Racialised experience - Inequality-induced anger
“How are they gonna understand it? I am brown, they are not!”
I can hear a string of four-letter words spelt out from the smash on the table. Ash’s parents have had high hopes for their only son. The hopes keep piling up from one sacrifice after the other they have made for him over the last 27 years. Those sacrifices include but are not limited to giving up their own education at the age of 18, working 20 hours a day, restricting their diet to one meal a day to save up and spending 150% of their savings to send him study abroad. When Ash counts the sacrifices his parents have made for him, he describes himself as a walking Victorian house, because the money and care his parents have spent on him might be equivalent to what a Victorian house is worth.
The high expectations of him have always been an immense pressure, but Ash has learnt to set them aside throughout the years. Ash lives very close to where he works, that saves him a lot of commute time and fares and he enjoys the short ride on his bike despite the fluctuating weather. He gets along with his colleagues very well. They exchange news and updates on football, play D&D and visit the same Thai restaurant every other Friday night. It may not visually be the most culturally diverse neighbourhood, Ash nonetheless experiences it as a friendly milieu in which he feels he’s welcomed.
This painting is inspired by Kehinde Wiley's exhibition The Prelude in the National Gallery
Things take a different turn when COVID hits, the hostility towards people with different complexions is bubbling up. More than once, Ash encountered strangers calling him “Hey, brownie! What are you doing here? Go back to your home country. Stop spreading the virus”. Understandably, Ash feels a bit annoyed but he says he does not feel in the slightest threatened, he can simply shrug it off and get back to his routine. Ash did not realise that was only the end of the beginning. COVID is lasting longer than expected and people’s patience is wearing thin, somehow it does not only bring out the bright side of humans but also the dark side as well. In the street, Ash has been spat at by a group of teens, flipped cigarettes at and daggered with a range of derogatory terms. From these instances, Ash’s defence mechanism has learnt to accept that “there are nasty people everywhere, I can’t reason with them. I have to get over it”. Except, he doesn’t know how to accept them. No one should learn to accept them, because these behaviours are fundamentally unacceptable.
These racialised incidents can be traced back to five years ago during the chasm of the nation in the Brexit debates. Spending his school years in England, that was the first time Ash was heckled on the street with things like “go back to your home country ”, “Do you understand English?”. These are not unfamiliar to many minorities and they are only a tip of an iceberg. Underneath the surface, as many socially aware citizens will observe today, there are institutional flaws sustaining unhealthy power dynamics and social inequalities. Ash recounts that in all his part-time and full-time jobs, the White peers would get promotion more often than the people of a different cultural heritage, regardless of their work experience and qualification. These lived experiences of social suppression and inequalities make Ash doubt his values in society and question his identity. Through our conversations, Ash reviews his upbringing and the social inequalities imposed on his family, Ash understands that the lingering thought “I’m never good enough” and the feeling of being unsafe might have been stemmed from the pressure from his family and society and the social injustices he witnessed and experienced.
Having lived in England for nearly two decades, Ash has never felt that he was an outsider, nor has he ever been challenged on his cultural identity. He is not aware that he needs someone to talk to until Ash finds himself battling with racing thoughts at night and struggling to sleep. These presentations have escalated since the beginning of COVID in January 2021 when he encountered more challenges on the street. Having worked from home for more than five months, he notices that this isolation has induced a strong feeling of loneliness and his heart will race when he passes a group of youngsters. This unusual bodily sensation heightens his mood even more, as he does not identify himself as someone who will fear anything or anyone.
The more we talk about it in the sessions, the more we discover that Ash has had nowhere to discharge the pent up fear, anger and resentment imposed by the social injustices. These feelings are rising from misunderstanding and belligerence, and arousing the suppressed memories of being treated unfairly in school. Being both British and Pakistani under this political climate, Ash finds this double identity conflicting and challenging, he doesn’t know how to address it and his friends are too careful to talk about it. Whenever he tries to bring it up, “the people often fear that they may say something that will make them racist hence they tiptoe around the topic and avoid asking questions”. Trapped in this uncomfortable zone, nobody knows what to say and no one dares to make mistakes, which makes this safe space so helpful and valuable to people like Ash.
In the end, Ash finds it difficult to vent the indignation piling up in him, it takes him a good few months to call his long known friend Kat to voice out and settle down his feelings. Slowly with Kat’s understanding, encouragement and patience, Ash started getting up on his feet again both literally and figuratively, he joined a crossfit centre in the neighbouring town, where he met a group of affable people from different walks of life and reinstated a routine to a healthier lifestyle. By word of mouth, Ash got in touch with us online and opened up his struggles and feelings over eight sessions. Ash reflects that through this new experience, he was trying to make sense of his feelings, map out where they are from and to, and re-harness his sense of self-efficacy.
For topics like racism, class, glass ceilings, gender fluidity, imposter syndrome and climate change, they are not something that everyone cares or dares to explore. These topics may seem indigestible, intangible or substantial, but bit by bit, we can untangle them together in this safe space. The discomfort and suffering our surroundings impose on us are part of the struggle in life, they are unavoidable but endurable, intelligible and more importantly reparable. When you are ready to unfold your feelings, book a session with us. From there, we will walk with you, one step at a time, to become a better self and promote diversity in harmony.
Please note that for confidentiality reasons and word limits, we have simplified the impact of racialised experiences on an individual’s mental wellbeing. If you would like to learn more, you can start with reading more about the lives, history and culture of a nation that you are not familiar with. Here is a small list of literature and films as a starter,
read:
Franz Fanon
Malcom X
watch:
12 Years A Slave (2013)
Harriet (2019)
News of the World (2020)