‘I hate talking about race but sometimes, being Black is exhausting’

Desmond Tutu’s death has brought up a whole lot of painful feelings about the colour of my skin

TLDR; Racial injustice sucks.

I really did not want to write this post. I don’t want to have to talk about this at all and I have fought it with every fibre of my being. But every week when I ask God (in the very practical way you might ask a friend or partner for advice) what I should write about for this newsletter, the topic of race comes up. I ignore it. There are much more worthy people than me talking about it, writing sellout books on it to educate others and being tireless ambassadors for the cause for getting equality right. I also have lots of close white friends who I sense struggle to know how to respond to this topic and, because I am both a) a people pleaser and b) not yet successful enough to say what I really feel without being cancelled, I tend to err on the side of caution. Like I said, it’s exhausting and this is not an area I feel comfortable delving into. Then I heard that Desmond Tutu passed away two days ago. And this felt like a conversation I could ignore no more.

The Archbishop and activist Desmond Tutu, reportedly described by former US President Barack Obama as ‘a moral compass’, died aged 90 on Boxing Day. For those who don’t know, Desmond Tutu was a school teacher in the 1950s who opted to resign rather than comply with the racist apartheid regime in South Africa. Tutu was a key figure in telling the rest of the world about the grievances of South Africa’s exploited majority communities. In 1988 he said at a United Nations summit that ‘Apartheid is as bad as nazism’: “We don’t want to drive the white people into the sea, we don’t want to destroy white people,” said Tutu, who won the Nobel peace prize in 1984 for his nonviolent efforts to end apartheid and avoid devastating conflict in South Africa. “But is it too much to ask that in the land of our birth, we walk tall as human beings made in the image of God? … To say we want to be free?” (Guardian, 26 Dec 2021)

I’ve grown up knowing what apartheid is, but the Wiki definition is particularly traumatic, especially when I consider that as someone in my 30s, I was actually alive when it finally ended. Read it here. In the UK, there are people who say that the lack of representation of Black and non-white people in British media isn’t actually a problem, it’s representative of the white-majority population living here. And actually, I do kind of understand that thinking. But how does it compute that in South Africa, where white people were/are the minority, that from 1948 until the relatively recent early 1990s, South Africa was dominated politically, socially and economically by white people? Between 1960 and 1993, a reported 3.5 million Black Africans were forced from their homes and moved into segregated neighbourhoods. I can barely write this without crying. I cannot cope with this insane cruelty against Black people and while it may have been a few decades ago, these things have lasting consequences.

In 2020, the Black Lives Matter movement - which began as a hashtag in 2013 in response to the acquittal of a white man who killed a Black teenager - rose to the forefront internationally after a series of African Americans were killed. That summer a Ghanaian friend of mine, married to a white Englishman, cried on my lap in the park as she tried to make sense of the feelings this movement brought up. Her husband didn’t get it and she felt isolated in her emotional struggle. For many of us my age and older, we have simply learned to sidestep racism. We have learned to wear our hair a certain way to make ourselves acceptable in the workplace and to eschew our home-cooked food for sandwiches so we wouldn’t be the outcasts in school cafeterias. I remember as a teenager, trudging round modelling agencies with photos under my arms trying to find one to represent me. In New York, I had a print out and with each “No”, my dream died a little and I ended up with a sheet of crossed out agencies. No one wanted me. Back in London someone finally told me why I was being rejected despite being told I had a “good look” and the height and build of a catwalk model. Bookers didn’t normally come down to see models who were rejected at the off, but at one agency I was told to wait and a tall, dark skinned Black man came down and took me to one side. He gently explained that they didn’t get asked for Black models and that there were very few agencies that would take on new Black models once they already had one or two on their books. I looked at the wall of model cards filled with white faces and my heart sunk with disappointment. I felt wretched and depressed. I read in fashion magazines about the outrage of models being told they should come back when they had cut their hair or lost some weight or had their teeth done. I remember thinking how silly of those models to moan. I would have done anything to become the supermodel I dreamed of. But I couldn’t change the colour of my skin.

However, this was a disappointment I had become familiar with. I was brought up in a white majority environment, both at school and at church. Mum was very strict with us and I now see why. Once my parents divorced, as a single mother, she was determined not to fall into any stereotype. People commented on how well-behaved we were and how obedient. We were not allowed to be anything but, for any misbahaviour would undoubtedly be put down to us being Black, some kind of unruly, lesser race. I had a teacher who was a wealthy white South African and it was rumoured she had some racist views. Reported ill treatment of non-white students were whispers along the corridor. Mum wouldn’t allow me to give that any thought. ‘Just get on with your work and behave’ was her (wise) advice to me. In primary school, a white boy called me a nigger and my sister beat him up. She was then repeatedly bullied for her thick lips (which ironically, women now pay thousands for) and for our wiry, sponge-like hair. Why am I telling you this? Because this is my reality and sometimes the survival mode of the now coined, “living while Black”, explodes when confronted with the realisation that we are subconsciously fighting every. single. day. 

