J Magazine - Issue 1 - The Civil Rights Issue

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magazine

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CIVIL RIGHTS

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ISSUE ONE J MAGAZINE | ISSUE 1 | THE CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUE | 1

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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Hon Jiun Wong DEPUTY EDITOR Grace Witherden CREATIVE DIRECTOR Federica de Caria SENIOR EDITOR Amita Joshi EDITORIAL Marie-Amelie Heuls Jasmine Rapson P.T. Soh

COVER MODEL: Victoria Sanusi, PHOTOGRAPHER: Hon Jiun Wong

Editor’s Letter J Magazine has been a long time coming. What began as a way for me to learn about creating a magazine has since turned into a project that aims at documenting the hidden stories of society.

February was Black History Month in the United States and LGBT History Month in the United Kingdom. For our first issue, we wanted to focus on the civil rights as a way to tie both these months in and pay tribute to the campaigners and the activists of history.

Lastly, words are inadequate to express the level of gratitude and admiration I have for my colleagues and friends. They’re the light that journalism needs.

Table of Contents

4 8 11 14

An Evening with a Drag Queen The Proud Ones The Freedom to Marry Coming Out Stories

19 30 32 34

Queer Black Spaces The Game Changes Slavery In The UK

Million Women Rise

36 38 42

Racism: A Personal Reflection No Steps Without My Sister Looking Back At History

Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking at an interfaith civil rights rally in San Francisco Cow Palace, June 30, 1964. Photographed by George Conklin

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An Evening with a Female Drag Queen WORDS: FEDERICA DE CARIA IMAGES: KATHRYN SIMPKIN

I

met Kathryn, a girl drag queen. Yes, a girl. I was sitting on the floor one night, a glass of wine in one hand and in front of me, a plate of pasta. There was five of us that room, almost all in the same position, and by that I mean, still sober. I had met a couple of them ten minutes before, but the conversation flowed naturally. Then casually one of them came up with: “I do drag. Drag queen”.

I lost my virginity for the second time that night. I didn’t know anything about it. I knew about the man in a wig version and I always thought drag queens were like a gender-related phenomena. But Kathryn, that night showed me how wrong I was. I remained curious and dissatisfied that I couldn’t ask all that I wanted, I found a good excuse to ask her for an interview.

Ready to lose your virginity again?

This time we were in front of a café. “I last did it about two weeks ago. I was in Manchester.

I do mostly Manchester. The scene there is just so incredible.

I like London, I like both. But Manchester is moving forward with a very alternative scene.

Maybe because of tourists, in Soho you might see a specific kind of drag. A man in a wig”, she says. Right there, my mistake number one.

It’s surprising how this little pixie, with blond boy hair and blue eyes could change. She’s got this clean face; with just a little bit of gold and blue eye liner but I bet she doesn’t even use foundation. And then at night, her body becomes a canvas.

“You come up with an aesthetic concept. We had a really good one last time we went, which was ‘God and Goddess’. The

“I lost my virginity for the second time that night.”

Kathryn Simpkin becomes a drag queen at night and has performed both in London and Manchester J MAGAZINE | ISSUE 1 | THE CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUE | 5

J MAGAZINE | ISSUE 1 | THE CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUE | 6 time before we had ‘Nightmare Before Christmas’. You just come up with a theme and you go for it. Face paint, make up, hair, no hair, body paint, just nakedness”, says Kathryn, describing her last exhibition in Manchester.

It’s not a full time job, but she does goes paid for her exhibitions, for her performances. What does she do apart from impersonating a character? “Some people sing, but what we tend to do is lipsyncs. It’s in a way, an art form in itself, because you embody the singer. He or she is coming out

“It’s like storytelling. You pick a song that will help you tell your story and you just kind of become that person” of you. It’s like storytelling. You pick a song that will help you tell your story and you just kind of become that person”, she says.

She did sing once, but that was a year ago. “When I first started out drag I did a pageant, ‘cause it’s a really good way to get to know other queens. It’s like a beauty pageant, but a drag version. What happens is that often you end up having judges with a really conventional idea of what drag is. Drag is a man in a wig singing ballads, you know?

So then if somebody comes along and rips his wig off, strips down and covers himself in fake blood, then they are like, ‘What are you doing? This isn’t drag!’ But it is drag. Just it’s a very different way of seeing it”.

Apparently, the judges tore into her, because in the end they were able to understand she wasn’t just being ‘fishy’ which Kathryn explains means feminine among drags -, she was a woman. “They weren’t able

to understand I was actually a woman straight away. At first, everyone was really confused.

Then as soon as I talked, they were like, ‘Uh, she is a girl drag!’ I remember at the beginning, they were pointing at my boobs: ‘How did you do that?’ I was like, ‘I grew them!’”, she tells laughing.

Everything changed when she met Cheddar Gawjus. “I did a performance in Manchester and this guy came up to me.

He was like: ‘I really like your performance. I like your look.

Would you like to perform in my club? I really want to put you in an environment where you’re going to be appreciated”, she

says. It is in this way that Kathryn began to go to Manchester.

“For me, it’s not about being female, it’s about being a visual piece of art.

You’re never going to be a woman when you’re on stage” In Manchester, there’s apparently a ‘gay’ area: “You can literally walk from one club to the other”. In London, there’s Soho - the old venue - but there’s also Camden. Camden is another

area where they don’t care so much about gender. “Those people go for an image, not for a gender. They literally just see it like another image and they don’t care which gender you start off with”, she explains. “They call us ‘fairy queen’, ‘fairy queen’ is like female queen. Like ‘girl queen’”.

But why is there competition between male drag queens and girl drag queens, why does a group often discriminated then discriminate in turn? “I think that some of them do feel threatened, because they think you as a woman don’t have to put in as much work. There are, for example, drag queens that

don’t even call themselves ‘drag queens’, they call themselves ‘female impersonators’. I hate that personally. For me, it’s not about being female, it’s about being a visual piece of art. You’re never going to be a woman when you’re on stage. You’re going to be a performer, and you’re going be a character, a cartoon. It’s not about becoming a biological woman. But I think that certainly for some drag queens,w the aim is to become as close to a woman they can”, says Kathryn.

“It’s a bit like every community, with other denominations inside.

It’s the same in the religious community. Within the gay

community, there are so many different denominations.”

I asked her then, when did female queens begin to appear and when did the concept of drag start to change. “I think it’s an element of the 80s. If you look, for example, at Annie Lennox from the Eurythmics or at Grace Jones. It’s like that gender bender we’re talking about. The woman with very short hair, or the woman wearing a suit, with big shoulders. It’s kind of becoming masculine. I think it comes from a lot of 80s fashion”, she says.

I get the feeling that Kathryn loves the 80s. “ I started to get attracted to this world, probably when I was about fourteen. I was

“I’m a female, often dressed up like a man, dressed up as a woman.” a big fan of Pete Burns and I really like his aesthetic. Well, now he’s gone mental with plastic surgery, but he’s very much ‘If you want to wear girls clothes or boys clothes, it doesn’t matter’. He just wears whatever he wants.

This conversation has almost the same effect as my coffee.

Much like how caffeine keeps you awake, this conversation makes you aware. “So in the end, I’m a female, often dressed up like a man, dressed up as a woman. It’s an aesthetic. I want to say again that it’s not a gender thing.

“Gender is fun to play with, because people will always question it. People always want to classify something”.

A variety of moments and faces of Kathryn Simpkin: (clockwise from left), a causal photograph, with a friend, dressed up, and without any make-up J MAGAZINE | ISSUE 1 | THE CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUE | 7

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CHRISTINE BURNS “There are so many things I’m proud of, but probably the thing I’m more proud of is the thing that would surprise people the most. I’m proud to be a trans woman, I’m proud to be a lesbian trans woman.

“People always look surprised, because they probably wouldn’t tell me that I could be proud about that. I wasn’t always proud. I lived a lot of my time in the closet. I even started campaigning in the closet for many years. And I worked in the kind of environment where is probably not wise to be out to people.”

