Holding On toWhite Privilege Means Never Even Acknowledging You’re in the Wrong

While apologising is just … out of the question

I grew up in the North of England. I was fourteen years old when I came upon ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ in the school library. The book was not required reading but I read it cover to cover in a week, staying up late at night and missing lunch to read it in my lunch break at school.

I’ve always had a vivid imagination. The description of people being bought and sold at auction, horrified me. I got captivated by the experiences of the mild and gentle Uncle Tom. Being ordered about, expected to show endless deference, act subserviently, work the longest hours and be beaten at the whim of the owners was something that the author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, conveyed most vividly.

My horror, as she described the actions of violent white owners of Afrikan people, was assuaged when I learnt there were also rebels, white people in America who helped run the ‘underground railroad’ to freedom in the North. They were a Christian sect called ‘Quakers’.

Some two decades later, after very disappointing experiences in white academia and white socialist/feminists where a kind of ‘doublespeak’, seemed to prevail, I found myself walking beside a Quaker guy at an anti-war rally. He was a Quaker. My mind flickered to my 14 year old self… Quakers who took meaningful social action to embody the virtues of Jesus. Alienated both from my Muslim heritage and socialist circles, I began attending the local Quaker meetings to be part of this community.

I loved sitting in a circle symbolising the rejection of hierarchy. I read the red Quaker book of testimonies and was touched to read the words of people for the 17th century to the recent past. The concept of ‘continuous revelation’ really spoke to me, along with the concept that we all have ‘that of God within’.

I joined about year later having attended every Sunday, been to a conference… and making friends with people there, including Jane, in particular, a homeschooling momma who was in the middle of a separation from her husband.

Jane had never worked. She’d got married and chose homeschooling for her two kids. She’d abandoned her Uni degree in her final year. “Because I got pregnant”, she told me.

The weekends when the children were not with her, were difficult for her I sensed, so we often did things together. She took me to her allotment. I often asked her to come with me for a sauna at the gym, where I went.

I also suggested she try teaching as she was good with group activities at the Quaker meeting house. She could come to my class as a volunteer I told her. But she never did. The following year, I started work at another college. I was being targetted there as I not compliant over falsifying a register and making up classes that had not taken place, to cover for the managers who had wrongly, claimed funding.

I know truth is stranger than fiction as that bully of a white manager also happened to be called Jane.

After a fraught meeting, where I expressed my thoughts on the need to address Muslim male students who were harassing their white female classmates, Jane the manager yelled at me, ‘Don’t think, just teach’, I drove home upset and quite exhausted. I collapsed into my bed early that evening. then I was woken by a text from Jane, my Quaker friend. I read her text with a sense of absolute disbelief.

Her text said: ‘I know I shouldn’t ask you this, but could you sign a form, to say I’ve been attending your classes as a volunteer… My course is finishing in a week and I didn’t get round to arranging my teaching practice.’

I paused, I sighed. Wearily, I texted back. ‘I really can’t do that’.

I couldn’t believe in the course of ONE week, there were two attempts by white women to get me to commit fraud… to lie and sign my name to the lie they needed, to cover up their lazy, dishonest arses.

No thank you. It was an abuse of my friendship to ask me! I felt so upset and restless, I had to get out of bed and get some chocolate to sort of ground and comfort myself. Well, that was my excuse!

After a six week silence from Jane, I decided to build bridges and contacted her. I suggested we meet in the gym reception area where we could have a drink and then go on to the sauna. She agreed. I got our coffees and after a little chit chat, I said , ‘About the teacher training thing…” To my surprise Jane turned away in her seat to the point that she had her back to me!

Okay… so she doesn’t want to talk about that.

Once we were changed and in the sauna she went and sat at the furthest space away from me. It was… uncomfortable, to say the least.

After that attempt to reach out to Jane, I didn’t try again. Not did she. I also stopped attending the Quaker meeting. I had too much going on at work.

You know that long word, ‘intersectionality’ comes to mind. I was veering from one crisis to another, through the interlocking systems of racism, sexism and classism that were coming at me personified by people in just about every sphere of my life. The only time I seemed to get a break was when I was home alone. Solitude became my comfort blanket.

Meanwhile, not one person over the weeks, months and years that followed, at the Quaker meeting that I’d attended for three years, ever attempted to find out why I stopped going. I really wanted someone from there to reach out to me. But no-one ever did.

I did see Jane the fake Quaker a couple of times in town. I avoided her.

Yesterday, I read on my Facebook page that the Quaker meeting is going to cancel my membership as I haven’t been there for so long.

O Cowardly Quakers, could you not come and ask me why I stopped attending? A dog cannot read your fine words, but embodies more love and loyalty and truth than you do.

The past ten years or so have brought to the foreground how very deeply I’ve been duped by the unwritten rules of engaging with white UK gatherings, whether in academia, social activist circles and the Quaker fraternity no less. It’s a very painful lesson.

In the 21st century, in all the superficially liberal so-called democracies, which remain essentially white supremacist nations, while it is no longer socially acceptable to pontificate whether people of colour are really fully human, nor to make obvious differences in the terms and conditions of work or in social or other interactions between people of European origin and everyone else. .. but…

But there is, like a musty, wrinkled palimpsest, echoes of the old system of domination, exploitation and a subtle deeply embedded attitude of entitlement emanating from white people. If you don’t comply with the unwritten code, you will find a certain distance growing. Before long, there are no more calls, no more visits and even the switch-on smiles wane and waver. You are no longer welcome as you did not follow the unwritten rule — comply with your white master — or mistress, preferably with a big smile.

In the UK, just like in the USA, the people of colour who succeed, gain acceptance and prominance are mostly the compliant ones, willing to be used to stomp on the rest of the world in pursuit of white supremacists’ goals.

I’ve realised that the people who make up the present day Quakers lack the moral grit of the founders and the early Quakers who risked jail, confiscation of their property, and loss of life to remain true to their ideals of integrity and truth. Most of those passing themselves off as Quakers today, are what Chomsky called ‘the bewilderers’, they are the well-heeled teachers, social workers, probation officers, lawyers and such-like, ensuring the smooth running of the Empire while bleating about democracy, and human rights.

Actions sure do speak louder than words, my False Friends. The unwritten rule Jane expected me to follow was… ‘comply with my ‘request’ - fulfill my need — or else you will be socially erased, you’ll be dead to me/my community’.

The core truth I’ve unearthed through many such sad experiences is, by and large, the following:- Be less than compliant O People of Colour, and you will be out on your ear. No room at Whitie’s Inn for you!

Of course there are some exceptions to the rule. I will also write about my truly steadfast and heroic white friends. (Yes, there are several).