As a white person, I grew up watching movies, and reading books about people who looked like me. There were people I saw myself represented in, and could relate to. There were very few black people in these stories, and when they were, they were always sidekicks to the white protagonists. I came of age in the 00s, when Bono and Bob Geldof were telling us to “feed the world” and “Make Poverty History”. I was surrounded by images of starving children in Africa (“the country”), who needed us to “save” them. This was the image I was fed of black people – people who have no education, people who were starving victims of corrupt governments, with no agency for themselves. In my 20s, I moved to London – and everyday the Evening Standard was telling me a new narrative of black people – that black people stab and murder others, they are gang members, people we should be afraid of. For the few months of living in the city, I found myself involuntarily tightening up when I walked past a group of black men. The narrative I’ve been fed of black people is either someone to be “saved” because they are too ignorant or incapable; or someone to be feared. It takes active work to overcome and undo the internalised stories that we are brought up with. It means reading literature by black authors and with black protagonists; it means being switched on and questioning stereotypes that we see or read; it means to notice and challenging our thoughts and assumptions – every single day; it means that we raise our children to have dolls and read books and watch films about people who don’t look like them.