Christine Burns is a Trans rights campaigner, formerly vice president of Press For Change (PFC) and in 2005, was awarded an MBE for her work representing transgender people. At the beginning of her career she decided not to reveal her trans history but then, in 1995, she changed that.

Remembering it, she declared: “I realised something had changed in 1997, when I realised it was more embarrassing to admit to being a conservative than to being a trans-woman.”

The Pro

WORDS: FEDER

Ray Gosling was famous as a BBC journalist and gay activist. Then he decided, in February 2010, to claim, while on air, to have killed a lover in an act of euthanasia. A claim that although was revealed to be false in the end, stuck to his name, even after his death.

A Pioneer of the modern British gay rights movement, Ray started campaigning in the 1950s and kept doing so even when his profile on television and radio increased. He first started working with Allan Horsfall in the North West Homosexual Law Reform Committee in the late 1960s, which later became the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE). ‘Gay Monitor’ became the name of the website the two were running.

Gosling believed in a democratic mass movement in which gay people were encouraged to take control of their own lives and fight for their rights. A sharp contrast from the famous 1960s movement, Homosexual Law Reform Society, which wasn’t run by gay people themselves.

The documentary producer and broadcaster, famous for his ability to catch in his productions quirky aspects of life, passed away on 19th November 2013.

IMAGE CREDIT: THEHEROINES.BLOGSPOT.COM / ZIMBIO.COM / RAYGOSLING.ORG / TWITTER.COM/DIAGEOLIAM

RAY GOSLING

PARIS LEES “It was a figurative kick in the teeth being born male – but when I was younger, I also got actual kicks in the face for ‘acting girly’. Feminists have long fought to protect women from violence and I wish more of those with big platforms would discuss the very real abuse trans people suffer, often daily.” These are the words of Paris Lees, in a piece for The Guardientitled: “Why I’m trans… and feminist”.

This is how Lees has publicly identified herself: as a bisexual trans woman and as a feminist. Paris is a journalist, a presenter and a transgender rights activist, who founded META, the first British magazine aimed at the trans community. She was also the assistant editor of Gay Times and has also written for The Independent, The Guardian, and Vice as well as for the BBC and Channel 4 News.

Brought up as a boy, she started her transition when she moved to Brighton to study English at university. From that moment on she started campaigning to improve the social recognition of transgender people, and was awarded the Positive Role Model Award for LGBT at the 2012 National Diversity Awards.

oud Ones

RICA DE CARIA

LIAM HACKETT “Being different can be difficult, especially when you are young.

Like many others, I found growing up to be painfully difficult. I was bullied continuously throughout primary and secondary school for being gay even before I, or many of the bullies knew exactly what it meant.

“The bullying got physical during my final few years at secondary school and I just remember feeling so alone and full of self-loathe. I was lucky to have the support from my friends and family but I never felt like any of them truly understood what I was going through.

High school eventually came to an end and after starting college...I began to regrow my confidence and eventually pinpointed that there was an enormous gap in the market for an online community that enabled youths to login and share advice about bullying.” These are the words of Liam Hackett founder of the anti-bullying website and charity Ditch the Label.

The young activist campaigns against any ‘social labels’ that tend to define people. Hackett officially launched Ditch in 2012 when he was 21 and is now the CEO of the charity.

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HARVEY MILK “Somewhere in Des Moines or Saint Antonio, there is a young gay person who all of the sudden realise that he or she is gay, notes that if the parents find out he’ll be tossed out of the house...a child has several options: staying in a closet, suicide and then one day that child might open a paper that says “Homosexual elected in Saint Francisco” and there are two new options.

“The options are to go to California or stay in Saint Antonio and fight. Two days after I was elected, I got a phone call. The voice was quite young. It was from Altoona, Pennsylvania and the person said: ‘Thanks’. And you’ve got elect gay people so that that young child and a thousand and a thousand like that child know that there is hope for a better world, there’s hope for a better tomorrow.

“Without hope, not only gays, but those blacks and the asians, the disabled, the seniors, the us’s. Without hope, the us’s give up.” This is one of the most famous speeches of Harvey Milk, an American politician who became the first openly gay person to be elected in California.

He ran for political offices, three times before winning a seat as a city supervisor in 1977 in San Francisco, making history.

Honourale Mentions Ian Mckellen After coming out in 1988, Ian McKellen has been an active campaigner for LGBT rights. He helped co-found Stonewall, a LGB rights lobby group, named after the Stonewall riots. In 2007, he became a patron of The Albert Kennedy Trust, an organisation that provides support to young, homeless and troubled LGBT people.

Edith Windsor At the age of eighty-four-year-old, Edith Windsor managed to bring down the Defense of Marriage Act with her case in the Supreme Court in 2013. With her beauty, courage and youthful demeanor, Edith became an unlikely activist for LGBT rights.

Stephen Thomas Whittle As an activist with the transactivist organisation Press for Change, Stephen Whittle has worked with the trans community for over thirty years. He is also the President Elect of the World Professionals Association for Transgender Health, and was honoured with an OBE in 2005 for his work on gender issuse.

Dan Savage On September 2010, Savage started It Gets Better Project in light of the suicide of 15-year-old Billy Lucas. The project is aimed at assuring gay teenagers that life can improve after bullying by encouraging adults to submit these reassurance videos.

Romaine Paatterson Romaine is an American LGBT Rights activist, radio personality and author, who received national attention for her activism at the funeral of murdered friend and gay student Matthew Shepard. She has been very vocal about her response to anti-gay protests conducted by Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church.

IMAGE CREDIT: DANIEL NICOLETTA / GLAMOUR.COM

Michael Steed He served for many years on the Executive Committee and treasurer as the Campaign for Homosexual Equality.

At one time, he shared the platform with Ray Gosling at a public meeting in Burnley in 1971, over the proposed establishment of a gay club.

The Freedom to Marry ONLY EIGHTEEN COUNTRIES HAVE APPROVED MARRIAGE FOR SAME-SEX COUPLES NATIONWIDE WHILE OTHER COUNTRIES ARE SLOWLY ON THE WAY TO GIVING COUPLES THE FREEDOM TO MARRY. IT’S SLOW PROGRESS, BUT IT’S PROGRESS NONETHELESS.

WORDS: HON JIUN WONG

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THE UNITED STATES Individual states are left to decide their own marriage laws. Massachusetts became the first state to allow same-sex marriage. In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Defense of Marriage Act, which had previously prohibited the federal government from respecting legal marriages between same-sex couples.

MEXICO Only civil marriages are recognised by the law and while same-sex marriage is legally performed in Mexico City and in the states of Quintana Roo and Coahuila, it is explicitly banned in the state of Yucatán. Same sexmarriages performed within Mexco are recognised by 31

Countries with the freedom to marry Countries with regional freedom to marry Countries with pending recognition Countries who prohibit same-sex marriage

GREENLAND Greenland is among many countries that offer many rights to same-sex couples but that doesn’t include marriages. Other countries include Germany, Hungary, Ireland and Scotland.

SOUTH AFRICA In December 2005, the Constitutional Court of South Africa ruled that denying same-sex marriage violates the country’s constitution and gave Parliament one year to adjust laws to comply with the ruling.

AUSTRALIA Couples - including samesex couples - who have lived together for more than two years can achive “De Facto” status, which extends to them the many protections and responsibilities that marriage provides. However, same-sex couples are prevented from marrying due to a ban on same-sex marriage contained within the federal Marriage Act (1961), enacted by the Howard Government.

WORLD MAP TAKEN FROM VECTORWORLDMAP.COM DATA TAKEN FROM THE INTERNATIONAL LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, TRANS AND INTERSEX ASSOCIATION

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Coming Out Stories: LAURIE CANNELL LAURIE CANNELL IS THE CAMPAIGNS REPRESENTATIVE FOR UCLU’S LGBT+ STUDENTS’ FORUM, WHICH IS AIMED AT PROVIDING SUPPORT AND WELFARE FOR LGBT+ STUDENTS AT UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON.

as being ‘gay’. But then it feels like I am defining myself into another box and I am once again constraining myself. So ‘queer’ kind of opens that box up. And it also include my gender, which I’m not really sure about.

