A Race We Can All Win - Part 1 of 5

“Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently, discredited and abandoned - Everywhere is war!” sang Bob Marley.

I am thirteen years old. I have been at this grammar school barely a couple of weeks. I’m exploring the grounds on my own at lunchtime when I notice another pupil, Brannigan, and his gang advancing slowly towards me. I have an ominous feeling as I see a menacing look on his face and the expectation of a ‘rumble’ in the eyes of his friends. I naively wait till they have cornered me before acknowledging their presence. It is clear to me that there is an intention of some kind of confrontation, but being new to all this I have no idea how this is supposed to unfold.

 “Oi, Paki!” he addresses me. His friends laugh. At this point in my life, I have never been called a Paki before, though I know that it is a racial insult directed towards anyone of South Asian descent, or even of a slightly darker complexion. I stand there sheepishly, not knowing what to do. Should I try to run away, or stand my ground? Instead, I pretend that I do not fully understand. “Hello,” I reply, a little nervously. He looks back at his friends with an incredulous smile. “Paki!” he says again, more forcefully, trying to goad me into a fight with him and his friends, a fight that both he and I know I would lose.

“Actually, my parents are from India and I was born here,” I say, hoping that this will somehow make a difference. Since I’m not responding to his provocations, he decides to use this opportunity to make a political speech justifying his behaviour in front of his friends. 

“Well you still come here and take all our jobs,” he announces. I think about this for a moment. It really doesn’t make any sense to me, and feel I should point this out to him.

“But I don’t have a job,” I reply. “I’m still going to school, you see.” His friends start laughing, but this time at him. He looks a bit confused but tries to maintain control of the situation.

“Yeah, but you will take our jobs one day,” he retorts.

I try to negotiate, appealing to his sense of reason. “Look, I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you tell me which job you’re going to do, and I won’t go for the same one?” His friends giggle at this and somehow I have managed to diffuse the situation for long enough: the school bell rings, and I am proverbially saved.

The subject of race and migration, and the conflict with which it is often associated, is a contentious one for many. It is probably one of the most difficult topics to tackle with any objectivity, since we have all been exposed to assumptions about race and migration which we may have internalized without knowing. I will endeavour to write as honestly and openly as possible about my own personal experience, interspersing my writing with titbits of information garnered from my literature review (with links to media in blue) and some of the conclusions at which I arrived. I deliberately include racist labels for context and use colour descriptors, as well as the word ‘race’, which I completely acknowledge is itself a social and political construct.  I apologize in advance for this, as well as the stream of consciousness style.

We live on a beautiful planet, with so much potential, and have come a long way in many regards. Paradoxically, it is also a world ravaged by pollution, environmental devastation, endless wars, famine and brutal inequality, where 10 men own more wealth than 85 countries! That should give us pause to reflect on our predicament. Even those who are doing relatively well need to heed the cautionary tales of history - that without systemic change, their own good fortune cannot last forever. Their legacies will not be passed on to future generations beyond their own lifetimes. Sir Francis Galton the pioneer of Eugenics was ultimately proven wrong in his study, showing that success in one generation is not a guarantee of its continuation in others. A global pandemic and its economic implications just exacerbate this pre-existing condition.

The state of the world, and its socio-economic malaise, is undoubtedly complex.  I believe there is a roadmap to a solution which requires a shift in global consciousness, and a little imagination to dare to dream of something better for all of us on this planet.  In the world order we live in, some human beings are valued less than others. This is evident through our global economic system and its institutions that strongly favour the wealthy, feeding the ever-growing gap between rich and poor. This happens on both an internal and international level, where the powerful can siphon off the resources of the powerless. This juggernaut of consumption and exploitation is unsustainable for society and our environment.

The way we treat each other as human beings must be examined. The simple truth is that we are all interconnected, as COVID-19 has adequately demonstrated. Despite our nation states, we are essentially ‘one people’. Building a new socio-cultural-economic model is part of our evolutionary journey. We need a new set of paradigms to replace old ones that are no longer relevant or sustainable. That is what I hope to demonstrate by relating my own experiences within a historical context. I will expand upon these memories and extrapolate them to the challenges that all people face – since, returning to my proposition – our interdependence is the basis for a global community.

