Black child. Black woman. Black mother.

Growing up in an overwhelmingly ‘white town’ to a black mother who worked hard to succeed, which often meant (and still means) diluting her blackness and encouraging her children to do the same, just to get by. 

These are experiences of my own. Experiences that even the people who know me best will never have heard me talk about. And experiences that I am only grouping together for the very first time ever, right here, now. Realising the chronicity of how white privilege has affected me directly in real time. 

- Sitting in church as a child listening to another child ask: ‘Mummy why is her face that colour?’ 

- Moving to a new infant school in a new area and being told on the playground : ‘You love X because he’s brown and you’re brown too!’ 

- Being made the butt of lunch table jokes at Junior School ‘You eat poo!’ Because the food in your lunchbox didn’t resemble or smell like everyone else’s. I learnt eventually not to eat all day and throw the contents of my lunchbox away on the way home. 

- Being told to ‘just go back to where you came from!’ as closing argument from a Year 6 classmate

- Feeling humiliated as a teenager in cycling shorts and having your Dance teacher exclaim in front of the class “Gwen’s bum always sticks out!’

- Being called ‘Bob Marley/ Janet Jackson/ Black B*tch/ and so much worse when rebuffing advancements from men on multiple holidays. And then pretending to be unaffected so as not to make your white friends feel ‘unnecessarily’ uncomfortable

- Going in to work on a Monday and having a senior colleague look at me and say ‘Nice hair. Are you hiding a small family in there?’

- I almost always straighten hair for interviews

- I am almost always the only black female in all workspaces

- I have lost count of the number of times I have had to stop complete strangers putting their hands in my babies’ hair. 

I realise now that my life as been a constant dance. An attempt to understand and learn to live my blackness whilst being scared to come off as ‘too black’. 

Now I’m a mother. Now my responsibility to my children is to do everything in my power to make sure their dance is to their own beat. And not the beat of a colonial drum. 

#blacklivesmatter #blackmotherhoodmatters #blackfamilies #biologicalweathering