Mixed up: ethnic identity as a dual heritage daughter

I was recently invited, with others, to speak at our church Zoom service about my experiences concerning my ethnicity within both community and church. This is what I read out and I wish I had heard it when I was younger. I'm sharing in the hope that it will help people to understand the experiences of people better, and perhaps help other mixed race / dual heritage children to explore who they are more comfortably. Thank you to our church for giving me this opportunity to share.

I've only recently come to realise that I'm not white. To be fair, I've always ticked the 'White/Asian' box on the forms, knowing I'm honouring the truth at the same time as helping diversity quotas along. But despite the genetic facts of the matter, I've always felt that I am a "white" person masquerading as a mixed race one on paper only.

The reasons for this are complex but one is obvious: compared to my brown-skinned mum and my darker brother, I feel white. Somehow I got the lion's share of my dad's English genes, and even Mum talks of how strange it was for her daughter to be so much lighter.

My deep consciousness of my comparative whiteness has meant that when people have questioned my ethnicity, I have written this off as anomaly rather than a pattern that shows that I am not an English-looking person. Somehow the frequent questions, "Where are you from?" or my favourite, "Are you a bit...?" never alerted me to the fact that my other people's perception did not match my own. Incidentally, I always welcome people asking me, however clumsily, if it is from a kind heart, but sadly this wasn't always the case.

I remember asking a friend at school to borrow her concealer and her laughing and exclaiming, "But you've got way darker skin than me!" which I found ridiculous, as to me we looked the same. At Body Shop parties (the noughties version of the Tupperware gathering) I would go to swatch a shade of foundation and be told, "oh, that's far too light for you". I still sometimes buy makeup that's way too light because what I look like does not match what I see in the mirror.

Ironically, my lighter colouring has meant that some people have felt at liberty to confide in me that they think immigrants should "go home", until I ask if they mean my mum shouldn't be here, and they blush and say "Oh no, not her, she's fine". I resist the urge to point out that every immigrant is someone's mum, or dad, or daughter (and that immigration is good for our economy). But aside from that negative aspect, I know am a beneficiary of white privilege in terms of my life opportunities, which means that as far as I know, none of the struggles in my life have been a direct result of my ethnicity. I am all too aware that my pale skin has meant that I have got off lightly in terms of racist abuse; my darker brother has suffered more.

Another key reason for my inability to grasp who I truly am is the nature of my mum's ethnicity and her lifelong struggle with identity. Mum is Anglo-Indian, which is pretty niche. There have only ever been around 300,000 Anglo-Indians living at one time. Anglo-Indians are imbued with identity insecurity, due to their historical rejection from both British and Indian communities. Our British colonial ancestors have been traced back to the 18th century: white upper-class Englishmen who felt at liberty to take the spoils of India for themselves, including her women, thus creating a whole new ethnic group with their illegitimate children. When India achieved independence in 1947, the Anglo-Indian community were left out in the cold by the collapsed Empire and found themselves in a precarious position.

My Indian identity always felt like an absence to me. India was an abstract, an unknown I have never visited. No, my mum doesn't wear a sari. No, she doesn't speak "Indian". No, she's not Hindu. And most insultingly: no, she doesn't own a corner-shop (with no disrespect to any corner-shop owners of whatever skin colour they may be). People have struggled to place me but have always known that somehow, I am 'other'. We didn't fit with anyone's idea of what we should be.

My Indian family had mostly emigrated to Canada long before I was born, meaning there was no big family to hang out with and celebrate our Indian heritage with. I don't look much like any of my dad's family; I look like my cousins who live in Canada. And what was my Indian heritage, with no saris, red dots on our foreheads or Diwali traditions?

We ate curry - amazing curry - at home, and rice with a lot of things English people have chips with. My parents educated us around the dinner table about the East India Trading Company, the British Empire, Indian history, the partition, white supremacy, and racism. We loved eating jalebis, the Indian sweets that are orange and sticky. I liked that I was half-Indian. But because I have always seen myself as white, and because my Dad, as a white Englishman, is very comfortable conversing openly about these things with anyone, I erroneously assumed that all white British people experienced this type of upbringing, and that fluency in talking about race and ethnicity was a normal part of British culture.

