A Race We Can All Win- Part 3 of 5

At the beginning of 1998, I decided it was time for me to move on from the country of my birth to seek new pastures, as my parents’ generation had done. I wanted more out of life in a place that was English-speaking and progressive, and most importantly, where my ethnicity would not be a barrier. What can I say - other than that I was young and naive. I spent almost a year engaged in research looking at different countries and comparing various statistics on the economy, climate, politics, pollution, crime, social mobility and so on. After much deliberation, I settled on Canada, which branded itself as a multicultural mosaic at the time, and I applied through their skilled worker program. After applying I decided to travel to Vancouver and spent six months volunteering in a couple of organizations to immerse myself in its culture.

I really enjoyed the time I spent working at the First Nations House of Learning (the ‘Longhouse’) at UBC, and got to learn a little about the indigenous peoples and cultures of Canada. Concurrently, I was also a mentor on the ‘downtown east-side project’. My rose-tinted view of Canada was changed during this time.  I realized after many conversations that these people had suffered great discrimination in their own country, had been marginalized by the European settlers, and had suffered many injustices along the way.

Immigrant communities also suffer systemic racism in Canada, though not as overtly as I had previously experienced. I witnessed a fair amount of prejudice directed at Asian people in particular. The default complaint I heard was about Chinese people, but it could easily apply to any other race. Canada was still much more progressive than the UK, America and the other choices I was considering, so I emigrated there. During my time in Canada, I was only called a ‘Paki’ twice.  Progressive, right? Most of the time I was described as either a Brit (by my accent) or East-Indian, which was strange, as it revealed the mindset of the people who were defining me. I had never been called East-Indian before, and assumed they must have thought I was from the Eastern part of India.

The origins of the label ‘East-Indian’ are connected to my own migration route in an abstract way, so bear with me as I connect the dots. The East India Company was the colonial entity that first traded with India; after a series of wars with the Mughals, it then ruled India from 1757 to 1858, before the British Crown took over until India’s independence in 1947. My parents migrated from India to Britain, where I was born. I migrated to Canada, where I was again an ‘East Indian’, and then to the United States, which has a flag based on the design of the flag of the East India Company! Benjamin Franklin said to George Washington, "While the field of your flag must be new in the details of its design, it need not be entirely new in its elements. There is already in use a flag… I refer to the flag of the East India Company."

The Flag of the East India Company (1801). Credit: Wikipedia

When I questioned the East-Indian label, it was explained to me that they had to distinguish between an Indian from India and one from North America. Columbus thought he had arrived in India, so the name stuck for the indigenous peoples of North America, instead of the names they used themselves. Now there is an official recognition in Canada of First Nations people, to relieve some of this cognitive dissonance, so there has been some progress.

Tribal Nations of North America. Credit: Mapsontheweb-maps.com

A white person generally doesn’t need to deal with this issue, since in Canada they are a Canadian, and in America they are an American. Everyone else tends to get hyphenated (sounds painful!) regardless of their own preference. National identities are all social constructs anyway, and we should be allowed to choose our own. The trouble only becomes obvious when we think about the debate over gender identities, but the common denominator is the identity a person wishes to use for themselves. I am sure that over time, the hyphenated names denoting ancestry will disappear with each progressive generation as their origins will become less important.

 

White people do not have a monopoly on racism and prejudice. Anyone is capable of inflicting the same behaviour on others, even if they suffered from it themselves. Amongst many colonized and oppressed people, there are victims who became the perpetrators, and recycled the prejudice and hate that they received. I am also well aware that prejudice exists in every country to different extents, both in terms of ethnicity as well as religion. To reiterate, I am writing about my own experiences in the places I have lived, I am sure that others may have experienced it differently and I appreciate those views are equally valid. As Malcolm X had acknowledged near the end of his historical journey, ‘Whiteness’ is not a prerequisite for racist behaviour.

