peter
“I had just moved to a new school in Crawley, just outside of London. I obviously had an accent. I remember being outside on the playground and the kids would be dancing together singing: ‘United Kingdom! United Kingdom!’ and then they would all stop to point at me and chant: ‘AFRICA! AFRICA!’ I remember the feeling of almost peeing myself. Horrible…
I have experienced racism throughout my life. After a certain point, I just got used to it and instead of dealing and processing each incident, you try to forget about them and just get on with life. For me, it definitely became a thing. I got somewhat desensitised. A couple of days ago, somebody I used to work with got in touch about a shoot we did together years ago and said: ‘I’m getting in touch because I want to apologise to you. Remember when we were on a shoot together and some people walking by said really nasty racist things to you? I didn’t say anything at the time. I turned around and pretended that it didn’t happen, I can’t get it out of my head. It has hurt me ever since.’ I tried recalling the event, but I just couldn’t remember this experience. Probably because it was just one of many. I mean, it must have been painful at the time, but I just shook it off. There were events that I will never forget though, like the day I was walking by College Green and these teenage girls threw eggs at me, shouting ‘Fucking nigger!’ or when I was standing on a crowded LUAS and a group of people made monkey faces at me from outside. I turned around and everybody around me pretended they didn’t see it. I could talk about the hundreds of times when I was told to go back to my own country. I was actually told this by a homeless person sitting on the street, after me apologising for not having change with me. Ireland is my country! I am at home!
Someone just recently told me that if people are so racist to you here, why don’t you just emigrate? I work around people all the time. I know that people in Dublin are overwhelmingly great, but racism is present – we need to find a way to combat it! I have a son; he is four-years-old. While I wish I did not have to have ‘the talk’ with him. I’ll still have to prepare him for experiences that I won’t be around for…”