A personal view of The Sewell Report
Anna Sofat reflects on the findings of the controversial Sewell Report, recalling how she herself strove to assimilate in the Britain of the 1970s. Has anything really changed?
The Sewell Report on UK Race Relations has attracted much controversy since it was released on 31st March. The Centre and the Left have accused the Commissioners of whitewashing history. Yet the world is not as black and white as the media or indeed social media amplifies. Truth often lies somewhere in the boring, grey middle.
Reading the report has made me reflect on my own experience and that of my family’s. I came to Britain 50 years ago from India as a young girl. I arrived in the UK on April 11th 1971 on a plane from Delhi to Heathrow – it was cold, drizzly, I had no idea where I was and I didn’t speak a word of English. What I do remember is seeing more white people than I had ever seen. And as part of an Asian family dressed in beautifully coloured but (weather-wise) totally inappropriate outfits, I was cold, and scared of all the attention we were getting.
Throughout the next decade I learned to speak English, and attended a big south London comprehensive, where I had ‘Paki’ thrown at me by both white girls and black girls, who ganged up on me and other Asians. I’ve since learned it’s much easier to bond if there’s a common enemy and in 1970s and 1980s London, there was a hierarchy – the cool white girls (typically the pretty ones), followed by the bold, brash, black girl gangs, then the other white girls and eventually the quiet Asian ones. Every now and then you’d find a white girl in a predominantly Asian group or a white girl accompanying one or two black girls. But that was as far as any mixing went.
During those years, I learned to be ashamed and scared. Boys followed me when I was walking home from bus stops – I’m sure they had nothing more than jeering and piss-taking on their minds, but as a young girl it didn’t feel like that. This was the time when there was blatant racism everywhere: my dad struggled with racism daily in his job at the Home Office. In those days, the Black & White Minstrel Show was still on TV and Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech was still fresh in the memory, and just one English girl, Lynn, was brave enough to invite me round to her house. I was ashamed of who and what I was: I dressed far more modestly in line with what my parents and their culture favoured.
Where I did fit in was with the teachers, especially the ones who took the trouble to look beyond my lack of English; who encouraged, pushed and inspired me to do better. Of course, there were teachers who were biased – maybe racist, who told me they didn’t really expect me to do that well in my O’Levels. But there were also those who set higher standards, who taught me about a better, more equal world and who were key to my success at school. The kind of liberal teachers the Thatcher Government came to view as their enemy, and did so much to discredit.
By the time I was in my twenties, and in work, I no longer spoke with an accent, thanks to my Dad insisting I spoke English at home with him. I dressed to fit in, and as a young, pretty, relatively light-skinned women, learned to use my femininity in a predominantly white male business world. I was so convinced of my ability to navigate this new world, I remember negatively judging women who stood up to the men at work by emulating their leaders’ ‘tough’ behaviours. I didn’t flirt or use my looks; instead, I learned to flatter. I kept the peace, kept my head down and got on with the job.
So does the Sewell report reflect my reality? No, it doesn’t. I like to think London is more diverse than many parts of the UK and more tolerant than many parts of the US. And there was a time, as we entered the 21st century, that I was proud to be British in an era where London was thriving as a diverse city, a racial and cultural hotpot. I felt at home.
Today, we have Asian and black people at the heart of Government and in many senior roles in business and other walks of life. However, they haven’t got there because of a benign system. It’s because they learned, like I did, to navigate the system. But should it have to be like this?
No, it should not. As with gender, we might have equality on paper, but in reality we live in a world designed in the main by men for men. And here in the UK, a community mainly designed by whites for whites.
What’s sadder is how the UK has become even more divided over the past decade, as many communities came to feel the pain of the credit bubble and the Government’s austerity drive as a response to the huge debt it took on from the banks. It became a lot easier to blame our own issues on others, the east Europeans, asylum seekers, or the EU, than to really confront the issues and find solutions. And as our world changes, our feelings of insecurity at being left behind have been exploited by politicians in their drive for power.
So within this context, I’m not surprised the Sewell Report has not delivered. Worse, there’s now further polarisation in the response to the report itself. We could certainly learn a lot from Nelson Mandela and his work in race relations. We need a report that seeks to heal, rather than divide. One that admits – and indeed apologises for – the wrongdoings of the past. That addresses the institutional failures within the police, the home office, and of schools to respond to the needs of black boys. We need a report that triggers a bold vision for a diverse but inclusive UK, with the most robust accountability. And we need it as soon as possible.