I grew up as a mixed race boy in a family of five in Portsmouth. My mother is white (Irish), my father is black (Caribbean) and I have a twin brother and an older brother.

My family were more privileged than most families in the area. Our parents were well educated, my father was an engineer on a decent salary, so whilst there were financial difficulties at times, we never went without food or proper clothing. Our parents were concerned enough about our wellbeing to brush our teeth, wash us regularly and they could afford to give us the tools we needed to do well in school: computers, pens and pencils, and they could help us with our homework and cared about our education enough to attend parents evenings and be in regular contact with our teachers. I say this because this wasn’t the case for a lot of the children I went to school with. Given Portsmouth was an overwhelming majority white area when I was younger, my first hand experience of seeing poverty was of white poverty.

At infants school, the colour of mine and my twin brother’s skin was mostly a novelty / curiosity for the other children and the fact that we were twins meant we stuck out all the more. Along with continuous disbelief about us being twins, kids asked questions like “why are you not white?”, “Mummy says black people cooked too long in the oven” But at that age it was mostly harmless. People genuinely didn’t have much first hand experience of people from other cultures and backgrounds.

But by the time we were at Junior school, children were starting to absorb the racism around them. One time that stands out was when a group of older kids used to stand by the gates in the morning everyday to scream “Native Indian” chants, pointing at the middle of their foreheads, among other offensive and culturally inaccurate racial slurs. What hurt was not so much the slurs, but how complicit every adult and child present was in the racism. They saw it and did nothing. You were left thinking internally: do they agree or are they outraged and have chosen to say nothing? Our parents shared school drop offs with our friends’ parents. These parents heard the slurs too and would say nothing. We never “told” on the kids and they were never punished. At the time I felt utterly alone and in hindsight looking back I hate how normal it felt, something that we just had to put up with for being different.

At the time it was common to use the term “half caste” to describe someone of mixed ethnicity and I often used the word to help describe my background to others. Once, during a lesson with a supply teacher I used the phrase and he got very animated with me, even angry. He told me that the term was derogatory and that it comes from the idea of race purity. He told me that “half” implies less or lower in a caste system to superior pure races. I felt ashamed. If this was true, why was it such a common phrase? Why hadn’t people stopped using the term?

There was a general level of ignorance about other cultures when I was younger. At a school age, people didn’t understand what or where the Caribbean was. They saw my skin colour and assumed I was from India or Africa or Pakistan. Somewhere foreign for sure. But this was coming from kids who hadn’t seen much of the world, who mostly hadn’t left the country and often hadn’t even visited London.

It was astounding to hear that people hadn’t visited a city I had such a love for. Both my mum and dad’s family are based in London. As a child I loved to visit both sides of my family. It was also a chance to indulge in and celebrate black culture. My Nan used to make the most amazing Caribbean feasts and my aunts and uncles would come round. We would listen to music, dance, sing and laugh out loud with no inhibitions in a way that was so unashamedly black. On the car journeys across London I would relish being regularly caught in traffic jams. It was a chance to listen to pirate radio stations. In contrast to the south where there might be 6 or 7 FM stations predominantly playing music of white origin, pirate radio stations packed the local frequencies in South London. It gave me the love I have for UK Garage, jungle, hip hop, RnB and other music forms that are deeply rooted in black music and heritage.

In reflection, I realised that at school nothing was taught about black history. We learnt about religions and countries of the world, but it was only because I chose to take GCSE History that I know anything about UK black history. A history which, our teacher admitted, we only learnt about because the alternative was the world wars which he insisted we had learnt plenty about and would learn plenty more about should we choose A Level history. We learnt about the discovery of the Americas by Europeans and the slave trade that the UK and other countries established. A basic piece of black history which, from my experience, so few people in the UK are aware of. The idea that African black people are in the UK because of European slavery. The fact that the Caribbean now and the windrush generation that my dad was a part of are the decendants of British slavery. Even the fact that the way slavery was abolished in the UK - by paying a huge sum of £20m (£17bn by today’s money) to UK slave owners for loss of “property” - was glossed over in the history we learnt. Knowing this, it’s painful when I hear people jovially jest “wouldn’t it be great to bring back the British Empire”. “Get those colonies back into shape” hahaha. I’m left thinking: Colonialism is tied to race supremacy right? Where do people of my skin colour fit in this picture?

