Come the fuck on
All week, I felt a skeletal finger drawing its tip up my back, adding pressure as it got closer to my neck. Is that dramatic to write? Well, something dramatic is happening. The polls in the referendum have closed and the votes counts have begun to drip in as I type this, and I am stressed out. I am far from home, away from my closest family, and far away from all the comforts those things afford me. I am scared. I am being dramatic because this is a dramatic moment to be living in.
I don't know what will happen if Britain decides that leaving the EU is the best thing for us. I've read as widely as I can around the issues, and much like how I will never knowingly vote Conservative in my lifetime, I already knew a vote to remain was the only option for me. The economic and cultural consequences aside, as a black Brit of Nigerian heritage – come the fuck on. How else was I supposed to vote? In 2016? In the era of UKIP and its ilk? In a time when the language directed at people like me (as well as those far less fortunate) is so dehumanising? At a time when the most centrally placed political voices have ceded ground on so many issues regarding the basic humanity of people not of the British Isles that you can barely see the space between them? Come the fuck on. Here's a news flash: you might not be a racist if you voted for us to leave, but let's be real – chances are you are pretty flippin' racist.
I think about the lives my parents were leading when they first arrived in this country in the 1970s. I think about the toll of Empire – how so much of England's relative wealth came from a series of deadly adventures. Well, deadly for some. I think about how borders were far less guarded when the United Kingdom spread out across the globe, claiming lands and ending lives on the whims of powerful men. I think about the souls buried forever in the water – no, not those souls, but the far more recent ones – and I think about the conversations being held about whether or not the bodies housing those souls deserved to be saved. I read people saying we are "full up" and how tired they are about having to care about lives that are not their own. I think about some of the strands my multi-disciplinary identity – black, female, Muslim, working class (in origin, if no longer in fact), Cockney (born well within the sound of the Bow bells, thank you very much) – and I think how they have all been flattened. I think about what is allowed to be British (and by what process!), and what is not. I read about sovereignty, and how important that is, and I think, again, of all the formerly sovereign lands that were plundered without a backwards glance. I think about the milk of human kindness gone sour. I think about the lies that have been told to us, over and over again, relentless in their advance, pummelling (some of) us into believing them. I think about the dishonesty of the people who are in charge of us, and how some of us are so greedy for their lies that we suck on the sponges of hyperbole, straight untruths, and bald-faced lies until they are dry.
I am deeply ashamed that this is the UK in 2016. Is that dramatic? This is a dramatic moment.
In a way, whether we remain or leave is immaterial at this particular juncture. What it has brought to the fore is the thing that needs observing and beating back. This is what happens when you attempt to modulate the tenor of poisonous political discourse by matching it. The minute you make the "well, I agree..." gesture, you give it legitimacy, and you practically walk it down the hall to your kitchen. Have a seat, dine with us. I do not have the luxury of ignoring the state of Britain today. It affects me and mine in a way that is more visceral and immediate. It begins with my name and my skin – that which immediately catches your eye – and burrows ever further inwards. In the story of bacon and eggs, one animal is giving more of itself. The residents of the chicken coop do not feel the loss as keenly as those in the pigpen. For some of us, there's more skin in the game.
I don't know what will have happened by the time I go to bed tonight or wake up tomorrow. For now I am sitting in an apartment in Brooklyn, scared and worried.