By The-New-Wave Slave

I’M NOT RACIST, BUT…

London, two weeks in.
It was all a beautiful mess. From the top deck of a bus 35 – Clapham Junction to Shorditch, via Camberwell – I could see the cramped rows of discoloured housing blocks; terraces, 4 years young, next to converted factories and Victorian freehouses. And in front of them all, looking just as confused: black man next to white man next to China-man next to Jew.
In the distance the Gherkin rose up from the concrete heap as if it was ten years too soon; odd parts of the city below were still clinging tightly enough to the past for the building not to quite fit. The London eye and City hall, too (Please insert romantic description of Parliament and Tower Bridge here). Nothing seemed to match, and yet, when I looked on, it was visual harmony.

But on the bus I couldn’t quite catch the sweet sweet scent of carbon monoxide drifting through the air as the city do-gooders pulled transparent recycle bags out of their four by four Mitsubishis (No, not Smartcars. Yes, you can blame them). Nor could I quite make out the languages hurtling from every direction, hating the way each other sounded, in this, the city that was supposedly the poster child for a better tomorrow – a new and mixed world made up of every blood-line on earth – that stood, now, a mere shit stain of the multicultural ideal.

The problem was no one understood each other. The city was in conflict with its’ time period, its’ design, its’ stance on greenhouse-gas solutions, and its’ people were in conflict with anything going. They didn’t know what they wanted. They couldn’t be European because that would be giving in, but they couldn’t be too English because that was just plain wrong; save that for the angry young white fellow who likes his hair low, low and low – yes sir indeed!…at least, I think that’s right…I‘m not quite sure…

I needed to know more, so I stopped off at a McDonalds. It only ever took a trip to the local restaurants and public houses-of-purchase to get a fairly reliable idea of an area’s social situation. (Colchester’s McDonalds seemed to be run by rough edged 15 year old school boys, thirsty eyed and full of unreasonable hated, and Chippenham didn’t have a McDonalds, just Victorian values and the best damn oriental Fish and Chip shop south of the M14). This particular London branch was over crowded and hostile. The manager wouldn’t close the door on anyone – so’s not to appear inhumane – (which also increased his chances of seducing cheap and desperate labour), but keeping the place civil was slightly beyond him. – “This is a serious town on serious earth, my friend. The blacks need to be pressed up hard against the whites if they’re to be vindicated.”
“For what?”
“You know, all that stuff that’s in the past.”
“Hold on, who exactly are we talking about here?”
“Both sides, if I’m to tell you the truth. Yeah, there was the slave thing, but forgive and forget for god’s sake, forgive and forget. I haven’t the room or the patience to keep letting these free riders in here – there’s only so much to go around, and I can’t talk everyone into taking to the decorum. This is England, you know, the Queen’s own – and we’re in London, the city of honour and foul play – not a lot of people get that, chum. There’s a lot of autonomy among the darker new comers, but I haven’t the know-how to tell them to play ball! – We need to put them next to each other, let them work things out.”
“Really?”
“Just sit back and relax, friend. You’ll see.”
I ordered a fillet O fish and medium fries.
“Wha?” the Polish guy behind the counter said. He spoke some English, none of it good. I didn’t mind this (much), but when I repeated my order more clearly he seemed to be offended by my accent. The English one. He gave me a dirty look and left. I thought I‘d remind myself that masturbating in burgers is just a myth.

McDonalds has never lied. Things were bad. We were living in desperately sensitive times, and any one of our footsteps could have been on a politically incorrect eggshell. There was togetherness, that much was certain, but it went about as far as being in the same city. Beyond this, understanding each other seemed to be a bit of a chore. The original Englishmen (whoever they were) stuck to their end, and the home-wreckers (I could be bold here and assume) stuck to theirs, you crossed the boarder at your own risk. England didn’t want to talk races into togetherness because it was afraid of making them angry, but the less they understood each other the angrier they became. Burkas confused England, so did Yoruba and apala music – all of which were equally offended by too much in-your-face Englishness (whatever the hell that was)…

The Polish guy came back and I had too much of England in me to point out that he’d given me the wrong order. I hadn’t had a Big Mac in a while anyway (And there were more terrible goings on all over! On my way out I saw a guy standing by the door holding a pistol! Was wearing a yellow and red loose rider jump-suit; red and white stripy sleeves, starch white face, red curly hair. Big red “M” on his chest. Whenever an obese person walked towards the door he pointed the gun at them and said that he’d kill their entire family if they didn’t keep coming back to eat fast food day after day for the rest of their lives – I saw it with my own two eyes, I did!)

