What follows is a real life example of a white person who decided, without prior warning, to add a whole new section to our race relations policy.<\/p>\n

This scene takes place in one of the many chain pubs that has taken over Lancaster. Nothing usual about the setting, it just gives me a good excuse to mention our former local pub. This was the only pub that let you bring your own music and gave you a free drink for acting as DJ. I refuse to get over the fact that it is \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00cb\u0153under new management\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2. <\/p>\n

Getting back to the story, I was in the company of Mich, my two siblings, a cousin and a friend. There was a white lady sat at the table opposite ours, with her back to us. I am going to call her Claire, or as we say in the North, Clurr. <\/i><\/b> Every so often Clurr would glance over her shoulder and look at us. After a few minutes of craning her neck she decided to turn her chair slightly so that she could keep one eye on her crowd and the other on \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00cb\u0153us coloured folk\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2. <\/p>\n

In case I am accused of ‘playing the race card’ (a subject worthy of its own blog entry!) here are my reasons:<\/p>\n

\n
• \nWe were sat against a wall \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u20ac\u0153 there was nothing behind us. The wall had no distinguishing features other than the bodies of 5 black people and one white guy resting upon it.<\/li>\n
• \nBlack people instinctively know what counts as an \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00cb\u0153is it cos I is black?\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac? (Ali G vs The Police [2000]) moment. I don\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2t know how, we just do\n<\/li>\n
• \nClurr\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s subsequent actions \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u20ac\u0153 what Clurr did next left no doubt in my mind that it was cos we woz black.\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

  I am not sure at what point Clurr decided that staring was no longer good enough all I remember is getting that strange feeling of someone standing over you. I looked up and there was Clurr, leaning over our table, camera-phone in hand, clicking away. She took individual close ups of all the black people at our table. Clurr, clearly a perfectionist, paused between each take to admire her work. Satisfied, she stepped back and took one group photo. Not pleased with the result she snapped one last time before returning to her seat and showing her new pictures to her friends.<\/p>\n

  Two whole minutes later and eventually someone at our table was able to speak. It was agreed that Clurr had gone one step too far and I eagerly took on the task of setting her straight. I deliberately chose not mention race. I simply reminded her that we had a right to privacy and it would have been polite of her to ask before she took pictures of us. Clurr had obviously memorised the \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00cb\u0153I am not racist; I have black friends’ <\/i><\/b> speech and without prompting, began to recite it. Needless to say I too had my share of speeches memorised but I decided against the \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c5\u201cI’m @?%&!-ing tired of your @%!?”<\/i><\/b> speech.<\/p>\n

  Judging by Clurr’s actions I had concluded that she wasn’t the brightest of people. I opted for the confident-lawyer-talking-crap<\/i><\/b> speech.<\/p>\n

  I quoted various sections of Acts (both real and imagined) that she had violated. I demanded that she delete the photographs of us and warned that if she repeated her actions, I would not only ensure that she was kicked out of this pub but I would also be pressing criminal charges as well as issuing civil proceedings against her. Clurr had obviously not expected this and neither had her friends. It was their turn to be left speechless. <\/p>\n

  Later on that night, when one third of the table had gone to dance and the other third had gone to get drinks, Clurr returned to our table, no camera in sight, and as she sat down next to me she said,<\/p>\n

  “I’m real sorry ’bout earlier. Din’t mean to upset you like. Are guys on tour or something?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Having read Mshairi\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s post on last night\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s TV programme, and having watched the second half of the show I couldn\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2t help but recount one of the craziest forms of racism that I have faced whilst living in Lancaster. For those who don\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2t know Lancaster, here is a brief summary of the town\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s unwritten race relations […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[94],"class_list":{"0":"post-181","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-race","7":"tag-race","8":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Y7Vr-2V","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}