I hated being black. For pretty much the first 16 years of my life I carried around some pretty major anxieties about the colour of my skin and the stigma that followed it. More than a few times as a babe I cursed God (bearing in mind I’m not particularly religious, but I had no one else to blame) for making me black. As strange as that may sound, to hate something about yourself, that’s not even the strangest part. The strange part is that I only realised this a few months ago. Writing this is a big step, and a big part of me learning to deal with my perception of myself and my place in this crazy old world.
From a very early age (and by early I mean like four or five) I came to the conclusion that while being white was no guarantee of success, being black was a sure sign of failure. I had seen how my parents had struggled in comparison to that of some of my friends’ parents. The fact that we couldn’t afford as a family to go on holiday to far and exotic lands (we had been to the Isle of Wight more than once, though). That as children we weren’t able to have the things we wanted, and that this became so common that my younger siblings, even as young children, refrained from asking for much, because they understood that our parents wouldn’t have the money. Christmas and birthdays were sparing, but they always tried to get as much for us as they could. Minorities might not have a monopoly on poverty, but coupled with our portrayal in the media I got a pretty poor sense of my chances of success. While there were positive role models around me, my family being a major inspiration in my life, they were only a small isolated group of individuals, and in no way a large enough example of us as a race, and I thought “surely TV must have a better idea of the situation”.
I come from a family that has always pushed me and my many siblings to be successful. We had to be. Education was incredibly important, and I was told that I was going to go to university and that I had no choice. Many of my family hadn’t had the opportunity to go to, my dad being one of them, and so it was a massive deal for him when I did eventually end up going. There seemed to be a sense of relief from him as if to say “it’s okay now, he’ll be fine”. I have always been told by my parents, just as their parents did for them, that as a black person you have to work ten times harder than your white counterparts just to get noticed. I could never truly be myself, because that may be deemed too black, and make people wary of you. I had to be like a low fat version of myself, never really revealing how I felt or thought, because it might scare people. This attitude was drummed into me so hard that I lived by this mantra up until just this year. This push towards success and idea of racial suppression I guess is part of what led me to hate being black, and so I decided if I wanted to be successful, I had to be white.
Much of this transformation didn’t really take place until I started at my secondary school which was predominantly white. Whilst I was still quite ‘clued up’ during my primary school days, because we were still innocent, much of those racial divides weren’t evident, but secondary school was my march towards success. I started modelling myself on my white peers. I dressed like them, walked like them, talked like them and listened to the same music as them. I immersed myself in ‘white culture’, all the while going to great lengths to distance myself from black culture. I refused to listen to hip-hop at a time when it was becoming increasingly popular and was infiltrating white households, and providing an important platform for young black people to air their grievances. I told myself it was my belief that it lacked credibility in a musical context, because many of the artists didn’t play instruments; and also the sometimes negative image of black people that it perpetuated.
In truth, as I think about it a little more, it was probably because it associated with black people, and thus I didn’t see it as path to help me become successful. I didn’t even try to find any black artists outside of hip-hop, because black music was not going to help me model my successful self. My relationship with black people began to deteriorate as I got older. I found the other black students ‘too black’, and so made the assertion that they weren’t as serious about becoming a success. I ignored them, maybe even shunned them. This led to me being sometimes being harassed by them. I played the victim, convincing myself that the untoward behaviour being aimed at me was about some jealousy that they had towards me. Looking back I realise that perhaps their behaviour was justified, because I was being passively racist. I disregarded their existence and their response was to verbally abuse me, and for that I am sorry. I wasn’t a white supremacist, but my drive to succeed, to survive had begun to lead me to believe that the only way forward was the ‘white way’ of life.
