I was thirty before I was black
Created | Updated Apr 15, 2005
I was thirty before I was black. I always was black I just wouldn’t admit it. When I was growing up black was not a good thing to be. I lived within a white family, in a town with maybe twenty black people. Being black at best was to be a subject for pity. At worst to be black was to be an object of hate. So I wasn’t black right. I wasn’t coloured or brown, I wasn’t of colour, and I wasn’t n****r or a sambo or a savage. I wasn’t one of them. I refused to acknowledge that I was any different from my white family.
When the unthinkable happened, when the taunts drove me to acknowledge my colour, I would pray. Please God make me white. Please God make me the same as the people around me. The way a child will pray for a lost toy to be found. Complete faith that one morning I would wake up and my skin would be a cool milky white complexion. For some reason God never answered that prayer, so after a while I stopped asking and proceeded to build a world in my head where I was just the same as everyone else.
You have to understand the time and the place. I grew up during the sixties in an overspill town north of Liverpool. Political correctness had not yet happened and the love revolution did not extend to loving your coloured brethren. This was a time that spawned a popular sit com called Love thy Neighbour. This was a programme about the trials and comic situations that could arise if a black family moved next door to you. I loved that programme. It was a very good portrayal of blacks in a white society. The jokes were funny because it was so real. One of the two black families who lived in our town, the Benascoe’s, lived about 500yards up the road from my house. A well respected good catholic family with lots of kids. I often heard mothers talking about how clean and well turned out the children where. “It’s a pity they’re so black “.
At least once a week when I was too small to speak up, some kindly lady passing our garden would see a little black child playing, and would do a good deed and return me to the Benascoe household. After a while Mrs Benascoe gave up explaining and would just wait until the kind lady had gone and then take me home.
The other black family, who I will not name, had the reputation of being biggest bunch of thieves and liars in the town. I don’t know if it was true, but I spent a lot of energy and anger pointing out to people that I didn’t belong to that family.
Pity or hate, my role models. Except I wasn’t one of them. My family was white, the only blackness was my absent father. We were a white working class family, third generation Irish immigrants, who had escaped the slums of Liverpool to live in a brand new town. I had 22 cousins and we were all white.
When I was thirty I became black. It was a cathartic experience. It happened suddenly and is a whole story in itself. I embraced my colour, lifted my head up, faced the world, and got on with my life. I felt fortunate; I could laugh at my past, had no chip on my shoulder and no illusions about my colour. I dealt with insults and taunts mostly without anger. I able to use my experiences profitably with the young people I worked with, and was confident to be a voice against racism.
Until the 29th March 2004. For the first time in about 38 years I wished I was white.
It wouldn’t have happened if I had been white. The child would not have shouted nignog. The parent wouldn’t have spat in my face. The parent would not have drove off and dragged me 50 foot. I would not feel so worthless.
The physical injuries will pass, the being scared to go out alone I will fight, but I can’t find a way to get God to make me white.
I don’t really want to be white, I just don’t want being non white to be a problem.
When the unthinkable happened, when the taunts drove me to acknowledge my colour, I would pray. Please God make me white. Please God make me the same as the people around me. The way a child will pray for a lost toy to be found. Complete faith that one morning I would wake up and my skin would be a cool milky white complexion. For some reason God never answered that prayer, so after a while I stopped asking and proceeded to build a world in my head where I was just the same as everyone else.
You have to understand the time and the place. I grew up during the sixties in an overspill town north of Liverpool. Political correctness had not yet happened and the love revolution did not extend to loving your coloured brethren. This was a time that spawned a popular sit com called Love thy Neighbour. This was a programme about the trials and comic situations that could arise if a black family moved next door to you. I loved that programme. It was a very good portrayal of blacks in a white society. The jokes were funny because it was so real. One of the two black families who lived in our town, the Benascoe’s, lived about 500yards up the road from my house. A well respected good catholic family with lots of kids. I often heard mothers talking about how clean and well turned out the children where. “It’s a pity they’re so black “.
At least once a week when I was too small to speak up, some kindly lady passing our garden would see a little black child playing, and would do a good deed and return me to the Benascoe household. After a while Mrs Benascoe gave up explaining and would just wait until the kind lady had gone and then take me home.
The other black family, who I will not name, had the reputation of being biggest bunch of thieves and liars in the town. I don’t know if it was true, but I spent a lot of energy and anger pointing out to people that I didn’t belong to that family.
Pity or hate, my role models. Except I wasn’t one of them. My family was white, the only blackness was my absent father. We were a white working class family, third generation Irish immigrants, who had escaped the slums of Liverpool to live in a brand new town. I had 22 cousins and we were all white.
When I was thirty I became black. It was a cathartic experience. It happened suddenly and is a whole story in itself. I embraced my colour, lifted my head up, faced the world, and got on with my life. I felt fortunate; I could laugh at my past, had no chip on my shoulder and no illusions about my colour. I dealt with insults and taunts mostly without anger. I able to use my experiences profitably with the young people I worked with, and was confident to be a voice against racism.
Until the 29th March 2004. For the first time in about 38 years I wished I was white.
It wouldn’t have happened if I had been white. The child would not have shouted nignog. The parent wouldn’t have spat in my face. The parent would not have drove off and dragged me 50 foot. I would not feel so worthless.
The physical injuries will pass, the being scared to go out alone I will fight, but I can’t find a way to get God to make me white.
I don’t really want to be white, I just don’t want being non white to be a problem.
