The shame of racism

A Black Lives Matter socially distanced protest summer 2020

The shame that racism invokes in white people is complex. Confronted with evidence, I might try and look for a reason that is not attributed to race - unable to acknowledge a truth that is not mine. 

Or I might feel under threat - am I guilty? How will I be made to pay? 

People mourned the death of Diana, Princess of Wales with flowers... now they're exposing fear of her son's wife with tantrums. 

It's impossible, in these hemmed-in days, to avoid a big news story. Harder when it involves the UK ruling class. Megan Markle's experience entering the UK's top family speaks to millions of ordinary couples in the UK who've faced, or are facing, the same question - do I stay or do I go? Am I a part of this family or do we, a new couple, go it alone? 

The other day I went for a walk with an old schoolfriend, a biracial woman brought up from the 1950s by a white family. She asked me what I thought of Markle's decision to talk to Oprah Winfrey. I'm no royalist and haven't watched the interview but the fall out reveals yet more about racism in the UK - the TV presenter's tantrum, public vitriol. And so it continues to polarise what racism means - distancing it yet again from being accepted as a common problem for each of us from one angle or another. Those with infinite privilege will not tolerate self-examination, are above all scrutiny and their followers follow, unthinking. I remember with a shudder my father's enthusiasm for Enoch Powell. 

In the days when the friend I walked with the other day was the only black person I knew, she was dealing with racism alone, from childhood. Years later I am the white mother of two black children, obviously adult now. Our experiences as a bi-racial family range from blatant bullying and aggression to stupidity, ignorance and almost laughable thoughtlessness. My children have lived with racism and as a mother I have had to learn how to help them deal with it. Their experiences of racism have happened within the personal sphere as well as the public, on the street as well as in school. 

All of this points to the need to listen and talk openly, the need for a new way of debating issues that matter and it's not going too far to expect new thinking from all of us.