{ the race discussion. }

[delga]

So. Am locking comments &c. because I don't want to talk about this, I just want to state it and then go back to what I've been doing the rest of the year: avoiding it.

I do not spend every moment of my day thinking about the fact that I'm coloured. I mean. It's not like you can forget per se but it's a little like that: you're not conscious of it every second of the day. I don't know anyone who is always conscious of the fact that they are coloured or white or mixed or whatever. I think it only comes up in certain situations (for example: race discussion). The people who are talking a lot in this debate are like that too, regardless of what you may think: they don't spend their every waking moment thinking about their race or colour or culture. Sometimes they're thinking about the things they have to get done that day, or wondering how that scratch got on the table, or trying to work out if they're free next Saturday. Just like everyone else.

But. And here's the part that I think is different. Coloured people/people of colour have more instances where they're reminded of their race/colour/cultural diversity than white people. These things are more of an issue when you're looking at flesh-coloured/skin-toned elastoplasts/bandaids that don't look anything like your flesh. They're more of an issue when you're worried about walking through certain parts of the city alone because people are racist. They're more of an issue when you're watching a show and an actor who is Indian is playing a character of a different race; or when you're watching the news and your family's country is on fire because of war; or when you're excited because Goodness Gracious Me is a massive hit in the UK or Slumdog Millionaire is a hit everywhere. It's not necessarily that we think about it more than others; it's that we're confronted by our racial identities more often.

I think a lot of the upset in the recent race discussions has arisen because people are being made to think about their prejudices and about their understanding of race in a way that they don't normally have to - in a way that they normally ignore or don't even think about. But the race discussions are bringing topics into consciousness which is discomforting. I can't read most of the posts on this subject; I certainly can't comment on them. I get frustrated and I feel inadequate and mostly I feel a lot of shame: shame about my own beliefs/thoughts/practices and my habit of ignoring the debate. But I ignore the debate because I have to preserve myself and protect myself from having to think about these things all the time, and also because I cannot deal with the counter-confrontation. I've said it before: I speak for myself. I define myself. But a lot of my actions are defined by other people because that's the way life works.

I'm saying: we don't think about these things all the time but we do think about them more than non-coloured people/people of colour/white people because we are confronted with our race more often than white people are confronted by the colour of their skin. I sometimes think that white people are only really confronted by the colour of their skin in discussions of race. I'm confronted by mine every single day. And it's not a wholly negative or wholly positive thing; most of the time it just is. But in a debate where tempers are rising and staying quite high I wonder if people who aren't always confronted by their identities don't see that this discomfort they are feeling is one that we feel quite often.