Weheeey. Get me. Ms Brown girl OUTSIDE the Ring - I’m
so OUT I’m IN...
I read last week – on the internet so it must be
true – that mixed race is the fastest growing ethnic minority in the UK. Mixed
Race is cool.
As usual, commercial needs have trumped an
institutional grasp of this situation. You can barely look at a billboard in
the UK without seeing a pretty mixed race kid advertising cute clothes or
whatever. And I am old enough to recall a time when if my parents saw a black
face on the TV my brother and sister and I would be called into the living room
to witness this strange phenomena. (See Stephen K Amos for really funny sketches on
this point)
Ok so my parents were many decades ahead of their
time and I am too old to give a fig about ‘cool’ now but it’s still nice to
know.
In the 80s debates raged about terminology. For
example did you refer to Asians separately from the ‘Black’ umbrella? In the US 'people of colour' was an acceptable term whereas 'coloured' was viewed as disparaging in the UK. It was a
time when racism flourished and the politically conscious-raised
simply regarded non-white as black.
I recall a couple of years ago at a Meet
the Promoters event in Newcastle trying to point out to the audience of venue key
holders that many people - even in the NE - now looked like me. The entirely
white, predominantly male barriers to the arts venues in the NE looked at me blankly.
But it’s true. And what I love about it is that mixed race children seem to be
the ultimate response to racism. Despite the endemic prejudice of our immediate
history, black and white people have quietly got on with falling in love with
each other.
It then occurred to me that other groups that think
of themselves as outside the mainstream are possibly also more IN than they
realised.
Gay men have always used the term ‘out’ when
referring to admitting their sexuality. There is another implicit ‘out’ there as
well. Some must realise that white hetro able bodied middle/upper class yada
yada yada is the most IN club there is. So in coming out they are not only
revealing their gayness they are stepping away from the benefits of that exclusive club. And it’s
an odd one anyway because some in the gay community or the hetro have felt
bound to ‘out’ gays who didn’t want to be out. The guy who employs my youngest
daughter has a mug which says “no one knows I’m gay” which sums up the whole
thing neatly.
Disabled people, like black people, don’t get to
choose if the world knows about their ‘outness’ or not. And frankly neither
do working people who bear the yolk of the world’s grind. And ironically some
of the groups who clearly do not in any sense make up a minority in the way we
mean when we discuss these bizarre human constructs – are not in a minority.
Women. The afore-mentioned working people. If we could just tweak our
perceptions enough we’d realise that OUT is the new IN. Minorities are the
majority. If you add up all the people
outside the exclusive club of white male hetro able bodied
born-with-a-silver-spoon-in-your-gob people who think the world owes them - they
are so few and we are so many.
We, out here, make up the biggest club. We are so
unbelievably out there – here - that we are totally in there (!). When you start to
include other ‘outs’ the red heads, the ones with regional accents, the people
who don’t conform to physical ideas of what is body-acceptable we are almost
everyone.
In fact I think there are only about 3 people left
in the IN club. Three shrivelled up apparently hetro able-bodied white guys who
live in cities, have money and power, went to the right schools, married their
cousins somewhere along the family tree were born with a sense of their own
indispensability.
The only thing is they are behaving like they own
the world and we are letting them get away with it.
Ok
So we need to have a think about that one.