My flatmate is a
fencer and loves the sport. One of his fencing friends gave him a
lovely umbrella for Christmas with the handle shaped like the hilt of a sword covered in a
cloth cover. It’s a lovely present I said to him this morning you should take
it with you when it rains it is a big umbrella ‘I can’t carry that thing around
I am back and the cops will stop me’ came his reply. That is such a painful
realisation knowing you have to look a certain way so that you aren’t stopped
by the authorities. Being a black man isn’t easy as bell hooks said society
expects black men to be more righteous than everyone else and holds their
failures up as an example of their inferiority.
My flatmate is a
black man and yes he likes fencing as much as his white friends do but none of
them will be stopped by a policeperson, their youth and sense of irony will
never make dangerous or suspicious to the authorities. This is not the first
time this has happened though, a few months ago we caught a bus one night and
my flatmate got in first and found a seat for both of us the white woman
opposite him cringed and tensed up till I came and sat down next to him she
looked at both of us didn’t seem pleased but was pacified with my presence.
People say racism
is dead do they realise there is more to racism than shouting out rude names?
It is in the silences, the quiet exclusion, and the institionalised
misrepresentation. Racism of the 1960’s was very different and was very obvious
but a quieter racism exists now. I have seen a black academic being shouted
down at an anti racist conference by people who claimed they spoke for him. My
flatmate and I have a running joke between us whenever we watch a film I ask
him was it one of those films where the black guy dies first. It is a terrible
joke but it is based in a painful truth. We have only seen black men as
disposable commodities who get in the way of white society. It doesn’t help
that fiction on screen is similar to events off screen. Black men no matter how
young or old are a much-vilified group.
Racism embodies
our deepest fears. Knowing your teenage son can be shot at for being
suspicious, knowing your education, good manners will not protect you in such a
situation is a very deep seated and realistic fear. Don’t tell us we are
paranoid don’t tell us we are being hysterical don’t tell us we are looking at
things too deeply. Isn’t the Ferguson case and countless cases before and after
it indicative institutionalised racism. I am not saying every white person is a
racist or goes out of their way to attack people of colour the system is a lot
deeper, its working very insidious. Just like sexism, homophobia, and other inequalities
are deeply ingrained our society so is racism its in the law, it remains in
society even when the law changes. It is in the everyday life of people. Knowing
you have to constantly negotiate your place in society to be accepted to be
respectable in the eyes of dominant groups is an inequality.
The fact that my
flatmate’s first thought was I will be stopped by the cops is indicative enough
of a system that has ingrained a very real fear in him. It doesn’t matter how
much my flatmate likes his umbrella or how many assurances he gets deep down he
knows the minute he walks out of that door he will be stopped. It wont matter
that he lives an honest decent life and wouldn’t hurt a fly in the eyes of the
world he will always be a dangerous black man.
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