Ramsey Sound, Westest Wales
When I was twelve I was sent to an international school in London. None of the other schools that my parents approached would take me; I am dyslexic. I remember the entrance interview with the head master's wife. We discussed Star Trek. Yup, I'm a nerd. The students were children of the diplomatic corp, nepos or local flavour such as me.
I remember standing on the stair to the first floor and looking up at an African-American who must have been 16 years old at the time. We had made friends by joking as we passed in the corridor, eating lunch at each other, standing together in the park at break. Somehow 'You all look the same' had come out of my mouth. I don't remember the context of the conversation — but the effect was immediate. Was she no longer talking to me, but to a racist child from a racist country that had built and lost an empire? If someone had placed tape over my mouth and she could have read my eyes and heard my muffled pleas, she would have known this was Romeo and Juliet — even if I was much too young. But the golden arrows that left my bow, turned to lead as they pierced her heart. The tape was ripped from my mouth and our unfriendship began — what had I said? I knew I had said something wrong and yet I did not understand. Who put that phrase in me? She soon returned to the States and I never got to say sorry. It's been 40 years, this is my apology. This is unconscious bias and it took a great deal to bring it to my conscious.
Netflix released 'Spirited' for Christmas last year. It's a love story about an old white scrooge — now in the ghost business — falling for a clever, competent black woman who wants babies — but she's a business woman played by Octavia Spencer! Wait is this really the movie that I saw? And she marries Will Ferrell! Their happy ever after is living in a front room with two babies and an open wood fire!? Were they looking the other way when they wrote this thing? So yes, Spirited — I once tried to convince ivy league feminists that Mrs Doubtfire was a 'significant' movie — I have form.
Spirited has a number called 'Good Afternoon' written by Ryan Reynolds. 'Good Afternoon' is a polite insult. You hurl it at an other that has offended you. Since it is a dance number in the movie, you could add a couple of steps, a twirl or just hands splayed with a slight bow from the waist or even a curtsey! But with your pained smile you are being polite in the face of offence. And with this absurd reference I would maintain that you are inviting the unconscious oaf before you to wander off into a corner and have a good think. It may take 40 years, but they'll get there.
In the British press at the time, Lady Susan Hussey was being excused for unconscious bias when she asked Ngozi Fulani: 'where do you come from?' That is not a bad ice breaker at a Commonwealth conference, or even a conference of Women's organisations. Where Hussey went wrong was not following the answer Fulani gave. The answer would have taken them to a conversation about the work that Fulani does and the cause she labours for. Would it be demeaning to suggest that Hussey was playing a game for the bored with the other Ladies in waiting: "Let's see if we can collect all the countries of the Commonwealth by asking the attendees where they come from". For her insistence was to get Fulani to say a place, with a single mindedness that should not have been possible for one with such conversational experience — she's 83 years old. That's the unconscious part. But let us go deeper. Game or no, what she was asking of her conversational companion was entertainment. She was trying to control the conversation and by extension lord it over Fulani. We have returned to the Victorian values of philanthropy that enable the powerful to reduce the state and once again provide an ever greater inequality and social immobility! The social reforms of the 20th century were intended to make philanthropy a thing of the past. Rights articulated demands on society for safety, education and dignity through taxation and regulation. Now Amazon pays less than a living wage and no corporation tax! Definitely looking the other way!
Lady Susan Hussey comes from a class that exists through land and our lack of effective land reform. She was working in a building created by empire that to this day has made no attempt at reparations. And this institution decided to gather philanthropy to discuss the plight of women in our society! Were they looking the other way when they wrote this thing?
In semiotics they define two companions, langue and parole. Langue is the language that you inherit and parole is what you try to say with what you are given. But parole breaks langue all the time, as each generation tries to make meaning. We have been given a rundown, post-imperial, racist, sexist country. What shall we say with what we have been given?
So let us vote a 'Good Afternoon' parliament into office and make the land reforms the centuries have denied us. Let us tear down the institutions of colonialism and oppression and make our own anew. Let us leave behind what we have been given and choose to be the people and carbon-neutral country we can be!
Or you could just say, 'Good Afternoon' to me.