RACISM Black and white

Growing up in black and white
Vron Ware is white, her partner is black. And, since people see any
shade of brown skin as black, their son Marcus is black, too.
Together they are learning what racism means.

THE first time my son was called a nigger, he was about 16 months old. The insult, delivered by a crabby old man in an overcoat, stomping through the park, was directed at Marcus in his pushchair but intended for me to hear. I called the man back and told him to repeat what he had said to me. I was more shocked that he could be made angry by the sight of a child than by his actual words.

He came back and repeated what he had said. ‘Another little nigger’. ‘What’s a nigger?’ I retorted, trying to think of a way to get back at him. ‘A coon, another little coon,’ he spat in reply. Just then a young white couple rushed up and began to abuse him. We all shouted at each other for a bit and then he walked off. There was no point in arguing. This old man was past redemption.

I was glad to have had support, as I don’t know what else I would have done. But I didn’t know what to say to the couple as we walked on through the park. The shock of what had happened hit me a few minutes later and I went on my way.

I forget that people see my child as black, as other, as different and somehow separate from me. That was the first shock. Of course on one level I am prepared for that, but not for the hatred, for someone wishing the baby dead.

For racists, for those who see black people as alien, ‘or inferior, a white woman with a black lover or a child is highly disturbing. ‘Race-mixing’ is not only symbolic treason, it is above all ’unnatural’. The famous radical William Cobbett, writing at the beginning of the last century, complained bitterly at the way English women consorted with former West Indian slaves who had found their way over to the ‘mother’ country: ‘Amongst white women, this disregard of decency, this defiance of the dictates of nature, this foul, this beastly propensity is, I say it with sorrow and shame, peculiar to the English’.

One of the fundamental institutions of apartheid is the law which prohibits marriage between black and white. It is illegal even to be a child of ‘mixed race’. The crime is not symmetrical; white men have always got away with treating black women in whatever way they please. Traditionally men are not considered responsible for reproducing the race. That has always been the role of white women. In Nazi Germany women who were caught in the company of Jewish or other non-Aryan men were paraded through the streets with shaved heads. The culture that produced the man in the park wants to ‘protect’ white women from sexual contact with black men, not only because whites feel threatened by ideas about black sexuality but also because they fear a watering down of the race.

Looking back over the last 30 years, Stuart Hall identifies this fear of miscegenation as the central clue to the panic induced by black immigration in the 50s and 60s. ‘It is as if in the middle of the vast number of ways of representing the Black presence, in words and images, one topic, virtually unspoken, lay at the centre of the discourse, driving those who contemplate it crazy, like a shadow across the collective unconscious. In the mirror of the imagery - screaming to be spoken; the trauma of black and white people together, making love, finding their sexuality with each other and having children as the living proof that against God and nature, it worked.’

Children with black and white parents signify not only that ‘it works’ but also that they are part of Britain’s future. Racist propaganda is full of pictures of playgrounds or classrooms: black children growing up in the English system.

The most hurtful thing I could think of to say to the old man in the park was ‘at least you won’t be around for much longer’. To which he replied, ‘There are a lot more like me’. At this point I should have said, ‘Well, there are far, far more of us’. And there are, but I was suddenly paralysed by a vivid image of small groups of embittered whites meeting together to try to stop dear old England being ‘swamped’ by a tide of multiracialism.

This image is terrifying because of the violence, the intimidation which these groups create in reality. But in fact this is only one end of a spectrum of racism, and less dangerous ultimately than those more pragmatic or subtle forms which can pass as ignorance or common sense.

As, for example, when a person feels compelled to comment on a child’s skin colour, features or hair, as though discussing a cross- bred puppy. ‘Is your child half another nationality?’ asked a complete stranger once. ‘Isn’t he interesting-looking,’ gushed another, who went on to describe other combinations she had encountered.

This kind of curiosity, indicating that some people need an explanation of a child’s appearance if it differs from its parent, may seem harmless enough. But it’s another reminder that race is in the eye of the beholder. That people see that before they see him.

Round where we live there are lots of so-called racially mixed children. Mine will not feel unusual or isolated as long as we stay there. As he grows up, the most important thing is that he learns to place himself in the complex of cultural and political relationships which brought his parents together. He’ll need to know how to respond when kids his own age start calling him ‘nigger’ or ‘paki’ or whatever they’ll be calling each other in five years time. More worrying is how his teachers will treat him, or the police in the streets, worries shared by parents of all black children.

I learned a valuable lesson from the encounter in the park. Before then I wasn’t sure if people saw Marcus as black. Not completely English to be sure, but not a coon. He’s 18 months old now and will soon need a bit more of an explanation if a stranger starts shouting at him for no apparent reason. I’m glad that the old man said out loud what a lot of people think. Both Marcus and I are now older, wiser and stronger as a result.