“There was definitely a process of coming out to myself before I came out to the world.”

How do you first introduce or identify yourself to people?

It depends on whom I’m talking to. If I can’t be bothered having a complicate discussion, I tend So how did you find out that you to say I’m gay but I prefer to be were not straight, and queer? defined as queer.

For quite a long time, I sort of buried it deeper down than How do you differentiate between possible. I thought, I had to come the two? out. There was definitely a process I tend to give a different answer to of coming out to myself before I that question every time, because came out to the world. queer means lot of different things The reason I didn’t come out to lots of different people. was because I didn’t feel like I For me, I define ‘not straight’ could be me and be gay. I felt

like you see a lot of these quite specific stereotypes and they’re very constraining and I didn’t want to be forced to fit into them so I was quite happy with who I was, apart from this urge, from this attraction to men.

I hid it very well; nobody in my life realised, nobody in my life knew and was like “Oh we already, we already worked it out”.

How did your parents react to you coming out?

They were very good, I think they were surprised. They thought my brother was gay and not me but it’s actually the other way around.

They were almost too okay with it. It’s such a massive thing for me to have finally said after six years thinking about it.

I came out when I was 17 and I remember first realising that I was

“You still get a quite liberal spin on it, saying ‘‘It should be fine. You shouldn’t have to come out.’I find that quite silencing. It’s not a positive response for me. There’s an underlying tone of ‘please be quiet about it.’” doing it a lot of the time.

a little bit different about the age of 11 and talking about porn with some friends and I realised that I wasn’t quite looking at what they were looking at.

“I realise that it’s actually quite liberating and exciting to be a bit camp...”

Do you still feel like you don’t fit a stereotype?

No, I don’t think I fit a stereotype.

It depends on whom I with, and where I am, and how comfortable I feel.

I now realise that not wanting to fit this sort of a camp stereotype of a gay man was actually quite sexist of me.

I realise that it’s actually quite liberating and exciting to be a bit camp, but I don’t feel comfortable

sure the university and the union are considering the needs of LGBT As a teenager, was there any one people. you looked up to?

We need it as a space where I was listening to a Radio 4 people feel safe and are able to be programme about the life of Ian themselves.

McKellen and this was when I was 17 and I was already thinking, How do you feel about the about sort of hiding it less. I was progress that’s been made so far, in terms of policies and society?

“I don’t want a straight life There has been progress made where I’m gay.” but I think quite often it’s progress in the wrong direction. I wouldn’t listening to the programme about have put so much effort in fighting Ian McKellen and sort of thought for gay marriage, especially one ‘He’s had a pretty good life. I would that doesn’t allow trans people. be happy if I had this life, and I don’t think marriage is a maybe I can have a life that I’m priority for a lot of LGBT people, happy with that and come out’. it’s a priority for settled, wealthy, gay white males and lesbians. I How do you feel about public think there’s a statistic that 50% stories versus private coming out of young homeless people are statements?

LGBT. That’s something I want I believe it should be something to campaign about, I’m not that we shout about, that we’re proud interested in campaigning about of, that we want to talk about marriage. I don’t want a straight because I think it does play a large life where I’m gay. part in people’s lives and to say It would be nice if people “Oh, it’s only a small part of them” felt like they could come out as minimises the dangers and the themselves, rather than coming difficulties of being LGBT. out as gay, queer, bi and everybody I think it’s more public nowadays else telling them how they should because it’s more easy to talk behave, telling them how they about. You don’t get the same should fit. backlash that you used to get.

Even the people in the You still get a quite liberal spin community say: “You’ve just come on it, saying ‘‘It should be fine. out as bi, that means you have to You shouldn’t have to come out.’ I alternate what gender you have find that quite silencing. It’s not a sex with”, or coming out as trans, positive response for me. There’s and you have to change the way an underlying tone of ‘please be you speak. quiet about it.’

There’s always these sort of roles on how we behave, from How important are these LGBT within the community and from societies for students in university? out of the community. It would be Very important. I think you need nice if that wasn’t the case. these societies in order to make J MAGAZINE | ISSUE 1 | THE CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUE | 15

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Coming Out Stories: HANNAH MILLS

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J MAGAZINE | ISSUE 1 | THE CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUE | 18 HANNAH IS A SECOND YEAR ARCHAEOLOGY STUDENT AT UCL.

you been doing today?’ and I said “I went to see this film with one of the uni societies” and she said “Which society?”

When did you first realise that I kind of had a minute of what you were bisexual? should I do and then I went ‘fuck It was kind of a drawn out presence. it’. I was feeling pretty inspired I knew my aunt was a lesbian so it “I think a lot of people wasn’t like I was stunned.

What was it like going through the process of understanding your sexual orientation?

I was in an all girls school from Year 9 to Year 13, so I kind of just ignored it and went: “Let’s just not do this now”.

And then my sister told me that she thought she was a lesbian and she was concerned about it and didn’t know what to do about it. She got over that better than I did, over coming to terms with it.

Then at UCL, I was like: “Yeah, I should find some fellow gays’.

Did you ever have to publicly come out?

I haven’t come out to a lot of people, which seems ironic because I seem to go out to all these events. I thought that I’ll just started going to all these LGBT events on Facebook and maybe they’ll get the idea.

And do they?

No, not really. I don’t know, maybe I’ve been doing it at bad times.

But you know, you can’t really hide when you join a group on Facebook, which is one of the reasons why it took me so long to join the LGBT society. I was kind of agonising over: “But it will tell everyone”.

I saw ‘Pride’ with the LGBT society and I cried a lot after seeing it. It’s a very inspiring and true story. I was walking home afterwards, feeling inspired by the gay basically. I called my mother and she was like ‘Oh, what have

use it as a stepping stone to say ‘I’m gay’ or ‘I am lesbian’, which is fair enough because it’s like testing the waters.”

after the film and said: “The LGBT society” and there was a long silence. She went “Oh” and then I freaked out because it was unplanned and then I spent a lot of time walking around in circles in Highbury fields at night on the phone, crying a lot and saying “Was that okay?”

I had been talking to a couple of people days before that, and one of them was telling me how he got kicked out. And this was kind of unexpected but also hilarious as well. Mum started crying because I had been afraid to tell her and she was like “It’s fine, it’s fine”. Dad’s the brother of the lesbian aunt, so he’s completely fine, he was like “We love you”. It was a very awkward conversation to be having in Highbury Fields in pitch black.

It was a bit awkward, because I think they were leading up to “and I have a girlfriend” but nope, still single. They haven’t really mentioned it since, which is awkward. But I don’t really want to talk about it. The only thing that has changed is the gender neutral: “Haave you met anyone yet, not have you met a guy or a girl?”

kind of response?

There were a lot of threesome jokes, but I think a lot of people use it as a stepping stone to say ‘I’m gay’ or ‘I am lesbian’, which is fair enough because it’s like testing the waters.

It’s kind of annoying on one hand if people go, “Oh, you’re actually really a lesbian” but I see why people do that because if you really come out as bi and not actually gay, and if it was a really bad reaction, you might leave it for a bit longer.

Are you really active in the gay scene?

No, not really. I’m kind of a boring person. I try to go to all these events because it is LGBT history month but I am part of the School’s Out thing that the LGBT society runs.

We basically go into different schools and talk about LGBT stuff.

They did one or two weeks ago at a school and they were talking about coming out.

How do you feel about, as part of a younger generation, how far we’ve come?

I think a lot of the focus on legislation has been on gay marriage, which is good. I am not against gay-marriage but I kind of feel like everyone’s pushing for gay marriage but there’s more to it.

