ui9mTPMMY
But boy did I have an awakening when I came to the world's most Multicultural City, London in 1997. I was still, in the main, the only black face at the National Theatre or The Royal Opera House, the British Museum or the British Library, but many areas like Brixton were predominantly populated by black communities.
Very quickly, I realised how fortunate my upbringing had been. At no point was I told the colour of my skin would ever hold me back, but the traditions of African or West Indian culture were suddenly brought into sharp focus as I made more and more black friends.
A dear black female friend had been awarded the best family lawyer of the year and the first words her Jamaican mother uttered to her were "well that's all well and good but when are you going to get serious, find a good man and give me grandchildren" my friend's crest-fallen expression was soul destroying.
A Nigerian black couple had sent their son to Private School and were astounded to discover that he challenged their parental authority by questioning the validity of their requests. "I would have been beaten to within inches of my life if I answered my mother like that" the wifre said as she struggled between her middle classe status and her cultural heritage.
If you didn't define as Black you were a Coconut, if you did, you were politically ostracised. This was an entirely different world to what I was expecting. The likelihood of being punched in the face by a white person in the middle of a busy street as had been my experience in Wales - wasn't conceivable in London then or now.
Yet it borught more complications than I could ever imagined.
The more I understood about the oppression of Black people in London the harder it was for me to understand their position. They were surrounded by people who looked like them in their droves.They had unity yet the infghting was as laughable as the Judean'People Front and the People's Front of Judeah.
They didn't seem to be hindered in anyway, if they escaped the crime ridden areas they often inhabited. I remember a Black Ghanaian female friend who was ostricised by her own family for doing a degree as they felt she thought she was better than them and was working for the "whiteman" as a respected Government Lobbyist.
What else could she do in a 93% White country?
What made matters worse for me, is that I'd never failed to get a job on interview. This means that everybody who employed me did so knowing the colour of my skin. That was from education to the civil service, the licence trade, retail, telesales, Public relations and media and a whole lot more.
As time went on Black friends started to use language like "you don't know your roots"... I didn't, so I started to learn and the more I learnt the more I realised that at the height of the race industry, just before Atyon Abectu interrupted the service by standing up and shouting in Westminster Cathedral during the apology for the Slave Trade, most of my Black friends didn't either.
It was never more aptly demonstrated with the corruption of the Mary Seacole story. An incredibly heroic woman who'd come to Britain to share her knowledge as a medicine woman during the Crimean war.
Seacole nursed, Nightingale invented nursing.
But if you'd listen to the history today, you'd think the two women were of equal significance to the development of the.nursing profession. All the way down to the Statue of Seacole being placed in the grounds of the namesake of the Hospital that Nightingale established the World's first Nurse Training school in, St. Thomas's Hospital, which Seacole had no connection with whatsoever.
Black friends used to tell me she was written out of history because of racism, but when I asked if that was the case, why her Book The Wonderful Adventures of Mary Seacole in Many Lands, had been in the Birtish Library since its publication, the response was always "Is it, I didn't know?".
What they actually meant was, they didn't have this balck story pre-packaged in a easy to consume form that didn't require any effort in obtaining the information. Not that it didn't exist.
Seacole was heroic not historic. I'd ask anybody to name any of the 38 White nurses that Nightingale took with her who'd be the equivalent of Seacole but I've yet to find one person who can name a single one.
And so I found it strange on Wednesday being surrounded by a vast array of people in Hyde Park for the Black Lives Matter march. There was a strange kind of unity but one that felt mildly fake.
When John Boyega delivered his heartfelt speech it wasn't clear what he was saying about his own career. He'd reached the heights of Hollywood success and therefore his voice hugely amplified the experience - but what was it that had held him back?
He'd just bought his parents a house, he'd reached the pinnacle of financial and artistic success. He's primed for a similar journey as Idris Elba, Chiwetel Ejiofor, David Oyelowo, David Harewood and others had already taken.
Sometimes to the discomfort of Black American actors.
https://www.newyorker.com/
Watching a generation who haven't had the fights of the Black-Shirts, the National Front or even the BNP with just the last remnants of the EDL barely a footnote (UKIP being too diverse to be considered a racist organisation - jingoistic undeniably with racists in it but so do Labour & the Conservatives) somehow lost any intellectual validity. The whole thing was clearly an emotional response but to what, was unclear.
The killing of a Black Man and the subsequents riots is a regular thing both here in the UK and in the USA and has never changed anything as yet again we find ourselves doing exactly the same thing.
So we know we can't rid ourselves of racists but is it possible to balance the scales for ethnic communities in a predominantly white society?
