Opinion and Race Discrimination

In my personal life, having been brought up in a very white conservative middle class area, I found myself exploring the various areas of the country that I subsequently lived in and achieving a real multi cultural, cross generational, open mind.

Racial prejudice arrived in my life when I fell in love and lived with an Asian guy in 1988, who bravely gave up his family to be with me because they vehemently didn’t approve. I never questioned my choice. I didn’t see his colour, his religion or his previous way of life, I just loved him for who he was and, perhaps naively, couldn’t understand what the issue was. My Dad and my Step Mum were bewildered.
At the time we both worked in South East London and lived in Romford in Essex. On the whole we didn’t receive any outright prejudice but it was always there bubbling under the surface and every now and again it would raise it’s head. This was the first time in my life that I realised such racial hatred existed.
When we first met he used to have to walk from South to North Woolwich at the end of his evening shift. A journey that took 15 minutes and involved descending down a flight of stairs until you reached the bottom of the tunnel, under the Thames and then walking through and ascending the stairs the other side. One night two older guys behind him started shouting abuse. He heard them drawing closer and ran, literally for his life, only just making it up the stairs and onto the bus, which fortunately was waiting at the stop, when he emerged from the tunnel.
We got spat at, when we were out one night at the cinema, by the people sitting behind us and I remember him using serviettes to remove the spital from my hair. On the rare occasion that we went out clubbing it was always with a group of work colleagues so we could blend in.

This racial discrimination didn’t go away, when in 1994 I met the guy who became the father of my children. He was of Caribbean descent. However this was when I learnt that prejudice could work both ways.
Just one week before the wedding my future father-in-law told me he had hoped his only son would marry a girl of similar descent and that he wasn’t overly happy with the match. My family refused to attend the wedding and my Dad struggled to come to terms with my subsequent mixed race children.
The night before my son was born, my husband and I were out at a karaoke pub in the East End of London. At the end of the night I had to stop my husband from getting involved in a fight, when a white guy of similar age to us started referring to me “as black man’s meat” It was a fractious situation. My son wasn’t due for another 12 days but my waters broke less than 2 hours later.

I always remember going out as a new Mum, walking into Romford and around the market, with my precious little bundle wrapped up in his blankets in his pram and older ladies peeking in the pram, loving the idea of a new baby and then being shocked by his colour. This didn’t change when I had my daughter. Neither of my children look like me, they have strong Caribbean genes and later in their life when they invited friends home for tea etc it was obvious that their school friends didn’t expect me to be white.

I always proudly displayed beautiful framed photos of my children on my desk at work. One Christmas Eve, after I’d moved back to the South West, I was sat at my desk, at the end of the afternoon shift, working my way through the clock cards that staff needed signing for overtime. I made enquiries of them as to what their plans were for Christmas and I’ve never forgotten one young lady saying to me “What are you doing for Christmas?” . “Oh it’s just me and my children” I replied. “Oh you are so nice, you’re like that Angeline Jolie adopting children from other countries” came the reply. When I then told her they were my children, that I’d given birth to them, her expression was one of total bewilderment. I could literally see her brain trying to work it out!

When my children were 7 and 5 years old, I became a single Mum having ended my marriage based upon my husband’s constant infidelity. Despite our divorce I always ensured that my ex mother and father in law remained part of my childrens’ life. This was their ancestry and something I wanted to ensure remained a constant in their lives. Once I moved away from the South East I still kept that culture alive and to this day we still celebrate our own Caribbean Christmas, the weekend before Christmas, with home cooked Caribbean food.

Racial prejudice then spread into my childrens’ lives which is a whole other board game. Experiencing it first hand is so much different to seeing it being directed at your children. How do you explain to them that the comments being directed towards them are born out of ignorance, when they are still innocent and confused and don’t understand why they’ve not been invited to a party despite being friends with that person at school? How do you help them to fit in when their skin is a different colour and grows darker in the sun, particularly when they have been abroad on holiday? When getting your hair wet in the rain can be a major deal and when adults stare at you when you are in unfamiliar surroundings? It wasn’t something I was well prepared for. I’d lived a life where the colour of your skin meant nothing to me.

My children are part of the 1.2 million people in the UK who are mixed race and I didn’t foresee that this brought it’s own unique dilemma. They weren’t black, so some people of African/Caribbean descent, didn’t feel they fitted in either. My daughter still deals with this, particularly from business acquaintances in the USA.
Conversely they are not white, so as explained previously, they don’t fit into this group either. The book “The Mixed Race Experience: Reflections and Revelations on Multicultural Identity” by Naomi and Natalie Evans released in July 2022 really helps in this situation but was 20 odd years too late for me as a parent.

I’d like to think that my experiences of racism as a white Mum with mixed race children allows me to understand the world a bit better, particularly at a time when systemic racism is being openly questioned throughout the media.