I feel like if gay marriage gets through and becomes a thing, it becomes “Look, magic, it’s equality!” but actually, there’s all kinds of other things still out there.

There are so many places where you can get fired for your sexual orientation. And obviously like, hormones. If you’re trans, you need it but it’s expensive When it comes to being bisexual, and it’s difficult, especially when people often say “You’re just you’ve got more chances of being experimenting, you’re just depressed and homeless. You confused”. Did you ever get that have to be in a very lucky place.

Queer Black Spaces IN FEBRUARY, THE EQUIANO CENTRE AT THE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON HELD A SECOND SESSION OF QUEER BLACK SPACES. THE EVENT WAS GEARED TOWARDS EXPLORING DIFFERENT EXPRESSIONS AND HISTORIES OF BLACK QUEER LIVES AND EXPLORED BLACK LGBTQ LIVES FROM THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY TO CONTEMPORARY BRITAIN.

IMAGE CREDIT: SEE-MING LEE

WORDS & IMAGES : HON JIUN WONG

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Okey Nzelu POET, WRITER AND TEACHER, WHOSE RADIO PLAY ME AND ALAN (LOOSELY BASED ON THE LIFE OF ALAN TURING) WAS BROADCAST ON ROUNDHOUSE RADIO IN 2013

B

efore I knew It, I was writing about somebody who was white”. It’s a sentence not commonly heard from any writer, regardless of ethnic background, and yet that is what poet Okey Nzelu uttered at the Equino Centre.

It’s puzzling to ponder how this occurs, simply because how does one come off the pages as a white character or a black one for that matter, if it is not explicitly stated.

With a novel, a radio play and a screen play under his belt, Okey is not simply an aspiring writer who made a simple typo but rather one with considerable experience with literature who discovered he had created a character he never intended to create.

Okey tends to write about

black characters, specifically Nigerians immigrants and their descendants. Not because his writing specifically discriminates white individuals but rather he likes to write about what he knows.

In his novel, the main character is Nigerian, a descendant through her father and is able to speak French but not her parents’ language. Her

“How much can you really relate to each other?” boyfriend was intended as a foil to the protagonist: a black man, raised by white English parents who can’t relate to his girlfriend’s sense of being an outsider: of not knowing what it was like to have a “culture that you belong to, or belongs to you, but you don’t quite know how it works”.

While there might have been nothing wrong with leaving the boyfriend as a white character, Okey came across a much more difficult question: what is universal? What is universal between a white, middle-class sheltered teenager and someone who lacked a relationship with her father, her father’s culture and her father’s language? That’s how Okey slowly rewrote the boyfriend, not just because he was a white individual but rather he wasn’t sure if as a middle-class individual, he would be able to relate with the protagonist. But then, Okey discovered, that begged another question: “How much can you really relate to each other?”

In his radio play – a one-man show about two men whose personality resembles two polar

sides of Alan Turing’s personality – Okey found himself doing the opposite to his novel. He had written one side of Turing’s personality as being very social and very popular and the other more inward looking, but when he began to act out the play and voice the characters, he imagined them to be black. However, it was never explicitly stated that they

were black nor did he consciously write anything to suggest so, and yet Okey imagined them as black personalities.

It’s curious to think about how certain individuals and categories of people become ingrained in our minds. Okey recalls a time when the late Maya Angelou had said that she once thought Shakespeare was a black girl,

because after reading Sonnet 29, she thought: “Who else could understand what it’s like to be an outsider in society like that, who else can understand what it’s like to not belong, to feel so angry and so disenfranchised, how could he not be black?” Okey then reflects, upon his writing and the world: “How different are we really and how much are we the same?”

Gemma Romain HISTORIAN BASED AT THE EQUIANO CENTRE, UCL, CO-CURATOR OF SPACES OF BLACK MODERNISM AT TATE BRITAIN, AND CO-ORGANISER OF QUEER BLACK SPACES 1 AND 2

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here’s such a wealth of knowledge that emanates from Gemma Romain, the co-organiser of Queer Black Spaces and 1 and 2. However, if one was to then remember that Ms Romain was actually a historian based at the Equino Centre of University

College London, then it really shouldn’t come to any surprise.

She’s been pivotal in documenting Black history and specifically, how black musicians, artist and writers would socialise in various multi-

“...to decentre the archives from the ‘white’ focus and read against it.”

ethnic spaces.

Contrary to public opinion, the black presence wasn’t really in isolation, especially not in Soho.

Rather, there was a whole range of migrants: the Jewish community, the black community of various backgrounds, all of whom were mingling and mixing together.

It was only through looking at

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Of course, what sometimes occurs is that what she finds in the archives can be about white artists and musicians. However, that doesn’t limit her desire to delve into looking at the connections black individuals made; instead, she tries to find the black people who crop up or are softly mentioned in these archives For example, the group of artists in the 1920s who had gone to Chelsea Art School – like Edward Burra and Barbara Ker-Seymer – all were massive fans of jazz and music performances. They were all such big fans that they would

meet up, go to these events, talk about reviews and talk about jazz records. With them, came a lot of black friends and acquaintances.

It then becomes Gemma’s job to try and identify these individuals and search for information about them, to decentre the archives from the ‘white’ focus and read against it.

This became more apparent when she looked away from individuals and instead looked at social spaces. She came across documents from Guyanese conductor and clarinettist, Rudolph Dunbar where talked about the club scene in Soho. It then sparked a flame of curiosity in Gemma and she soon learnt about the existence of queer and black jazz clubs. What she found

fascinating was how these spaces appear so often in National Archive records because of criminal proceedings. They crop so often in Metropolitan Police proceedings, the Public Prosecution files, Secret Service files and much like her other research, the main gist of Gemma’s goal is to then “read against the grain of the archives”.

While it may be at times problematic, especially when attempting to look at both these criminal records and other sources like diaries and journals, it’s still crucial for Gemma and historiansalike to reveal queer, blackened identities and uncover information previously unattended to. It’s about baring a history. A black, queer history.

Visual artist, Rudy Loewe together with historian, Gemma Romain at the Equiano Centre at University College London

Rudy Loewe VISUAL ARTIST PREDOMINANTLY USING COMICS TO EXPLORE NARRATIVES CONCERNING RACE, GENDER, SEXUALITY AND DISABILITY

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obel Prize- and Pulitzer Prizewinning American novelist and editor, Toni Morrison once said: “If there’s a book that you want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it”. Morrison’s advice, which was assumedly addressed to all the shy, pen-afraid writers out there in the world, was something that visual artist, Rudy Loewe took to heart. It inspired her to whip out her pencil and then sketch and write. Feeling

“If there’s a book that you want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it”. like there was an absence around certain narratives being told or that there wasn’t enough of these narratives present in society, she began fill that gap out in literature.

She started by unpacking her own personal experiences and developing relatable narratives in the form of comics. One of her works Bad Therapy/Rad Therapy revolved around her experience at accessing mental health services.

She looked at the ways in which she managed to access these services and it made her mental health better and unfortunately, worse as well. It’s by putting pen to paper that Rudy hopes to help people not “go through the same traumatic stuff” that she went through.

Mental health is an issue that Rudy feels extremely passionate about: it’s more than just about the stigma that surrounds it, but rather the way it affects other parts of an individual’s identity. It’s about the intersection of queer black identity and mental health – how queer black people access these mental health resources and what their experiences have been.

Being a queer black individual, she’s gone through all these experiences and more. She has

had to live through being out in public, seeing how her gender is being read, or rather how people are trying to gender her – into categories she doesn’t feel comfortable with. It was about her trying to get in touch with being seen as a teenage, black boy and how that feels versus being seen as a twenty-something black woman, neither of which she identifies as.

As Rudy’s grandparents were part of the Windrush generation, when it came to working on a piece for Black History Month, it only seemed logical to start there.

However, she wanted to dispel the common myth about black people only living in the United Kingdom after the Windrush era – which was obviously not true, so she then focused her narrative on the journey of coming to Britain.