Or is just suffient to take to the streets every couple of years to remind people racism is alive and well?
My mother always told me I'd never meet an intelligent racist, she's yet to be proven wrong.
Being the only "Black in the village" with a 70s afro made me an obvious target.
But I was brought up white (whatever that actually means)..
Being fostered by a White Family in the small village of Ystrad Mynach in the South Welsh mining Valleys from pretty much birth in 1968 (a year after the National Front was established) to 1984 (a year before the Brixton Riots) meant they were the only family I've ever known.
My father, a former naval officer, based in Trinidad in the 2nd World War was working class and racist (when I was 15 he admitted he didn't want a fuzzy wuzzy in the house to begin with, but I'd done alright - but that's a whole story in itself).. My mother, the youngest of 13 had escaped her blitzed Coventry home and was as Middle Class as they come.
Having attuned myself to the onslaught of name calling. by the time I hit junior school, they were easily assuaged, that was,until Alex Hayley's "Roots" hits the BBC in 1977 and a whole new raft of epithets were suddenly found to call me from Chicken George to the ever popular Kunta Kinta.
But nothing bothers me more to this day as much as "Jungle Bunny" two words that have no reason to be put together other than for the benefit of an insult. Just writing the words has the hairs on the back of my neck going up and putting my whole body into fight mode.
A fact shared with comedian Reginald D Hunter when discussing what was to become of the film I was producing on race Colour Blind (2009) and why we decided to end it with the actor in Blackface to kick start the debate we were looking for.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Racism was clear when I grew up..
Name calling was just name calling. I was just as likely to be called the above names as the fat kid being called Piggy or the Ginger haired amongst us being insulted with the moniker of Duracell (the copper covered top).
Being beaten up for the colour of your skin - well that clearly was racist.
But the Robertson's Jam Jar Golliwog wasn't racist. How could it be there was no context to it. The Black and White Minstrel show was mainstream BBC Saturday night viewing (1958-78) and in stark contrast the racist Alf Garentt (played by the Jewish Warren Mitchell in Till Death Us Do Part 1965-75) was mocked mercilessly for his ignorant and idiotic viewpoints.
I never thought about race. Sure I'd been beaten up for the colour of my skin on the streets of Cardiff but that was both ways... White Racists in Rhwbina for being black and Somalians in Tiger Bay for not being black enough (all because I was hanging out with some white friends in the Custom House pub at the top of Bute Street).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
When I was still in nursery school some of the parents, within my earshot, would tell their children not to play with "the little blackie boy" because their children may catch something.
And as Lenny Henry had experienced himself and would often recall in a joke, I'd find myself offered a banana as a treat (now it should be noted these would be expensive and not easily accessible in the early 70s in Wales) as a genuine effort by friends' parents to be nice and welcoming.
However the one thing I'd been brought up not to do is be defined by the colour of my skin. My closest friends by the time I was 17 would refer to me as the most White Middle Class person they knew, because I went to the Opera, the theatre, enjoyed independent cinema, was well read, loved wine above beer (sacrilege in the Welsh Valleys - but a burgeoning trend in the Welsh Capital where I'd acquired my first flat to rent the year before) and would prefer good food like the Lexington Burger on Queen Street as opposed to Wimpy or McDonalds in Cardiff (my elder brothers have a lot to answer for)..
I loved being the only black face in a room, in a job or at a party. It held me out to be different, not the same as everyone else.
And why wouldn't I want that, my and all my white friends' heroes were Black, we just didn't see them that way.
Everybody had a copy of Richard Pryor's Here And Now, seen Stir Crazy and considered him the funniest man to have ever lived. Through television Floella Benjamin (Play School) had taught us in Nursery, Derek Griffith (Play Away) in infants school, Lenny Henry on a Saturay morning kiiling us with laughter on Tiswas and Trevor MacDonald in solemn severity read our news.
Eddie Murphy was the Bevery Hills Cop, Denzel Washingon had played Steve Biko in Cry Freedom, we'd seen Missipi Bruning, the Cosby's were mainstream on the newly launched Channel 4 and Wil Smith's the Fresh Prince of Bel Air was the biggest watched BBC2 show of all time just as I turned 20
Not to mention the likes of athletes Dayley Thompson, Booker WInning author Ben Okri and fashoin designer guru Bruce Oldfield and of course the greatest black role model of all time, the World Champion boxer, Muhammad Ali, who often graced the sets of our chat show hosts in the UK to inspire generations with his intelligence,wit and fabulous oratory skills. .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-ui9mTPMMY
But boy did I have an awakening when I came to the world's most Multicultural City, London in 1997. I was still, in the main, the only black face at the National Theatre or The Royal Opera House, the British Museum or the British Library, but many areas like Brixton were predominantly populated by black communities.
