No Win Race. Derek A. Bardowell

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      I often struggle to convey this to my white friends with children. We all have our problems. We all have our issues. I understand that. But I also know that they will never have to worry about whether their children will be welcome in some neighbourhoods or not. My white friends are unlikely to teach their kids about how to deal with the police, because their child will less likely be profiled and stopped without reason. They will not have to instruct their kids about the way they walk, through fear that this may reflect badly on how their behaviour is perceived. They will not have to worry about their child wearing a hoodie or having their child’s athletic achievements being attributed to natural ability. They will not have to worry about their child being exposed to an overwhelming number of negative images in the media or having any academic failure implicitly attributed to ‘race’. They will never have to edit their child’s assertiveness in public through fear of their child being perceived as angry or aggressive. They will not have to prepare them for multiple taxis driving past them, low expectations and stereotypes from teachers, or multiple clubs, restaurants and bars refusing them entry. It is unlikely that their children will ever be mistaken for ‘the help’ at fancy gatherings. They will not have to worry about how ‘race’ is represented in school, or if their history is non-existent in textbooks. They will not have to worry about their child’s skin being a determining factor around whether an employer thinks s/he can fit in or not, or whether they are deemed suitable for housing. They will not have to prepare their child for a society where white folks will continually explain how you (as a black person) should feel about racism.

      My father grew up in the era of West Indian batsman Collie Smith, under colonial rule where the divides in society and on the playing field were written in the law. I grew up in the John Barnes era under Thatcherism, where the violence of racism enabled me to see how discrimination made the playing field uneven. My son is growing up in the Anthony Joshua era where the uneven playing field is not quite so clear, not quite so blatant, but the impact on black people remains overwhelmingly negative.

      How, then, do you prepare your children for a society where they will be sent ‘to the crease, only for them to find, as the first balls are being bowled, that their bats have been broken before the game …’¹

^* Handa’s Surprise is an illustrated children’s book, set in southwest Kenya. Handa is taking fruit to her friend Akeyo in a basket on her head. One by one, various animals take a piece of fruit from her basket without Handa realising. Will she have any fruit left by the time she finally sees Akeyo?

^* ‘Empire State of Mind’ was a song performed by Jay-Z featuring vocals by Alicia Keys. In the song, ‘Empire State’ means New York. Here, the West Indies exposed the fragility of the British Empire.

CHAPTER 1

       HYMN OF HATE

      THE FIRST TIME IS OFTEN THE WORST. You never forget that feeling. Never quite forget how you responded or how you wish you’d responded. You hate yourself. Hate yourself for the way you felt. And that hate, hatred of the incident, hatred of your response to the incident, it never leaves you. Always stays, always scars. It never leaves you because every time an incident like it happens again, whether explicit or implicit, your immediate emotion harks back to that first feeling, back to that first response. Fright. Fight. Distrust. Disgust. You may know how to respond differently now, how to be more assertive, maybe more passive. But fundamentally, at that moment when you are confronted by racism, you dive right back to that first feeling, to that first response. Fight. Fright. Disgust. Distrust.

      My first time occurred at Wembley Arena on 27 September 1980. I was seven. Wasn’t there in person. Observed it on TV. On screen, the Arena resembled a backstreet pub in the East End: smoky, uninviting, hostile and undeniably white and working class. You didn’t need to see the faces of the patrons in attendance to grasp their attitudes. Their fanatical moans painted a picture of flushed-faced, testosterone-charged, agitated men. The Arena may have been playing host to the world middleweight championship fight between Alan Minter and Marvin Hagler, but on this night, the world-famous venue had been transformed into a scowling theatre of hate.

      I watched the fight with my father in our comfy living room in Second Avenue in Manor Park. We were one of maybe seven black families on the street, which was in the north side of Newham, one of the most racially mixed parts of the East End. My father was a painter and decorator while my mother had just started working for Laker Airways. I lived in the three-bedroom terrace with my two older sisters and my grandmother, who had her own bedroom and kitchen in the extension. I planted myself chest down on our rug in my usual posture, elbows grinding into the rug to support my head, which was perched on my hands. My father took his place behind me on our sofa, with its black synthetic armrests and orange seat covers, which sat in front of our lantern-patterned wallpaper, coloured three shades of brown.

      I didn’t know Minter or Hagler at the time. However, I remember my father putting down his newspaper to concentrate on the fight, which signified its importance. It wasn’t too often that our 19-inch colour television commanded my father’s full attention. He had purchased it with my mother’s premium bonds winnings in 1970, just in time for the World Cup in Mexico, the first finals to be televised in colour. Ever since, it had become the most vocal member of our family. It was always on, whether anyone was watching it or not. It drowned out the noise of cars speeding down our street, the screeches of kids playing knock down ginger and the metal on metal bangs from our neighbours working on their cars. My father controlled the TV, always claiming to be watching something even if he was asleep or reading the Sun. I was his personal remote control.

      On screen, the fighters were standing in opposite corners in the ring. Minter, a white boxer from Crawley in West Sussex was the reigning world middleweight champion, having wrestled the title from Italian-American Vito Antuofermo in Caesars Palace, Las Vegas in March 1980. Minter’s victory had been controversial. Most of the boxing writers sitting ringside thought Antuofermo won the fight. An informal poll of ringside writers had 10 siding with the Italian-American, five with Minter with two scoring it even. Two of the three judges on the night were split in their scoring between Minter and Antuofermo. However, the third judge, Roland Dakin from England, gave Minter 13 rounds to just one to Antuofermo with one round even, causing Boston Globe writer Bud Collins to remark: ‘He [Dakin] wasn’t the usual burglar, stealing in the comfort of the home precinct. He had gone into another man’s country to perform the overwhelming act of larceny, and never tiptoed.’

      So, Minter had to defend his title against Antuofermo in June. The return, at Wembley Arena, was not controversial. Minter dominated, slicing Antuofermo’s face to pieces and causing the referee to stop the fight in the Brit’s favour in round eight.

      Minter had been the golden boy of British boxing. A 1972 Olympic bronze medalist, he looked like a young Clint Eastwood, with a hard face but pretty features and a constant expression as if the sun was shining directly in his eyes. Out of the ring he wore tight flashy suits with his shirts unbuttoned to reveal his chest and gold chains. Minter had a flat nose, a wide face with a natural tan and a bouncer’s confident posture. His victory over Antuofermo made him the most famous sports star in Britain, sought after for sponsorship deals and ads. American fight critics didn’t think much of him though. Not surprising. American fight critics didn’t think much of most British fighters. These writers tended to load their articles with lazy jibes about what British fighters did outside of the ring (primarily drinking tea) and insults about how they fought in the ring (stiff and upright). Minter certainly did not move with the fluidity of fighters like the American Sugar Ray Leonard or Mexico’s Salvador Sanchez. And his biggest problem through the СКАЧАТЬ