It was also a chance for her to portray something that’s quite unimaginable in today’s society: having to leave the Caribbean for the first time in their lives, travelling on a ship for three weeks, and going to a continent that you don’t have any idea of.

It was a way for Rudy to remind people that, even though we live in a time that feels quite immediate and that the “internet has completely transformed the way in which” society interacts on a global scale, it wasn’t always this way.

It’s this self-awareness that

“...even when stories are about black people, the black character instead becomes a vehicle for a white character’s story.”

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exudes from her when she talks: a mature grasp on how that even when stories are about black people, the black character instead becomes a vehicle for a white LEVERHULME VISITING PROFESSOR AT UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK WHO character’s story. That’s particularly AMONG THE BLOODPEOPLE: POLITICS AND FLESH why she wanted to make sure that black individuals were central in her work, and that she didn’t homogenise their experiences – there’s no main character in her comic.

Interestingly enough, when it became to producing the comic, Rudy had a slight problem: she

Thomas Glave

“That’s a privilege.

Feeling like your story is worth anything”. was so used to working in black and white but she realised, “How was I supposed to keep it in people’s mind that it’s a work about people of colour if it’s in black and white and everyone is white on the page?”. After experimenting with the unsuccessful idea of working with brown paper, she began using the colour brown and developed the concept of “brown-washing”.

And that became a way for her to decentralise whiteness, and to decolonise her own work.

This way of telling black narratives in a way that doesn’t feel compromised is so unique to Rudy, and that’s partially why she’s drawn to comics. For her, comics are a way to empower people, especially young people, to tell their story because as she says: “That’s a privilege. Feeling like your story is worth anything”.

That’s how she managed to slowly encourage young people to tell their own personal narrative, by making them feel as if their stories are of value. Of value enough to be made into comics.

Of value enough to be told.

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isiting professor at the University of Warwick, Thomas Glave is a fascinating character; one that seems better suited for the podium or stage rather than in front of a class or a lecture theatre.

It’s in the way he delivers the words of his book: from the effeminate way of saying ‘mmhmm’ to the regular

utterances of ‘cock’ and ‘pussy’ that makes one forget that this is an academic lecturer speaking, and not a man whose main job is just to provoke or entertain.

During his time in Jamaica where he regularly attended lesbian and gay parties, Thomas discovered something that had never been written or documented before.

By watching Jamaican men communicate in these social

OSE LATEST BOOK IS ENTITLED

settings, he overheard comments about the alleged sizes of cocks, whether an individual took ‘hood’ – to bottom – or if he was a man who ground (a top), and also heard gossip about the legendary ability to “ejaculate semen while lying on the back all the way up to the ceiling”.

Sexual nature aside, Thomas detected often with these comments, came a racial tinge

“...how does a fiction writer, like Thomas, go about describing and documenting these unspeakable, unexplored and unexplained realities?”

– e.g. that black man there has a very big cock. He’s also quick to point out that in Jamaica, there’s a big distinction between black and brown. These subtle racial comments also extended to Asian and East Asian men where small cocks were scorned along with the flatter buttocks – “You’ve got a flat back like a Chinese man”.

However, while this might have made for some interesting

discussion among friends, Thomas uncovered much more of a sinister nature.

As time went by, he began to notice that no Jamaican or Caribbean writer, male or female, had yet to document and explore the race, colour and masculinity dynamic present in these social talks. Not even the late and daring Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas who had unabashedly wrote about ethnic and sexual encounters among Cuban men.

Rather, it seemed that how Jamaican men felt and experience their bodies as “sexually-active and gender-inclined young men in society as men who lived, desired and sought pleasure, both erotic and romance” was in many ways unspeakable. Why were these words rarely taken out of these social events and not out into public discussion?

He asks: “Why were we, as men who desired and had sexual and romantic activity with men, so apparently ashamed of using the word ‘pussy’ as we so unquestioningly subscribed to racialised fetishizing desire, for other men?”

As a writer, Thomas is aware of the role language plays; not only in the difference between words chosen but also the way tone operates and thus, how does a fiction writer, like Thomas, go about describing and documenting these unspeakable, unexplored and unexplained realities?

He ends with: “How does a fiction writer deploy onto the page a language often used in secrecy?”

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Nazmia Jamal A TEACHER OF TEN YEARS AT AN INNER LONDON SIXTH FORM, PROGRAMMER AT BFI FLARE (FORMERLY LLGFF) FOR 6 YEARS, AND HOST OF QUEER BLACK SPACES 1

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he year 2003 was a big year for Nazmia Jamal, as not only was section 28 taken out of the Local Governments Act but it was also the year she came out to her parents.

This sort of personal and political climate of her life made it important for Nazmia to not compartmentalise or compromise her own identity when the time came for her to go into her first teaching job. She wasn’t going to go into work and pretend she was somebody else. Luckily for her, the only real concern students had was “how [would she] have babies?”

Having been in the education industry for ten years now, Nazmia has been in a position of being able to expose students to works from all kinds of writers and poets, especially when it concerns identity. She was able to be part of a syllabus that began in 2008 and is currently in its last year where one could choose between studying the Victorians, World War 1 or the Struggle for Identity in Modern Literature.

For Nazmia, she couldn’t quite figure why anyone would want to teach anything else if they’ve got modern literature as an option: “You’re introducing young people to the literature curriculum, why would you teach them the Victorians, how alienating is that?”

She obviously chose to teach the Struggle for Identity in Modern Literature and was able to choose texts, such as Jackie Kay’s Trumpet, which provided the perfect

opportunity for her to talk with her students about identity. It helped foster an environment where she could go into a classroom and probe her students about how they responded to certain texts, how a Trans friend might respond to it, how a person of colour might interpret the material, why she might be a feminist and why being queer colours her reading, etc.

Unfortunately, this is the last year of these particular specifications for the Struggle for Identity in Modern Literature, and therefore Trumpet will no longer be taught. However, Nazmia did manage to sneak in a hidden victory.

She was able to convince the exam board to teach James Baldwin which provides her with a way to teach the semiautobiographical novel Go Tell It On The Mountain.

With that novel, she’s able to look at Baldwin, talk about the difference between being an African-American and a person of colour in the United Kingdom – they’re not the same thing –

and where the similarities lie. She could legitimise stopping teaching to observe what was happening when the Eric Garner verdict came out and discuss it with her students.

Come September, Nazmia is unsure of where education is going to go. The texts they’re allowed to teach this year is limited in the breadth dedicated to exploring identities of black and queer identities.

For Nazmia, it’s been an exciting ten years of being able to mould her students, but much like the current state of society and the government, she’s not really sure where it’s going to go.

Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski

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FREELANCE ARCHIVIST, COMMUNITY WORKER AND DESIGNER, CURRENTLY AN ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE AT THE WOMEN’S ART LIBRARY, GOLDSMITHS

hat night at Queer Black Spaces 2 served as an important moment for freelance activist and community worker and designer, Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski. It was the first time she had ever spoken publicly about being queer.

However, this wasn’t something she spontaneously realised about herself, but rather much like the other aspects of her life, it was something done through exploration and reflection.

It was during the period of time when she was at the London College of Printing and Distributive Trades – now called the London College of Communication – when Ego became accustomed with the idea of photography and the aspect of sharing.

She always had these photographs from the likes of Edward Weston and Barbara KerSeymer but it wasn’t something she had really paid attention to before. It was only when she

allowed Ego to explore herself creatively and she soon developed into the notion of capturing intersections of identities.

As an artist-in-residence at the Women’s Art Library as part of the artist archival research group X Marks The Spot, Ego is a strong advocate of the importance of adopting archival practices in our daily lives. And that’s where photography comes in: it’s a way of illustrating these intersections and the gaps of society.

“...how we can move away from the notion of hidden or silent histories” began doing photography shoots of her own with her friends, that she began to realise that there was something quite profound about having a photograph of her own to share, rather than spending time with somebody else’s photographs.