As for white people, being ‘white’ is not a choice they made themselves. They did not choose their own socialization or conditioning, and therefore they should not have to feel guilt, unless they know the nature of the world around them and are not doing anything about it. Of course, the same goes for all of us. I have always made a clear distinction in my own experiences between malicious intent in behaviour, and ignorance or lack of knowledge about race and culture. Although they are connected, I would treat each very differently. Generalizations and stereotypes based on anecdotal and individual experiences are dangerous. I recall having a discussion with other white colleagues in the publishing company, Pearson Education, the first job I had landed soon after my arrival in Canada.  I was the only visible minority amongst hundreds of colleagues. One evening, over dinner, they were telling their own travel horror stories about their trips to Africa and Asia. Many of them were based on generalizations that concluded with casual racist observations. I tried to give some context, from my interest in cultural anthropology, but it was a very difficult discussion. How do you deal with an anecdotal experience that a person believes is the norm? Everyone’s own subjective experience informs their world view, but are they aware that the views of others, also from limited subjective experiences, may be equally true?

In the parable of the blind men and the elephant, referenced in the ancient Sanskrit texts of the Upanishads, all reality is subject to different interpretations. This premise is the foundation for an objective or universalist perspective.  A group of blind men were told that an elephant would be visiting their village. They were very excited to find out more about this creature, so they went to the village market to experience what it was. Since they were blind, they had to feel with their hands what it might be. Each man only felt a part of the elephant, as they did not know that there was more to it. One felt its trunk, another its leg, ear and so on. They each believed they had each experienced the elephant in its entirety, even though they had only experienced one part of it.  Then each man described the specific part they had felt to the others, as this was what each individual believed the elephant actually was. As they couldn’t see the whole creature, they fell into an argument, and began to fight each other calling each other liars. In the Sufi version of this story retold by Rumi in his Masnavi, the men were in the dark and not blind. His version ends with him stating, “If each had a candle and they went in together the differences would disappear.”

So many disagreements on race and culture are ultimately down to the different perspectives drawn from our own individual experiences. They may have some truth to them, but they do not represent any objective truth. Understanding how we come to know things, and separate fact from opinion, is a real struggle. Epistemology is a subject that really needs to be taught in school, particularly in this age of information, where knowledge is power. People are overwhelmed by having so much information at their fingertips and thus have to rely on trusted sources that often have their own political agendas. Education, and understanding the methods of learning, including critical reflection, can help to unify what we know about each other and the world around us. It can guide us to make better decisions with robust outcomes.

The Blind Men and the Elephant. Credit: D.C. Heath and Co.

I did try to address the issues of racism while living in Vancouver. I went to many talks at the University of British Columbia and at the Vancouver Public Library to listen to speakers on a range of subjects related to discrimination and pacifism. I saw a connection between the dehumanization of people and their culture and conflict. I was a member of an anti-war group, and protested the invasion of Iraq and other military conflicts. The first step in the dehumanization of people is to see them as an ‘other’, something distinctly different from ourselves. It’s ‘Us and Them’, like the track from the Pink Floyd album Dark Side of the Moon. Not only is war hell, it’s insane as well. The song was about war and the contributory conditions which lead to it, including colour prejudice and effective infrahumanization, that potentially drive us to ultimately kill another human. ‘Infrahumanization’ is an interesting word. It isn’t exactly the same as ‘dehumanization’, but more nuanced. It arises when people view their ingroup as different in essence to the outgroup which they then deny the same humanness, the ability to feel the same way, the same joys and pains. Roger Waters once stated in an interview, “We can either pool our love, develop our capacity to empathize with others and act collectively for the good of our planet, or we can remain comfortably numb.”

