Why we're still talking about racism...

This is a conversation we've been having for over twelve months as a generation. Individually, I've been having this conversation since before I can remember. We've learnt, together what terms like micro aggression and gaslighting means, together we understood why black lives matter is important and have promoted the reasoning behind taking the knee, together. Individually, I have been justifying my existence in this country...since before I can remember. So why are we still talking about it, when it looks like "so much has changed"?

Because it hasn't.

The most abhorrent thing I've heard for a lot of my life is that it's not "that bad" here and we should stop talking about it...because it doesn't exist anymore. Living in the UK, alongside people from all cultures, colours, backgrounds and ethnicities we look like the poster child for multi-culturism. The fact that a chicken vindaloo is associated more with Birmingham and Manchester than Asia should mean that we are integrated as a society, right?

Wrong.

Now you're asking why, and the best way I can possibly answer that is to share with you some of the questions I've been asked...some very regularly, and the things that have stuck in my mind from my experiences in being a very integrated member of this society. These have been my experiences so far...

I can sense this happening before it does, and I feel a knot in my stomach each time. If I am ever in the company of someone who isn't Asian and they hear other Asian people talking, without fail I get asked, "Do you know what they're saying?"...This would be the equivalent of me asking any person of European background if they understood the couple talking in French, the guy speaking in German or the lady speaking in Russian. India itself boasts 22 languages in the country, not including English, and Asia is?home to?around 2,300 languages, spoken by around 4.46 billion people, so just because we share a skin tone or a continent in a common...does not mean we all know each other or what each other might be saying.

Institutional racism. There is a massive misconception of what this means, especially as most people look at the makeup of the NHS and will see a sea of brown faces...so how can this exist? With all the additional training police forces must do, and the fact that they promote BAME applications should mean, again, that this situation is getting better? Well. When I was being racially abused by my neighbor the police officer asked me what I expected him to do about it and that she was drunk and to just let her tire herself out, and without asking me confirmed my ethnicity as "pakistani" on my complaint. Now, he could have been just a bad egg but the abuse didn't stop for me. When someone close to me was suffering with abdominal pain, because of her skin colour was given unfair treatment and assumptions were made that left her, alone, in pain. The old saying being that Asian girls lie about having sex, lie about getting pregnant, and lie about getting abortions...this Asian girl was still a virgin and was denied an honest, sympathetic ear of a trusted doctor that could see beyond her skin colour and would just listen to her symptoms. This is not ok. To make assumptions about our backgrounds and circumstances because of a story you might have heard about another member of our continent, we're not all the same.

A phrase that makes my blood boil, and has inevitably decreased my time on social media for now and the future is, "I don't support a marxist movement". My first question to that is always, what is Marxism and who do you think Karl Marx is? This can never really be answered by anyone using this as an excuse to boo taking the knee, can never really be answered by the people quoting it as a reason to say "all lives matter" because they don't understand the phrase "black lives matter", or for some a space to be openly, directly racist. Just to cover this off black lives matter, does not mean ONLY black lives matter. Marxism is a political and economic theory where a society has no classes. Every person within the society works for a common good, and class struggle is theoretically gone. So, now that you know what it actually is...how can you defend your morality in booing taking the knee?

Can you eat that? Do you celebrate that? Isn't it against your religion to drink? There are eleven major religions in the whole of Asia, most of which are situated in India. Ask a question about the belief network we may belong to before assuming you know what's best for us...it's really quite patronizing when I'm trying to dig into my bacon sandwich and someone comes up asking me if I knew that was bacon, and that bacon is pork and that pork is haram. I know on the surface it feels like you may be doing the right thing, but for the person hearing it all they see is someone making a sweeping assumption about them and their background, without asking the toss first. All I see is someone making an association about me because of the one thing they know about the continent of Asia, even though I live in the same country as you.

In a professional environment I have been turned down for a role because my background wouldn't "fit", and that due to that they felt people wouldn't allow me the space to work and get the results needed. The job was basically administering rent and events for a town centre, the town happened to have a large makeup of not people of colour and having never been denied service in this area, I was still denied a job. A job that I proved I could do, and my feedback wasn't that I lacked skills...it was that the environment wouldn't accept me. Looking back, I feel I could have made that decision for myself...and did, when I applied in the first instance. I have had people wonder if I speak English because my ethnic background is Indian, and not understood that my nationality is British...alongside my education. Without meeting me, knowing me...just made an assumption that I would be speaking in a thick Indian accent, possibly bobbing my head back and forth in a charming, innocent manner as I spoke. I've been asked in the middle of a work day on more than one occasion by more than one individual if Indian girls are "really that hairy"? The icing on the professional cake has got to be when I was asked if I was loud in bed, as the gentleman slept with one Indian girl who was, therefore he bet we were all loud? There are an estimated 30.8 million Indians living outside of India, and about 1.34 billion in the country, so half of all those people must be loud in bed? To be told by a guy that I must be loud in bed because of my skin colour, and because of whatever assumptions he's made about my ethnicity because of interactions with one of us was honestly the smallest I've felt.

I can't tell you the amount of times I've been asked if Indians eat monkey brains because of one film from the 80s. I've had strangers come to me and before introducing their face to mine, I can feel them touching my hair. I've had a stranger just shout "curry" I was walking through the park...not the most imaginative racist insult I've had, but definitely memorable.

So much of the above has happened in the last 10 years. The times in school where I was called a "paki" as a "joke" by peers, or the times teachers assumed I wouldn't be very smart because I was coming in not speaking English at home, but two other languages, the times when people have moved away from me or stared at me in shops because I didn't look "good enough", those times I've tried to push back in my mind. Firstly, because who could live with the cognitive dissonance of being proud of my country but not my countrymen; mostly though it's because there was always something to take that place. My peers calling me a "paki" turned to my working peers assuming my diet, my beliefs and my dress. The teachers making judgements turned into doctors, nurses and the police force instead. Instead of just shouting "curry" from across the road, there's online social persecution and messages from strangers telling me this is their country, and that means they can say and do as they please.

I haven't written this article to have a moan, to complain or to make anyone feel guilty. Some of the above culprits are people who I still consider my friends, after a conversation or two. I've written this so there is some understanding of the other side, just so you get an idea of what a day to day could look like walking around with a brown's girls face in the UK. This is only my story, I would ask others for theirs' too. They may have one and if they don't then you can tell me it's getting better...

My final thought on the matter? Ask questions, talk to us, ask us about all the things you think are true and all the things you think aren't, just don't assume. Don't assume we're all the same, don't assume we can understand each other because we look similar, and don't brandish us with one set of rules because that's all you understand.

Just ask.