This experience

For her, it’s how we can begin to “pluralise the history to be shared” and how we can move away from the notion of hidden or silent histories – or more accurately as she feels, “overlooked history”.

For members of such a minority group, Ego feels like she can’t emphasize strongly enough the importance of ensuring these narratives are not just preserved, but more importantly shared and accessed at events like Queer Black Spaces. It’s no use to keep history left in dusty, abandoned basement rooms.

For those who argue that the internet has made archiving a lot easier with the seemingly limitless storage it offers and that who needs handwritten letters – like the ones Ego has been reading of singer Jimmie Daniels – when you’ve got emails, Ego has a sharp retort for that. “When you die, your email dies with you and your password dies with you”.

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WORDS: AMITA JOSHI DESIGN: HON JIUN WONG

IMAGE CREDIT: UNITED STATES LIBRARY OF CONGRESS’S PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION

The Game Changers

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. One of the main Leaders of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s, he was both a Baptist minister and activist.

Fighting to end the segregation of African-American citizens and influencing the Voting Rights Act. Martin Luther King, Jr. was admired by many for his choice to act without violence and carried out through protests and boycotting. As well as several other commendations for the crucial work he carried out to mobilise and motivate people, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1968. King was assassinated in April 1968, but his “I have a dream” speech lives on.

BOOKER T WASHINGTON One of the last generation of black American leaders born into slavery, Booker T Washington criticized the Jim Crow laws as being discriminatory. Giving speeches against lynchings and gathering a network of middle-class, educated black members of society, he strived to prove that they deserved the vote.

Exceptional at politics, he was able to work his way into a position which influenced the media, pressure leaders and raise money for the cause. His fourteen books include the famous ‘Up From Slavery’ which is studied in American literature today. He died in 1959.

WALTER REUTHER

RUBY DEE Ruby was an actress, journalist and activist, known best for her co-starring roles in Do The Right Thing and American Gangster. Her star studded career involved receiving a Grammy, Emmy, Screen Actors Guild Award, Obie and the National Medal for Arts. Raised in Harlem, New York, she went to an acting theatre school before writing an autobiographical book detailing her political activism. A member of the Congress of Racial Equality, she fought for equality in the Arts and continued to do so past her acting career, such as when she was arrested in 1999 for protesting. She sadly died in June 2014.

PAT PARKER Pat grew up in Texas before studying in Los Angeles and began to identify herself as a lesbian in the 1960’s. Calling herself a black feminist lesbian poet, she began showing a flair for writing when she gave her first reading in 1963. She founded the Black Women’s Revolutionary Council in 1980 and contributed to the formation of the Women’s Press Collective. Pat died of cancer in 1989 and many in the literary world mourned her loss. The Pat Parker place in Chicago, which can be visited today, was named in her honour.

IMAGE CREDIT: UNITED STATES LIBRARY OF CONGRESS’S PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION / ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, INC. / BLACKENTERPRISE.COM / ROBERT GIARD

An American labour union leader, Reuther was born in West Virginia in 1907.

He was an active supporter of the American civil rights movement and pictures from the March on Washington for Freedom and Jobs (August, 1963) and the Selma to Montgomery March (March, 1965) show him marching alongside the public. Attending the Martin Luther King’s gatherings, he incorporated and spoke for the rights of black people during his time as a leader. Known for his modern attitude towards the working environment, he would offer hourly wages and vacation pay for all of his workers equally, regardless of background.

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Slavery In The UK A HIDDEN PROBLEM

WORDS: JASMINE RAPSON IMAGE: BRUNO CASONATO

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e are no strangers to the predominance of slavery in u n d e rd eve lo p e d countries today. Various things spring to mind when the subject is brought up; the exploitation of children in Bangladeshi sweatshops, or the horrors of sex trafficking that young girls face in India.

These issues are not just unique to the third world, but rather the exploitation of both adults and children right here in the UK has been glazed over.

Slavery in the UK is becoming a rapidly increasing problem. A total of 1,746 cases of slavery were reported in the UK in 2013.

The government then addressed

the issue and made the first ever official estimate of 13,000 cases – four times the reported amount.

The pressing question is: Why is there such a huge difference in these figures? Professor Bernard Silverman, the chief scientific adviser to the Home Office, told the Guardian that the new statistical analysis aimed to calculate the number of “hidden” victims who are not reported to the authorities.

“Modern slavery is very often deeply hidden and so it is a great challenge to assess its scale,” he said. “The data collected is inevitably incomplete and, in addition, has to be very carefully handled because of its sensitivity.”

Of the 1,746 reported cases in

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“The first step to eradicating the scourge of modern slavery is acknowledging and confronting its existence.” the UK, only 90 were UK nationals.

Victims range from different countries, most predominantly from Romania, Nigeria and Vietnam. People move to the UK to seek solace from the political and financial issues they face in their home countries, and instead fall victim to different forms of exploitation, from sexual trafficking to forced labour.

Human traffickers deliberately seek out the vulnerable, and manipulate them so they feel like there is no escape. Last week, a man was jailed after forcing three young women in to sexual slavery at his family run brothel. Alex Brier, 41, subjected the girls to physical and psychological abuse, telling them that if they didn’t obey him he would report them to the police

for prostitution. Eventually, after 15 months in captivity one of the girls exposed Brier and his family.

One of the main barriers to stopping this level of exploitation is the enormous the repercussions foreign nationals and their families face back home if they are discovered. If they leave a form of employment, despite how badly they are abused, they will be deported. This puts a huge amount of power in the hands of corrupt employers.

In 2013, three ‘highly traumatised’ women were rescued from a house in Brixton, South London, after having been held against their will for over 30 years.

One of the women had spent her whole life in captivity.

The government has launched

‘The Modern Slavery Strategy’, to counteract slavery in the UK, and make sure cases like these don’t go un-noticed. However, due to the ‘hidden’ nature of slavery, it is incredibly difficult to uncover such cases.

Home Secretary Theresa May said: “The first step to eradicating the scourge of modern slavery is acknowledging and confronting its existence. The estimated scale of the problem in modern Britain is shocking and these new figures starkly reinforce the case for urgent action.

“That is why I have introduced a Modern Slavery Bill, the first of its kind in Europe. But I have always been clear that legislation is only part of the answer.

Theresa May went on to say: “Everyone must play their part if we are to consign slavery to history where it belongs.”

Million Women Rise WORDS: AMITA JOSHI

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he weekend of International Women’s Day is a spectacular sight to behold. Women of all ages, nationalities and religions come together with one united purpose. Holding banners and walking proudly, they have something they feel needs to be heard: “Together we can end male violence against women.”

It’s International Women’s Day this Sunday but for the first time in seven years, plans have not taken their usual course.

The Million Women Rise march, taking place in central London, represents more than just the faces of women all over the world.

The thousands who come together and walk the route

that the suffragettes first took represent the demands of modern women today.

Females who want equal rights and dream of a world without patriarchy or male violence.

Organised by volunteers, over the last seven years they have always had the support of the Metropolitan police who ensure their safety during the march.

But this year, a dispute arose after the police initially refused to be involved and said that if the march is to go ahead, MWR will need to find funding of over £10, 000 to support the costs of planning a road closure and ensuring other safety precautions.

Yet without public funding, the chances of raising the sum before March 8th became an increasing

pressure for MWR, who have tried on several occasions to contact the police to change their minds Chief Superindent Colin Morgan said in an interview with The Guardian: “It’s more a matter of refusing to use the public purse to provide a traffic management plan or stewarding for a private event.”

The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, also voiced his concerns about self-funded protesting.

He said: I’m very much of the view that the police do a fantastic job of managing about 5,000 protests of one kind or another every year. I think it’s important that they should continue to do so.”

Although the decision has now been reversed, the Metropolitan

police have said that protestors should not expect automatic protection from now on.

Founder of the march Sabrina Qureshi felt the refusal to cooperate has broken a long-serving British tradition that should always be upheld.

