England's never been racist
what kind of fuckery is this?
My father owns a corner shop and every day my mother cooks meals for my cousins who run it to enjoy. She always puts aside an extra serving for Chris. Chris is unhoused and white English, he sits at the table in the back room of the shop with my family members every day. My father with his broken English and Chris with his slurring discuss the world's ways.
My parents are Kurdish immigrants from Turkey. We do not have a country of our own. In Turkey we cannot play Kurdish music, speak our language or carry out our faith. My dad - the outspoken Kurdish communist he was, was told after his fourth arrest and torture to not be in Turkey if he wanted to stay alive (he used to let us trace his torture scars and bullet wounds). Since 2013 alone the UK has supplied £2.1 billion worth of arms sales to Turkey, these are the arms the Turkish government has used to carry out the genocide of the Kurdish population in Turkey. But it’s not just in Turkey, the UK has also provided arms for Iraq’s genocidal war on the Kurds and Conservative and Labour governments supported Baghdad’s brutal attack on the Kurds 60 years ago, knowing it may have constituted genocide. When I hear the common “go back to your country!” shouts roaring from all over the UK this past week all I can think is “Where?” if your tax money has helped destroy it, if you’ve left us no choice but to run here and accept cheap labour that was beyond less than what the English workers were going to accept, then that is not our fault, blame your government. Don’t ask us why we came here in the first place when the choice was between that or to be killed.
I understand that mass migration and immigration laws may be flawed, but this does not make me have racist outbursts at people. Understanding things need to change does not make me, or you, or anyone, a racist. I do have outbursts at the system that is built upon the backs of us dirty immigrants, against us dirty immigrants. Many people are surprised to see that there are so many racists in the UK but it’s always been a thing its just been impolite and not British to talk about racism. Women of asian backgrounds are twice as likely to die during childbirth in the UK, black patients are half as likely to be given pain medication as white patients - do I need to spell out where the idea that foreigners feel less pain than us stems from? There simply are immense racial and ethnic disparities in diagnosis and treatment, that’s a fact. 46% of schools do not have teachers from ethnic minority backgrounds. Not only does this cause cracks in students from these excluded backgrounds’ perception of themselves it also means white English students do not see ethnic minority people as leaders, either in a classroom or as headteachers, only fuelling negative stereotypes about people from ethnic minorities backgrounds as not ambitious or not able to be leaders. Hence a lot of white people currently thinking they’re stopping racism by saying things such as “If all the Turks left who would make your Kebab? Who would be your barbers?” echoing Ms Sharon Osbourne’s infamous ‘If You Kick Out Latinos, Who Will Clean Toilets?”
I could go on and on and on listing all the way there’s deep-rooted structural racism in England, but does this make the individuals racist, you ask? Yes. If you live within that structure, you cannot help but be influenced by that structure. If you hear Middle Easterns being talked about as immigrants and roaches in the news but hear Australian immigrants spoken of as ‘expats,’ it’s going to make you think of one being superior to the other. One as being the further away scary person, the other a friendly face to take in and mingle with. Akala explains this better than I ever could in this video here.
My dad is a historian, if I ask my dad about the history of any country, any space, any obscure little moment, he will be able to go on a 3-hour long explanation. He loves animals, his dogs were no different to him than his best friends and now his cat is the princess of the house. He rescues birds and he creates habitats in the garden for as many bugs as possible. He treats his best friends as his brothers and sisters. He handcrafts his own switchblades, birdhouses and canes, carving Kurdish folklore into them. He paints my nails, pulls insane pranks, and speaks of religion as if it will bring the end of the world. Back when he was in Turkey if anyone ever had any issue with anything he would be the guy people would come to and be it nice or rough he would get the problem solved. He was ‘that man.’
But coming to England did a number on him, being filled with so much passion and zest for life, for knowledge, for learning and teaching, but also not even being able to fully speak the language needed to communicate all of this, as well as the vile racism he faced every week not that different from that he left back home, caused frustration and depression that he will never understand.
Having to come here and start up a whole new life without any money, hardly any help, no language and a whole different culture was tough and took a lot from him but never paid him back. He would go to English lessons at night and during the day he worked at the factories for almost a quarter of what his English co-workers were making. He worked and worked and worked, and back home his friends passed away one by one as a result of the government he had to run from, so he had no choice but to stay. He was working in the very same system that he had spent so long fighting against. He chugged on for a future for his children, never once forgetting his past and all he left behind. Never forgetting the blood that never stops spilling. Funerals he cannot attend, a home on a street he can no longer recall, time does not stop.
He still is knowledgeable and passionate and he loves living almost as much as love itself. My dad has hammered into us what he calls ‘the fundamentals of a good life’ - the importance of living fully because you could die tomorrow, spending all you have bc hoarding money is wrong as you can’t take it to the grave, and not dying with the dead - it’s what they’d want. But the most important thing of all is to love one another with all you have - because it’s all we have, he taught us to only live out of love, even in a country that hates you, love is the thing they cannot take from us.
And he still is one of the most interesting people I know, no matter how much this country/system has tried to dim him. It’s as though the old him, the one who was passionate and loud and mischievous isn’t necessarily gone but just sitting in him waiting to find a spark again, peeking out occasionally for a breath of fresh air when he visits Turkey in the summertime. Oftentimes I will catch him staring at one photo in particular. He is in his 20s lying on his friend’s sofa, he’s bandaged up from the fresh bullet wound he had taken earlier that day, he has a bottle of whiskey in his hand, his hair is beyond shoulder length, his friends sit by him laughing so loud their eyes have disappeared. I see him looking at it and wishing he was there, I see him struggle to recognise who he was before he had to leave it all for a place so unwelcoming to his soul now, welcome to England.
