Racism

(6-minute read) – It was the start of my third day in England. I walked along the platform of a train station somewhere in the south of London. An uncommon bright yellow hue of light reflected off the concrete floor between the roof-covered portions. “Good grief, it’s the sun,” I heard my bemused inner voice say. I hadn’t seen this light since I’d landed there.

The yellow light fell upon me for a moment as I walked past one of the uncovered portions of the platform and I felt the slightest elevation in temperature. The corners of my mouth elevated slightly too.

A young man walked toward me from the other end of the platform. The corners of his mouth were not elevated. On the contrary, he looked angry. He flayed his arms as he walked as if to warn everyone to get out of his way. He had a cigarette swinging in his right hand.

Just then a public address voice commanded, “No smoking on the platform.”

Without breaking stride, he flicked his cigarette at a speaker above him.

My first reaction was anger. This chap looked like he needed someone to grab him by the scruff of the neck and make him eat that cigarette he left burning on the floor. I locked onto his cold blue eyes as he got closer, getting ready to challenge him. It seemed he hadn’t seen me yet.

Then my pesky inner voice chimed, “You don’t want to make eye contact with this mug and ruin your happy day. Leave it alone, man.” So I looked away and resolved to let him pass without any interaction at all.

A few seconds later I felt his dark energy as he brushed passed my right shoulder. “Let it go, Mike. Let it go.” I breathed out.

“You fucking Afghan.”

He never looked at me. I don’t think he changed his stride. But I felt those three words blow on his hot breath into my right ear. A split second later, the stale smell of cigarettes hit me. I held my breath. Then after a moment I breathed again.

The sun had disappeared behind thick grey clouds. We’d gone back to London’s default setting.

I turned slowly and calmly to look at him. But he carried on striding down the platform without even glancing back at me.

The rest of the day I wondered what the English people around me thought of me. I sat in the train and in my meetings with the young man’s words still ringing in my ear. I thought I could still smell his stale breath.

With my dark, curly hair and my Arabic features, I didn’t look like your typical Englishman. I had never felt so conscious of my Lebanese looks before.

I watched carefully, almost neurotically, how people reacted to me.

Did that woman’s eye just twitch when she looked at me because she was uncomfortable? Was the man on the train ride home avoiding eye contact? Is she a racist? Is he one?

There’ll always be people that find our differences a problem. There’ll always be people who think they are superior to the other. It takes an experience like mine with the brutish British bigot to really bring the ugliness of racial hatred home.

I was so happy to set foot on South African soil after that trip. I’m not a victim of racism here. I’m not an inferior Arab amongst blue-eyed boys here.

I’d had South African friends call me names like ‘camel jockey’ and ‘lapkop’ (rag head) but I didn’t feel insulted or oppressed. The context was different. That’s what makes a name insulting or not: the context.

My ancestors had to endure racism as Lebanese immigrants to South Africa in the early twentieth century. After members of the early Lebanese community took legal action, they were eventually classified as white by a judge based on their Maronite Christianity. And just like that, for the rest of the twentieth century they enjoyed white privilege.

As I contemplated my experience in England and my family history, racism struck me as absolutely absurd and downright ignorant – truly a perspective of unenlightened minds.

I flew 9,000 kilometres from London to Johannesburg. When I got on the plane in London I was a ‘fucking Afghan’. When I got off I had transformed into a white South African with a privileged past.

Where had I changed? Somewhere around thirty thousand feet? Was I transformed in my economy seat?

Two arbitrary things – space and time as defined in society – determined my race and all the labels and psyche that go with it. Nothing changed in me. Nothing changed in my ancestors. Yet a judge and a brutish bigot had such power to change my perception of myself. Absolutely absurd and downright ignorant.

With the apprehension of the absurdity came an epiphany: I am what I am, loved and dignified at a deeper level, regardless of all the outside stuff and the societal stuff that supposedly defines me.

I am fortunate – I have only felt the violence of bigotry a few times. I imagine it is difficult to appreciate one’s own dignity if exposed continuously to the dark ideology that one race is superior to another. Racism is the worst form of anti-love because it tries to destroy the truth of our common dignity. It deludes us. It lies to us. And it separates us.

But the existential truth is that we are all human beings at the most fundamental and real level. Not race, nor any other superficial classification of human sub-group can change this.

I smiled to myself as I recalled the young man on the station in London 9,000 kilometres away. How sad that racism had robbed him of his humanity. How sad that it had robbed him of opportunities to connect with fellow human beings. The absurd construct of a classification of people had turned him into a brutish bigot. It had turned him into an angry young man, dissatisfied with life and looking to offload his anger on anyone outside of his sub-group.

I felt sad as I snaked along the immigration queue at Johannesburg’s OR Tambo airport. Racism had robbed so many of us here in South Africa too.

Then, my brown eyes met the brown eyes of a lady behind the immigration counter. She had curlier hair than me and a darker complexion.  The corners of her mouth elevated as she said, “Hello, where are you arriving from.” I said, “London”. She said, “Welcome.” And I felt the overwhelmingly beautiful connection of one human being to another.