Grandma’s Rules
Dress smartly. Speak properly. Be polite, smile.
Those are a few words of wisdom bestowed upon me as a child by my Mum and Grandma. Pretty bog-standard advice. Advice that I’m sure most of us heard more than a few times in our formative years.
Dress smartly. Speak properly. Be polite, smile. Them’s the rules.
With this in mind, let us revisit a recent Friday night. Myself, Dan and Kofi, two of my Wakanda Social Club collaborators, are at a BBC networking event in Central London, connecting young black people in the media. The room is full of young black faces hailing from all over the world, networking and celebrating, feeding off each other’s energy. Dancing, singing, drinking; a Shaku Shaku over here, Qwara Qwara over there. I’m Milly Rocking to Bad and Boujee. We’re living and rejoicing in what is a truly exciting time for young creatives who look like us.
We leave the event for a friend’s 30th birthday drinks and head for an infamous row of bars in South West London. “I fucking hate ____”. Yep, so do I, but it’s a birthday and I’m not ready to stop shaking a foot just yet. We approach the venue. There’s a bit of a queue, nothing major. I revisit the rules.
Dress smartly. Speak properly. Be polite, smile.
“We should be fine, I’ve been in here plenty of times”, I say, trying to convince myself as much as I am my companions. The elephant in the room that we each try to ignore is that it is often hard enough for any three single men to get in the venue, let alone whilst bearing your oversized black luggage.
Don’t forget the rules.
Rule 1 – Dress smartly. I look at our three; Woollen overcoats, cable-knit jumpers, toe-cap boots, Kofi wearing the shit out of his Kente cloth. Not a tracksuit, nor baseball cap in sight. We’re three well-dressed men, owning smart casual (Sorry, not sorry — self-love is important, people).
Rule 2 – Speak properly. With each of us hailing from Yorkshire, we come equipped with an accent that often throws people off. “I didn’t expect you to sound like that!” (Translation — I thought you lot only came in Pidgin, Patois or Rude-boy, this is very confusing for me and I‘d appreciate it if you’d explain yourself). Put simply, we sound more Emmerdale than SBTV.
Rule 3 – Be polite, smile. I’ve played this game before — we all have. I’m ready to kill all of you with kindness. Just let me in the club.
“You’re not coming in without any girls”. We were ready for this go-to line for all-male groups, so we have the story primed. I calmly, politely explain that we are here for a birthday and the rest of the party is already inside. I sound like a sycophant and I hate myself for it (I’m talking tongue right up the proverbial). After being instructed to call the host to validate my story, he comes out to explain that our party is actually female heavy, so the ratio is absolutely not an issue.
My pulse grows stronger, words start to spill.
Stick to the rules.
We dance for another few rounds, with our friends watching awkwardly from the other side of the fence trying to reason with the bouncers — all of us now trapped inside this living metaphor. It’s awkward for them; it’s awkward for us, but they need to see this. Eventually, our validity is confirmed by our Caucasian brothers and we’re allowed into the queue. Not the club, the queue.
Once we get to the front of the queue, we receive a familiar eyeballing from the head honcho. “I’m gonna do you a favour. I’ve seen you in here before, that’s why we’re letting you in…but I don’t want any trouble from you three”. “If you’ve seen me in here before and know I’m not a trouble-maker, why did you need to say that?” I half mutter, disgusted that my begging-ass self has just had to put money in this man’s hand. I’m tired of this game, I just want a drink and to wheel-up my two-step.
Why didn’t you say the same to the group of wiry white lads you let in directly before us? Where’s your self-respect, Dom?
Remember the rules.
All of this happens in the space of a few of minutes. What had started as a great evening celebrating black success ended with the all too common reminder not to get above your station. It’s the dread of Murphy’s Law forever creeping just behind you, waiting for the right moment to turn your most joyous moments sour. It’s always lurking — you just don’t know what form in which your misery will manifest itself*.
Being black, there are certain luxuries you aren’t afforded. Once massa had done me a favour and let me inside the club that evening, I had a conversation with one of the doormen and asked him to explain himself. Why was he happy to treat us in that way, given (plot twist: the doormen were black too) he is likely the recipient of similar such treatment at any other establishment? “When we let black men in, they fight. When we kick them out, they want to fight us. White men don’t do that”. Simple deductive reasoning, right? They want an easy night. I’d love him to spend an evening on the doors in Newcastle’s Bigg Market — old boy would be SWEATING.
Forget the rules. I need to call him an Uncle Tom, I want to belittle him in any way possible, but I’m not mad at him, really. He didn’t make this choice. He didn’t want to discriminate against his own people. He hates the voice in his right ear more than he hates himself. He just happens to live in a society where a little Uncle Ruckus might ensure his job security. When it’s a toss-up between your dignity and a livelihood, how many people can honestly say they’d do the right thing?
We do not have the luxury of being judged on our character before anything else. For me, the reverse is the very essence of White Privilege. Whenever we enter a given scenario, our blackness precedes us, before any judgement call is made on our nature as individuals. We inherit the historical negative stereotypes that blackness brings with it, rendering any further judgement of our character unnecessary. It’s a cunning ruse. We are a monolith. Every single one of us represents every other black person walking the face of the earth. We let one of your lot in the big house a few weeks ago and we had to turf his arse out. Not falling for that again.
I think back to the rules. You lied to me, Grandma. You lied to me. We followed the rules. Your rules were supposed to get me through the door.
I look smart, I speak well, I am polite and approachable. I am a threat.
Racism in the 21st century is often difficult to grasp for the unaffected. Every young black man has his own version of this story. Many people think racism takes place in some vacuum they’re never exposed to. They’ve never seen it, acknowledge that it exists, but also accept it is nowhere near as bad as it once was. I’ll be the first to admit how lucky I am that I don’t have to live with the perpetual fear of violence that my ancestors and relatives had. They were brave so I don’t need to be. But what do we fear? I live with a fear of two things tied to my blackness; rejection and humiliation. That is not at all to say that I seek affirmation from white society, but I live with a constant fear of being rejected from anything on a count of my blackness. The humiliation was clear for my white friends to see that night. They saw that racism is more than attacking a man because he happened to be born a nigger.
Racism is humiliation. Racism is rejection. Racism is self-loathing. Racism is the feeling you get in the pit of your stomach before doing something unequivocally normal. Racism is the look of resignation you share with your friends when that very normal thing goes exactly as you feared it might.
My racism is fear, but I am a threat.
*Not long after I finish writing this, Raheem Sterling cups his ears as a final fuck you to racist fans aiming monkey chants in his direction, after scoring England’s fifth against Montenegro. You can’t make this shit up.