At work I frequently have to remind my colleagues that it’s important to include non-white faces as well as white. I don’t like doing it, it’s embarrassing. I feel like a petulant child crying about not getting my own way. Growing up, I met many Black boys who refused to date Black girls. Throughout my childhood, there was a thing about Black men dating white women as a sign that they had “made it”. Made it out of the class barriers dictated by their race and were therefore better than the rest of us. Some of them looked down on Black women as if they were second (or fourth, according to apartheid regulations) class citizens. And if that wasn’t bad enough, a dating app released data showing what we already knew, that we, Black women, were the least desired group on dating apps - rejected not just by men of other skin colours, but also by Black men. This cut deep on so many levels because I’ve felt that, but have never been able to articulate it and also, I don’t ever want to feel like I’m “playing the victim”. I personally don’t get approached by Black men either in person or on the dating apps I have since stopped using. But even though the relationships may not last, I notice that my white female friends get lots of attention from men of all skin colours. I have a (Black) friend who always picks up on this. Whenever I tell her some success dating app story she asks me if the woman is Black or white. Ironically they’re always white and she smiles knowingly and says, ‘Well of course!’

Last year, a (white) Christian friend of mine offered to set me up with a (white) Christian guy she knew. I have dated both Black and white men and even though he wasn’t my “type” (whatever that means, since my exes have all looked wildly different…), I agreed. My friend showed me a screenshot of their conversation where he had replied enthusiastically to the idea of being set up. ‘Send me her number and I’ll give her a call!’ he said excitedly. Then she sent him a photo of me… and there was a silence. A few dots as he typed...and then nothing. And then, ‘Ah thanks but I was looking for someone a bit more athletic as I’m quite sporty’. LOL. Only resilience allows me to laugh at this, because I knew. I knew immediately what he meant. And despite my well-meaning friends telling me that maybe I just wasn’t his type, (which is fine), his excuse, having been so keen intially (presumably he thought the friend my white friend spoke of, was also white,) was so ridiculously transparent. My arms, back and legs are so toned that during the London Olympics in 2012, an American tourist stopped me on the tube to ask what race I’d just competed in. And I say this not to boast but to simply illustrate my point. I’m fine with not being someone’s type, but race rejection just feels…awkward. And when it happens repeatedly? Depressing. 

I want to stop writing about this now because I realise there is so much healing to be done where I have been hurt and (felt) rejected in this area. Sometimes I have a completely irrational reaction to things. Things like seeing famous Black men with white wives. I immediately wonder whether that was a deliberate decision to break the “class barrier”. I think about all the amazing, beautiful, intelligent and kind Black women I know who have been single for years and years. It’s irrational because their relationships are none of my business and it’s irrational because in the last few years, all of my partners have been white. There are other things too, like when colleagues get treated differently. When my book came out, I was at a friend’s apartment and her brother was visiting. She showed him my book and being a kid of the visual generation, he immediately turned to the back to check the author photo but there isn’t one. ‘Are you sure this is you?’ He frowned disbelievingly as he turned the book over in his hands. I laughed and didn’t really think much of it until I saw the back of the cover of a (white) friend’s book, published shortly after mine, with a photo of her, beaming on the back cover. 

I’ve heard books by Black women sell better when they are written about “the Black experience”, not, as mine is, simply a book about life which happens to be written by a Black woman. I read a few years ago about a study which delved deeper into the notion that ‘Black models don’t sell magazine covers’ and the (Black) head of a well-known beauty brand admitted last year on social media that she has been advised not to use a picture of herself in any of her branding. Why? She was told it would damage sales. I’m conflicted about sharing these things. But these are the things that Black people deal with everyday and don’t/can’t/won’t talk about. And when it finally comes out into the open, it’s like a dam has been opened and the floods of tears are released, as they were for my friend who lay weeping in the middle of the park: Exhausted.

That was heavy, and I want to leave on a positive note because life is hard enough for all of us at the moment! Today I’m taking time to honour the man and the legacy [of] Desomond Tutu who fought so hard, along with other anti-apartheid activists, to change the racist nature of South Africa and the world. In the UK, brands are big on the D word - diversity - and making sure non-white people are represented infront of and behind the camera. I’m torn with how it’s working. Does tokenism change anything? I don’t know. But I’m grateful for people like Desmond Tutu who put their lives on the line to make sure it does.

Doll x

PS Thank you for reading my tome of a newsletter today! It’ll be back to the usual length next week ;)

Photo: Me, on the day of my book launch in 2020, experiencing what is known as ‘Black Girl Joy’ in a racially unjust world. Also the photo that had me rejected by the would-be suitor who said he wanted someone more athletic. : )