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Why This Man’s Daughter is Scared to Visit America
Racism | Diversity
“I don’t want to visit somewhere where I can get shot for doing nothing,” said my dual-heritage daughter, when we were discussing a possible trip to the US. Unspoken were the words “because I look black”. I would have loved to tell her she was wrong, but I couldn’t.
I don’t usually talk about race online. And it’s not because I don’t care. I do, almost too much, but sometimes I don’t want to discuss it any more. And sometimes I can’t believe that in 2016, we still have to think about these issues, much less talk about them. But the conversation with my daughter made me think it was time to break my silence.
Lately, every other day it seems there’s news of the shooting of an unarmed black male (and occasionally a female). Later, he usually turns out to be innocent. Even for those that aren’t squeaky clean, the “reach for the gun” approach favored by many US cops seems excessive and downright crazy to those of us looking on from the outside.
I’m British-born, Caribbean raised and have divided my adult life between the two cultures. In both Barbados and the UK, where most police aren’t armed, the police culture in the US — and the gun culture in general — leaves us puzzled, particularly in the wake of so many studies that say that when you get rid of the guns, fewer people are shot.
Makes sense, right?
I’m all in favor of freedom. My ancestors marched, fought and died for their right to be seen as equal. But when one person’s freedom impinges on another person’s right to live without fear, something is wrong.
But the question of race is bigger than the issue of who’s most likely to get shot. It’s about systematic discrimination and oppression of the rights of one group over another.
Even in the UK, where getting shot for no reason is less of an problem for people of color, there are still issues to contend with. Black people are more vulnerable to stop and search requests and, as in the US, black males form a disproportionate amount of the prison population, relative to their demographic presence.
In both countries, some of the best-intentioned people are also the most clueless, wanting to hope that things are better than ever for people of color. After all, don’t we have equality legislation in place?
Legislation is a good start but it doesn’t stop discrimination.
I’ve had my share of racial discrimination, across more than 40 years and several countries. Some incidents that stand out include
● Pointing, staring and whispering in France
● Evaporating accommodation in London
● Being denied entry to a restaurant in New York — this happened this year with a couple of friends
● Losing out on jobs for which I was clearly better qualified (I happened to know one of the other candidates and we discussed this)
Yes, on both sides of the Atlantic, some of us still have to work twice as hard to be considered half as good.
And I haven’t even had it bad. Among my black friends, almost all can tell of similar or worse experiences.
Sure, some things have improved, but they’re a long way away from being perfect.
As a black person, everything you do is under scrutiny and actions that pass without comment from other ethnicities somehow become a reason to tear you down. As we’ve seen with Gabby Douglas and Simone Biles, you could win Olympic gold for your country and still be criticized.
Even away from those dizzy heights people will still question your choices. I’ve had well meaning liberals offer their views on race as though I should applaud them, while simultaneously uttering vacuous comments about my name, choice of residence, background and education. I’ve been the victim of other people’s assumptions, positive and negative.
The partial antidote to this is something all people of color have to learn — how to present yourself in a certain way to make white people feel comfortable with you. We all know about the unwritten rules about how you must appear and behave to avoid attracting negative attention and we teach those to our children to protect them while resenting the need to do so.
That still doesn’t always stop incidents from happening, especially in the US, where it seems that trigger happy individuals somehow have the right to shoot first and ask questions later, especially if your skin is the “wrong” shade.
To my daughter and many others like her, racism doesn’t make sense. Discrimination on the basis of ethnicity is, quite simply, silly. But she reads the news and knows that that conviction won’t save her if she happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
That’s why I can’t blame her for feeling afraid of visiting America when there are so many instances where there is a huge disparity in the response to perceived wrong doing depending on the color of your skin, and where the “shoot first and ask later” policy seemingly operated by many law enforcement officers puts her life at risk if she’s there. Sure, she’s a teenager, but she knows that in the US teen and tween boys are gunned down, so it’s not just adults that are at risk.
I’d love to be able to tell her she’s wrong and she will be safe, but I can’t, because we’re not there yet and who knows if we ever will be. Instead, I pass down the knowledge of how to be invisible — or at least acceptable — so no-one ever has to add her name to that long list of people shot in America. I don’t want to see her or anyone else I know in the headlines for the wrong reasons. There are plenty of other places in the world where black people are less likely to be shot. Maybe it’s time to visit some of those.
In the meantime, here’s my message to everyone who cares about this: let’s keep talking, writing and making videos. Let’s keep highlighting inequality. Let’s shout loudly when someone gets it wrong — and when they get it right. Only when we are ALL willing to engage with issues of race, whatever our own ethnicity, will we have a hope of putting it right.