Who the Hell are My Own People?

On the Frontlines at the Intersection of Racism, Sexism and Muslim Misoygyny Combined

When I was 22 years old, I decided in my infinite wisdom that I needed to get to ‘know my own people’. Because apart from the immediate family of parents and siblings plus 2/3 uncles on the fringes of my life, all my schooling, college and university life, just about all of the time outside of my parent’s home in the North of England, I had been the sole brown face in a sea of pink.

It was the time of ‘color-blind’ policies in the classroom, run by the all-White teachers in the near total, All-White school, while out on the streets, there were skinheads smashing the shop windows of South Asian people, and yelling ‘Pakis go home’, in the streets. I should add it took me a long while to finally defy my mother whose advice (when I started secondary school) was that I should not make friends with the ‘Goray’, ie the Whites. Out of loyalty to her, I withdrew from my classmates and became the school hermit/wierdo. Over the course of the next four or so years, I rarely spoke to anyone, unless I was going mad, letting off steam on the hockey pitch!

It was at college, that my separatist stance mellowed quite a bit, enough to have lunch with the Goray people from my classes. they were all mature students returning to education in their thirties and forties. I felt…