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Friday 19 December 2014

I'm saying this as I've experienced, I was born black, it was never an issue I grew up in Somerset, Weston Super Mare, being the only black boy, no one bullied me or called me names I just was and it just was, as we grew up together we didn't see ourselves as different, I only noticed difference in school one day, when we were drawing the outlines of heads our silhouette projected onto a piece of paper where another chalked it out, mine was radically different, from my head shape, to my large lips and broad nose, it was there and then I realised what race was.

For nine years I lived in Weston and There was only one incident as when my Nanny began fostering other kids, the child was from another school, we threw a party for that child and as we were inviting children one parent said she didn't want her child around blacks. That was the first time I experienced racism, I don't know how I felt but I felt something and that's why I can remember that experience.

It's not even the fact of choosing my skin colour, I love being black because black is me. I love Africa for it's beauty, diversity & history from Egypt to Songhai and it's iconic animals. To me the issue is what comes with having the skin colour the assumptions and preconceived notions of what blackness is, our culture of black people being laughed for being dumb, classless and 'ghetto' it's frustrating and I can get mad and cry over it, because it's still like o wow if you talk articulately and show that you process a brain,

I'm so tired of white entitlement, I'm so tired of people telling me not to be angry, I'm so tired of people black people thinking they have to conform therefore settling therefore not allowing progress,

I'm just fed the fuck up and it pisses me off that I entered into an industry that accepts racism and thinks it's ok to pat themselves on the back for doing a token all black issue of a magazine, when a black model walks for a prestigious house for the first time in more than a decade. These are accomplishments yes but shouldn't they shock and horrify first and congratulate second?

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