By ELISABETH ANN BROWN
WASHINGTON, DC – I have had a very privileged life. I was born in the UK, I am white, and my father was an athlete and a member of the British armed forces, which afforded us quite a lot of opportunities. He was British Heavyweight Weightlifting Champion and represented Great Britain in the 1960 Rome Olympic Games. Being in the army meant that we lived abroad a lot and we spent a total of almost seven years in Germany.
The army had many people from British Commonwealth countries around the world serving in its regiments, and my father also had friends in the sport of weightlifting who came from the Caribbean. So for me, exposure to people of different races was an every day experience, not something I thought of as different. I went to school with black and white children in the 1960s, during a time when American schools in the South were still segregated and apartheid was a part of daily life in South Africa.
In 1963 when I was eight years old we were living in the UK, and in the United States the civil rights movement was in full swing. We had no television in our house, so we got all our news from the radio, magazines and newspapers. I was just a little girl, and I had never been exposed to racial hatred so I found the news from America to be extremely puzzling and frightening. It was hard to understand how adults could be so horrible to people because they looked different. I was not really aware of the history of slavery in any great detail and I didn’t really learn about it until I was a bit older, about eleven or twelve.
During the time we lived in Germany, we visited the infamous Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, which had been turned into a very grim museum. I was still quite young when we went there, but the images that I saw were deeply imprinted on my mind. We still did not have television, and the only movies I was exposed to were mostly Disney’s famous cartoons with good moral messages such as Bambi, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and The Jungle Book.
I was raised in an atheist household, and although I attended religious knowledge classes in school, I was very confused about religion, especially when I read how over the centuries it fuelled so much hatred, controversy and many wars. How could people who claimed to be Christian enslave so many millions of Africans and justify their belief that black people were less than human using the Bible? How could they invade the lands of another people, slaughter them and herd them into reservations, deny them their rights and their own religious beliefs. More reasons for me to really question religion!
In 1982 I moved with my young family to The Bahamas. This was another eye-opening experience for me. For the first time in my life I was a minority. I found that living in a small island nation only 150 miles from the US coast, the attitudes towards race were very much influenced by what happens in the States, as well as the influence of colonial life and slavery in the past. Colonialism was something I had only heard of and read about. Now I was living among people who could remember what it was like to live under British rule.
Christianity plays a very big role, and while some reject it as the white slave master’s religion, others use it to justify beliefs that perpetuate hate, not the love that I think being truly spiritual should bring into our lives. I didn’t find a great deal of racist sentiment in The Bahamas, but it does exist. If anything, I thought it was the white minority that contributed the most to any anti-white feelings as they generally tended to avoid celebrating things like Independence, which should be an opportunity for the country to come together as a whole.
I had a recent conversation with a couple of young Bahamian friends on the topic of racism, from the point of view of whether or not people should marry outside their race. One was of the view that black people should be more pro black, to promote their own people, businesses, education and culture. He held the opinion that mixing the races was not helpful to this end. I disagreed, as I think that to keep on sowing the seeds of division will only perpetuate the ‘them and us’ situation. We need to be able to learn about and respect each other’s cultures, and to acknowledge the terrible things of the past and work together to ensure that these things never happen again. Racism has always been with us, but lately it seems to be making itself felt more openly.
I am reading a very fascinating book ‘Walking With the Wind’ by John Lewis, member of Congress for the 5th District of Georgia, who marched beside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr during the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s, and participated in the Freedom Rides and the march across the Edmond Pettit bridge in Salem. The danger he put himself in, along with other brave men and women, the ideals he stood for, and the sacrifices he made must not be in vain. The concept of quiet, non-violent protest worked then, so can it work again in this new era of racial tension and mistrust that are escalating before our eyes?
I recently got hooked on watching a BBC series on Netflix called ‘Call the Midwife’. It has apparently been a huge hit all around the world. The episodes highlighted the poverty in the East End of London in the 1950s in a very real and compassionate way. As a child in that era I was not aware of how classism and racism were so prevalent in the country of my birth. The series is based on the real life memoirs of a midwife, Jennifer Worth, who worked with the Anglican nuns in an area of London known as Poplar, and brings out the compassion and love of the women she worked with. In this world that seems to be devolving into a cycle of hate and suspicion similar to the civil rights era in America, it really is a timely as well as enjoyable series. After the news has been assailing me all day, I find that immersing myself in stories of humanity, caring and love is like an oasis at the end of the day, putting a warm feeling in my heart and a smile on my face before I go to bed.
There is a growing fear among white people that they are rapidly becoming the minority. They cling to a bible that teaches love thy neighbor, but still they fear those neighbors who don’t look like them, speak a foreign language, worship in a different church, or love someone of the same sex. I wrote about my spiritual journey in another article, and while I still hold my beliefs, and the hope that people will become more understanding and tolerant, it certainly tries my patience and makes me continue to ask WHY?? I will however continue to live in hope for our world.
