I was relentlessly bullied through pretty much every school year. It all started with taunts about my hair in Primary school, growing up in a little Devon village I was the only brown kid through most of my time there. I became used to getting picked on for the way I looked, but I often fought back and stood up to them even though they were crippling my self-esteem. I still had lots of friends though (who also got picked on for various things) so I thought it was just general bullying. I wasn’t aware of any racial hatred as such, directed at me, until I reached secondary school, which is weird because that was a lot more multi-cultural & diverse with so many pupils from all different backgrounds but that’s where I experienced the worst name calling ‘nigger’, ‘wog’. There this one vile person who I remember well, she would shout abuse at me whenever I walked past her and one day she wrote the words ‘D N is a grey paki’ permanent marker across the wall in the girls toilets, I was obviously mortified but I was shy and didn’t feel like the teachers would listen to me if I reported it so I didn’t say anything at first. I had the kindest friends though who scrubbed it off the wall and took it upon themselves to report it and it was taken seriously, the school dealt with it pretty well to be fair.
The first time I witnessed racism I must have been 6 or 7, we went to visit family near London, while out shopping (this must have been in the mid 90’s) we walked past some weird crazy racist woman who had a banner (can’t remember what it said) but she grabbed my mums arm and shouted “you black bitch, get out! Go back to your country, you don’t belong here!” I remember feeling scared and confused because my mum looked shocked and shook up.
I just pray that my kids never have to go through any sort of harassment or experience racism like I have, but I’ve already felt the need to discuss what racism is with my 6 year old this week.
This story is from a series of interviews by Kadeem Yarde, who spoke to people at a Black Lives Matter protest in North Devon. To see the original blog post use this URL: https://www.kadeemyarde.com/post/racism-in-north-devon