But who was I to talk. I was a 2nd generation Nigerian immigrant, and my mother hated England. “These stupid white people,” I often heard her say. She lived here though, liked the perks. Always ranted on about how much better Nigeria was. Wanted to send me there whenever I was naughty as a kid. So my black skin made me stand out, an easy target for the angry nationalists. But take my good friend Jake Kinsmen: 27 years old, blonde hair, blue eyes. No history of racial abuse, directly or indirectly – and perfect English, taught to him by his single mother, who was taught by her mother, who, being fresh off the boat from Germany, learnt English from a factory worker in Chelsea that had never once said a bad word about anyone based on their skin colour or background, and swears it. So why then and not now? Did Jake have more right to be English because his family had been here longer? The truth was, as with every other continent, England was a finders keepers nation. It didn’t really belong to anyone. Englishness didn’t have a specific background – it once saw a massive insurgence of the Normanic culture, before that, the Danish, before that it had been populated in the early 500s AD by German tribes (Long live the Queen by the way). The country was just playing the same old immigration game, only it was taking on a darker skin colour and a more religiously ambiguous tone – and there wasn‘t much land to spare either. Englishness was an idea, rather than a face, and this is why it was so hard to find.

I was in HMV when I found out that relations between the black and white folk still needed some work.
Wondering through the DVD floor I suddenly came across a ‘Black Cinema Section.’
What actually constitutes black cinema exactly? This section would have been fine if it was all in an African language (like ‘Asian cinema’ is in the Asian languages and ‘French Cinema’ in French) but it wasn’t. Eddie Murphy, Cuba Gooding Jr, Denzel Washington – these are all American, English speaking superstars. Surely these films aren’t ‘black’, but simply ‘films…staring black people.’ And ‘8 Mile’!(?). Oh, the irony. As a black person I was deeply offended, more so due to the fact that it was a section enforced by black people as much as white. This ‘black section’ was exactly what was wrong with London. England. The damn world. People were so busy trying to acknowledge differences they had overlooked that it was exactly these differences that served to pull people apart. It wasn’t empowering for the black race to have their very own section, it was absurd. If you wanted equality, be equal. That went for DVDs as well. Anything else suggested that black people acted a certain way – or liked certain things. Well I’m black, and I don’t like Avirex jackets (they suggest a hardness I don’t possess), and I’m not overly fond of spicy foods (though I can take it. I’m just more of a flavour person). ‘Rio Bravo’ isn’t a ‘white’ film, it’s just a ‘film’, as ‘Boyz in the Hood’ or ‘The Harder They Come’ should just be ‘films’.
I sighed. Another public house-of-purchase had given me disappointing insight.

I wandered aimlessly after that, head down, thinking of the woes. Aimlessly down the streets, aimlessly into shops, aimlessly onto the suffocating tube trains. But I was to be saved!
When I looked up I found myself on Edgware road, the haven of London spirit. Yes, it was dirty, and yes, there was a possibility of running into a hardcore street gang, but if London was the heart of England, it beat the hardest here. Lined with Arabian corner-shops, African food outlets, Subways next to Starbucks next to Kebab shops next to crummy faced whisky bars – this place was alive! The people knew who they were here. Iranian speaking Englishman, Ewe speaking Englishman, English speaking Englishman – Outside of the Hookah cafes people smoked shisha in business suits and Nigerian Kaftan outfits alike (originally an Indian past time that fit so well against the Albion backdrop). Here, England was no one thing, but a mesh of culture that took on the history of a country – almost unexplainable. Almost! These dirty pavements were England, these cheap wine bottles, these angry young rude boys. And ahead of me Marble Arch rose in the distance, behind that, Hyde Park, and behind that, hope. This is London! I thought to myself. This is England!

Yours truly,
The New-Wave Slave

p.s. I apologises for any sentimentality experienced during this read.

NEXT TIME: Boris Johnson is some sort of genius but has yet to find his niche!