Ahead of the march on Saturday, she discussed her determination to continue the event.

“Without a positive police presence at the march, some women may feel vulnerable and unsafe and this may discourage some from participating.”

At the heart of this debate is human rights: the right to protest and the right to be heard. If peace marches can no longer take place, what then is at stake?

41-year-old participant Nina Thaker from Barnet who will be at the strike on Saturday felt uncomfortable with the decisions “Could this be a breach of the European right to protest? I really feel like it could be.

“After all, doesn’t Article 10 and 11 of the European Convention of Human Rights say that protesting lies at the heart of the democracy?

“If the next step taken is that people cannot protest unless they can fund their own safety first, who knows whether any voices will ever be heard.

“Particularly at a time like this, we all need to unite for causes, not allow them to be stifled.”

Remonstrations have been happening for centuries, even as early as the 1500s where protests

to reform the Roman Catholic Church have been recorded.

From Tiananmen Square protests and Iraq War protests to the marches of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi, the significance of these pivotal moments have been earmarked for school children today to study.

When the first Bill of Rights was adopted in England in 1689, the first step towards ‘representing the people’ was taken.

Could it be time to once again remind people of what the country has worked hard to establish?

That is for the Million Women Rise marchers to decide.

Follow #MWR2015 for more details Millionwomenrise.com

IMAGE CREDIT: GARRY KNIGHT

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Racism: A Personal Re

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can be at times a late receiver of news. Last week, I came across an article in The Guardian’s, dated Tuesday, 27 May 2014 and entitled “Racism on the rise in Britain”. A British Social Attitudes survey found that racial prejudice has risen amongst the UK citizens since 2001.

As a citizen from Malaysia - a developing, multicultural country - I have been exposed to such a multitude of races and individuals: Malays, Chinese, Indians and indigenous races.

I am Malaysian Chinese; my ancestors came from China and then settled in Malaysia. Upon reading the Guardian article, I was immediately reminded of the stage of life I was at during 2001. I was 19 and had left Malaysia to start my studies as

an international undergraduate student at Swansea university.

During the first few weeks of being at Swansea, me and my Malaysian friend was exploring the city. We were chased down the street by a man who was also yelling “Gook! Gook!”. We didn’t know what “gook” meant but we

university friend of mine told me that she had to remove her tudung, otherwise known as the hijab, because at the Student Village at where she was staying, people were cussing and throwing objects at her.

At some point during my undergraduate years, Korea took

How could a person, who doesn’t know me and doesn’t know, judge me based on the colour of my skin and my features and attempt to hurt me? saw that he was hostile and he was making a beeline for us. We ran into a shop, he got as far as the shop’s window before someone pulled him away.

The article mentioned “widespread Islamophobia”. Again, another flashback. When I first arrived in the UK, the 9/11 were a recent thing. A Muslim Malaysian

a huge role in an international sporting event - it may have been when it when they co-hosted the 2001 FIFA Confederations Cup, I can’t remember - but I do recall, however, being at a club with a few friends. People of European descent would stand up, look at us and go “HI! KOREA!” It may seem funny now, but it certainly was not

eflection WORDS: P.T. SOH IMAGES: SWEN HERWIG funny at that time.

The Guardian’s article really brought back a lot of memories.

Sometime later after I graduated, I was taking the Tube in London when an old man called me a chink and attacked me. Luckily he missed. Although I was not physically hurt, I remained emotionally injured for a couple of weeks. Even though Malaysia is a multicultural country with its own racist politics, I had never been verbally or physically attacked the entire time at which I was there.

How could a person, who doesn’t know me and doesn’t know, judge me based on the colour of my skin and my features and attempt to hurt me? Did he know that the immigrant workers who were working in the UK pay full NHS taxes, but have less access to medical benefits?

The racism that I encountered was not only confined to the Caucasian race. One of the parttime jobs that I had during my undergraduate days was as a dishwasher at a Chinese restaurant.

While working in the same kitchen space as the cooks, one of them, from Hong Kong One of the cooks, who was from Hong Kong, would speak condescendingly about Malaysians, for example how stupid we were.

I spent a few years in Britain, staying at a few places all over England. Nearly anywhere I would expect someone to go “Chong chong”, “Ching chong”. During those years, I went for a hen party in Blackpool with a few other people of Chinese origin. We passed by a group of men who called us the “Chinky Party”, or something like that. I was enraged.

However, one of us, a Malaysian who graduated with her bachelor’s not long after me and remained in Britain ever since, told me that she’s accepted it as part of life in Britain. A dear friend of mine would never introduce herself as coming from India because of the almost perpetual racism that she had encountered when she was doing her PhD. Some people might argue, “All this is freedom of speech”. Have you ever heard of the adage: “If you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all”? Why say things at the expense of someone else that will also not benefit anyone and result in unproductive and negative consequences in the long run?

I feel very affected about racism, because I think it runs deep. In Malaysia, politics favour particular races. Broadly speaking, the majority races are the Malay and the indigenous races, which are collectively known as ‘bumiputera’ (or ‘bumi’ for short).

The bumis have benefits that the Malaysian Chinese, Indian and other races cannot access, like discounts for residential and commercial properties. There is even a racial quota system in favour of the majority race in both education and in certain types of employment.

My entire experience in Britain hasn’t been all bad. I would not exchange my experiences for the world. I received plenty of love as well. I wish to give a shout out to the individuals who stood up for me and for others. The hate crime police, the ones who want to stamp racism out and who are open to the culture of others. Even today, I can feel the after effects of what I went through. If a British colleague were to talk about how racist Malaysia is, I will often get defensive.

Why have I agreed to write this article for Black History Month, even though I am not black?

Would I have the audacity to claim that I had the same experiences as black people did? I wouldn’t. A person of Caribbean descent once told me: “Doesn’t matter what race you are, as long as you’re not white you’re seen as black here in Britain”. I have much respect for the black community, what they went through and how they are moving forward.

I now stand up for racism when I see it. I have empathy for immigrants. Once I saw a man racially taunting an Asian woman and I told him off. At another time, a customer was aggressively criticising a Starbucks employee’s English - who was actually speaking perfect English except that the syntax was slightly different -, I stepped in and basically switched the syntax around. These are starts that I hope will continue! Perhaps that is a start for a better tomorrow.

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No Step

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here are two key situations that Leila will never forget. The first, when her mother left her and her older sister Armita, at her uncle’s hut in a rural Irania village. The second, when they managed to run away from their biological father, with the support of a warm-hearted Taxi-driver, whom she owes everything to.

The two girls were 13 and 15, when their mother and her new husband decided to go on a “vacation”, visiting family relatives. The holidaysended with Leila’s hysteric outburst of crying after realising that this vacation didn’t come with a return ticket back home.

For their uncle, his two expatnieces, who formerly lived in Austria, had no other interest than free

housemaids and effortless income.

During two years, he cashed-in the pension their mother sent from Austria, extending his house and buying to his wife and child new clothes. Leila and Armita could not even count on for a glass of milk, since this was only for the ones, “who actually have to work”, as the uncle always stated.

During this time, Leila reached her limits. She missed her friends, was angry and disappointed with her mother, and slowly turned into a shadow of herself.

Family visits were the only highlight of their otherwise dull routine. At one meeting, there was their mother’s younger brother, who decided to take them with him, after hours of Leila and Armita begging and several phone calls from them.

Their happiness of finally being in a warm environment was shortlived.

One day, their biological father stood on their doorstep. After eleven years of no contact, Leila felt a glimmer of hope, naively thinking that he would send them back home to Austria.

How wrong she was.

The sisters realized as soon as they got into the car, that the only thing their father was interested in, was their Austrian citizenship, and nothing else. He, however, made the mistake of taking the whole family to the Austrian embassy, which was already familiar with the sisters’ case.

Leila had called them several times already, when she still living with her uncle, but they could not help unless both also had an Iranian passport.