So I continued to hang out with my white peers for a few years. Everything was going well. We went to each other’s houses, birthday parties, gigs. There were cinema and school trips. This was it. I was becoming accepted. Things started getting a little dicey as we moved closer to our GCSEs. The house parties were starting to get crazier. There was a push towards the fast life, but my instilled lessons from my parents wouldn’t allow me to follow fashion. There were things that I couldn’t do as a black child. There are certain liberties that society would punish me for harder than my colleagues, and so the sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle was not for me. The drift was beginning. It was also around this time that as a teenager you start to look for cues to help you identify yourself. I was steadily falling out of love with rock music, and I started to return to my soul and reggae roots. I have to credit John Legend for his debut album ‘Get Lifted‘ getting me back into my roots. I started to voraciously research black artists from around the world. We spent a lot of time sharing the obscure music we had found in our parents music collection, which in turn shaped our adolescent selves. But there was a problem. While they were sharing their own musical heritage, much of mine was being ignored. No one really seemed interested in the music that had helped shaped my parents. The music that from time to time could be heard filling my house on the weekends. It wasn’t their fault really. It just put a stamp on a further growing issue that we just weren’t that similar. I felt left out, and it was during these last few months in the build up to my GCSEs I started distancing myself from my friends. At the age of 16 I came to the brutal realisation that no matter how hard I tried, no matter how much I immersed myself in their culture, I could never become white.
When the time came I left and went to a different sixth form to do my A levels. Tears were shed, messages were written on shirts, and promises of never forgetting each other were ushered. I will never forget the amazing time that I had spend with these people, and how important they were in helping me navigate my teen years, but I felt we were on different paths. My road to self discovery was a different one to theirs. My sixth form was very different to my secondary school. It was predominantly black. If I was to come to terms with being black, this was a good place to start.
I had an amazing two years there, and I made some amazing friends from all walks of live. I had never been in such a diverse community before. Though I was brought up in the borough of Lewisham, which is incredibly diverse, most of my life I experienced through a classroom, and as a kid my classrooms had lacked such diversity. I was amazed to be surrounded by so many young black minds who were pushing for success like I was, but they hadn’t seemed to have traded in any of their ‘blackness’ to do so. They didn’t share my fear that black was unsuccessful. In fact they seemed spurned on by it, and their confidence and drive helped build my confidence and drive. It was in these two years that I learned how to love being black.
University helped me build confidence in my identity. I wore my race like a badge of honour and took great pride in sharing my culture with others. We were all so interested in each other’s origins, religions, and cultural nuances. We debated (sometimes heatedly) about our cultures’ roles in shaping a future Britain. We all learned so much about each other, and about ourselves. I no longer held on to the anxieties that I had amassed while younger. I was turning them on their head and using them to help succeed, and I found oddly enough that white people were responding to me better than they had been before, when I was masquerading as something that I wasn’t.
After university however, something was still wrong. I still wasn’t quite there yet and I didn’t fully understand what it was until towards the close of 2014. It’s a problem that many black people still suffer with even though we aren’t really aware of it. Even though I was no longer trying to identify as being white, I still sought their approval. For some reason everything I did was for the approval of some nameless, faceless white collective. I wasn’t sure why I needed it, but it didn’t change my feeling that way. It’s an odd thing to understand, and an even odder one to explain, but it is a subtle hangover from slavery. Since slavery we have unconsciously been taught by our parents, by others around us, and the general social climate to seek white approval. It probably started out as fear while as slaves, but that kind of grip that one group can have by oppressing another is hard to shake. It leads to causing the oppressed to become subservient, and it is taking us a while to recover, and it can end up becoming self-sustaining. It’s not too dissimilar to seeking the approval of an abusive parent, or partner. Even though there has been all that bad blood you still want them to accept you. It’s kind of messed up.
My own epiphany came around as a result of a burgeoning music career which is steadily increasing my self confidence, and that of my younger brother and sisters. They ended up going to the same secondary school as me, but being a decade later the school was now far more diverse. They were allowed to celebrate their culture and shared it with many of their peers. There are more positive representations of various ethnic groups, showing that success is possible regardless of your origin. My decision to no longer seek white approval has made me feel so free and confident that I can shape my own future. It seems such a small change, but removing those kinds of shackles from your own mind allows you to achieve for the right reasons. I no longer rely on the help of others, I’m going to do things by myself, for myself. I am no longer going to achieve despite being black, but because of it.
Image: Götz Keller