It’s warmth and love that the culture here lacks. There is a serious lack of vital community networks and the system of “villages” because people are bred to be hyper-individualistic. A lot of the racist English people hate foreigners because of the voice and joy we gain through our communities, they can’t stand the idea of community because what they do not know scares them. They hate that these foreigners come together and suddenly have money, family and happiness thanks to these intricate community networks. They’ve never been ones to try and learn, they’ve never been ones to try and change. They’ve never needed to. So they remain alone and shun everything foreign, they get miserable and hateful.
Coming to this country was hell. If the journey was terrible, the debt was worse. The initial loss of family, community, and belonging, was hell. Adapting to this country was even worse, having to give up your culture, minimise your views, and smile and wave at all the neighbours who scream racist remarks at you was dehumanising. Casual racism is huge in England, being asked if it’s because we are Muslims that we aren’t choosing the pork option at pub Sunday lunch, being told by new friends about how she’s got with soooo many “exotic men,” being told to go back to a country we don’t even have or belong too when accidentally bumping into someone at the shops. Being asked if we celebrate Christmas, and then when we say yes being asked why, being told it’s crazy we care so much for our elderly, leaving who we are at the airport gates every year knowing it would be too much and it could attract the eyes of a racist. All of this is light work.
Wondering if the henna from our wedding celebrations is too dark, too foreign, catching people looking disgusted when I speak to my parents on the phone in Turkish only to smile when I switch to English, being told by my favourite teacher to not plan for university because I’m Kurdish I’ll be married off before I’m 15, being told by another teacher not to be too proud I’ve been selected for the talented exclusive drama group as he only picked me to amp up diversity points, being told by my ex-boyfriends family that my culture is stupid and that I should be allowed to fuck my boyfriend in my parents home as a teenager because that’s “what real British people do.” Watching my parents being told by the police that they should sell their home and move because the racist neighbour that spits on them and makes pig noises at them every morning is “just like that” (they do eventually move), hearing someone ask my mum if she’s the safe kind of Muslim, and then argue when mum lets her know we aren’t even Muslim - we aren’t religious at all! Being asked if Kurdish people are even real or made up. This is all light work, British pride was never on the cards for us because they were never proud of our sacrifices and hard work, why the fuck would we be proud to be British?
It’s so easy to feel as though nobody cares for their neighbours here, nobody cares for their morals, ethics and values. Friends whom I love dearly will share beds with men who proudly proclaim immigrants cannot read maps because they never learnt ‘our language’ - a language which doesn’t even originate from here. In crowded rooms, I will discuss my opinions on England’s treatment of the Welsh, the Irish, and the Scots and watch as scoff and ignore it and I will know it’s because a dumb foreigner should stay out of English politics. Plus, it’s not polite to discuss these matters, not if you’re English.
A friend will sit at Friendsgiving and loudly and proudly laugh and boast about his stocks in arms, the very same arms that are being used to destroy my people. It’s okay because he has an Indian girlfriend! One whose family has stated could’ve disowned her for dating him - to this, he responds it’s a good thing he won’t have to go to family meet-ups then, not understanding just how much she is sacrificing for him because he will never understand just how much family means these filthy foreigners. She is not like one of the other Indians, she is his. We will not speak of it. It’s not polite to discuss these matters, not if you’re English.
Racism in England isn’t a thing, they say. Racism in England is so quiet, they say. Racism in England isn’t “the harmful kind” they say.
Neighbours who we share food with will be heard shouting racist words at Pakistani people who stood too close to their front gate when tying their kid’s shoelaces. My father came home one day and told us Chris had told him it was because of immigrants like him that he didn’t have a home, between mouthfuls of homemade Kurdish food. My mother will send food again next week, he doesn’t deserve to starve she will say as we watch protestors burn down a hotel housing refugees, there are kids outside laughing.
My dad calls his remaining friends back home. They are sat over a BBQ, bottles in hand, they’re singing Kurdish songs of freedom, songs proclaiming one day we will have a home again. My father joins in from the sofa on this side of the world, tears in our eyes we sing. My brother struggles to understand, it’s not English he says, it’s not us.
I don’t want to be here either but I have no place else to go, we have no interest in paying taxes that go towards arms that kill us, we have no interest in forging friendships with people from school or neighbours that we know will only ever be surface level because we are ‘the other.’ We do not want to watch our kids not know our language because we no longer speak anything but English at home as speaking Turkish could make us a target of racists outdoors, whereas their English classmates get French lessons on Fridays and speak it loud and proud. All this is only for people to point out mispronunciations in our English anyway. But we do not have a home to go back to, your government helped that, point your hatred at them trust me we don’t want to be here as much as you don’t want us here.
We work harder because we have to prove our worth, we ask for less so we aren’t accused of being a strain on recourses, we leave life behind in pursuit of fitting in. I was born here, I was raised here, and I only know my life as that of which I’ve had here, the hospital I was born in sits down the street from my elderly aunt’s home - the very same aunt that has had to shelter at her daughters house this week. But still, I am unwelcome here, England is not my home, you don’t need to burn hotels or riot in the streets to make me aware of this, I’ve always known.
But we never forget who we are. We are so much more love and light than you will ever be and that hurts your rotten core. It hurts you that you take and take and take and yet we sit here singing, in our language, for our freedom, we still hope. We live here now, whether you like it or not. We fall in love here and we hurt here and we curse and dance and cry and sing here. We build communities and look out for one another here, we do belong here, even if it’s not home. And we would’ve built these communities with you too had you let us in.
We have never known home, we have nothing to lose and this isn’t something we aren’t used to. So shout all you want, I know where I live, this has always been my experience of England, the only difference is it’s on TV now! I know you’re rotten down to your system, down to your core, you’ve been instilled it from childhood, you always come to us as individuals, come again and let us show you what damage and what good a real community can do.