All of this started to change two years ago when I read Reni Eddo-Lodge's superb book, "Why I'm no Longer Talking to White People about Race". In one part, she discusses mixed race children, and how the colour of your skin does not determine your ethnic identity: your genes and heritage do. I was amazed. This gave me the freedom to start accepting that I am half-Indian and half-white even if I don't look 50/50. I also identified hugely with a lot of the things Eddo-Lodge says about how white people interact with the subject of race and how brown and black people can feel about this, which surprised me. Around the same time, Mum had given me the novel "Secret Children", which is the fictionalised story of a family like the one I have come from, a long time ago: an Indian woman stolen from her village for a paltry sum by a British coloniser making his fortune from Indian tea. These books started unlocking something within me.

The murder of George Floyd has catalysed this process. As the aftermath and protests started to unfold, and the reactions poured out, I found myself struggling hugely. There were many reactions that showed the lack of understanding of structural racism and the uphill struggle people of colour still face in the UK. There were reactions from well-meaning people who were 'shocked' that this kind of thing could still happen. For those of us who have faced racism all our lives, it is not shocking, it's just exhausting, painful and exasperating. Then there was the silence. I understand that silence does not necessarily mean approval of injustice, but it can feel like it when it helps to uphold the status quo, and it can definitely feel like a lack of acknowledgement of pain. Silence certainly does not change anything.

I began to realise two things: one, that the people I was most identifying with in the George Floyd reaction were people of colour; and two, that all the hundreds of 'anomalies' throughout my life were not in fact that, but a coherent pattern. By that I mean that every time someone has asked me where I'm from, told me immigrants shouldn't be here and watched my face twist in pain, asked if I've had my teeth whitened, told me my hair colour looks too dark for my face or that they knew I wasn't English because I look 'a bit' - all of these things suddenly clicked into place and I realised that who I am is not who I have thought I am. In fact I am who everyone else sees: a half-Indian, half-white woman.

This all converged into the realisation that the 'white' experience of race is not something that I know much about, because it's totally different to mine. I do not know what it is like not to feel like an 'other'. I cannot comprehend not feeling that identity is something extraordinarily complex and confusing and painful. I did not understand before this month that talking about race at the family meal table isn't normal. I find it very difficult to understand being "proud" of being British when I am painfully aware of what Britain's historical actions have been. This is quite at odds with the culture we live in, particularly in Keighley where being proud to be British is kind of a big deal. At the same time, while I abhor the actions of the British Empire, I am very much aware I would not be here without it, two truths that are difficult to reconcile. I have never lived anywhere that is not overwhelmingly majority white and have never attended a church that isn't majority white, so I have no personal experience of that "melting pot" ideal where multiculturalism is a thing and I would be able to fit in. I know that the breakdown of my parents' marriage has also contributed to my general fractured sense of identity too, although both mum and dad are incredibly unconditionally loving to me.

I haven't finished processing all these emotions yet. I've experienced severe anxiety during this time. But here are some things that are helping me through it.

1) My underpinning identity is that I am God's child and a member of the human race, created in his image as are all other human beings. Christianity provides the ultimate antidote to racism. Race is a human construct, designed to subjugate. We have different skin colours and ethnicities and can celebrate these, but we are all one race. Sadly, we have to deal with the consequences of racism, but we know that we are not Indian or white or black first and foremost: we are Christ's.

2) Jesus was a brown-skinned man who lived as a refugee in his early years, did not belong in any earthly home, and was despised and rejected and killed by the authorities and his own people. He faced the ultimate injustice and he knows more deeply than any of us could what it means to be an outcast.

3) I may have been a bit slow on the uptake to realise who I am, but the people in my life who know me and love me, like yourselves, have always known who I was, and have accepted me. I think because ethnicity is not talked about, it hasn't always felt like that, but I know it to be true.

4) Our family is evidence of how God's grace works out of evil situations. What the British colonials did to Indian women was wrong. But out of it have come precious human beings. Fallen image bearers are capable of good and bad deeds and God can still work amazing providence out of injustice.