Movie poster of Us and Them . Credit: Trafalgar Releasing

I spoke on an anti-racism panel at the University of British Columbia as part of the ‘Not on Our Campus’ campaign. During this time, I shared an apartment with a writer, who taught me about the history of Canada from a Cree perspective. He told me one day about how he had called the police to his house after he’d seen a stranger in the garden from the window and been concerned about his family. He stood outside on the lawn waiting for them to arrive, and when they did, an overzealous officer used a taser on him, even as he was telling the officer that it was he who had called the police in the first place. To add insult to injury, they took him away in a police car and put him in jail. He was later released, with no apology or any form of compensation. I was incensed, and urged him to write about this to the local paper. He told me that this kind of thing was so common it would not change anything.  Unfortunately, Larry was right. This is a common occurrence in Canada, where indigenous people, to this day, are systemically discriminated against by police and the society they live in. Historically this has occurred since the first settlers arrived in Canada and the foundation of the Hudson Bay Company, the acquisition of land and resources, and the residential schools that separated families from their children and re-educated them. The list of horrors goes on until the present where they are ‘managed’ by a system that deprives them of their humanity (click here to hear Sheila Wolfleg talking about her residential school experience). To be fair, there are many progressive Canadians who regularly campaign against this discrimination and are trying to change society for the better. This gives me hope.

Canadian Senator Justice Murray Sinclair. Credit: CBC

I recall an interaction one day with the building manager of the condominium where I lived, on Robson Street in Vancouver. He saw me pass by the café where he was sitting reading a newspaper, and called out to me. I had always been polite with him, and would chat whenever I saw him. As I sat down, he showed me the headlines in the newspaper about Chinese immigrants who had stowed away on a boat to smuggle themselves into Canada. He just went off for almost an hour about Chinese people: how they are taking over and don’t speak English, about illegal migration, and then the Indian Act. I had never seen him so animated about any topic. He said a lot of racist things, telling me (while he was saying them) that he was “not a racist, but…” I listened to him patiently, and when he had finished, I told him, “Yes, I see what you mean. I wonder if this is how first nation peoples must have felt when they were invaded by Europeans?” He just stared back at me blankly for a minute and went back to reading his paper. I got up and migrated away.

I got married in 2012 and moved to Philadelphia a year later. My observation on racial identity and culture from living in Philadelphia was like experiencing déjà vu. I had seen this movie already: the plot was the same but the characters had changed. This version also had a lot more gratuitous violence.

There are many good things about the United States and its people that I really like and enjoy, but one of the major issues holding American society back is that same issue of racism and prejudice - and to an even greater extent than my previous experience. Fear of the ‘other’, and the prevalent gun culture, do not help the situation. Levels of racism vary depending on where you live, but the main difference is, that racism is palpable in the way so many American cities still have areas divided by ethnic lines and communities, many of whom simply do not mix. I have seen more overt discrimination towards Black people than any other race, even though Hispanics and other ethnic groups also suffer it. Fear has a huge part to play in this. Americans are courageous people in some ways, but paradoxically also shackled and divided by these age-old fears and mistrust.

Genocide and slavery were the midwives at America’s birth. The pains of labour can still be felt: the wealth and power of this country was based on slavery, after the genocide that removed and displaced the native American population. A large part of the indigenous population died from the lack of immunity to the ‘old world’ diseases, though there is evidence that a some were subjected to deliberate infection with what we would now call biological warfare.

The transatlantic slave trade was a horrific chapter of human history and enriched the mostly European nations that indulged in it.

 

L’amour – slave ship called ‘Love’ commemorated by a glass brick in Nantes at the Museum of Slavery

America was built on this foundation and the economic disparities it produced. African people were abducted from their native lands and transported in the most inhumane conditions; many died on the voyage and sold into a terrible life of slavery.

Stowage of a British Slave Ship (1788)

This was forced migration: these people did not consent to or want it, and it was not for their own economic improvement, but rather for the economic empowerment of their ‘owners’. Even after 1865 and the Emancipation Declaration, African Americans were still not truly free; they were then subjected to the continuing injustices of the racist Jim Crow laws, lynching, imprisonment, segregation, discrimination, and poverty. These words do not adequately describe the true horror of their predicament. Imagine a human being (who looks like you) beaten bloody, young children raped, men incarcerated in small spaces, sometimes for years, hung by their neck on a tree and burnt while still alive. All these vile and horrific things happened to African Americans specifically because of their race and this needs to be fully understood to appreciate why so many years later this is still etched into the psyche of so many people. Even after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, right up to the present day, there has still not been any real reconciliation between the way that African Americans are treated, though there have been efforts made by States across America to educate people about these historical injustices. Some people feel frustrated and angry that they should not have to pay for what happened ‘hundreds of years ago’, and cannot understand why Black people are so sensitive to the way they are treated or why they demand respect. There is a huge disconnect between large parts of the population and what they feel responsible for and entitled to. It is too simplistic to blame just one group of people for this or that, since all our choices and decisions impact each other in ways we do not see. This is partly due to the way our communities are structured. We still have a kind of segregation based on the zip code or area that people live in, where schools, crime, amenities and wealth are all interconnected. Where you live often dictates outcomes for your health, education for your children, employment, and encounters with police. It’s interesting that the safest communities do not have the most police, but they do have the most resources. The company people keep outside of work also generally tends to be within the same racial groups. Many people do not get a chance to interact with people socially who are different from themselves. Doing so would bridge a lot of gaps in understanding.

