#AbolishBAME Campaign

Society Has Progressed Beyond the Need of the Term BAME

2 min readAug 7, 2020

Going from Africa to the UK, from being Burundian (as I was taught) to being Black, I was stripped from my nation-hood, African-hood,
I liked it, although I had to then backtrack and remind people that I wasn’t born here, I’m actually African, and Burundian, (to people’s surprise considering my accent)
It taught me that people will see me primarily as black, and everything else was secondary. I was okay with that? You identify with a title, when you identify with the community associated with it, when you identify with the communities’ culture, hardships, traditions, lived experiences etc. There were plenty of experiences and cultures that black immigrants, black British people identified with.

So I have assimilated into Black British culture, growing up since I was 5, absorbing the culture whilst also learning about other identities, e.g. Indians’, Chinese, Pakistanis, Arabs, British, Polish etc. As a black person when interacting with other races & ethnicities I learnt to lead with my blackness and follow up with my African-hood, my ethnicity.
Until… It wasn’t long until all the ethnicities I had learnt became amalgamated into two categories, white & non-white. Suddenly we were rushed into one room, whilst white people were rushed into another.
At my school, the population reflected the world. A majority of the population were ethnic minorities, so you could imagine how disorientating it was for the majority to have to learn a new common identity, BAME, much like I had learnt upon arriving in the UK.
I won’t pretend that there weren’t some areas that this worked well, we shared our immigrant experiences whether it was our grandparents our ourselves that emigrated into the UK, we all had some experience of racism to varying extents, we all had our traditions, cultures that had to be assimilated into UK culture etc.
Nonetheless, we still had different experiences

Our experience of discrimination and oppression (although still varying) may derive from the same place i.e. colonialism, imperialism, racism, microaggressions, experiences of and in public policies.
Our specific experiences of discrimination and oppression, however, vary dramatically.
Even outside of minority status, our ethnic differences i.e. our cultural, historic backgrounds, our foods, our literature etc. should be acknowledged, identified, directed and celebrated