4) I believe the church has a key role to play in this conversation. Our allegiance is not to our nation but to our Saviour. We can talk to each other with grace and honesty because of our identity in Him which turns away pride, fear and shame. One example of this I have really appreciated was conversations around the time of the Brexit vote. Because part of the Leave campaign was concerned with immigration, I found it hard not to second guess whether my Leave-voting friends saw this as an issue and as a result how they would see my family. So I broached the subject respectfully with a number of church friends I knew had voted Leave and really enjoyed hearing their thoughtful views and learning from them. This then dispelled the worries I had too and the potential tension.

I understand that the concept of being "colourblind" came from good motives and was a reaction against racism, but I think we need to ditch it. Colour is beautiful. It's how God created us. Saying we don't see colour also stops us from acknowledging the injustice and pain people of different colours experience. The church can see and celebrate colour and be curious about each other because knowing and understanding one another shows us all a little bit more of God's image reflected in each of us.

So what do I see when I look in the mirror now? I am trying to see me for who I am: a kind of Indian and English-looking woman with my mother's nose, my Dad's curly hair, and my Grandma's eyelids. But most of all I am trying to see myself as God sees me: at home in Jesus, safe, secure, loved, and stamped with the Holy Spirit's seal. My earthly ethnicity may always be something of a conundrum, but I know that because of my identity in Jesus, the struggle will be gone one day, replaced by perfect peace and joy in an earth that knows only complete and beautiful unity. That isn't just a dream: it's our future reality.

Covid-19: Your sadness is valid - even if you're better off than someone else

A lot of us are pretty sad at the moment. It's often said that comparison is the thief of joy. I wholeheartedly agree, and I'd also go further and say comparison is also the thief of sadness - and that is equally, if not more, dangerous.

It is very common to invalidate ours, or others', sadness, by comparing the situation to those who are worse off. For example, the lockdown we are currently experiencing has been frequently compared to the Second World War - and the comparison is almost always used to urge the reader to be grateful it's not worse. Getting perspective is one thing, but using one situation to infer that the genuine difficulties of another are not legitimate is at best irrelevant, and at worst, damaging.

Restricting our need to grieve has become more widely understood as an issue that can cause serious mental health repercussions down the line. Bottling our emotions up inevitably results in them exploding at some point later: whether that's directed at ourselves or to others. We know all this, and it's become far more accepted that emotions need to be explored and felt, but we still struggle to give ourselves permission to mourn the mundane.

What do I mean by that? It is unquestionable that somebody who has suffered a great loss or trauma should be completely validated in their suffering and it's not often that people argue with that. But when it comes to the everyday sorrow, we're less practised at giving space and weight to our feelings.

As I've discussed before, we live in a broken world, where sadness cannot be eradicated (at least not yet), and is an intrinsic part of life. We know this, and yet we resist it. All too often we use the blunt tool of comparison to try and lever ourselves out of a funk. Are our children exhausting? Well, at least we have some. Are we experiencing loneliness? Well, at least we have a house to be lonely in.

As with many fallacies, there is a twisted truth in this. Sometimes gaining some perspective is entirely necessary and relevant in finding emotional healing. We are all familiar with the scenario of a small child (or even adult!) who is given an array of goodies and still manages to throw an almighty tantrum over the one tiny detail that isn't quite right. In this case, drawing their attention to the grander picture is clearly essential - and a pretty regular occurrence in this household.

But there are plenty of sources of sorrow that aren't, and shouldn't, be relegated to the status of 'minor detail', and instead need acknowledging. And ironically, it is only when we acknowledge that it's okay to feel sad about these things that we can truly have a fuller perspective on the situation, because we aren't attempting to obscure part of it with a false positivity.

I'm a big fan of the Disney movie Inside Out which is a great illustration of how all our emotions are necessary. The character Joy spends the movie pushing her colleague Sadness stay well away from their girl, Riley's, emotional control panel; she believes the goal is to only allow joyful experiences and memories into her life. In excluding Sadness, she ends up short circuiting Riley's whole emotional and psychological system so she can't feel anything at all, let alone joy. Joy finally realises that some of Riley's happiest memories have come in the wake of deep sadness, because it was those moments of sorrow that allowed the warmth and joy of human comfort to enter in. If we squash sadness down, we disable the full range of emotions that we need to access in order to fully function.

