How to be Anti-racist

I am sometimes a pretty embarrassing person. I talk to animals, constantly, like they are humans. I, literally, have full conversations in my garden, with the cats that live next door. I spend a lot of my time managing my self-shame at being rubbish, or getting something wrong or being embarrassing. I’m a perfectionist for this reason because who likes to walk around feeling ashamed of themselves?

However, one of the things I am really proud of is that I have been a practitioner of anti-racism for as long as I can remember. I have actively striven for all kinds of equality for most of my life. I am an active feminist: I believe in furthering the rights and fair treatment of women in society and in the workplace (you can check the “feminism” section on this website if you want to read about that). I am a supporter of LGBT rights. I am also anti-racist. And I’ll disclaim that I haven’t always got it right. I haven’t always noticed the things I should. I haven’t always been in the position (or had the audience) to fight, loudly about racism. The desire is there though, to see a better, fairer society for us all.

I have seen racism with my own eyes. It is real. it is happening in our society. (And even if you don’t see it yourself, it’s there. Ask POC!)

• I saw it when… I got the bus to school and I heard my school friends talking horribly about “dirty immigrants” and how “they should get out of our country”.
• I saw it when… kids at school called people “Pakis”.
• I saw it when… someone called my friend a “chocolate bar” and the perpetrator lied and told the teacher it was because he’d called him the “milky bar kid”.
• I saw it when… we were teenagers and one of the boys in my class was black and the most intelligent (with the nicest handwriting, man I was so jealous of his handwriting!) but he was always being distracted by drama and fighting.
• I saw it when… I worked in a retail shop and Indian women would return clothes and people in the shop would refuse to take them back because they smelled like curry.
• I saw it when… I worked in a pub and I’d see drunk men having a go at black or brown people because of their race.
• I saw it when… I worked for a media company and our manager was racist and didn’t want to hire the most talented candidate because of his skin colour (and some preexisting assumptions he made that such people were “lazy” based on nothing other than the colour of their skin).
• I saw it when.. I heard a woman get shouted at on a train for her race.
• I saw it when… my British grandad used racist slurs.
• I saw it when… my dad told me grandad called him a “dirty immigrant” and forbade my mum from marrying him .
• I saw it… when one of the newspapers I worked for wrote racist articles about immigrants.

So you’re probably thinking, you saw all that shit – did you just sit there? Didn’t you do anything? Dear Reader, you don’t know we very well, do you? I can be a very difficult person when it comes to equality…

• When I saw it… on the bus to school and heard my school friends talking horribly about “dirty immigrants” and how they “should get out of our country”… I responded, “Did you know my dad’s an immigrant?” And they’d all look at me shocked because I was an “invisible” 2nd generation immigrant. And go, “Well, no obviously we don’t mean you.” And I’d say, “Ok, well who do you mean then?” And they’d go silent. Because we all know they’re racist because they mean “non-white” immigrants.
• When I saw it… when kids at school called people “Pakis”… I would say that’s unacceptable and don’t be racist.
• When I saw it… when someone called my friend a “chocolate bar” and the perpetrator lied and told the teacher it was because he’d called him the “milky bar kid”… I told the teacher what really happened; eventually that boy was suspended (after many other incidents).
• When I saw it… when I worked in a retail shop and Indian women would return clothes and people in the shop would refuse to take them back because they smelled like curry… I would question them on it and they’d claim they couldn’t be returned because they didn’t have the tags & I’d say, “Yes, but you accept untagged returns from white people all the time”.
• When I saw it… when I worked in a pub and would see drunk men having a go at black or brown people because of their race…. I’d ask the person being had a go at if they were okay, before launching into an anti-racist attack on the offenders and kicking them out of the pub. (Much to the dismay of the Owners. People did complain about me.)
• When I saw it… when I worked for a media company and our manager was racist and didn’t want to hire the most talented candidate because of his skin colour… I said he was the best candidate and we should hire him. (I can only apologise to the person in question for this because he was subject to racism for basically the whole time he worked there, even when I asked if he could report to me so that he wouldn’t have to deal with him. We both ended up leaving that company – and it was good riddance from both of us!)
• When I saw it… when I heard a woman get shouted at on the tube because of her race… I told the man on the tube off so fiercely, he got off at the next stop.
• When I saw it… when my British grandad used racist slurs… I’d tell him that he couldn’t say that about people and he’d say “It’s my house, I can say what I want.” I had no answer for that, other than to ask my dad if we could go home now.
• When I saw it… when one of the newspapers I worked for wrote racist articles about immigrants… I immediately emailed our lawyers and asked for legal advice as it was racist. I found out about it because Facebook flagged this to me as racist content, so it had grounds to be removed. The regional Editor didn’t want to remove it, quote, “because it will get loads of hits”, but I got our lawyers involved to get it taken down, which it was a couple of days later (facepalm) – unfortunately after the damage had been done.

I may have been branded a “trouble-maker” so many times in my life (“Oh Luisa, you are so dramatic, why do you care what people say?”), but I look at the world today and I’m proud I stood up for what I believe in. And I see the protests now (Disclaimer: protests I won’t be attending because of Coronavirus and my health conditions) and I am proud of everyone who, peacefully, marches to support the rights of others . It’s up to every single one of us (both white and POC) to call this out. We may get branded as troublemakers; we may fear being let go of our jobs – and this is, especially, true for POC such as John Boyega who admitted at the protest that “I don’t know if I’m going to have a career after this, but fuck that.” (source: the guardian); we may face detention at school; we may upset our racist elders but it is essential work. It is uncomfortable, but essential and, more importantly, it is the right thing to do. I am not condoning violence, though, ever. And I hope, in our country, we have enough freedoms to exert social change without needing to use it.