During my early twenties, I briefly dated a brown-skinned South African man. It was short-lived because we did not have that much in common. So, it did not have anything to do with the color of our skin. If it did, we would not have bothered with one another. During my time with him, he disclosed that many of his relatives were racists – he was not only referring to ‘White’ people but to other groups of African people, too. He could not accept, or comprehend, this attitude from them toward their own race.
If our relationship had become serious, any racial discrimination would have stemmed from his family, not mine. I know this because several years later, my brother became involved with a Maori woman with whom he had two children. My parents and I did not disown him for it, nor did we tell him to move on with someone else. They never married. When it came to the baptism of the children, my brother did not care for it since he does not care for religion. So, the decision was hers to go ahead with Greek Orthodox baptisms for both children. She had been raised Catholic by her adoptive parents but also knew the traditional Maori ways via her maternal grandmother. When she and my brother invited me to be the Godmother of their first child, I asked her if she would prefer a Catholic baptism: she said “no”. I asked if she wanted to include any Maori ritual, if she thought it may be relevant: again, no. The one traditional Maori thing she requested early on, was the burying of the children’s umbilical cords in my parent’s garden. They agreed to it.
Many years after this, I was sitting in my hairdresser’s salon, listening to an Indian woman condemn the boyfriend of her daughter because he was from a lower caste than them. (If you do not know anything about their caste system, go here.) Her daughter was there, so she was saying it to her face in the presence of the hair stylist and myself. I had never heard anything like it, in terms of its vitriol. So, here we have bigotry based on class from within the same dark-skinned racial group.
I share all of this because I have had enough of Whites/Aryans/Europeans being tarred and feathered as the only racists, or bigots, on Earth. This false narrative is peddled by the most racist racists on the planet.
Enough already.
Helen
