No Win Race. Derek A. Bardowell

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СКАЧАТЬ a beer can whistled towards Hagler’s head. Before Hagler could get to his feet, another object flew over his bald dome, then another missile and another. Soon bottles and cans rained. The new champ curled into the canvas like a scared child at a fireworks display. The police jumped into the ring to apprehend a man who tried to attack Hagler.

      I couldn’t believe how quickly the crowd had soured. Nor could I tear my eyes away from the screen. Hagler’s corner men Goody and Pat Petronelli came into the ring to protect him. They formed a human pyramid over the fighter as the crowd gathered ringside to shout racist abuse. Most of the press sitting ringside sheltered under tables or held chairs above their heads to avoid being hit by the alcoholic missiles. Objects struck Carpenter and ITV’s Reg Gutteridge, British boxing’s foremost commentators. These fans, it appeared, had not thrown empty cans and bottles. They had thrown half-full weapons in disgust and hatred.

      I did not see Hagler again that night, maybe a knee on canvas or the shining glint of his beer-stained bald head. But his corner men, some officials in suits and the police scraped him through the bottom rope. ‘He had to be smuggled away like a criminal from the scene of his triumph,’ said the Daily Mirror’s Frank McGhee. They dragged him through the hostile crowd to his changing room as remnants of blood and beer sizzled in the ring.

      ‘Disgusting!’ was the headline on the front cover of the 3 October issue of Boxing News. Mullan opened his report by stating: ‘The long-dead myth of British sportsmanship was finally buried at Wembley as a cascade of beer bottles and cans showered the ring and a racist mob howled obscenities at the black fighter who had taken Alan Minter’s world middleweight title and at the black referee who had stopped the fight after one minute 45 seconds of the third round.’

      In the same edition of Boxing News, American promoter Bob Arum, who staged the Minter–Hagler fight, had stronger words. ‘This was a disgrace … It was ridiculous the way this nationalism was built up before the fight.’

      Once Minter had drawn the colour line, the fight had taken on a sinister tone. Black had beaten white. Black had beaten up white. Embarrassed white. England’s ego had been bruised. And they couldn’t accept it. My father was happy for Hagler, but the racial conflict had disturbed him into silence. England had lost more than just a boxing contest.

      Until the first beer can flashed past Hagler’s head, I had not completely inherited my father’s support for the American. I couldn’t grasp how Hagler’s skin colour could be the cause of such fury. And sport seemed like such an inappropriate platform for such clashes. Didn’t seem real. But then this was the first time I’d ever witnessed racially motivated violence.

      Fright.

      The fight sullied my impression of sport. Couldn’t quite re-live sport in my mind anymore. Couldn’t quite use sport to alleviate the boredom of school anymore. Couldn’t quite hide as freely behind my daydreams anymore.

      Distrust. Fright.

      A year after the fight, my sisters were talking about a fight at Little Ilford where a white girl had called a black girl a ‘black bitch’. When I heard this, I laughed. Paula, my eldest sister, turned to me and snapped, ‘Why are you laughing?’ I didn’t know. I probably thought the word ‘bitch’ was naughty. ‘Don’t you understand?’ Paula said, before explaining that the term was a racist insult. I didn’t understand and walked off in a sulk.

      The Minter–Hagler fight flashed back into my head a few months later, when my television screen was on fire. That was all I could see, flames bursting through our 19-inch canvas. I had been lying passively on the floor, waiting for the blaze to engulf me. However, my television was not about to burn down. My house was in no immediate danger. I just couldn’t digest the images on the news. I felt troubled and anxious as I watched scenes from the 1981 Brixton uprising.

      The ‘riots’ had been sparked by ‘Swamp 81’, a police operation launched in Brixton that allowed officers to stop and question anyone they thought looked suspicious of committing a street crime. The police stopped 943 people (over half were black) of which 118 were arrested in four days.⁶ ‘Swamp 81’ had followed years of over-policing in black communities and over-policing at any events or venues frequented primarily by black people. This had followed years of mainstream press linking crime to black people as if an inherent character trait. This had followed Thatcher’s warning that British people feared being ‘swamped’ by people from different cultures. This had followed the New Cross Fire in January 1981, when 13 black partygoers aged between 14 and 22 lost their lives. There was little or no mainstream press. No outcry, no mourning outside of the black and local communities. Despite New Cross being a hub for the National Front, police investigations had been swift, too swift, to rule the incident as an accident. To the wider public, the victims had no names, the incident went unnoticed. This led to the ‘Black People’s Day of Action’, a ‘general strike of blacks’ where 20,000 people marched from Fordham Park in New Cross to Hyde Park on 2 March. The march had been largely peaceful. Despite this, the Sun’s headline read: ‘Day the blacks ran riot in London.’

      The New Cross Fire had been vague but haunting to me. I knew of it, but without detail. ‘Thirteen Dead and Nothing Said.’ The Brixton ‘riots’ had been more vivid. But my mind could not absorb the extreme violence and rioting taking place in my city. I was only eight and didn’t know much about anything. All I knew was that I had never seen the night distorted so alarmingly as I watched the images on the news of overturned vehicles set alight, and blackened and shelled buildings. There were hundreds of police cowering under riot shields, pelted with Molotov cocktails and bricks, distressed black people dragged by coppers in riot gear, a pub with an erupting roof, incessant sirens, rushing crowds and confusion.

      The morning after the uprising, the streets were dusty and empty, as though desperate for sleep. The skeletons of cars threw mournful shadows. Shops and houses were doorless, windowless and war torn. Brixton looked haunted and exhausted.

      On the final day of the ‘riots’, I was having a late afternoon bath when my mother entered the bathroom. I stepped out of the bath while the washing machine, which was in our bathroom, was convulsing. My mother helped me dry myself. As I stood there, damp and naked, I said, ‘Mum, I want to bleach my skin white.’

      ‘Why?’ my mother replied calmly, although startled by my confession. ‘People don’t like us,’ I replied. I was too scared to say white people through fear they might be listening. She replied, ‘Listen, your skin is beautiful, dark and smooth. You must always be proud of your skin and who you are.’

      I listened. I took note. But I was entering a phase when racism would become part of my daily reality.

      For some time after the Brixton ‘riots’, I could not sleep. Paranoid, I would listen for sirens. Couldn’t hear much. But the slightest sound would make me shiver as if someone had been breaking into our house. Walking to school, I inspected nearby shops, trying to detect any visible signs of damage. My eyes flickered constantly as if someone had been waving a sword an inch from my face. My skin terrified me. Everyday experiences of racism, the period when rumour turned to reality, made me even more cagey, even more withdrawn, never quite knowing where I stood, never quite knowing how people perceived me. What did white folks really think of me? Didn’t know. But my skin tone made me feel apologetic, guilty, watched, scrutinised, as if a constant Spotlight had been covering my every move.

      I didn’t know at the time, but this had been the double-consciousness American sociologist W E B Du Bois referred to, the conflict between trying to develop your own character while being cognisant of how you are perceived by white society.

      Fright.

      During my final years at primary school, СКАЧАТЬ