For example,  African Americans make up about 43% of the population of Philadelphia, yet it remains one of the most segregated cities in America. Many people do not understand that this is a result of legislated segregation and poverty; it is not purely by accident, but by design.

From the 1930s the federal government encouraged mortgage lenders to withhold credit from older neighbourhoods, immigrant communities, and particularly areas where African Americans or other people of colour lived. This process was known as ‘redlining’, as banks and federal agencies literally used red ink to define the areas that would be disinvested. North Philadelphia, and many other urban areas across America where African-Americans lived, were choked off from the investment they so badly needed.

                    Redlined areas of Philadelphia. Credit: National Archives and Records Administration

The reality of being black in America is that there are major obstacles that white people generally do not face. There is no comparison when it comes to statistics about discrimination.

 

Experiences of African Americans n=802. Credit: NPR / Harvard School of Public Health 2017

“What is portrayed in the daily news about racial discrimination in America corresponds to the very real personal experiences of Black Americans today, particularly in the areas of employment, interacting with the police, and housing,” says Robert Blendon, Professor of Health Policy and Political Analysis at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who co-directed the survey. The resulting anger and frustration in the African-American community ends up contributing to the confirmation bias of whites and other communities that ‘they’ are the ones with a problem, and that’s partly why things never change.

The current political climate is so divisive that a US president could hold a rally in Tulsa, the place where one of the largest massacres of black people occurred in US history, the day after ‘Juneteenth’ or Emancipation Day. This is mind-boggling. It shows the lack of empathy and demonstrates the huge rift in this country, even after the national recognition of the murder of George Floyd. One of the president’s closest advisors, Stephen Miller, has documented relations with white supremacists as well as being involved in the propagation of conspiracy theories.

The abuse of power by the police is symptomatic of a much deeper racial problem that results in officers disproportionately targeting young black men. In “officer involved” shootings, they are shot and killed at more than twice the rate of white men under the same conditions. This power dynamic represents the concentration of power within our society.  Admittedly, other immigrant communities have also suffered from this abuse of power, but none as much as the African-American community. My friend Kamil worked at a gym part-time, while also running an IT business. He told me of a very different reality of living in Philadelphia, and not in the old city neighbourhood where the gym was based. He had lots of stories about racism and the issues that black people face in Philadelphia. I also saw how he was treated by some of his colleagues and did not think it was fair. His attitude was to keep his head down and work regardless. He was very stoic about it and he needed this job so he accepted an imperfect work environment. We would share some solidarity, and I regret that I never opened up about my own struggles with racism, as I was so focused on commiserating with his. It is so important for people to build unity with each other in the struggle for change. Through solidarity comes strength.

A Race We Can All Win- Part 2 of 5

 My days at the Grammar school were generally bleak and uninspiring, though there were some silver linings that made them more bearable. It was a private all-boys school except for the Sixth Form, and was affiliated to the Armed Forces known as the Combined Cadet Force, or CCF. I was in the Royal Air Force section at the school and found some succour amongst my fellow RAF cadets, who were more intellectual and less physically inclined, and thus were more likely to be the recipients of name-calling and bullying rather than the perpetrators. Most of the pupils I had received racist insults from had joined the Army section, so I had some respite from them. I must admit that though I am now more of a pacifist, as I believe most conflict can be avoided, my time as an RAF cadet forms some of the best memories of my school days. I made some genuine friends, and got to fly in ‘Chipmunk’ trainer aircraft, once even enjoying aerobatics with an Air Commodore who had fought in the Battle of Britain. Coincidentally, my great uncle, Sabir Ali, was a Flight Lieutenant in the Royal Indian Air Force, an auxiliary of the RAF. He was court-martialled for striking a British Officer who had insulted him. He was later vindicated but was unfortunately killed in action during the Second World War.

