IN FOCUS
CRAZY HAIR:
GROWING UP MIXED-RACE IN A PREDOMINANTLY WHITE TOWN My band has a song called The World’s Biggest Paving Slab, in which I mention the "terrorist of Talbot Street’. The largest known domestic haul of bomb-making chemicals in England belonged to Robert Cottage, an ex BNP candidate who lived in my hometown. There are many things I love about Colne, from the beauty of its semi-rural landscape to its incredible music community, which has hosted Europe’s largest rhythm and blues festival for the last 30 years. Yet, juxtaposed
with its regressive values, an undercurrent of racial intolerance and historical taste for far-right nationalism - I can’t say, even with the privilege of being mixed-race, that it was an easy place to grow up. If you type "rock musician’ into Google, the results are predominantly male. If you backspace and type in "female rock musician’, the results are predominantly white. That is what it is like to be one of the only black 32
faces in town: you don’t see yourself represented. I never had a black teacher; I never had a black doctor; there were no black business owners; there was no black Disney princess and no black women were rock musicians. Growing up in the "Ain’t Nobody Got Time For That’ generation, the prejudice I experienced wasn’t like the overt racism directed towards the local Pakistani community or refugees; small in numbers, we were seen as more of a novelty than a threat.
