No place like home
On moving and belonging
We are planning to move to Ireland later this year. And I have been thinking a lot about being a migrant (twice over), and making home somewhere new. I came to the UK almost 20 years ago, and think of this as home (of course). But I also talk about India as home. And now I am feeling anxious about moving countries (even though it is exciting) and making home somewhere else, even though the situation in the UK isn’t ideal for people of colour, with increasingly polarised politics.
I will write more on this and on navigating the various hurdles in moving from England to Ireland, in the aftermath of Brexit. In the meantime, this week, we saw how a Black woman who must have experienced racism at various stages of her life thought that the Holocaust wasn’t about race, and a comedian with a huge platform used a minority Romani comedy as a punchline for cheap laughs. And it is sad reminder of how misunderstood the concept of race is, and how Roma community has sadly been ignored and marginalised for far too long. But more importantly it reminded us of the importance of intersectionality when we talk about inequities, both historic and contemporary.
It is uncomfortable to think about these things, but unless we put ourselves out of our comfort zone, we will not change stereotypes, beliefs and attitudes.
So what is in my tabs?
Of course race isn’t based in biology and people often have this mistaken belief that there is a genetic basis to race. There isn’t. It is a social construct. This means that stereotypes such as ‘black men are more aggressive’ is purely based in long-standing stereotypes and not in any biological difference in their physiology or their brains. I have written about it in my book Sway: Unravelling Unconscious Bias, but there are so many excellent researchers and scientists who have been writing about this too. Here are a couple of good summaries:
The Unwelcome revival of race science
The Ideology of Racism: Misusing Science to Justify Racial Discrimination
While race is a social construct, and its perception of what constitutes a race has changed and evolved over time, its consequences as racism is very real. Race science or eugenics was used to justify oppression by claiming that certain racial groups were inferior to others. Angela Saini and Adam Rutherford both have written good books about this.
Here is a great essay in New York Times ‘Ideology as Biology’.
Following Jimmy Carr’s comments in his comedy special on Netflix, I was asked to write an opinion piece for The Independent. I wrote about prejudice norm theory and why we have to once and for all consider as a society, how long – and why – we ought to continue tolerating such lazy “humour”, where hatred is entangled with the “jokes” and there is a denial of social or moral responsibility on the part of the comedian, as well as the audience who find them funny. (I refuse to read the comments. It is never a good idea.)
While researching for this piece, I was surprised to find out that the Romanis originated from the north-west India and genetic studies in 2012 showed links with people in Rajasthan and Punjab. They were sent (possibly as slaves) to Middle East (which is why they were called gypsies or gypciens because it was mistakenly believed that they came from Egypt) and then moved over to Europe. I can feel the pain of this nomadic lifestyle where they have always been seen as an outsider no matter where they are.
And these stories from four young people are so touching and thought-provoking
I have been looking at similarities between Indian languages and Romani
And there is a great twitter thread about this which shows how this oppression has continued and been normalised until the present day.
Of course I am thinking a lot about home, belonging, otherness. I am thinking of those who leave home in precarious conditions, and those who are forced to flee and spend most of their lifetime trying to find roots elsewhere. And what we mean when we call somewhere home.
“I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid certain surroundings, but they have always a nostalgia for a home they know not. They are strangers in their birthplace, and the leafy lanes they have known from childhood or the populous streets in which they have played, remain but a place of passage. They may spend their whole lives aliens among their kindred and remain aloof among the only scenes they have ever known. Perhaps it is this sense of strangeness that sends men far and wide in the search for something permanent, to which they may attach themselves. Perhaps some deep-rooted atavism urges the wanderer back to lands which his ancestors left in the dim beginnings of history.” ― W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence
So, let me know here in the comments what does home mean to you? Where is home for you? What makes home for you?
Hope you have a lovely week!
Pragya