So many servicemen and women who fought for Britain were conscripted from the Colonies. Over 600,000 African and over 2,500,000 Indian soldiers fought under British command against the Axis powers. This is barely mentioned during commemorations of remembrance and seldom heard about in popular culture or seen in any films about the last world war.

                                Flight Lieutenant Sabir Ali of the Royal Indian Air Force

I remember being told off one day by an older gentleman at our local sports club for being too loud, when another South-Asian friend and I had just left the squash court and were talking as we walked across the cricket ground on the way to the exit. There was no-one else there to disturb, but he found it necessary to tell us that he had fought in the war for “our sort”. Whenever I hear about how many allied servicemen died in the war, and how their sacrifice should never be forgotten, I always think of my great uncle Sabir!

We had our sports at a field called Hartswood, which was a couple of miles from the school itself, so we needed transportation from there to get back home. I remember waiting in line for the bus and being told by another pupil not to wait too close to a boy called Lendon, because his mother didn’t like ‘Pakis’. It should come as no surprise that I ended up resenting that school and rightly or wrongly conflated racism with Conservative politics, which was part of the family background of the vast majority of the private grammar school’s pupils.

Even though Britain had initially needed immigration to aid its post-war reconstruction, there was a growing sense of fear and hatred particularly in the already socio-economically deprived areas where immigrants had been housed. It was no accident and actually enshrined in policy, that immigrants would end up living in some of these areas. Many had no choice, as they could not get a house elsewhere. This is the relatively unknown history of the rise of Asian ghettos. Mahesh Upadhyaya, an Aden-born engineer, was the first person to challenge discrimination under the racial equality act of 1968, against a builder refusing to sell him a house in an area where Asian's did not live, but the case was dismissed on a technicality.

First Case under Race Equality Act. Credit: Eachother.org.uk

There was a wave of attacks known as ‘Paki-bashing’, which targeted and assaulted Pakistanis and other South Asians, that lasted from the late 1960s till the 1980s. The national and local media fanned the flames of anti-immigrant rhetoric, and there were systemic failures by the police and the courts that indulged far-right fascist, racist movements such as the National Front, White Power Skinheads and the British National Party. This was a very difficult time for race relations and many people I knew had the mental and physical scars that reflected this. A friend I met in college told me how he used to play the keyboard in a band, until his fingers were broken by skinheads waiting for him outside a gig, leaving him with permanently disfigured fingers and an irrational distrust of anyone white. I remember introducing him to some white friends of mine, and his first reaction was very negative. He was very hostile to them as his past trauma prevented him from seeing them as anything other than potentially racist skinheads with longer hair. However, he warmed up after getting to know them and saw that not all white people were racist. He even ended up sharing a house with one of them. Many British-born friends from South-Asian backgrounds who lived in inner-city areas told stories of violence meted out to them and their families, including hateful graffiti and vandalism of their property, broken windows, and shit pushed through their letterbox. Their reaction in some cases was to generalize that British culture was racist, and thus they avoided contact with white people as much as they could. They would have business dealings with them, but no social interaction outside of work. In many of the big cities of the UK it is entirely possible to live this way, and many areas remain culturally divided to this day.

Paki-Bashing headline.  Credit: Crombie Media 

To grow up in 1980s Britain under Thatcher’s government was to experience a time of great social turmoil. Not only was it difficult for people of colour to get housing or even employment, but now they were also being harassed by the police.

