| Being threatened with a gun is never nice. Especially not when it’s someone you live with. A friend of mine was moving out of his house a few days ago, and temporarily into mine, but before he could finish talking about keys and refunded deposits, he and his flatmate exchanged hard words. Then shouts. Then deadly threats. When I left work that day, I found my friend’s worried voice on my mobile’s answering machine. I work in a prison and can’t take my phone in with me, so I collect messages after I finish. As my workplace contains some truly dangerous people, I do not take kindly to having friends of mine threatened with firearms. Especially not when all I want to do is go home and be at peace. We ended up paying his former flatmate a visit. My friend drove us to their now almost-empty house, partly to take the last of his stuff out, but mainly to see if we could talk some sense. I’d met the guy a few times. He’s small, temperamental. Schizophrenic rather than psychotic. But instead of him, we met his elder brother, an even smaller and weaker version of the man we were trying to say goodbye to. The brother greeted us with a smile and asked us to sit at a table. He started talking about misunderstandings and future friendships, but I cut him short. The man talking to us in broken English was half my size and clearly sorry to be there, having to talk for others, but I was in no mood for explanations. He wanted money. We wanted his brother’s keys. We made the exchange and went our separate ways with cool handshakes. I had hoped that, by then, the unpleasant surprises were finished, but there was one more shock yet to come. Safely back at mine, over a cup of calming tea, my friend decided to sum up the experience by saying; “I’m not racist, but I’m never going to live with black people again”. His now-former flatmate was from Africa, a migrant arrived in London not long after my friend had done the same. As is often the case, however, this African émigré did not grow ever more at home as time went by. The opposite, in fact. Ever more lost, ever more isolated, ever more unhappy. More argumentative. More confused. Eventually, more keen on fantasising murder. Still, nothing justifies racism. I’ve lived in the UK for over two decades. My sister is married to a former war refugee from Angola. My job in prison is to coordinate diversity – meaning I am paid to promote understanding and challenge discrimination on behalf of all prisoners, staff and visitors. And there I was, in my own kitchen, still trying to relax after a rather intense evening, now hit with one of the ugliest phrases known to human kind – “I am not racist, but…” Confronting these kinds of statements is something I do eight hours a day, five days a week, in prison cells, in courts of law, in conference halls across the country. At home, I just want to drink tea and write, but rather than leave my friend’s statement be, I calmly, patiently said; “All Poles are racist, because all people are, in some way, racist, because we all are, in some times and places, weak.” Racism, like all hate, is absurd. If you really believe a group of people is in some way beneath you, why shout, why hurt, why exterminate? Leave them to it. Exploit them. Win them over. Anything, but don’t verbally or physically attack. That is weak, cruel and stupid. And I had to challenge his attitude, because I was at fault too. When I heard that phone message earlier in the day, my friend’s distressed voice made me angry. I didn’t for one moment believe his flatmate had access or the desire to use guns. But I was still furious. Furious that someone could say such things to a friend of mine. Furious that my friend would choose to live with such imbalanced people. Furious that I was allowing myself to get dragged into their conflict. I was at fault, because I knew my friend, I knew his flatmate, I had agreed to help and now I was angry at myself for all that. Which was weak, stupid and in some way cruel. Over that late cup of tea, we had to admit we had all failed that day, and how. So me and my friend would not be looking for guns against one another in weeks to come. |
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