As a British Indian, I have had numerous encounters with both overt and institutional racism. I grew up in the 1970s and 80s, when Margaret Thatcher talked about the fears Britain had of being “swamped by a different culture”. This was apparently in response to the rise of the National Front, who were campaigning in competition with the Conservatives over the very hot topic of the time - immigration.

The National Front, 1970s.  Credit: Spectator.co.uk

The National Front is a far-right, fascist political party founded by Arthur Chesterton in 1967. He was a follower of Oswald Mosely and a member of the British Union of Fascists and National Socialists - the closest party Britain had to the Nazis. They believe in white supremacy, biological racism, racial separatism and antisemitism. They were popular in the 1970s and 1980s but have never won seats in Parliament and have now lost their power to other far-right parties such as the English Defence League (EDL) and The British National Party (BNP). They were very well known to the generation of immigrants who were the subject of their rallies - the alien cultures.

The band Alien Kulture, formed in 1979, who played in 30 shows before disbanding in 1981

Since the 1950s, Britain was desperate to acquire ‘skilled’ workers from its former colonies in order to deal with the shortage of labour of the post-war years. This was a real problem for the British economy that needed a boost and the only way to do it was to increase the work-force by importing labour. The British Nationality Act was passed in 1948 in order to allow immigration from the former colonies and Commonwealth countries.

British Nationality Act of 1948

A lot of those skilled workers, including my university-educated father, were forced to take unskilled or semi-skilled work in order to sustain themselves and their families. He had a degree in physics and had studied aeronautical engineering, yet his first job was working in a factory as a labourer. This was a typical situation in these days and remains a barrier for many immigrants where licensing and certifications are used to exclude.

My parents’ generation of immigrants also had to deal with the prejudice of landlords, many of whom imposed strict rules to keep their immigrant house ‘guests’ in line. I remember reading my father’s old letters, discovered in a suitcase in the attic of our house: a treasure trove of memories of when he first arrived in Britain.

Among them, I found several warning letters from various landlords, including one about not being able to use the heating in the ground floor accommodation he was renting. I remember my father telling me how he used to have to sit around with blankets and cardigans to fend off the cold, as landlords restricted the use of heating in their tenants’ rooms in the winter.

There were many things they were not ‘allowed’ to do, and so many restrictions that a human rights lawyer in today’s world would have had their work cut out for them. When my parents’ landlady observed my pregnant mother’s distended belly, instead of congratulating her on her pregnancy, she immediately gave my parents an eviction notice. It was so difficult for my parents to find accommodation that allowed young children that my mother had no choice but to take me, as a two-week old baby, back to India to live with my grandparents.

Notices such as these were part of life in 1960s Britain. Credit: Race Relations Board (1969)

Just a few years earlier, Enoch Powell, a Conservative Member of Parliament, had famously warned about the “rivers of blood” that would flow as a result of immigration into Britain. The Beatles even satirized this in an early version of ‘Get Back’ before the commercial release, known to bootleggers as ‘No Pakistanis’. To their credit, the Beatles used their fame to speak out against racism, they refused to play to a segregated audience in Florida in 1964 until the audience was desegregated, and their song ‘Blackbird’ was written in support of the civil rights movement.

Enoch Powell. 'Rivers of Blood' Speech. Credit: birmingham-rep.co.uk

 For a long time, I believed there was no sense in dwelling on these past memories, as they could not be of any benefit. I had previously believed that incidences of racism were diminishing as the world was changing, and that racism itself would soon be a relic of the past. Living in Philadelphia in the second decade of 21^st century USA, I now doubt whether this is really the case. Anyone who had spent time in Philadelphia will know that racism and prejudice are alive and well in the ‘city of brotherly love’.

