White girls are worth saving in the UK. Why not our Asian girls?
There is an ugly double standard in the UK care system
It is January 2009, and a 15 year old girl has just started her GCSEs. She dreams of being a history teacher someday. On weekends, she goes shopping in Birmingham town centre with her friends or mum. But in just six months time, she will be put on a plane, forced to have sex with a 52 year old man she has never met, and give up all her dreams. She’s not coming back.
Sound like a horror story? It happens to thousands of British girls and young women every year.
If Sally Jones, aged 15 from a white family, went missing from school and care records, and was trafficked to be a child bride in another country, it would make national news. But if that girl just happens to be born Neeta Banerjee, suddenly no one cares.
She slips away quietly into raised eyebrows and tuts of ‘lost potential’. If this happens to a white girl, it is abuse. If it happens to an Asian or black girl, it is tradition. The racism in the system is disgusting. The abuse is covered in glittering saris, orientalist fetishism, and voyeuristic black and white photographs of quaint little huts in Balochistan. These girls are robbed of their childhood, denied the same opportunities, protection and and education as their white peers, and it is fetishised as culture. Reality isn’t sitting in an ‘exotic’ sari surrounded by mangoes and delicious coffee, it’s being forced into an often alien landscape with a much older man and expected to serve him and give up your education and freedom. That is a choice no fifteen year old girl can make, whatever her melanin level.
Why is it that my white skin makes me a victim, someone to be protected from wicked men and slavery, but a girl hovering on sixteen with darker skin is simply a blushing bride? Ready to marry a man she’s never met? Ready to be a mother, give up her qualifications and chance at university? My friend Fatima (not her real name) lost almost a fifth of her sixth form friends to ‘tradition’ in Manchester. Over half of those were under 17.
When girls in many conservative families are deemed too western, or even worse, caught with a boyfriend, they are immediately match made with men back in India or Pakistan and sent home, often against their will. These girls are not meek little obedient pawns, these girls are British minors in need of protection from the state. Tradition and culture must never outweigh a girl’s right to a future and freedom. We need to get out of this orientalist attitude that these girls are not being abused by being married off abroad.
Frankly I think any child getting married, abroad or otherwise, under 18 needs to have access to child councillors and social support before they make that decision. Similarly, any child who gets lost from the system needs to be followed up. Excusing it as a ‘cultural matter’ is not acceptable. How unforgiveably racist it is to say that my underage, white childhood is worth saving due to ‘cultural tradition’ but another 15 year old’s is not? How are we not outraged by this?
More needs to be done. We are losing far too many brilliant, wonderful British-Asian girls to outdated, colonialist racism. Every British girl is a British girl, whatever their colour.
If you think you know someone at risk of being trafficked into marriage abroad, please follow the link below:
https://www.gov.uk/stop-forced-marriage
If you need access to lawyer or professional help, please contact me privately on twitter ( @MadelaineLucieH ) and I will try and line you up with suitable contacts. I will never pass on any issues of illegal immigration or private data to the police without your consent.