Racism took strange forms growing up. There was a kid in my year who used to regularly bully me with racial slurs. I think at the time I was aware of my own privilege though and in a strange way took pity on him. There was a time where the kids with the highest grades in our class “tutored” the kids with the lower grades for a lesson to help them write a page of a story (a very strange division to draw in a classroom in retrospect). I was paired to help him when I realised he couldn’t spell the word “blue”. We were getting towards the end of junior school at that point. I started to notice kids who weren’t dressed well, had stains on their school clothes, smelt unwashed and moments like that spelling. Later I found out the kid who had been racially bullying me regularly hung around my friends house (who was also mixed race) at dinner time and often ate there. He wasn’t well looked after and had an unstable home situation.

At secondary school a group of older kids used to wait for me and my brother to walk home and shout abuse at us, call us niggers, tell us to go home. It went on for weeks until a kid in my year saw the group go past me outside a science class and shout a slur at me, he ran up to the biggest kid and punched him square in the face. They never picked on me or my brother again. But I’m ashamed to say I witnessed the same kid who stood up for me hurl racist abuse at a supply teacher and did nothing.

Racism was also a running joke among friends. Groups of acquaintances at school would sing racist chants, mostly at my brother: “la la la la la - John’s a nigger”. One day a teacher overheard the chants and chose to give my brother and the two boys who were singing the chant a 2 hour detention. It was like he was in part to blame for the racist chants. Many of the kids at school were aware of the racism in their households. Some were embarrassed about the way their dads regarded people of other colours, regaling tales of things that had been said in the comfort of their homes. Some were not embarrassed. One child’s dad was notorious for raising an English flag and blaring the national anthem at their Pakistani next door neighbours. There was a time when I went to a sleepover at a friends house. England were playing in the World Cup (or Euros) and Emile Heskey was playing badly. My friend’s dad was watching the game with us and he shouted at the TV “stupid nigger!” At that moment I’m thinking: am I welcome in your house? Are you just tolerating me being here on account of me being friends with your son?

Football has always been a battleground for the best and worst of racial inclusivity. Black footballers have undoubtedly helped integrate the black community in Britain as a whole, yet football has also been a safe haven for people wishing to hurl racist abuse at players and spectators. At school it was much the same. It felt like my brother and I were perhaps accepted more readily by our peers because of our ability to play sports. My dad told us that when he grew up in London he spent a lot of time playing Cricket in the streets with the children in his neighbourhood. Caribbean culture shares football and cricket with British culture. Similarities like these have been celebrated over the years. But I look back and wonder why is it that we only celebrate the similarities between cultures and not the differences? In a strange way it’s as though you’re accepted as British for doing British things, but is pirate radio or curried goat less British. Is it un-British?

I’ve been fortunate to have only suffered discrimination at the hands of the police once when an officer took mine and my brothers name and address when we were among a group of white friends. There had been a motorcycle theft in the area and the police were questioning what we were doing on the streets at night. We were heading to the beach at the time after our prom. We laughed about it with our friends at the time but I was left with the sickening feeling that we had been profiled. The culprit turned out to be a white male.

The final memory I have from secondary school was during GCSE exams. We had a suspended time table and my brother and I were walking into school one lunchtime for an exam we had. Our route took us past an infants school playground full of kids having their lunch playtime. As we passed the school a small girl came running to the fence screaming “nigger” at us at the top of her voice at us. It was so painful to hear someone so young using that word, I couldn’t bring myself to look at her. We walked past in silence.

At college me and my brother started going to nightclubs. It became another running joke among our friendship group the lengths that bouncers would go to to stop us getting in. We had afros at the time which probably didn’t help. If it wasn’t our “striped tops’’ it was our polo shirts or trainers (the same stuff everyone else was wearing). One time my brother got turned away for having a “striped top” he took a taxi home, changed and came back so that the bouncer had no choice but to let him in. Another time all of our friends got in a club, the bouncer looked at us and said “one of you can come in’’. We both walked home.