Very quickly, I realised how fortunate my upbringing had been. At no point was I told the colour of my skin would ever hold me back, but the traditions of African or West Indian culture were suddenly brought into sharp focus as I made more and more black friends.
A dear black female friend had been awarded the best family lawyer of the year and the first words her Jamaican mother uttered to her were "well that's all well and good but when are you going to get serious, find a good man and give me grandchildren" my friend's crest-fallen expression was soul destroying.
A Nigerian black couple had sent their son to Private School and were astounded to discover that he challenged their parental authority by questioning the validity of their requests. "I would have been beaten to within inches of my life if I answered my mother like that" the wifre said as she struggled between her middle classe status and her cultural heritage.
If you didn't define as Black you were a Coconut, if you did, you were politically ostracised. This was an entirely different world to what I was expecting. The likelihood of being punched in the face by a white person in the middle of a busy street as had been my experience in Wales - wasn't conceivable in London then or now.
Yet it borught more complications than I could ever imagined.
The more I understood about the oppression of Black people in London the harder it was for me to understand their position. They were surrounded by people who looked like them in their droves.They had unity yet the infghting was as laughable as the Judean'People Front and the People's Front of Judeah.
They didn't seem to be hindered in anyway, if they escaped the crime ridden areas they often inhabited. I remember a Black Ghanaian female friend who was ostricised by her own family for doing a degree as they felt she thought she was better than them and was working for the "whiteman" as a respected Government Lobbyist.
What else could she do in a 93% White country?
What made matters worse for me, is that I'd never failed to get a job on interview. This means that everybody who employed me did so knowing the colour of my skin. That was from education to the civil service, the licence trade, retail, telesales, Public relations and media and a whole lot more.
As time went on Black friends started to use language like "you don't know your roots"... I didn't, so I started to learn and the more I learnt the more I realised that at the height of the race industry, just before Atyon Abectu interrupted the service by standing up and shouting in Westminster Cathedral during the apology for the Slave Trade, most of my Black friends didn't either.
It was never more aptly demonstrated with the corruption of the Mary Seacole story. An incredibly heroic woman who'd come to Britain to share her knowledge as a medicine woman during the Crimean war.
Seacole nursed, Nightingale invented nursing.
But if you'd listen to the history today, you'd think the two women were of equal significance to the development of the.nursing profession. All the way down to the Statue of Seacole being placed in the grounds of the namesake of the Hospital that Nightingale established the World's first Nurse Training school in, St. Thomas's Hospital, which Seacole had no connection with whatsoever.
Black friends used to tell me she was written out of history because of racism, but when I asked if that was the case, why her Book The Wonderful Adventures of Mary Seacole in Many Lands, had been in the Birtish Library since its publication, the response was always "Is it, I didn't know?".
What they actually meant was, they didn't have this balck story pre-packaged in a easy to consume form that didn't require any effort in obtaining the information. Not that it didn't exist.
Seacole was heroic not historic. I'd ask anybody to name any of the 38 White nurses that Nightingale took with her who'd be the equivalent of Seacole but I've yet to find one person who can name a single one.
And so I found it strange on Wednesday being surrounded by a vast array of people in Hyde Park for the Black Lives Matter march. There was a strange kind of unity but one that felt mildly fake.
When John Boyega delivered his heartfelt speech it wasn't clear what he was saying about his own career. He'd reached the heights of Hollywood success and therefore his voice hugely amplified the experience - but what was it that had held him back?
He'd just bought his parents a house, he'd reached the pinnacle of financial and artistic success. He's primed for a similar journey as Idris Elba, Chiwetel Ejiofor, David Oyelowo, David Harewood and others had already taken.
Sometimes to the discomfort of Black American actors.
https://www.newyorker.com/
Watching a generation who haven't had the fights of the Black-Shirts, the National Front or even the BNP with just the last remnants of the EDL barely a footnote (UKIP being too diverse to be considered a racist organisation - jingoistic undeniably with racists in it but so do Labour & the Conservatives) somehow lost any intellectual validity. The whole thing was clearly an emotional response but to what, was unclear.
The killing of a Black Man and the subsequents riots is a regular thing both here in the UK and in the USA and has never changed anything as yet again we find ourselves doing exactly the same thing.
So we know we can't rid ourselves of racists but is it possible to balance the scales for ethnic communities in a predominantly white society?
Or is just suffient to take to the streets every couple of years to remind people racism is alive and well?
My mother always told me I'd never meet an intelligent racist, she's yet to be proven wrong.