Another more practical rationale for why comparison is a false way to deal with sadness is that once you start, where do you stop? It's one thing saying "lockdown is really tough, but at least I have a warm house to live in and food on the table", but taken to its extreme, there's always going to be someone who's worse off than you, meaning that using this methodology, no sadness is legitimate. One wouldn't address someone who had just lost all their limbs in a bomb blast with the truism, "at least you have a beating heart".

In terms of the Christian faith, I also think it's important to note that if we don't acknowledge difficulty and pain we cannot rejoice in God's goodness and comfort to us in hard times. If we spend our lives trying to con our hearts into thinking there's no need to ever grieve, we shut them off from receiving God's help. He calls us to acknowledge our weakness and need for him, because he wants to fill our broken hearts with his grace and love. We also need opportunities to show each other love and help, as human beings and as Christian brothers and sisters. We may find it hard to ask for help, but we all love to help somebody else who needs it. To be human is to live in community. If we deny the everyday struggles of that community, we deny the need for each other.

So the next time you feel the weight of life's burdens, you don't have to make excuses for your feelings. Own them. Give yourself permission to grieve. God's waiting to help you, and so are your people. After all, Jesus wept, and so can we.

4 ways the Gospel enables conversations about race (and other awkward things)

Recent world events coupled with the mental health effects of lockdown have created a complex cocktail of emotions and thoughts for many of us. With more time to think, and a plethora of internet opinions to wade through (and sometimes add to), as a nation and a church we have begun to grapple with the issues of race perhaps more than ever before. Personally, I have found this a time of intense self-reflection as I work through my identity as a mixed race woman and Christian within the framework of tumult we are experiencing.

Our pastors have been preaching (Zooming?) through Matthew 18 during this time and some key elements from this passage have struck me as particularly pertinent to the British church as we seek to love one another more deeply and follow our Saviour more wholeheartedly, even and especially within our different cultures and skin colours.

So here are four ways I think Matthew 18 enables conversations about race (and other awkward things).

1) Matthew 18:1-4 - "Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."

We enter into God's kingdom as little children. At the time Jesus lived on earth, children had very lowly status. When He says we are to enter God's kingdom as children, that means humbly, knowing that all we bring to the table is our brokenness and our sin, knowing God will forgive us and make us new. Our salvation is all of Him. This means that by professing to be a child of God we are in our very essence acknowledging our faults and our need to be forgiven.

How does this relate to discussions about race?

It means we come to them humbly, ready to hear where we are at fault and where we need to change. If we have led privileged lives, perhaps without realising it, we look at those lives with eyes that are ready to be opened in new and uncomfortable ways. We must be prepared for our pride in our achievements and our sense of self-made success to be viewed through the lens of the privilege we never knew we had. It means that we are ready to listen to brothers and sisters without waiting to tell them our opinion. It means we are willing to hear their experiences and lives without assuming we have the correct, balanced view.

We have already come, humbled, to our Lord and Saviour, confessing our need for forgiveness and repenting. This is who we are and what defines us. Yet how often we bristle at any hint that we may have sinned. We can let go of this and allow ourselves to face the music and self-reflect without fear - for God already knows the fullness of our fallen hearts and has accepted us and loved us.


2) Matthew 18:10-14 - "See that you do not despise one of these little ones... if he finds [the one sheep], truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray".

Our Heavenly Father rejoices deeply over every soul that comes to him because we are precious to Him. We belong to Him and are in his family. This is our identity as Christians - we may be white British, Indian, African American or Chinese - but if we are Christians our identity as God's children is the ultimate identity. That does not wash over our ethnicity, but it does underpin it, and for someone like me who is mixed and struggles with how to reconcile the different parts of my heritage, it's amazing news. I do belong and I do have a family, regardless of how disparate my earthly family may be!

Because our identity is firmly and unshakably rooted in our salvation in Jesus, when we are interacting with issues of race, we do not have to feel threatened. Hearing the British Empire criticised or reading Churchill's not so popular opinions, you don't have to feel outraged and defensive that your nation is being criticised - because we know that our earthly nations are not truly home - that is the "heavenly country" that is infinitely better. Closer to home, if you are starting to feel the fringes of embarrassment and indignation when you sense your identity as 'white' or 'British' being threatened, you can push into our safe place as God's children and allow ourselves to listen and learn without leaping to your own defence.


