Brown, Working Class

Indian Arms Workers Train in Britain- War Industry at Letchworth, Hertfordshire, England, UK, 1941

Wikimedia Commons

Racism; I was always aware of it, there was never a time when it didn’t happen. I don’t remember a specific fall from innocence or an isolated verbal assault, just the fact that it was always there.

“Your auntie spends loads of money going on holiday so she can go the same colour as you.”

My well-meaning, (white) mother used to say to me when I was little. I felt that she was missing the point somewhat but I couldn’t quite articulate this. I didn’t really feel it would cut it as a counter slur in the playground. I couldn’t say to the other kids - yeah, you’re calling me these names but my Auntie, who you’ve never met, pays loads of money to get a kick-ass ‘tan’ like mine! (She [my Mum] also told me to thump anyone who called me any names, which was quite an effective method, but didn't really offer a long-term solution!)

Years later, a horrible little shit at school told me that my skin was like coffee with loads and loads of milk poured in and I remember thinking - yeah, and that’s supposed to be an insult? It meant that I was a coffee-cream; my favourite chocolate in the box!

“Blackie” was their missile of choice, when I was a kid, and, misguided as this sounds, it had a rather innocuous ring to it, in comparison to the much harsher sounding ‘Paki’.

So, anyway, I knew that I wasn’t living in some all-encompassing, tolerant and lovely Utopia  but what I did assume, again misguidedly, was that things would improve when I was an adult.

And they kind of did, for me. In that I wasn’t subjected to daily abuse. But, as we see every wearisome day, things did not improve on a wider, global level.

I kind of assumed that the world would have moved on by the time I had kids and that people in general would be less racist. How naive of me. I now believe that history moves in a wheel rather than a progressive, upward slant. Every now and then the wheel dips into a shitty puddle. The far-right are on the move again and even a cursory glance at social media; yes, even at what (some of) my own virtual ‘friends’ post or share, shows that racism hasn’t abated.

When it came to class, as a perennial outsider, I never really felt truly ‘working class’, not because our economic circumstances indicated anything else, but because, as usual, it felt like a club I hadn’t been invited to. I look back into the nebulous past and see ‘working class’ as being a group of kids with their backs turned.

“No, you can’t join our gang.” They’re saying. “You don’t call your grandmother, ‘Nan’ and some of your cooking smells funny.”

In addition to this, one of the things I got bullied for, at secondary school, was my supposedly ‘posh’ accent! I don’t think I had much of an accent and perhaps that was the problem; Dad was Sri Lankan, Mum was from Wales and, I hypothesised, my accent was some kind of neutral in-between, I didn’t talk like a local. (Or maybe I got bullied for using words like ‘hypothesised’) This feeling of being outside of the working class seems particularly pertinent at the moment, when people are attributing Brexit and the election of (spits) Trump, to the fact that politicians have too long ignored the concerns of the ‘white, working class’. But, as some commentators are keen to point out https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/17/trump-brexit-minorities-working-class; the working class is made up of all ethnicities. We/they have been there for years; working in the factories, driving the busses, nursing, cleaning, building, engineering etc, etc.

These days I feel more working class than I ever have; despite living in an area that a friend once referred to, scathingly, as a ‘bourgeois enclave’.

The people at the top will always seek to divide and rule, to harness any potential tensions between the different communities because they realise that, as a mass, the working class makes up the biggest proportion of people and are powerful and dangerous. http://www.peterloomassacre.org/shelley.html

So - 'the working class' - you didn’t invite me but I’ve joined anyway (in fact was always there, skating along beside you). Come, comrades, up the revolution!