Employment Discrimination Credit: Eachother.org.uk

The Conservative Party had instituted new police powers under the Vagrancy Act of 1824. It meant that people could be stopped and searched based only on “reasonable suspicion” that they had committed an offence - the so-called ‘sus law’ (suspected person). These were of course applied disproportionately to Black and Asian communities, but particularly in Black areas, which exacerbated racial tension as young black men were highly likely to be targeted. After they were arrested, many suffered violent beatings and even death under ‘mysterious circumstances’ while in police custody. Race riots were common in many of the major cities as a result.

Brixton Riots 1981. Credit: Thisdaythen.blogspot.com

 

Bradford Riot 2001. Credit: Yorkshirepost.com

Of course, there are also plenty of other examples of South Asians who did not suffer the same extremes of violence. I had many friends who had a completely different experience. They often grew up in middle-class or affluent areas where there were fewer ethnic minorities; hence they were perceived as less of a threat, and were welcomed into those communities. Some have no idea of the scale of this problem, as they were never exposed to it, in the same way a white person would not necessarily understand the issue without experiencing it themselves. The situation was and still is very complex. There is also an element of internalized racism, whereby the ethnic minorities themselves absorbed the racist messages and tropes they were bombarded with and adopted a mindset of self-hatred, or hatred of their own racial groups. Some would not have either the opportunity or inclination to associate with other minorities who were on a different socioeconomic level than themselves and thus there remains a divide in the understanding of these issues.

Internalized racism can be insidious, as you do not have a sense of your own implicit bias. Unconscious processes can chart a course without you even feeling you made specific decisions about yourself or towards others. We are all subject to a degree of internalized racism, which also produces a corresponding sense of entitlement when you believe you are superior to others. I acknowledge that I was also influenced by this, and remember avoiding people because they were considered ‘FOBs’ (fresh-off-the-boat) or stereotypes of the culture they came from. There was a time when I identified more with my white British friends, because it was easier to fit in this way. This gradually changed through my college years, as I was exposed to more people from diverse backgrounds and became much more aware of my own biases. I made a concerted effort to ‘unlearn’ my own programming, aiming to have a much more inclusive and balanced view of race and ethnicity.

I once had an Atari ST computer, and would swap games with friends, making disk copies of classics like Dungeon Master and Xenon. One computer game released in the late 1980s was a hacked version of another game called Sidewinder. A friend gave me a copy, thinking it was hilarious, since he did not think of himself as racist. I didn’t play it.

                                                         Pakibash by Klu Klux Software

My experience at University was much improved, compared to my school days, and I started to take heart in the idea that progress, though slow, was on the way. In London, with its cosmopolitan population and constant state of flux, there were always pockets of narrow-mindedness and racism, but generally, it seemed to be changing for the better. People boycotted and protested against South African apartheid. Eddy Grant released ‘Gimme Hope Jo Anna’, and the injustice of a system built on ‘apartness’ became the catalyst for international solidarity. Even Spitting Image highlighted the injustice of South Africa’s apartheid system with its own comedy song, ‘I’ve Never Met a Nice South African’, shaming it for its racism. Only a few countries supported the apartheid regime, and by 1994 apartheid had ended and Nelson Mandela was president. It only took another 14 years before he was taken off Ronald Reagan’s terror list. People seemed to be more aware of other cultures; there was an international and multicultural flavour to London and I enjoyed connecting with people from all over the world. I would often attend Speakers Corner in Hyde Park, frequent cultural events, comedy clubs, art galleries, museums and theatres. I was involved in starting the first multicultural society at our university, and my view of the world grew exponentially as a result.

Eventually I moved up to Liverpool to study, and while living there, I started hitchhiking (the subject of another blog - A Hitch in the Plan). I could not afford to travel regularly down to London, so this became my new mode of transport as a student. I would often ask the people who stopped to give me a lift what had motivated them to do so. On more than one occasion I was told that my ethnicity was the reason, as they had not seen someone of South Asian background hitchhiking before! I took this very positively, particularly since I never waited long for a ride. I realized that there were many kind people around: people without prejudice, prepared to take the risk of having a stranger in their car and assisting them.