Philadelphia magazine 2013

People of diverse cultures and ethnicities still face barriers of exclusion, and socio-economic hurdles, that many of their white counterparts do not. Clearly there is a power dynamic that needs to be addressed. There is such a thing as white privilege; it is difficult to quantify, and even more difficult to explain to a person who does not see that it exists, because they themselves do not feel they have been privileged at all.  Arguably, there are also many white working class people who suffer discrimination too. This is a nuanced issue complicated by class, gender, and other visible signifiers that may make skin colour less relevant.  I do not want to diminish these experiences and I will revisit this later. However, the suffering of these people is not primarily defined by race, which is the issue I would like to focus on for now.

Until I was eight years old, we had been living in Harrow, a very diverse neighbourhood in London, and then moved to the countryside, where I grew up surrounded by mostly white working- and middle-class people. At the local junior school, my best friend was a British-Chinese guy, whose parents had emigrated from Hong Kong. I did not personally experience any discrimination there, except for the time when I helped my friend defeat one of the school bullies. It was also the first time I experienced racism directed at someone else.

After school one day, Ken and I were leaving school when a bully, ‘Smith’, called out to Ken, “Bye Chinky!” Ken had been told by his dad that he should always stand up to bullies, or the bullying and name-calling would never stop. He squared off against Smith, who was two years older than us.

“What did you say?” Ken asked.

Again, Smith repeated,“Chinky!” Looking down at him, he was almost a foot taller than Ken and did not expect him to retaliate. He put his fingers in the corner of his eyes to simulate epicanthic eye-folds, and goaded, “Slit-eyes!” 

Without hesitation, Ken landed a punch right in the bully’s face and the now red-faced Smith, both surprised and angry, rained blows down on Ken. I could not stand there and watch my best friend being beaten up, even though I was scared of the older boy, so I summoned up some courage and landed a few punches of my own. Smith was so taken aback at these two smaller kids working together in unison that he decided to retreat. He turned away and ran off. We were both high on adrenaline, feeling victorious that we had seen off this bully, and walked home recounting the fight, blow by blow.

Picture of myself and Ken around the time of our fight with Smith

As far as I can remember, Smith did not bother myself or Ken again. That was one of my few successes in fighting off a racist using brute force.

There were other fights that I had later at the grammar school, but I had no allies, and found myself facing more than one opponent at a time. Luckily, most of these fights were broken up by a teacher. For most of my teen years at school, I had a fair share of racist abuse. I was called ‘Paki’, ‘Nigger’, ‘Coon’, ‘Chocolate-face’, ‘Black bastard’, ‘Wog’. Whenever I hear racial slurs and names also being used to insult people of different backgrounds than mine I find it just as abhorrent. The hatred comes from the same source of ignorance, and could therefore just as easily be directed at me. I still remember some of the chants that were used against me: “Pull that trigger, shoot that Nigger - Join the National Front!” Another was, “There ain’t no black in the Union Jack!” Even today when I see the British flag, it triggers memories of seeing it being brandished aggressively as a symbol of extreme nationalism. Rationally, I know it is not, but the association was there. The English flag, or St. George’s flag, is also used by the English Defence League, a far-right, racist organisation. This is quite ironic as St. George was born in Cappadocia in Turkey, of Greek parents, and is regarded as a saint in both Christianity and Islam.

 At this early stage in life, It became quite apparent to me that even though I was born in England I was not regarded as being English by everyone. I remember feeling very alone in my school days, particularly at the grammar school. I was called names and had to deal with racial abuse on almost a daily basis.  I eventually learnt to ignore the name-calling, even though it did still get to me, and this was reflected in my educational performance, which declined. I didn’t tell my family, as I felt shame, so they didn’t know about it till much later. I remember even a teacher at the school making fun of my name for cheap laughs, and I had a general feeling of hopelessness. I felt I had no-one who would stand up for me the way I had for my friend Ken a couple of years earlier. There was only a handful of boys in the whole school who were from any ethnic background and only two I remember who were black. If you were good at sports, which I was not, that made a difference to how you were perceived, so a couple of those minority students’ skin colour was overlooked because of their physical prowess.

William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, which we had to read for English, became my favourite book, because I felt I could really relate to it. The descent of a group of boys into a groupthink pack, and the resulting tension that leads to the bullying and eventual death of Piggy, the child perceived as ‘different’, seemed to sum up my own predicament.

The film Lord of the Flies (1963), based on William Golding’s book