3) Matthew 18:15-20 - "If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone."

The Gospel may unite us all in Christ, but it doesn't serve as a perpetual whitewash for ongoing sin. The New Testament is very real about the sinful nature and its persistence in this life even after we have been born again, and it's adamant that sometimes this sin should be gently exposed and the brother or sister brought to repentance. Racism is a sin, and its evil should not be softened or tucked under the carpet by the church. If we are saved, we sign up to be on the receiving end of this, as well as to go, and show our brother their sin, on occasion. In the British church, this isn't our forté. Our "stiff upper lip" culture often means that conflict nestles just under the surface without ever being resolved in a healthy way. As the church, we must be different. Unity does not mean pretending we agree about everything. It means that we die to self in order to preserve unity in Christ, putting our pride below the purity of the body of Christ. To show our brother their sin, or to have our own sin pointed out to us, both involve dying to self to preserve and nurture true unity.

In the context of race, this sin may not be as serious as overt racism. It may express itself in other more covert ways. We must be ready and willing to accept that sometimes we won't even recognise these in ourselves and receive loving rebuke with humility.


4) Matthew 18:21-35 - "I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?"

These verses were preached after a very turbulent week of protests following the murder of George Floyd. I was reeling and desperately trying to work through the torrent of anger, grief and indignation flowing through me. This passage was so timely. Our pastor explained that the amount of the debt the servant owed equated to millions, almost billions, of pounds - unpayable - and yet the Master wrote it off. The servant then goes and chokes someone who owes him a tiny fraction of this amount. The significance of the word "choke" was not lost on me, literally days after George Floyd died choking for air.

Our Father has forgiven us much. He has forgiven us for more than we could ever do to one another. Our sin put his Son on the cross. And he has forgiven us for that wrong. How can we, then, fail to forgive one another?

The topic of race and ethnicity can be a thorny one. It is rife with pain and hurt that stretches back lifetimes and centuries. Oppression that is rooted in history is not easy to dig up. But God calls us to forgive: to forgive those who have contributed, even unwittingly, to the problem. He enables us, by his grace, to forgive those who hurt us now by their silence or by their words.

Forgiveness is costly. Forgiveness does not ask us to sweep anything under the carpet. In forgiving, we are at liberty to acknowledge the pain and hurt, and decide to take the hit, to absorb the pain and in doing so be free of bitterness.

Forgiveness does not magic away consequences; and there are many consequences of racial oppression that we need to work through as churches and as nations. But knowing that we have been forgiven our great debt to the Creator of every living human being, who made us all in his image, changes the course of these consequences for us as brothers and sisters. We are set on a path of grace, to walk in the footsteps of the God-man who stayed silent as a lamb before the slaughter even when facing the most heinous injustice the universe has ever seen, in order to save his people and glorify his Father.



I have found these truths to be healing and I hope you do too. I have applied them to the subject of race here, but in actuality these encouragements can season any conversation with grace and love. I'm all too aware there are many occasions when I have not lived up to these saving truths - praise God there is grace still then! I pray that the Holy Spirit would cause us to rest in them more and more, and that in doing so we may truly be a church that is not afraid to go to the difficult places in order to become more united, more forgiving, more humble and more Christ-like.

The statues are a neat distraction from our own hearts

It's laughably shameful that permanent tributes to the men who organised and carried out the shipping of millions of black human beings across the world still exist in the UK, let alone that they are being described as "sacred" by our government. Edward Colston was a man who orchestrated the removal of around 84,000 people from their homes and moved them across the ocean in such squalid and vile circumstances that around 19,000 of them are estimated to die before they even reached their nightmarish destination. The outrageous amounts of money that people like him made from this heinous profession is why these people have permanent monuments to themselves that have far outstayed any welcome some gave them. Now when do we topple Oliver Cromwell, say the Irish?