I think my up-bringing taught me to keep my head down, be quiet, say nothing, pretend it isn’t happening. It has merit at times but I’m ashamed to say I have rarely stood up to the injustices I’ve seen around me. I’ve swept it under the carpet instead. It feels like a very British response to the problem. It’s uncomfortable to think of or accept the fact that racism still exists today. It’s uncomfortable to talk about. It’s uncomfortable to confront. I always felt grateful too that our experience wasn’t as bad as our dads before us. There weren’t people in the streets campaigning for us to “go back home”, no signs in windows saying “no blacks, no dogs, no irish”. But do the laws that prevent this kind of behaviour really change the prejudices of the people who write these signs and engage in these campaigns?

Past school, I’ve used being different and being privileged to my advantage. My wife and I have joked that the colour of my skin has very likely made me stand out in interviewing processes. The tech industry definitely has a disproportionate lack of minority representation and the representation it does have is often the subject of jokes. For instance, I’ve seen both first hand and heard anecdotally the language used to describe Indian contractors (probably the largest ethnic minority I’ve come into contact with in the tech industry). Billi-bing-bongs. I’ve heard of CVs being thrown in the bin because the applicant had a name that was difficult to pronounce. From that perspective, I’m “fortunate” to have a Christian name. My wife and I have also consciously given our children Christian names and part of the decision was to avoid them being discriminated against.

In retrospect, I think I’ve tried to consign racism to my past. The 90s were bad, but today is different right? Day to day I don’t experience prejudice or discrimination, at least not that I know of. If I do it’s behind my back or in the minds of others and they have the decency for the most part not to verbalise their prejudice.

There are still times when I become painfully aware of the colour of my skin. My skin prickles like it’s under intense heat and I get a lump in my throat. Recent times have been the weeks following the Brexit outcome. The country voted for Brexit. The area we now live in, Fareham, voted overwhelmingly for Brexit, on the back of Nigel Farage standing in front of billboards depicting hoards of non white people apparently flocking to the UK with a heading saying “breaking point”. I can remember heading to Sainsburys the day after the result, feeling that intense feeling, like eyes are watching me. I don’t want to assume why individuals may or may not have voted for Brexit but it was undeniably a platform for racial hatred and my inner voice walking around that shop said: will this give people who hold prejudices the confidence to voice them again like they did in my childhood? The rise in national hate crimes shows it did. I was fortunate enough not to be on the receiving end in this instance.

Following the appalling murder of George Floyd, I’ve seen people of all colours and backgrounds coming together during the Covid lockdown in protests as a public outcry of grief, anger and expressing a genuine desire to make racial discrimination and inequality a thing of the past. To me a beautiful display of solidarity between people of all races, ages and backgrounds. But I’ve also seen people on Facebook respond by saying they are appalled by the lack of distancing at the rallies, appalled that the rallies are taking place during lockdown and “embarrassed to be British”, implying that the idea of standing up for the fundamental human rights of black people is “un-British”.

My wife and I have 2 beautiful boys, James who has a similar skin colour as me and Robert who is white skinned. Both have the same heritage, but I have horrible pangs of doubt: will James have a tougher time growing up? Will Robert be constantly challenged about whether James is his brother or I’m his dad? It’s painful to think they might suffer similar experiences to me growing up and leaves me questioning: how much has really changed?

Like I said before, I’m well aware that my privilege has helped me to the job I have today and my skin colour has likely helped me stand out in interview processes. In that sense, knowing how underrepresented black people are in tech, I have to admit to never having actively helped to share my privilege with fellow people of ethnic minorities. I’ve mostly ignored and accepted the racist abuse that has been dished out to me and others around me in the past. In recent days I’ve asked myself, if I had less opportunity growing up, less privilege, would I have been so accepting? I need to use my privilege to help fellow people of ethnic minorities with less than I have. I need to speak out when I see racism in all forms, if I don’t I’m no better than the adults who idly stood by as kids shouted chants at me in Junior school. I need my children not to suffer the same experiences I did, and if they do, for people to stand up, hold the abusers accountable and educate them. I freely admit to being ignorant of many aspects of black history and the struggles that black people and other minorities in this country face day to day. I think I’ve realised that’s okay provided I / we are constantly learning and educating ourselves and others. And constantly embracing the differences between us and others that share the same, town or country and world that we live in.