Their father was enraged when he was told that his two daughters

ps Without My Sister LEILA WAS ALWAYS A HAPPY CHILD. AT 25, SHE IS STILL A VERY GIGGLY, LIVELY, AND FASHIONABLE YOUNG WOMAN, AWARE OF ALL THE NEW TRENDS AND “MUST-HAVES”. THERE IS HOWEVER A PERIOD IN HER LIFE, WHICH TURNED HER WARM BROWN EYES INTO DARK, EMPTY DEAD DOTS. WORDS & IMAGES: MARIE-AMELIE HEULS

were practically allowed anytime to leave the country, but his current family had no reason to seek asylum.

“If I cannot leave Iran, nor will Leila and Armita.

Either all or none.

“If I cannot leave Iran, nor will Leila and Armita. Either all or none.”

The vicious cycle started again. It was the third year of the two sisters missing out on school, their friends, and their personal freedom. Since their passport was not of any use for their father, they weren’t either, so he issued two Iranian ones for them to facilitate travelling within Iran.

A step, he might not have done, if he had known that the very nice lady at the embassy into Leila’s ear that as soon as they had Iranian

ID’s, an escape could be arranged.

All they had to do was come to the embassay.

Easier said than done. Once, when at a medical institute with their stepmother, this is what the two girls attempted to do. Since her father usually kept their cards somewhere hidden, a visit to the bathroom was the perfect moment for an attempt to flee.

Leila had to hold her stepmother’s handbag while her sister took their passports out of it. In that hurried situation, one of the girls quickly closed the zipper and her “stupid headscarf” got caught in it. There‘s not a lot to add to that image: seeing one girl literally inseparable from the handbag and the other one frozen with the two passports in her hands.

Of course, the incident was

immediately reported to their father, who by then had asked neighbors and people from the house to watch his girls.

Everything seemed hopeless.

Leila lost appetite and at home, if you could call it that, the tension was unbearable. That is when Armita came up with a new plan, which involved the Taxi driver, who was then, still a stranger to them.

This time it would work. It had to. So, with the excuse of taking a shower, both girls wrapped their few belongings and some money in their clothes, put the water on, and then rushed through a separate corridor out of the house and onto the streets.

Without looking back, they ran and felt lighter as they got closer to the highway. Armita stopped a taxi, and this is when they both broke out in

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After hearing the whole story, the driver was determined to help the two girls and drove them around through the maze of Teheran’s tiny streets and boroughs, until Leila finally recognized a familiar house.

“How I felt? I wanted to kill myself” Her mother’s cousin lived there, who had always been very nice to them. He understood the situation and called the girls’ uncle, whom their father had taken them away from. He was there in a matter of seconds and took them with him only minutes later.

The next week was the happiest they had been in years. On the seventh day, someone knocked on the door. The police was here to arrest the uncle after being accused

by the children’s father of kidnapping his daughters.

Despite Leila’s desperate cries, the female judge at the police station understood the situation, but could not help out of fear of loosing her position. “In Iran, the custody is always with the closest male relative.

I am very sorry,” she said. So off they went, back to their father.

She didn’t know that the strong feelings against her father weren’t at its peak until they figured out his new business for them after losing his job. Marrying them off. Leila was 15 and her sister 17.

“How I felt? I wanted to kill myself,” Leila said, which today still makes her so angry and hurt that the fight against the tears becomes impossible to win.

Her sister was married off rather quickly, because she was the “prettier one”. For Leila, her father said, it will

be harder to find a man, because she wasn’t as beautiful as her sister.

Leila felt helpless, alone and lost any remaining hope. Armita, however, again had a plan. She went along with the wedding. Her plan was to divorce as soon as she crossed the Austrian border and then get her younger sister back.

She kept her promise. With pressure from all sides, their father made a deal with her mother and sold Leila back for 1000 Euros - a lot of money in Iran.

From the moment Leila was on Austrian grounds and saw her mother, both started crying and fell into each other’s arms. She decided that she had wasted enough time being unhappy and would now only allow happiness into her heart.

The giggly, charismatic girl with a gentle sparkle in her warm brown eyes was finally back.

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Looking Back At History Human Rights are now legally protected in national and international law, but this wasn’t always the case. Over history, significant events have taken place which have changed the course of justice. The pivotal moments which built the foundations of Human Rights enjoyed today took place across the world, but here are the key events which occurred in Britain.

“Many people, especially ignorant people, want to punish you for speaking the truth, for being correct for being you. If you’re right and you know it, speak your mind.”

- Mahatma Gandhi

WORDS: AMITA JOSHI DESIGN: HON JIUN WONG

1215 1689 1762 K

ing John of England signs the Magna Carta, which was to become one of the most celebrated documents in history. The Magna Carta established that the king’s subjects possessed certain rights that coudln’t be violated by the King. The Magna Carta established basic due process rights for nobles and set the standards for the future bills of rights. It was more about rights voluntarily granted than rights universally owned by all individuals. It succeeded in limiting the powers of the throne.

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ill of Rights is passed, guaranteeing the right to free speech in parliament, the right to bear arms and the right to petition leaders. The House of Commons now have more power and the King’s actions are further limited. They can even remove him from power if he should act against their interests. This effectively takes power away from one person to a larger group of people.

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enevan witer, philosopher and composer JeanJacques Rousseau writes The Social Contract, or Principles of Political Right. In it, he says that the general will of society should be at the heart of the Government’s interests and that it is sacred and absolute.

IMAGE CREDIT: DOYLE, JAMES WILLIAM EDMUND / MAURICE QUENTIN DE LA TOUR

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1919 1930 1941 1943 T

he Treaty of Versailles is drawn up after the end of the First World War which supports selfdetermination and democracy. For the first time in history, nations seriously considered imposing criminal penalties on heads of states and nations who violate fundamental human rights. Other treaties stress the right to life, liberty, freedom of religion, right to nationality of the state of residence, complete equality with other nationals of the same state, and the exercise of civil and political rights.

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ahatma Gandhi leads the Salt March against the British in colonial India. The Salt March drew widespread, global attention to the independent movement in India, to the injustice of colonialism and the use of nonviolence as a powerful political tool.

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tlantic Charter is signed by Great Britain and United States in which it is stated that “all men in all the lands may live out their lives in freedom from want and fear”. The charter set the blueprint for postwar peace and the basis of the mutual recognition of the rights of all nations.

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he first of three wartime conferences, the Tehran Conference, is held between Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union.

Together, they developed an agreement by the threepowers to form an organisation of “united nations” after the war.

1945 1946 1961 1979 T

he United Nations Conference on International Organization is held in San Francisco and merges with the United Nations charter.

Its main purpose is to have a “respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion”

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he Commission on Human Rights is established by the United Nations, and Eleanor Roosevelt is selected by the General Assembly to be its chairperson.

A

m n e s t y International established by Peter Benenson in Great Britain, in response to a decline in international support for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Amnesty becomes the organisation devoted to the monitoring and protection of human rights.

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he Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women is adopted by the United Nations, along with the Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials.

IMAGE CREDIT: HELEN JOHNS KIRTLAND & LUCIAN SWIFT KIRTLAND / BLURRENT.COM / LIBRARY OF CONGRESS / SOCIALEARTH.ORG

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1998 2002 2005 2013 T

he Human Rights Act 1998 is enacted, and contains a set of civil and political rights that are considered fundamental to any liberal democracy.

Britain votes to abolish the death penalty as a form of capital punishment.

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he International Criminal Court is set up to try individuals that are responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity and other serious breaches of human rights.

F

ounder of Amnesty International Peter Benson dies.

Amnest International has become the biggest Human Rights organisation. It is also the 60th anniversary of the United Nations.

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t is the 20th anniversary year of the establishment of the mandate of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. On December 10, Human Rights Day 2013 is held with theme of “20 Years: Working For Your Rights�.

IMAGE CREDIT: LIBERTY-HUMAN-RIGHTS.ORG.UK

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magazine

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