Nevertheless, the fact that the conversation around race has now shifted to debating the merits of these people and whether Little Britain should be on telly is a downright disappointing shame. We obviously need a serious overhaul of what is considered acceptable (I would absolutely argue that David Walliams in blackface is not), but yet again, any chance we had of actually getting into the uncomfortable dialogue that underlies this is gone - shunted out of the way by Cecil Rhodes' bust.

We were getting into awkward territory for a moment; many white people are starting to grapple with these issues for real for the first time. Self-reflection and checking of privilege is occurring. Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race shot to the top of the Amazon book charts. People are owning their lack of understanding and seeking to get educated.

As I've spoken about before, any progressive dialogue about why black people are still treated as second-class citizens in this country, and how we can change that, has to start with ourselves and our own heart. Racism is not a binary; you are not either racist or not racist. We all have the capacity to be prejudiced and we all have to own our (unwitting or witting) contribution to the systemic racism that still chokes the life chances of millions of people in the UK.

The trouble is, that doesn't feel good. It really doesn't feel good to me that I have literally never considered, until this week, whether my buying power goes to supporting black-owned businesses. It doesn't feel good that I haven't even noticed that my kids' school has barely any non-white staff members.

We are all fallen human beings; the Bible says we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. None of us, I hope, would pretend that we'd want our life streaming on Netflix for all to see. It's easy to admit that in broad brush strokes, but actually confronting the fact that I as an individual have contributed to the oppression of black people in this country? No thank you. It's hard work to dismantle this way of thinking and many are recoiling at the prospect.

So what makes it easier to side-step this discussion while still pretending that we really care about Black Lives Matter? A nice distraction over statues of dead men, that's what. The national conversation and the newspapers have now rushed, like bees to a honeypot, to pontificate over how good and how bad Winston Churchill was and avoid the screaming elephant in the room.

Spoiler alert: all human beings are good and bad. Churchill was a great leader who led us to the end of the Second World War. He was also unequivocally a white supremacist who proclaimed that the British were a "stronger race, a higher-grade race" than "Red Indians" and the "black people of Australia" and that he didn't think any wrong had been done to them. The reason the slave traders have had such a visible legacy in cities across the UK is because they poured money into them. Never mind the fact that that money was bloodied with the wounds of black people whose descendants now live in the UK.

If we keep running from the darkness in our hearts, we can never change it. Pretending we are getting this right by looking at people who were worse is not the answer. It's hard to swallow the humble pie we all need to eat to actually get anywhere dismantling current white privilege. Those conversations need to start at a personal level, not with tweets about Cecil Rhodes' stoney-faced imperialism.

The good news is that once we do face up to our own culpability, there is grace. God promises in the Bible that when we say sorry for our wrongdoing, he is faithful and just to forgive us. His forgiveness gives us spiritual peace, but it doesn't mean we can escape from the complex consequences of racism, or injustice in any shape or form. But it does mean we can stop hiding behind statues and get to the crux of the issue: our own hearts.

White supremacy is in my blood; we need to get uncomfortable fast to defeat it

I wouldn't be here without white supremacists. My ancestors were 17th century, Eton-educated colonials. My ancestors were also poor Indian women, taken as mistresses by the English and Portuguese upper classes whose wives remained in Britain, kept in silks and butlers thanks to the treasures bled from the colonies by the Empire. This is the history of my Anglo-Indian maternal family, who lived in Calcutta until the 1960s, when my mother and her family moved to Britain courtesy of their British passports, only to be greeted by "No Dogs, No Irish, No Coloured" signs and a cold shoulder from the supposed "Motherland".

My mum met and married my dad, an Englishman who is pretty much as white as they come, and along came I and my brother. Growing up in a mixed race marriage was something I'm really grateful for. It showed me what it looked like for different cultures and backgrounds to meet and blend. When I was growing up, I didn't notice that my mum had brown skin. I don't even really understand this since I'm not blind, but I remember a clear moment when I was around 11 years old when I realised that the woman I simply saw as my mum might be seen as "the lady with the dark skin" by other people. Race and racism were discussed around our dinner table and experienced first-hand.