The only time I felt any discrimination in Merseyside was from the police. I had made friends with a group of dental students who lived in a big house a mile or so down the road from my own. They were five Sikh guys and one white English guy, living together. I had never seen that before, as I was so used to being the only visibly different guy in the group, and here the situation was reversed. It was refreshing to see.  Matt, from Wakefield, was very much into Indian culture, particularly the food and music. One night, I picked them up to go to an Indian cultural event near Manchester. As I was driving, Matt, who was sitting in the back of the car, kept looking out the window, and noticed that we had been followed by a police car for a few miles. I asked him not to look at them, as they might find some reason to stop me. He couldn’t help himself and looked around anyway, and the next thing you know there were flashing blue lights and a siren. I pulled over. What unfolded next was the most bizarre interaction I have ever had with police.

They asked me to step out of the vehicle and questioned me about where I was going. I told them about the event, and they wrote some notes. They asked Matt to step out of the car, and questioned him separately about where he was going. I could hear them from where I stood and thought this was very weird. They asked him if he was sure that he was not being coerced, and he replied he was sure, with a big smile on his face. They let us go. Matt then told us the police thought we might have kidnapped him!

My whole experience of living in Liverpool was generally very good. Despite the race riots of the 1980s, things had calmed down. It made sense to me that a port city with the oldest black British and Asian communities in the country would be at the leading edge of social change that undoubtedly contributed to it becoming a European Capital of Culture in 2008.

Liverpool - Capital of Culture. 2008 Credit: Moomusician-Shutterstock

I moved back to London in the mid-nineties, and started looking for work while continuing my education. This was when I realized that the rose-tinted glasses I’d been wearing were slowly being bent out of shape. On the surface, it seemed that society had embraced the idea of many cultures living together, and I believed most people treated each other with respect. However, the problem was that there had not been a deeper systemic change, and so the fundamental  issues that made a difference to people’s lives, like jobs and housing, were still creating divisions of race and class. I was about to experience these divisions first hand.

I managed to get a job in an estate agents business to pay my way through college. Part of my job was to contact landlords who wanted to rent out and sell their properties, get all the relevant  information, and then arrange viewings for tenants. The estate agency was in North London, not far from where I lived. At first, I really enjoyed working there, until my eyes were opened to the racial discrimination that made it so difficult for non-white (and particularly black) people to find a place to live. I was shocked the first time I experienced this, as I had sincerely believed that things were a lot better than they were back in the 80s, when I was at school.

I had just closed the deal with a landlord on the telephone, and was arranging a viewing for tenants, when he said to me, “By the way, I don’t want any Pakis or Indians living in my house.” I retorted that he was talking to one. He immediately hung up. Because of my ‘Queen’s English’ accent, he must have assumed I was white. I talked to Jacob, who owned the business. He told me this was not uncommon. He agreed that it was not fair or ethical, but said that this is how the world was, and we had to deal with landlords like that. One day, when I was going through the old files of properties, I found more than ten of these ‘special requests’ by landlords. I talked to a colleague about reporting this to the authorities - surely this was illegal? She told me that the business was not responsible and that although it was bad, we just had to ignore it.

That night I was mulling over making copies of the files, as I felt it unconscionable not to do something about it. I even called the Commission for Racial Equality (disbanded in 2007). They agreed it was a big problem, but as it was hidden and covert, and involved private individuals, it would be complicated to tackle. But they would try. The next day, I went to make copies of the files. They were gone.

The last straw for me was when I had arranged viewings for a Zambian doctor, and we went to see the place I had rung only ten minutes earlier. When we arrived, the curtains twitched, but no-one answered the door. We rang the bell a number of times, and waited for about five minutes, before going back to the car. As we got to the car we saw a white couple ring the bell. The door opened straight away. We went back and rang the bell again. Finally the owner answered the door, asking, “Who are you two characters?” I told him that I had only just spoken to him on the phone and had arranged to be there. Again, my ‘white’ voice had confused him. “Oh, I thought you were somebody else,” he said.  But he had never met me! He asked us to wait, since he was showing the other couple the house now. After a while they left, and he let us in, but he grilled the doctor for almost half an hour before letting him see the house, informing us that the previous couple were going to take it anyway. I was very angry. I turned to the doctor and told him I was really sorry that he had to be subjected to all this. He smiled and told me not to worry about it; he said he was used to this treatment. I resigned the next day.

