This is my empathy; I hope this is ok...
I can only begin to imagine what it must be like to be a black person in a white world.
A history of exploitation; second to none - yet turned away from, spat upon; as if I had no mother to call me her son.
Prejudice, intolerance - nothing observed but hate on a plate. A life lived unheard and stuck in the past; tainted.
I know what it is to be bullied, I know what it is to be hurt, I know what it is to have my face crushed, pushed into the dirt. But I’ll never know what it is to carry the weight of the enslaved amplified and beaten with the strength of the waves.
You see it’s not one person, or two, or three or four that waits whispering or worse behind a set of locked doors. It’s still a silent majority.
It’s in every seat that lies empty next to a black person on a bus or a plane or a train that says you haven’t got my trust.
It’s in the look that says I don’t understand you, I don’t want to be near you and I don’t want to be seen with you.
It’s in the feelings which tell you that I’m still the slave.
But there’s an irony to this which cannot fail to shatter, the illusions of grandeur that just crumble and clatter - at the thought that the real ‘slave’ is not the black person living in a white world but the white person living in a black world who can’t open their heart to another.
For the person who can’t open their heart to another - I pray 🙏
Stefan - 03/06/2020 - 06.59
Some explanation
As a child I remember my father telling me about the racism he suffered as a white child in the 1950’s; the son of a white woman who married Felix, a hulk of a man from Jamaica.
Spat at in the street, called names, beaten. Told to go and play “up the black end”; it left deep scars in my father.
It left deep scars in me of fairness and of intolerance to things I see as unfair - that drive me today.
You see felix was the sunshine; he took it everywhere he went. Gentle, smiling growing flowers and veg for the local grocers. And no matter that he brought happiness to his community; he suffered.
If my fathers ‘second hand’ suffering is anything to go by; we ‘white’ people have a great deal to answer for.
And that makes me said that humanity could have treated humanity so poorly in the past and in the now.
Felix has gone; but his memory lives on - thank you for helping me to be who I am today.
Proud and ‘free’ - I know it’s only me but change starts with one 🙏
Stefan - 03/06/2020 - 07:15
originally I had called this piece “to be a person of colour” - I changed it once I’d read about how that phrase might be interpreted and undo my intent. But I write this as an ode to all ‘black people’ - those who have been persecuted and enslaved. My empathy; I hope this is ok.