in-between love

there are highs to my days you know, things like this internship and race equality justice, the director asks what i would do, what i think that matters and you don’t hear that often enough as a young, person of colour in this country, and this other campaign we are building in a room filled with beautiful, talented, shining folk because we want better, we want to do better, a teacher tells us about his story, he is the only non-white teacher in a school that is predominantly bangladeshi, african caribbean and immigrants who have just arrived, he doesn’t want to do black history this year, he wants to do black future, the kids say he is a sell out because he’s young, black and successful, he pulled himself out the dirt, arnie graf reminds him that its only because we are always the token, the one of statistics, we need numbers, we need to demand those numbers, we all have some story to tell about how we have spent our lives as anomalies doing the things they say we are meant to do, need to do, and once done we are still the black sheep. the room falls silent when arnie speaks - at the age of 68 he has the vigour and passion of someone similar to ours but his wisdom and hope is demonstrative of something that comes into fruition with time, to be around someone who has a phenomenal history of community organising with profound success makes us realise that all this is worth it. we settle into our seats a bit more and watch his mouth intently as he parts with things we know we need to hear. 

 i sat and had a conversation with my dissertation supervisor, she is the only thing that keeps me on this programme, a reminder of why i am the politics i am, we discuss my ebay vintage obsessions, the good wife and call out white privilege by the foolishness i hear in my classes like “race categories are fluid, i mean michael jackson changed his race and transgender people just change their gender all the time” and you think that it doesn’t matter what this university ranks, it’s a microcosm of all the stupidity and ignorance that comes part and parcel of extreme privilege, i get bored sitting in class rooms where i only hear the opinions of international students (namely american and canadian) tell me what it is to be british, all that speculation with a smug smile that trickles the lines on their face, i forget on most wednesdays and thursdays now that i’m in london, that this place is even real, eventually we move on to my dissertation and i love visual representations so this is the part that i’m excited about, it’s nothing ground breaking but i’m learning new methodologies and research skills so things like that matter.

i look forward a little - the future i want to have, the things i’ll be setting up and creating, the art i want to collect, the furniture i want to own, the stories i want to hear, the stories i want to tell, the way that i want to invest in non-white business because it’s time we own things, own ourselves, own our experiences. we matter even if (their) history tries to tell us otherwise.