The lives of People of Colour are oppressed due to the course of our society. Let’s swap normal for usual for now*.

Let’s travel back to the 80s and early 90s where boys of Colour are targeted openly on the street for the crime of walking home or to school. We walk our normal route, a rag tag bunch of friends, siblings and those annoying friends of siblings, urgh. That bittersweet bi-daily ritual that we hated at the time but now. The glory of experiencing the infinite ecosystem that existed between home and school. The ecosystem that summed up our existence in the British Isles. Not Asian enough for our parents and simultaneously not British enough for our ‘superiors’. These were meant to be the glory days. These, I’m told, were the best days of our lives. These days, you should never have wished them away. These days. These. Days. 

Anyway. 

We know melenated and other oppressed folx will often congregate in clusters (sorry, not sorry) it is safer. Well, we thought it so. Walking through the town, fooling around as children do, a police officer stops us in the street. The oldest of us grabs the hook of his littlest brother’s backpack and holds firm as he wriggles unaware of the situation we find ourselves in. 

“Alright lads. Can we just all stop for a second.” He instructs as he flashes a badge. 

His order, soft to any white peer’s ears, for us are laden with impending lessons of what shall become a rule, not the exception, of interactions of this nature. 

We comply.

We look about, awkwardly remaining silent.

“There’s been a report of an incident”

Our silence must have caught him off guard. For us, it’s full of anxiety. I’m not sure what he was expecting – perhaps the pleas of our innocence or denial, a confession maybe. 

He continues, “and you lads fit the description” 

We look around at each other…the gradient of thought is tangible the squirmiest youngest wondering what’s happened and the upholder of the backpack – here we go again. 

What comes next belongs in a comedy sketch. The officer proceeded to talk through the reason we stopped. Something about us matching the profile.

An elder enquires, “What description is that then officer?” continuing to subtly hold his brother’s backpack, lest a sudden movement is misconstrued.

The officer, offended at the question takes half a step back, looks us all up and down, and proceeds to describe us one at a time.

“A coloured lad with a yellow kappa jacket”. His words laced with spit, eyes locked dead with each child he is describing as he does so. Folx, my fashion choices may have often given opportunity to many for name calling – but this sits very differently. 

“A dark lad with a grey hoodie and a bobble hat.” The pattern of the way that he emphasises specific words of his comments betray his otherwise cool demeanour. He knows what he is doing and he knows we can do nothing back.

Funny, thinking back – we should have challenged him. Nothing to laugh about to be honest. I wouldn’t challenge at this big age either. There are some acts in which justice will never be afforded to us regardless. 

The anxiety runs through me, pumped around my veins, the tingling in my brain, the need to move, run and inhale as much oxygen as a can to suppress the ball in my stomach and lift the weight from my chest. I lift my head and catch in my peripheral vision my brothers in stunned silence, to be honest, we connect not through eyes of contact but the ambience of the environment – we just knew.

That was one experience around a quarter of a century ago. Even as adolescents we knew that acquiescence was our only option and that was a lesson we learned well out of school. Our hormonal and neural structure set to safety for survival. The mere attempt at questioning authority was shown to have our aggressor double-down and remind us of our place. 

Fast forward to the pandemic and the lockdown period. My brother and I are driving to our local supermarket. It’s late night but we need to collect our weekly groceries. Two Brown men and perhaps stereotypically we both drive BMWs. Good God, the mundane conversation in the car graciously hangs in the air like a build-up in a bland comedy show; “it’s so dead bruv” “of course it’s dead bhuddu we are in a lockdown”, “I wonder what replacements we will end up with”. 

Cutting through the darkness those familiar blue lights. And then comes the noise that confirms our suspicions. A noise that make us both revel in regret of not appreciating the boring lives we lead. We fall silent. Flash. Flash. Flash those blue lights tear though the street. We pull over, slowly and calmly, we know the drill, set your recording devices, stay calm, keep your mouth shut and make sure your face is as neutral as possible. We are those children again. That anxious energy is back. It never really left. It’s an energy that we’ve worn so often that there’s a dangerous comfort to it. We know the layers well but they can betray us in the blink of an eye. The rest of the interaction was, well, it just was. 

Growing up in the UK as a melanated man means that you understand that this is the price we pay. We are also both unaware of the what we get in return. The silence before we arrive is cold and inevitable. The brotherliness between us cannot compete with the weight of the experience. We’re both searching for a sentence, a statement, anything to break the silence. One of us eventually settles on “I hope the baked beans are good”. it receives an awkward chuckle.

This is our society. No, you are likely not the police officers on those various occasions but this is our burden. Whether you’re a teacher, a shop keeper or in any position of power we need to hold ourselves to account around racialised trauma. I believe we can be better. I’m not asking for anything other than the recognition of racism. 

*After meeting Lady Phyll, I am in agreement that the word normal has been weaponised against the LGBT+ community and we should move towards linguistic alternative – she suggested usualised (which I’m all for). As a student of the natural sciences normalisation also has connotations with the idea of being = 1 a binary that serves no one well.