Race is to the US what class is to the UK

Sep 14, 2017 Letters

Dear Editor,
A recent letter in KN about normalizing the white USA supremacy stance caught my attention. How does one go about doing that, I wondered? American racism is ingrained, has been there from way back. Could a leopard change its spots? I often point out to the British media that racism is to America what ‘class’ is to Britons. It makes their born-and-bred whites comfortable. With Brits, it is something to look up to, or look down on. One group aspiring, the other patronising.
Unfortunately, the outlook may not alter even when in other countries. A few years ago, off a cruiser, on a day trip to one of the Caribbean islands, I happened to mistakenly enter an unmarked men’s washroom, and when a white American and his Brit companion entered after, the American told the British that he would break my legs, “because she is only a (using the N word. Britons being what they are, the word was already spread, and when I got back to the coach, “silence spoke”, and I could have heard the sound of a dropping pin!
Curiously, when holidaying in Europe, usually among educated white Americans, I have never experienced such prejudice. Perhaps because, I am able to explain European practices they find puzzling, one such being the smallest size bathroom towels. In every American hotel, this normal practice, being used, as I was told, to clean the skin after doing a messy job, such as gardening, to wipe hands. In European hotels this is rare or non-existent.
My own feeling is that the system will self-destruct in the long run. Speaking as an observer, the racial loathing is mutual. A few years ago, I met a mature married couple in New York, the husband a black B.G. chap, the wife a white Brit. He took her to meet his B.G. folk in the Harlem area, and she returned to the hotel in central New York a nervous wreck. They never expected such hostility from the neighbourhood.
He had to “hustle her away”! On my holidays abroad, Blacks have always questioned my association with whites; white Americans would look and wonder – until Brits explained that we were from “London, England”. I liked a question I once heard “Why can’t humans live like pianos – black and white keys needed to play a tune? I suppose the logical answer is “because we are not pianos”. “Variety is the spice of strife”.
Geralda Dennison

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