Читать книгу No Win Race. A Story of Belonging, Britishness and Sport онлайн

6 страница из 87

I realised I had started to squeeze him tightly. The back of my throat had started to tickle. My hands and my toes were cold and clammy. Not the rum. Should have been thinking about the immediate future, like playing games with the kids in the morning, country walks and beautiful landscapes. Instead, my mind was situated in the past. Always is. I took my son upstairs to bed, the documentary swirling through my head. I thought less about Thatcher’s death and more about her legacy.

I remembered what it had been like as a child in the eighties. I grew up in Newham in the East End, which for many black and brown folks meant racially motivated attacks and police harassment, and a general denial that these problems existed from the services that were there to help you. It had been a time when fear, paranoia and insecurity consumed me. From a young age, I felt like an outsider. Felt as if my options, crafted by the grit and hard work of my Jamaican parents, were impossibly narrow. Felt like a problem to the state. Never knew comfort. Never really felt at ease. Bus stops, shops, school, trains, my everyday spaces, brought conflict, stares, stop and searches, anxiety, false accusations and a fear of other people’s fear. I liked my home, my birthplace. England. But never quite felt at home in my birthplace. Never made to feel at home in my birthplace. It had been difficult to feel like a true citizen in a place where you were considered an outsider, in a place where many of the nation’s heroes were often my forefathers’ oppressors.