Amala Anyika writes: what would happen if one day you woke up Black?

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What is being Black? So on a scientific level, if you bypass theories proposing or supporting the idea of Black people being inferior, according to a 2020 journal on human evolution by Jablonski and Chaplain, having ‘black’ or brown skin is a ‘variation in the visual appearance of human skin’ mainly caused by melanin. Regarding levels of melanin, Sleek Makeup said I was a ‘Mocha’ shade. Then they changed the names to codes, so now I’m ‘C2P20’. That is to say that I’m mid-brown, or something like that. If you’re anything lighter than the ‘Sand’ shade of Rimmel foundation, let me present you with the freakiest of Fridays: tomorrow you wake up Black.
So depending on how long you’re Black for and who you encounter, these things will probably happen:

  • Someone will ask you where you’re really from. Well, they’ll ask you where you’re from first, and you might tell them. Depending on what you answer, they’ll then ask you where you’re really from. ‘Well hang on, let me just consider my lineage and examine it for you.’
  • Someone will ask you if you know another Black person, because you’re both Black. I’m not going to lie, in Sheffield the answer might be ‘maybe.’
  • Depending on your accent or the way you speak, someone will say that you’re ‘articulate’ or that ‘you speak really well’. I don’t know what people imagine you’re going to sound like.
  • Someone might try and touch your hair. Solange Knowles  wrote a song about that not being a great idea.
  • You’ll be disappointed by people and their stance on something related to race. Thanks, Shameik Moore, who suggested the Black community should stop blaming police brutality on racism, you ruined my favourite Spider-man film.
  • You’ll be continually disappointed by companies. Most companies. Pick one. For example, H&M in 2018 using a Black child to model a ‘Coolest Monkey in the Jungle’ hoodie.  Come on, really?
  • Somebody or some company or some spokesperson will issue an apology, saying they are ‘deeply sorry.’ They’re not really, because they did whatever they’re ‘sorry’ for in the first place.
  • People won’t notice these things or believe most of this happened when you tell them. 

You’ll start to notice how petty and considered micro-aggressions and insults really are, and sometimes you’ll have to double-check yourself. I had to check this one, but I was pretty sure it happened because it was the last thing in a long list of things that made me avoid everything to do with (formerly Prince) Harry marrying Meghan Markle and everything after that. I was watching some coverage of super fans of the Royals being interviewed before the wedding on the streets of Windsor, by Alice Beer on This Morning. I don’t know why I was watching this in the first place, but I was. Well one superfan who had previously met Prince Harry was wearing a wedding dress, and saying that she would be there to marry him if he ‘got cold feet’ about marrying Meghan Markle. Alice Beer then said that ‘Great Britain would lynch you’ if that happened. Could there be a poorer choice of words? Watch the video/footage from the Daily Mail, and then try and convince me she wasn’t deliberate in choosing those words. You won’t convince me.
Danny Baker was sacked from his job after tweeting about what it might look like when Harry and Meghan left the hospital with their newborn (formerly royal) baby . He issued an apology saying ‘sorry my gag pic of the little fella in the posh outfit has whipped some up’. Before the kid had even been born, someone had compared him to a monkey wearing a suit. Welcome to the world, Archie. 

Danny Baker’s tweet.
Your daily number of involuntary, and voluntary, side eyes and eye rolls will increase. I’m starting to think this might be the reason my eyesight is getting worse. That doesn’t make that much sense though, because it’s only my right eye getting worse. I don’t think they can move independently of one another, because I would’ve used it as a party trick.
The Internet will become your best friend and also your worst enemy, because for every often called ‘isolated incident’, you’ll find at least another one. When anyone mentions a racist attack being an ‘isolated incident’, you’ll wonder if ‘isolated’ might have a different definition that you didn’t know about. 

A BBC series about the murder of Stephen Lawrence, Stephen: The Murder that Changed a Nation , aired in 2018. I remember thinking at the time that it didn’t change a nation. It should have, but it didn’t. I was helping at a reading group for Black children last year, and I was with a small group of young teenagers discussing Reni Eddo-Lodge’s book Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race. I was trying to explain how being Black, and racism, might affect them. I said something like it will make things more difficult for you, maybe at school or at work. It might make everyday things more difficult, and you might have to think carefully about situations that you might end up in and how you can try and stay safe. Stephen Lawrence was stabbed to death in “an unprovoked racist attack by a gang of white youths” while he was waiting at a bus stop in London, reported the Guardian in 2018. 
Being Black is the feeling of knowing that any situation that you find yourself in can be turned against you because of the colour of your skin. It’s having to remind yourself that being Black isn’t a crime. Being Black is being guilty until proven innocent, when you’ve probably not done anything wrong. I haven’t even mentioned Covid-19 and the higher risk of death for Black and ethnic minority groups, as proven in an article by The Health Foundation summing up the evidence., but if you woke up Black before the outbreak you’ll be used to people crossing the road to avoid you. Not because of social distancing, but because you’re Black. So at least you’ll be prepared for that. 
So I reckon waking up Black, if you’re not already Black, would be an eye-opening experience. One thing I’m pretty sure of is that each time you closed those eyes to go to sleep you’d wish that you woke up being ‘Sand’ shade or lighter.