I walked into the city last week and found a book in Oxfam called “Another Country” by James Baldwin. It was sitting on a shelf with the cover looking right at me on a display. It had the most beautiful cover I’ve ever seen on a book. It was a painting of a Black man in a grey city, with the buildings all at angles surrounding him and the city. It looked like a geometric puzzle from which you needed to work your way out. I looked at him on the cover and felt that it was me. That was what I had felt like walking into the city that day, surrounded by giant buildings that could crush me in a moment. I bought it with my dwindling wages and started reading it as I walked back home through the labyrinthine architecture. I don’t know how it’s going to end but it’s about a lone Black man surrounded by White people, White friends, partners, everybody White. He’s going crazy, acting terribly, hurting himself and others. It seems like he is spiritually distressed, so lonely but surrounded by people. It reads like some kind of hell at the moment.
I couldn’t live in the countryside. I love the fact that it doesn’t take me long to walk on my two feet into a thriving, fascinating civilization. My city is full of people of all races. We have lots of different communities here. Whole roads are dedicated to one culture and another road to another culture. I will never get tired of looking at it and observing the people walking its streets to make a life for themselves. My city is a film set with beautiful characters within it. Everyday I watch the film of my city, never knowing what will happen. I have no money to travel these days but I wouldn’t want to. I watch the city and am triggered to take flight with my mind into my art.
Not only do I walk the city streets, but I also drive through it every day in my car for work as I’m a takeaway delivery driver. I’ve got a degree and MA in ceramics and fine art, but it’s hard to make money from that so I work at a takeaway store 6 days a week. To me, it’s the best place in the city to work, no matter if people look down on such a job. It’s the only workplace I’ve worked that I can stomach, without being driven mentally ill. I’ve tried others in the city, and they failed. It is not me that failed but them. I see it as my soul sacked them because I am the boss of my life.
The takeaway is the only workplace where I don’t feel uncomfortable or like I’m pretending to be somebody else. The reason for that is twofold I believe. For one, I have my music and books to listen to in my car. In my car I am free. I get to control what information enters my head. So even though I am at work I am not having to move away from my own personal environment that brings me joy. I am earning money while in my own world. My car is some brain laboratory on wheels where I inject myself with culture. The culture I choose is Black power. I listen to books about Black politics and I listen to hip-hop. In my car, it is a beautiful world where I bask in the glory of my color. It’s like an aural bubble bath, in an air-tight tank where sounds that make me feel proud to be Black soak into my soul. It’s not a world that anybody else controls, only me.
As I drive around my city seeing the Black and Brown people on the streets walking home from work or going for food, I hear Black voices from my speakers. My Black brothers in America telling me their life stories. In every single hip-hop album I listen to, something is said that relates to my life. This is why, for me, hip-hop is the greatest genre. Through hip-hop, I am not only drenched in the greatest variety of musical experimentation but I’m also fed the sociology and psychology of being human, of being Black and working class. Those rappers are my friends. I just think to myself “what a kind thing to do, to tell people about your deepest thoughts and emotions.” Rappers are kind and compassionate to their fellow humans. They write diaries, open them, and show them to the world page by page.
“I have my music and books to listen to in my car. In my car I am free”
The second reason I can cope at this workplace and don’t try and jump in front of a moving truck is that the people who run the store are Brown, rather than White. The staff are 95% Asian (Indian and Pakistani), and minority Polish and Romanian. I don’t know, I can just stomach Asian power over White power. They’ve always been kind to me, whereas in all the White places I’ve worked the issue of race has reared its ugly head. I’ve been at this job for five years now but during that time I have tried to work at other workplaces where White people were in the majority or held the most power and all of those employment adventures went wrong.
On two occasions I was hauled into HR meetings in the last year for having Black power beliefs in response to racist incidents at work. Simply for challenging White supremacy and speaking my heartfelt emotions. In the meetings, they always pointed a laptop at me, and there’d be a White woman sitting, staring, and writing down everything that was said. They felt like government interviews. I’d walk in feeling like a rabbit in the headlights as they’d never tell me what was going to happen, they just summoned me for a meeting. It felt like some big corporation was oppressing my views yet again. I’d always get told off and my words scrutinized. Even a Black manager joined in and ganged up on me. Both times they sat with transcripts of my words and asked me to explain myself or go back on what I’d said. Like I was a terrorist with extremist views. So that’s it I’ve had it. I can only work in non-White majority places now.
I can’t work in workplaces with majority-White people anymore because to me diversity in the workplace is a lie. These establishments are always just a load of majority White managers with Black and Brown people working under them. They are places where, if you challenge White supremacy, you are penalized because there’s still a White hand holding the purse strings. They are places that only want to talk about the positives of diversity. Show off their multicultural workforce and keep doing presentations about how anti-racist they are. But if that workforce starts to speak about racism in all its forms then problems occur. I remember after leaving my first job I watched the show “Dreaming Whilst Black.” In one episode the staff in Kwabena’s office had a karaoke night. The White staff were all singing Black songs. This exact thing happened at work. A White band at a function played Black songs all night, I was uncomfortable and asked why we couldn’t have paid a Black band instead.
So that’s why I’m back at the takeaway; because I’m tired. I’m one of those people who will comment on everything I see. It’s hard for me to shut up. I would spend my time in those majority-White workplaces wincing. I don’t want to have to keep wincing, I might get wrinkles. The point is though, the only reason I can afford to walk out of these jobs is because I am an artist. My main career, the one I care about passionately is making art. For that, I don’t have to kiss any arse, just create. If my passion was science or medicine I would be forced to operate within White institutions and bite my tongue. While I’m trying to keep creating and working on my art career I’d much rather work at the takeaway. Everyone’s dealt with racism there. Once a customer called up and asked for their food to be delivered by a White driver instead of Brown. The drivers are 95% Brown. My manager knows what racism is. I need people managing me who knows.
“Diversity in the workplace is a lie”
What I sometimes think is “What the hell would I do if the takeaway wasn’t there?” I couldn’t work in the White spaces so what would happen then? How would I earn? I’ve been at the takeaway for 5 years. They always took me back and have been the kindest to me. Tonight I was driving through the city streets thinking about the young people in schools. Tears in my eyes, thinking about someone Mixed race and close to me who isn’t enjoying school, thinking I don’t know how I’d cope if I was there now. When I was at school I didn’t realize what I was coming out to. This brutal city out here, full of White organizations, trying to gag us into being obedient, so we look nice on their posters. I had the ignorance of youth. I was kind of the face of diversity at school. I played Titania and Juliet in the school plays opposite White boys. But I knew I felt so uncomfortable in my skin that I wanted to scratch it off and would relax the Afro out of my hair. I knew I felt something I couldn’t articulate about the majority-White teachers, the European curriculum, and seeing a racist hierarchy with students but never knew that I would be so confined later on. So wrapped in rope hardly able to move through the world of employment. My heart is broken for that person I love, I don’t know how to help him and tell him it will all be ok.
Very well articulated Lisa… and very upsetting on many levels .😔 X