Tag: racism

Freelance Reflections #32

News

Does anyone have actual realistic expectations of what they can do in a given time? I tend to expect too much of myself. I’m going through a particular busy period and have lots of deadlines coming up, meaning I’ll have to do paid work for at least a couple of hours over the weekend just to keep afloat.

Only seven pages in after waiting for a blood test appointment & already recommend it!

Without much else to report than the standard work grind, here are some photos of my food from today. Even when I don’t share photos of my food, I still take them. I’m that obsessed. I’m weird. I don’t believe in depriving myself too much, so all I’m doing is trying to manage my portion size. Today I added cocoa to my porridge. I’ve watched Fed Up, so I try to have half a sugar in my tea (unless I’m hungover), knowing I have a sweet tooth. I blended three kiwis with some water and lemon juice for lunch with a slice of toast and poached egg. For dinner, I cooked some fake meatballs with wine stock, beef stock, herbs and passata sauce. I love writing about food, but it does make you hungry. Aside from the pictured, I’ve had two oranges, a handful of walnut halves, and after over five hours of content writing, broken up with lesson planning and lunch, I had a handful of my pic ‘n’ mix too. I’ve tried to get a monthly sharer bag as I think before I got the biggest size possible! And I did not share.

This past week has been eventful in terms of global events, and not in a good way. After International Women’s Day, some media outlets and general public had the audacity to doubt what Meghan Markle said in the Opera interview. What people also seemed to forget is that Prince Harry was also involved in this. It was disgusting to hear about the comments the Royal Family had made about skin colour, and the media’s comparison between Meghan and Kate is a prime example of misogynoir, combining both sexism and racism, pitting the two women against each other and skewing the perspective negatively when Meghan is shown to be doing the same thing. Things as common as eating avocado.

I posted on Instagram about Reclaim These Streets on Saturday at 6pm at Clapham Common Bandstand, and Reclaim The Fight at 6pm in Trafalgar Square, inspired by Reed of Come Curious, posting messages from my phone of a selection of texts with the words “home safe”. This is a vigil in honour of Sarah Everard, whose tragic case has unravelled this week. On Monday, I was walking through Brockwell Park looking at the posters, and now a police officer has been arrested on suspicion of her murder. I cried when I read about her remains being found in Kent.

Yet the Met police even have the audacity to threaten people attending with fines when we have had many demonstrations in the past year that have gone ahead, observing social distancing, and even an anti-lockdown one that couldn’t give a fuck. Most of us spend our lives just getting on, but it’s times like these that we need to take action.

One of my friends also rightly pointed out that missing black women don’t get as much media attention, which leaves it to us to spread the word through social media and the like. Mariam Khan gave a reminder that Blessing Olusegun’s body was found on a beach in Sussex last year, and despite the death being unexplained, the police are not investigating it.

One last thought that I’ve been made more aware of through social media is the importance of language; we need to stop talking about the women who have been murdered and raped. Instead, we need to say men murder women, men rape women. I am done with this passive language.

Long Walks

Inspiration, News, Poetry Gigs

Recently, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Southbank Centre hosted an event called ‘The Long Walk to Freedom’ based around Nelson Mandela’s autobiography. It was an incredible evening of poetry, music, video and readings from the book. I was excited to listen to Shingai Shoniwa’s acoustic version of ‘Never forget You’, to be hypnotised by Inua Ellam’s poetry and to see Lemn Sissay – who performed a song by Gil Scott Heron. Although those were the acts I was familiar with already, I could not have picked a highlight. The people performing were diverse in terms of both gender and race, and there was a real feeling of unity between the acts, as well as the audience. The whole show left me feeling hopeful, inspired and positive.

Then the other day I saw an article by Lemn Sissay about a recent visit to Shetland, where he was featured at a literary festival called Wordplay. This article was about coming across a tourist shop that displayed an array of golliwogs. He also wrote about it on his blog. The Shetland Times also wrote a piece on it, seeming to sympathise with the shop-owner. What sickened me were the mass of comments taking the shop-owner’s side, the ignorance and implicit (at times explicit) racism embedded in their words. I can’t even comprehend the woman of African heritage who advised that Sissay ‘read a bit’ and insulted his literary status. Whilst I don’t imagine the non-poetic will have always heard of him, these comments were ridiculous.

For me, the fact that the white shop-owner, Mrs Leask, dismissed the “rare” complaints she had received (which Sissay tentatively enquired about) and refused to stop selling them, to the degree that she would close the shop before she stopped selling them, means that she is not someone to sympathise with. Whilst I would not condone Sissay’s emphasis of the word ‘old’ in his piece, I’m not going to chastise someone who has had to fight racism his whole life. I find it hard enough myself to imagine the hurt, anger and frustration at seeing a golliwog as a black person. The golliwog is a well-known emblem of racism, and serves as a reminder for a horrific past. To sell one in a shop as fun, toy memorabilia is ignorant. Mrs Leask has made the choice to ignore the complaints, and as Sissay says, she is making a statement with her display in the same way that writers may do with words. You can decide who is right and who is wrong.

It is such a shame that this can still happen at a time where such a celebration of progress at the Queen Elizabeth Hall has taken place. Whilst I can understand that someone is going to get defensive about their actions when being accused of being racist because they think they are “not a racist” – supposedly indicated by the Mohammed Ali photograph Sissay mentions was also on display – it would be better if people could admit such mistakes and be open to learn how to right their wrongs. Otherwise, the photograph of Ali and polite exchange with Sissay simply becomes nothing more than a pathetic reasoning such as “my best friend is black”. This reasoning may make Mrs Leask feel better about herself, but it doesn’t promote positive change and is a backwards movement in the fight for equality for all.

xxx