Only one thing was certain and that was that the natives would not come out of it well. If there was danger, they could be relied upon to disgrace themselves and run away, leaving the hero and heroine and anyone else from England in the lurch, or else perish horribly. Considering that the jungle was their home, the natives were exasperatingly accident-prone. Hosts of them disappeared down the gullets of countless crocodiles, were crushed by rhinos, mauled by lions and strangled by snakes with no one to mourn their passing. My fate mirrored theirs in the games we played, I was thoroughly fed up with these celluloid Africans, ditto the Red Indians. They could carry on rolling their eyes and coming to grief week after week, but this African in Thornton Heath was going to do something about her situation.
“Gerald,” I said, as he was tying me up prior to lowering me into the snake pit at the side of the compost heap in Wilf’s garden, “why do you think it’s always the natives who get eaten by the animals? After all, they’ve lived all their lives in the jungle, you’d think they’d have learnt a few tricks by now.”
“You would think so,” said Gerald. “Maybe it’s because they haven’t got any guns.”
“I don’t think that’s the reason,” said Roger.
“Why do you think it is then?” Gerald asked him.
“I think it’s because white people have got more brains,” said Roger.
“That’s right,” agreed Doreen.
“Not all Africans are stupid,” I said indignantly, “I’ve got just as much brains as you have.”
“It’s only in the films,” Wilf said.
“Yeah, they’re only stories,” said Paula. “Are we going to get on with this game or what? If you don’t hurry up and finish tying her up, Gerald, I’ll get cramp in my leg waiting to be rescued here forever.” Paula tossed her long blonde hair.
I could see that reasoning wasn’t going to change things. I would have to try something else.
“Wilf,” I said, “I think it’s very unfair that you always get the smallest parts to play.”
“Elephants and rhinos aren’t small.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I suppose so.”
“Just because you’re the smallest and I’m the youngest we get the worst.”
“I don’t see how we can go against Gerald.”
“We could play other games.”
“What other games?”
“King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, for instance.”
“Uh-huh.”
“It’d be more fun to play a knight than an animal or a native.”
“Might be.”
I left him to think about it. He wasn’t persuaded in a day but eventually he agreed. We laid our plans in secret and when the occasion arrived we were ready.
“Remi,” Gerald shouted, “off we go, put the baggage on your head and lead on.”
“I’m not carrying it on my head,” I said.
“Oh, all right, carry it anywhere you like, but lead on.”
As I led on down the narrow alleyway and pushed open the gate into Roger’s garden, in the dense undergrowth beyond the hedge the pawing and thumping of some mighty animal could be heard. The noise reverberated like thunder through the jungle, and sure enough Wilf came charging around the hedge bellowing and raging, straight towards the native bearer, who, with what I hoped was unimpeachable dignity, laid down the luggage, and with unerring aim struck the rhino just above the horn. With equal dignity the rhino buckled to the ground beneath the astonished gaze of the explorers.
“What do you think you’re doing?” yelled Gerald.
“I have killed him with my spear,” I said.
“What spear? You haven’t got a spear,” Doreen said.
“Natives usually carry spears,” said the rhino from the ground.
“As for you, what did you fall down for?” Gerald said furiously. “Get up and shut up.”
Wilf arose and came to stand beside me. “We have decided,” he said, “that we’re not going to play these silly games any more. She,” he said, nodding his head at me as I stepped closer to him, “is fed up with being a native all the time and as for me I only ever get to play animals or Red Indians. I’m fed up too. You can play by yourselves.”
Our knees quaking, we passed through the gate and out of Roger’s garden.
Gerald was unforgiving. I took to following Uncle Theo around instead, working beside him on the allotment, carefully weeding the little section he set aside especially for me. I strongly suspected that Uncle Theo carried out secret work on my bit, because it always looked healthy and flourishing when I arrived for the holiday, and kind of wilted and dead by the time I returned to school, having forbidden Uncle Theo to lay a finger on it during the time I was at home.
“Uncle Theo, do you think of me as a darkie?” I asked him.
“No, of course not, I think of you like any other child, like my granddaughter.”
“You really don’t think of me as a darkie?”
“No, I do not,” he said, carefully raking the soil around his leeks.
“Doreen says I’m a darkie and that English people don’t like darkies.”
“She’s just talking daft. Sensible people don’t think that way; as far as they’re concerned people are people, they like them for what they are.”
“What am I then?”
“Like I said, you’re a child, quite a nice child for most of the time.”
“What will I be when I grow up?”
“You’ll be an African, a coloured person.”
“Why a coloured person?”
“Because, I suppose, you’re not white,” Uncle Theo said.
I studied him carefully as he turned back to his raking. His skin was scarlet from the sun, his eyes were emerald green and his little pointed teeth were green too.
I thought, Grandma would have said this man is talking nonsense. Mind you, it was becoming increasingly difficult to imagine what Grandma would have said. I was beginning to think that she and Aunt Rose and Patience and Alaba were all figments of my imagination.
