I must admit when I first saw the title I came with a negative attitude. Not because I think of myself as white but because I thought you were going to come with a piece against whites. Which you did but it was truly something from a different place and when I finished I didn’t feel diminished just educated.
I’ll try and make myself clear hear. I have no clue how you define my heritage, not because I’m not interested but because it’s too dammn complicated to hang a simple label on me. I live in England; I am a mixture of English, Irish, Welsh and Scottish blood but it gets more complicated. I bring this up at a time in the UK when the question of what it is to be English is being brought up due to the devolution of our political processes. There have been Welsh and Scottish assemblies set up and people have noticed the strong national identities present in these counties and are asking what about us? The problem is that when people start talking about the English our colonial past, rule Britannia and the great Anglo-Saxon Englishman are the things that are the most commonly talked about. I heard a musician called Billy Bragg talk about this at one of his concerts; one of his songs was about the most important part of Anglo-Saxon being the hyphen. There is no such thing as a pure bred Englishman; they are a mix of Celtic, Scandinavian, Saxon and various Europeans. Why does this upset them? Because the kind of person who believes in this lie is the kind of xenophobic person who hates all Europeans, Asians and blacks but yet they have no idea of where they truly come from. I have witnessed this in the flesh, at the moment I live in a halls of residence in Cambridge and we have a broad range of nationalities and colours represented in the building. There is a guy who perpetuates this xenophobic attitude, he will start talking all sort of rubbish at the foreigners and talk shit about race but he is a product of his upbringing and environment. There is no way to communicate with him on this because he is set in his way and there is no point in brow beating him. Now where am I going with this?
Well, labels are dangerous because they are simply words used to define people and a person is a very complicated thing to describe with a single word. There is too much room for interpretation and misinterpretation, unless we educate people about open-mindedness early how are we going to persuade people that colour or geography or whatever else sets you apart as different doesn’t matter. That celebrating our differences and knowing our history as it applies to the world today is important.
At the time of the Stephen Lawrence enquiry Spike Lee was over here and was interviewed about the report. He was asked whether he was surprised about what was currently going on in Britian and he replied why shouldn’t it happen to us in Britain? I can’t remember exactly what he said so don’t quote me on this but I’d like to ask a question. Have you got any idea how we move forward? If a guy who is black looks at me and discounts me because of my colour that is unfair on me as a person but I can’t blame him considering his probable experiences. Just how am I personally meant to deal with this? Sorry for the length but I am as confused on this issue as anyone is and while you have been concentrating on the American issues I thought that as it is a universal problem I’d drop my two pennies worth.