A Letter to My MP
Here are the things my friends who so kindly spoke to me about their experiences and I have thought. The feelings we have had and buried for years and the words we wished we had put down to paper. I write now, for all of us…
Dear my MP,
As the world has erupted into yet another pivotal movement against prolonged injustice, I have witnessed many of us teenagers stop for a moment. I have seen them take a moment to think and consider that the Black Lives Matter movement will significantly impact the future lives that we want to lead.
When George Floyd lay pinned to the ground in an impenetrable hold, many of us, finally, looked at the horrific sight in front of us and took a moment to consider. His death fuelled a realisation. A realisation of the detrimental consequences caused by malignant rhetorics present within every social and political structure. We may not see it, we may not experience it, but we now realise that racism is present in all pivotal social and political systems. As much as we try to fight it, racism is something that we have inevitably inherited by being born into these existing societies. Thus, it is up to us to try and do something about it by reading and learning and highlighting all of the ways that Black and ethnic minority communities have experienced social injustice.
Some of my peers have likely joined protestors on the streets and torn down statues. Others have employed peaceful means. Whilst I reject the decision to remove statues from various parts of the country illegally, I am not at all surprised that this has occurred, and I speculate that you, too, will feel the same way. It seems now that many are choosing to fight. Many are deciding to take more drastic action. I want to highlight the view that we can learn from the statues erected over the years by highlighting the injustices and atrocities of colonialist history. They are as much our legacy as the supremacy of the Empire has been. We need to find proactive ways to address our past. Tearing down statues is not the way forward. However, adding plaques of information and statues to museums may be a peaceful and informative approach.
When considering the Black Lives Matter movement, we must think about how long standing communities have been continuously let down in every way by their fellow humans and, as a result, the structures that are supposed to provide them with and protect their fundamental human rights. The Black Lives Matter movement highlights how they are marginalised, abused and dehumanised in both physical and psychological ways. The methods of racism vary and often go under the radar. We use passing comments that never sound racist until you stop, think, and realise their loaded meanings. As a dual-heritage individual, I grew up hearing people of my ethnicity referred to as ‘mixed race.’ I even used the term to describe myself and did not truly understand the phrase’s long standing, negative implications. Mixed race, half caste — I am familiar with these terms. I have had these terms directed at myself, my cousins and know that many, many other people have heard these terms, too. They are just the tip of the iceberg. Some told me, “Go back to India, you Paki,” and yes, I laughed at that because that isn’t even geographically correct anymore. It was also my way of brushing it off. I genuinely let it bounce off me because it was not a regular occurrence. I am lucky. Most people from my community in conversations have heard, “Oh, so where are you from?” followed by, “No, where are you from?” We all love exaggerating the word ‘from.’ These conversations end in such lovely awkward silences.
I must, again, highlight that these are mild instances of racism. Yes, I have accidentally walked past a BNP-esque protest and have felt genuine, undiluted fear coursing through my body at their aggression towards my community and family members. Yet, I cannot say that I have experienced significant acts of racism throughout my life. For the most part, I have only been exposed to the phrases highlighted above. These phrases we hear and have heard in passing for years are just vocabulary that we know we may encounter, and that sets off extremely loud alarm bells for me. It makes me think about how suffocating it must be for people that experience what could be considered more significant forms of racism every day. How do they feel to know that they are at serious risk of bearing the brunt of so many kinds of psychological and physical assaults of all kinds based on skin colour alone?
I would also like to ask this simple question. Does it not sound wrong? The term mixed race. It suggests that we have been placed into an ethnic blender, that we are not part of one species, but we have been diluted or changed. If we take a more objective viewpoint, I admit that, in a way, the terms are not wrong in what they describe but instead in the manner in which they are applied. It is the fact that there is a deliberate association with skin colour where there should not be. Skin colour has as much impact on our heritage as geography. If geography heavily defines our ethnicities, why do we not use this term for people of these backgrounds? Do you hear this term describing someone who is half English and half Scandinavian? Someone who is German, Spanish and Australian? Is it said about someone who has Scottish, English and Irish heritage? For all means and purposes, they have various ethnicities present in their heritage because they have ancestors from different countries and cultures. They, too, are of mixed races based on the original definition. Skin colour was not the primary consideration; it was more about the common language a set of people shared and their geographical associations. I want to highlight the misuse of the term mixed race as a more societally acceptable way of facilitating discrimination based on skin colour.
All of those examples, except for the one including Spain, give rise to people whose skin colour would likely be white. So, they would not find themselves labelled with these terms. These people likely have as diverse or even more diverse heritages than those deemed mixed race. Is it not absurd? Would it not be much more peaceful if we just embraced the fact that we all likely have many different cultures and heritages within our ancestry? Just because we have different skin tones does not mean we are not as ‘colourful’ inside. Colourful in the sense that we are an amalgamation of many interesting and beautiful experiences from so many cultures, local and afar.
When we all ask ourselves is racism present in the UK now,
The answer, unfortunately, is yes.
Which leads me to pose the question,
What can we do about it, and how will you act?