I came out freakishly white, considering the gene pool I emerged from. My brother has far darker skin than I. Perhaps for this reason, it took me a long time to embrace or be curious about my Indian identity and heritage. I've always felt like a fraud. Many people look at me and think I'm "a bit..." (their words, not mine), but I don't clearly look Indian and as such I've struggled to feel like I can openly own all the facets of my ethnic background. 

Reading one of the books below, Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People about Race, liberated me from this imposter syndrome by showing me that race is about far more than the colour your skin turned out. But the fact that I pale in comparison to most BAME people means that I too share the same privilege as white people in this country and the US and all around the world. I speak for myself and my experience but I cannot speak for anyone in the black community or any other individual from any ethnic group. It means that for me, the tears that have fallen in the past week do sting more personally, but it does not mean that I can deny my privilege or understand the difficulties and obstacles and threats that black people and minority groups face every single day all around the world.

Me, my Mum and my brother... back when you could get haircuts

It took me a while to decide whether I should write this blog. I don't want to compound the ignorance and I know I'm all too capable of being ignorant on these matters. But then I realised that if I blog about anything, I need to blog about this. Whatever forms of communication we use, whether it's face to face conversation, the phone, or social media - we need to be talking about this right now, and for good. For good. 

The trouble is that we are so scared of getting it wrong that we don't get it at all. I'm sure I've phrased things clumsily in this piece. But this afternoon, having stood in my kitchen crying tears of rage over Trump's proclamation that "today is a great day for George Floyd", I knew that I must say something. We all must.

So here are some of my thoughts on how those of us who don't experience difficulty because of our skin colour can act positively moving forward:

1) We need to get prepared to get uncomfortable 

It's not comfortable to discover that Britain pillaged the rest of the world and is built on the backs of slaves. The British school curriculum has serious gaps in its content on racial history, teaching the "greatest hits" of US black civil rights and the abolition of slavery. There is a gaping hole swallowing up that whole embarrassing Empire thing. We do not teach our children why India and Pakistan are two separate countries and why we are responsible, or why the "Windrush generation", so recently newsworthy again, had British passports. No wonder, then, that so much resentment and ignorance is being bred even among younger generations, when the structures of education do not breed understanding and historical context in its place.

Fact: when slavery was abolished, the British government agreed to pay a giant chunk of compensation... not to the slaves, but to slave owners. This was finally paid off in total in 2015, meaning our taxes have been going towards paying slave owners off until 5 years ago. Source here and thank you to Reni Eddo-Lodge's excellent book Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race for educating me on this.

What's even more uncomfortable is sitting and listening to, or reading, or watching, somebody who tells you of the struggles they daily face and how you can be part of the problem - if not by being actively racist, by failing to see the ordinary everyday issues and confront them; by not even noticing that every birthday card has only white people on it, that plasters only come in peachy-pink and that foundation shades are few and far between if you have dark skin. It's uncomfortable realising you didn't even realise. It's uncomfortable discovering that black explorers, NASA scientists and doctors have been edited out of our history books. It's uncomfortable checking our privilege. But it's absolutely essential. Comfort is not our goal. Justice and equity is. 

2) We need to get prepared to get it wrong and be called out

I was pretty shocked when one of my heroes, Emily Maitlis, got it so wrong on this week's Newsnight. Interviewing George the Poet (George Mpanga), she stated,

"‘You’re not putting America and the UK on the same footing… our police aren’t armed, they don’t have guns, the legacy of slavery is not the same."

Mpanga's bowed head said it all and he called her out on it respectfully and firmly. So many of us are capable of this kind of well-intentioned lack of understanding. We have to recognise we have no entitlement to get upset if we are told that we are asking the wrong questions and taking the wrong approach. Learning curves are best travelled with humility. If you want to correct me or challenge me on anything I've written here, please do. Tell me what could be better and what I need to change.

If we are starting with a statement, we need to turn it into a question. Sentences like "Racism isn't that bad in Britain" should be rethought as, "Please tell me what your experiences are of racism in Britain". A white person proclaiming the lack of racism in Britain is the same as a perfectly able-bodied person declaring all infrastructure wheelchair-friendly. It seems like there is no problem if you are not the one suffering the consequences.

Fact: if you are black you are twice as likely to die in police custody. If you are black you are 40 times more likely to be stopped and searched in the UK. BAME groups are twice as likely to die from Covid-19.