A couple of years later, I was working as a medical representative in London. We were having a team meeting in a conference room in a manor house in Surrey; a senior manager was discussing various strategies on how to approach medical personnel to influence them. Since a large proportion of doctors in London where of South Asian origin, he directed his strategy on how to talk to them, and made a number of racist remarks about the Indian and Pakistani doctors we worked with. I was the only Asian on our team. I was trying to build a career, and wanted to stay under the radar, so I held my tongue, even though I really wanted to tell him that what he was saying was offensive. I was very proud of the moment that my friend and colleague Zelko saw me shifting uncomfortably in my chair: he stood, and bravely called out the manager for the blatant stereotyping and racism. Other colleagues of mine also clapped to show support for what Zelko was saying. The manager was shamed by him and a few other colleagues that day. I really felt supported by my team, secure in the knowledge that they were many good people out there, many dear friends of mine included, who stood up for their principles and the rights of others.

I observed that inclusion and exclusion within groups of friends and colleagues was complex, and linked to the interplay of identities of race, religion, socio-economic class, and of course personal qualities. I was fortunate to have some friends who regarded themselves as working class, and in many ways I felt that they were just as disadvantaged and marginalized as those who had to deal with racial discrimination. Sometimes these groups would be working together, as I saw while at college, or working against each other, as I witnessed on visits to some areas of England, including London, Luton, Birmingham and Bradford. I remember being shown around by an Asian friend, Aneel, who lived in Luton, who explained to me that the town was divided, and that “white people just don’t come here generally”. He told me there were corresponding areas in the same town where you wouldn’t see any minorities. After Asians had been subjected to violence from white racist gangs in the 70s, he explained, they had formed their own gangs, initially to protect their communities, as they could not rely on the police to do so. By the 1980s, some of them had turned from protectors of their neighbourhood to drug dealers and criminals, as a result of the time they spent in prison for their violence.

I was deeply affected by these experiences, and the stories of others who had suffered much more than I had. I found myself vacillating between challenging these things and wanting to avoid all this nonsense; to emigrate somewhere my ethnicity would be less of an issue, not just for me but also for my family.  I had previously felt I could accomplish anything I wanted in the UK, as long as I turned a blind eye to prejudice and racism and adopted a more ‘English’ rather than Indian persona. But once you have seen it, it cannot be unseen!

I generally identify as British-Indian. I remember discussing this with a friend one day, who said, “Well you were born here, so you must be British.” I told him it wasn’t that simple. Culturally I identified with India; I had spent years there as a child and ate mostly Indian food, and even spoke the language - albeit like a second-rate Bollywood villain! Of course, I also acknowledged my British birth and cultural influences, and the fact I had spent the majority of my life in the UK. I told him that not everyone would see me as English either.

I have been labelled so many different things – ‘Paki’, British, ‘Coconut’ (brown on the outside, white on the inside), South-Asian, Indian, Indo-American, East-Indian (in Canada) - that I have become desensitized to the whole identity nomenclature. Hence I revert to the simple ‘British-Indian’, as it makes the most sense in a world where being human just isn’t enough.

I felt my white British friends had a greater chance of speaking out against these kinds of injustices, and being the instruments of change, than I did. If they spoke up, they would not be judged for having a chip on their shoulder or ‘playing the race card’ (a popular way to silence dissenters), and in this way, they could affect change.

Ironically, the origins of the ‘race card’ can be traced back to 19^th century right-wing politicians propagating fears about black people to influence the electorate and gain votes. The idea was illustrated in the London-based Punch magazine, whose editors did not support Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation and published the cartoon ‘Abe Lincoln’s Last Card’. Even though Lincoln was lauded for ending slavery, he still considered blacks to be inferior to whites.

‘Abe Lincoln’s Last Card’ in Punch, 1861, by John Tenniel, illustrator of Alice in Wonderland

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