Wilf and I met by the lamppost outside his gate. He said he thought that if Gerald and the gang continued to ignore us we might have to revise our position, which was that they needed us more than we needed them. I reassured him that though Gerald was a great man of action—he could jump on and off trams when they were moving, wangle us into the cinema or the swimming-pool without paying and melt the ice at Streatham Ice Rink with the power of his blades—he was very short on imagination; he depended on Wilf and me—they all did, I pointed out—for the refinements we supplied in our games. We’d all be back together soon, I predicted. I was confident because Gerald depended on me for something else that Wilf knew nothing about. I read to Gerald every night before I went to bed. He loved stories but, as Aunty Betty said, though he could manage the Dandy and the Beano, he was no reader. We had stopped at a particularly exciting point in Treasure Island and I knew he was longing to get back to it.
“So you reckon we should hang on a bit longer?” Wilf said.
“Yes, I think so,” I replied and hurried in . . .
At breakfast the next morning Gerald told me ever so casually to be sure to be ready to accompany him as usual to Saturday morning pictures. He said it between shovelling in mouthfuls of porridge; winter or summer, it made no difference, Gerald began the day with a saucepan of porridge. I took my time walking out of the room but once outside the door I raced up the stairs to prepare.
We called in on Wilf on the way to the cinema. He was so happy, he didn’t look where he was going and was nearly run over when we were crossing the road all strung out in a long line. Roger only just managed to haul him back in time.
Walking back home, Gerald, again ever so casually, said that maybe we should think of some new games to play. I put forward King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, which I was reading at school and Wilf suggested Martians from Outer Space. He and I both knew that he would ne
ver be King Arthur but he could be a knight, which all the books said was a noble thing to be, and, as for Martians, well, there was no reason for Doreen to look in my direction. Martians, as everybody knew, were green.
Nah Dove
A transatlantic womanist and Afrocentric theorist of Ghanaian and English heritage, she has lived in Ghana, Nigeria, Canada, the UK and the US, where she was awarded her PhD, which focused on African culture, women and education. She has written articles, book chapters, encyclopaedia entries, and is the author of the 1998 book Afrikan Mothers: Bearers of Culture, Makers of Social Change. Her other accomplishments include involvement in developing African-centred and Afrocentric schools. She is a proud mother and grandmother and, although retired, continues to volunteer and consult as well as learn and grow.
Race and Sex: Growing up in the UK
Africa
Once a young girl danced beneath the African sky
and the sun kissed her bones.
She saw her reflection in the lake
and understood her spiritual connection.
She never betrayed her mother Africa.
It might be confusing to the reader that I consider myself to be a person of African descent although my father was African and my mother European of Jewish lineage. I remove myself from the label of mixed “race” that is grounded in the patriarchal belief that there are several “races” of humanity, largely identifiable through colour. The whitest women and men are superior to the yellow, red, brown and Black-skinned women and men. Although women are considered inferior in each category, they exist in the same hierarchy with each other.
There is one race. The Mitochondrial DNA proves that we are all related to one African woman. It is wretched that in more recent human history the less melanin-ated have designed and invested in the falsehood of white superiority, whether through advantage or ignorance, disrespecting, debasing, demonising and betraying the light of their dark ancestry.
The label of “mixed race” privileges people like me in that whiteness separates us from Blackness or ethnicity because we “appear” closer to the “white” and are therefore perceived to be superior to darker-skinned people. This historical, religious, social and materialist belief is globalised and normalised through cultural conquest. The origins of racism and other heinous inequalities lie firmly in the subjugation of woman by man, the societal basis of existence. If this relationship is unjust, nothing can be right.
Now, at the age of seventy-two, I see that culture has taken a critical role in formulating reasons for the constructions of human inequalities throughout the world. My formative years were spent in Africa and I was schooled in the UK.
After arriving in London, although a child, I was both fascinated and horrified at the English ignorance and the perpetuation of lies and myths about Africa, its people and its culture. This terrifying experience gave me an insight into the minds and culture of European people. Conceptualising diversity in European and African cultures is problematic; after all, Africa was conquered using the same patriarchal methods by Europeans and Arabs; Africa’s resources lie in their coffers.
My father first worked as a sweeper for the London Underground until he joined a dental practice. We lived in a small run-down infested flat in East London. We were all poor, but I soon discovered that the hostility shown to me as a “darkie”, “blackie” and “nig-nog” was neither confined to me nor East London.
The fight to survive was both physical and mental. Name calling and fighting in the streets was a regular threat to my life and the lives of my brothers. I fought mostly with white boys, although was often intimidated by the girls. The boys were quick to get into physical attacks. My aggressors feared me as though I were an animal—unpredictable. The white boys fought me to show off their bravery. Whether these fights were in school or on the street, no one defended me. My brothers and I were alone. The agony that I felt was not from the pain of being kicked in the stomach, or punched in the face or head, or even wiping the blood and spit from my face or hair, it was at having no defence against the belief that I was less than human, posed a threat, and was certainly not a girl. I understand the internal damage to a young psyche forming in this cultural milieu of rampant racist hostility without the protection of the foundation that I had acquired through my prior knowledge and experience of Africa.