I can't speak for all POC but from my point of view, I find it hard that so few people have ever asked me about my ethnic background. It is just as much a part of me as having children is - and boy do you get asked about that if you have them. Not everyone will feel exactly the same about this, of course, but the idea that "we don't see colour" is at best unhelpful and at worst dangerous because it tells us not to see people for who they truly are. Colour is a part of who we are. It is not something to pretend doesn't exist because then you eradicate the problems around it as well as the joy of diversity. You're far more likely to make someone feel uncomfortable and offended by never ever touching on a subject that is highly important to them, than asking sensitively about it. And as in the above point, it's better to try and get it wrong and take it on the chin than not ever move things forward.

This story is a beautiful example of how more understanding can be fostered from these conversations.

The idea that we risk being villified for "political incorrectness" if we talk about race and racism is, in my view, just another form of white supremacy in the guise of white people who want to call the shots on what counts as acceptable. It's a way to silence the discussion and hide the structural injustices that people face every day because of their skin colour. The idea that POC will take offence and attack those who respectfully engage with us in this discussion is a fallacy that is in itself racist and perpetuates and protects racism.


3) We need to be pro-actively anti-racist

We want our children to see all people as equal, regardless of the colour of their skin... but how many books on our shelves have ethnically diverse characters? How many films have we watched with black or brown heroes? How colourful is our friendship circle? Do our kids know who George Floyd was and why he died? If we live in quiet, white villages, do we go out of our way to take them on trips to more ethnically diverse towns and cities? If we see racist incidents occurring, whether it's on the internet, in public or in private, do we call them out? Will we?


4) We need to be educating ourselves by listening to black and minority voices and then amplifying the black voice and the black community

Here are some ideas of where to start:

Why I'm no Longer Talking to White People About Race - Reni Eddo-Lodge

Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire - Akala

White Fragility: Why It's so Hard for White People to Talk about Racism - Robin Diangelo

Episode 102: Empire State of Mind on the Reasons to be Cheerful Podcast

George the Poet

About Race Podcast with Reni Eddo-Lodge

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Becoming by Michelle Obama (this is now a documentary series on Netflix too)

Engage with these - there is plenty on all forms of media - and other voices and information. Only once we have begun to listen and understand and truly hear can we be true allies: standing alongside, sharing the message and widening the platform.

5) We need to be fighting for structural change

All people can be and generally are prejudiced. Black people can be prejudiced against white people, but it doesn't generally reduce their life chances. Conversely, when white prejudice exists it is twinned with power to form societal structures that drive people down and force them to the bottom of the pile; that take away opportunity, health, wealth and ultimately life. To fight racism we must challenge and dismantle these structures.

If you're in management or leadership at work, do you have diverse representation, especially in positions of power? Does your board actively seek to find people of different backgrounds to provide a voice? This isn't just about providing a voice for people of all communities, it's about the fact that diversity of experience and opinion enriches everything and makes us all better and stronger together. Do you have a good mix of ethnic backgrounds in your workforce, and if not, why not? That might mean quotas for interview; it might mean looking into your job application processes to find out why no one is applying who isn't white; and it might mean being really honest about whether applicants with names you can't pronounce are equally considered, consciously.

Fact: 69% of FTSE companies have no ethnic diversity on their boards and this BBC study shows that you are three times more likely to get a job interview if you have an English-sounding name than a Muslim name.

We can write to the powers that be and demand answers. Adidas currently has 5 white men and 1 white woman on the board. Nike has 7 white men and 3 white women. Let's ask why. Ask your employer. Ask your kids' school.

Let's support black-owned businesses. Let's support black female-owned businesses (black women are the victims of intersectionality, discriminated against by both their gender and race and struggling against the most obstacles to health, solvency and opportunity). Let's read books by a range of authors, watch movies and TV series that you might not naturally choose, and take the time to watch that Facebook video by Black Lives Matter that we would normally scroll past.

Let's get out of our comfort zone. Because every day, millions of people in the UK and around the world have to live in a world that's uncomfortable at best and fatal at worst. George Floyd's family know that; and so does every ordinary black and brown family in the UK.