Similarly, racist encounters happened to my father. I had seen him come home bloodied on more than one occasion. One day when I was about seven years old, whilst walking with my father in a park, seven (possibly more) white teenagers of around sixteen or seventeen years old called my father obscene names and threatened him. My father picked me up and placed me on the side of the path on the grass verge under a tree and turned to defend himself. The youths surrounded him. He was able to cause some considerable damage before they ran away in fear. My father took my hand and we proceeded to walk on, amidst stares. This event had a tremendous effect on me because it gave me the confidence to fight to survive. I was in awe of my father because he was brave, humble, dignified, handsome and intelligent. To my mind, he was so much better a human being than those who believed that he was less human than they. I witnessed my gentle mother, a white woman who in the 1950s married an African man—betrayer of her culture—humiliated, called foul names and spat upon.
Quite soon, I understood that in order to be treated with any kind of respect and sensitivity one had to have blond hair and blue eyes. I went through what so many of us struggle with even today, some de-melaninising their skins. My existence was always under some kind of threat and I remember how I sobbed to my mother of my dilemma. My mother assured me, “You are beautiful just the way you are.” It was small comfort at the time but in fact, those words sustained me all of my young life. It helped when my mother informed me that “those who smiled at you as little ones are the ones who will later hate you.”
I learned that racism was not limited to London. Once, while my mother was washing me in the tin bath in the living room just before bed-time, I was watching television (our family had television early, we mostly watched the news); a discussion on apartheid was taking place. An Afrikaner expert on African intelligence claimed that head-size indicates the size of intellect. He was justifying the idea that African people could not rule themselves when so-called independence movements were rising. I remember getting upset. My father helped put these ideas in the context that it was the general belief of white people everywhere. It seemed so ludicrous, I could not understand how such ideas could be believed when they were so blatantly untrue. It made me angry and hurt and I felt the sadness of my father and African people everywhere. One day on the radio news a “Negro” in the US South who had been accused of raping a white woman, was being dragged out of a prison cell with the help of officers. We could hear the man’s head hit every stone step on the way to being lynched by the mob. I cried but understood so clearly that the injustices happening to me were so minor compared to what was happening to my people. In some strange way, it served to strengthen rather than weaken me.
After wanting to be white, it became important to be recognised as a girl. Even when I wore a dress I was referred to as “sonny boy”. It is true to say that my abuse at the hands of white boys led me to believe that I was not considered a female because white girls did not get threatened or bullied openly the way I was. The fact that I had to fight seemed to further relegate me to being less than feminine. Although there were girls who fought, they usually fought each other until I was older. For me being of African descent outweighed my sexuality amongst my peer group.
Ironically, older men did not feel the same way. By the time I was thirteen, at least thirty white men had exposed themselves to me while I was going to and from school, the library or the shops in the many places that I lived. Mostly they wore big coats. Even though I wanted to be viewed as a girl, this type of act was puzzling. It happened even while walking with my brothers whom I protected always. There was certainly an awareness of my bi
ological makeup. These men never attempted to touch me, some smiled, grinned, or nodded a polite hello and some proceeded to ejaculate. If invited into cars, I would carry on walking or if on a bus or train would move to another seat. I was frightened and afforded no respect outside that of being an object of lust.
I was too ashamed to speak of this to my parents or my white girl friends. It was years later when I found that it happened to other Black women. Rape was also a clear and present danger. One might imagine that I wore very short skirts and was well developed physically. In reality, my clothing was very conservative, I wore dresses or uniforms below my knees and heavy brown or black lace-up shoes, which I hated, and white ankle- or knee-length socks. By the time I was thirteen, I was into ya-ya skirts like my peer group. The question of my femininity in European society was part of the abusive and racist environment that I had to survive in and I saw it as that at the time.
This same hostility existed inside the classroom. When bullied the perpetrator would often escape punishment while I would receive an admonishing about my attitude. In truth I developed an attitude about the unfair treatment that I received. In one secondary girls’ school that I attended, a white South African geography teacher continually gave me lower grades than I deserved. In frustration I drew and coloured a beautiful map for a friend who received an A. Although I never received a good grade I had the satisfaction of knowing why. Whenever I was asked to read derogatory statements about Africa and African people I refused and was made to stand in the hallway. I spent considerable time there during her classes and earned a reputation as a trouble-maker. The stories are too numerous, suffice it to say that my experience was mild compared to that of many others even to this day.
When my children attended school, the psychological services had gained a massive foothold in the school system. The focus had moved from the white poor to the Black. Any perceived challenge to the psychosocial racism of teachers became a child’s behavioural problem. It was said that I had a chip on my shoulder. In reality, I did not acquiesce to unfairness easily which posed a threat to the “order”. This spoke more to their mind-set than mine. Later, these experiences enabled me to have insights into the realities of children of African descent often thought to have innate behavioural problems. Generally, my parents had little to do with my school life and were unaware of some of the problems that I faced. I studied hard at home and was expected to gain As and was punished if I did not.
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