Take it back: The power of language

I was called Paki an awful lot when I was young. Awful as in it hurt and pushes my stomach into my mouth still when I hear that and other words used as racist slurs, hurled with the violence of ignorance as a weapon to demean, differentiate and discriminate. 

Recently, during the height of the imbecilic thuggery of racists terrorising the UK, at a family Muslim wedding, a relative used the term - in a positively identifying way. Because my heritage is Pakistani. And it's something to be proud of. “Pakis like us,” was part of the sentence. As in this is who we are. We say it, we own it, it means something. Not what ignorant brutes make of it, but what we are made of - real history, a sense of identity connected to truth. Not the false and misinformed narratives of a nation that carved up, stole and ruined the lands of our ancestors.

“Words carry history with them, and this 4-letter-word, “p*ki,” holds the pain and mayhem it caused to so many people. Even today, it is still used as a racial slur; to disrespect, demean, and dehumanize.” Brown History

It's exhausting and saddening to have to feel all of this all over again. I don't want to feel in a constant state of anxiety, anticipating affronts to my fellow beings and beloveds, wondering about people's intentions and impressions as they look at me and people like me. Questioning their motives for hanging Union Jacks and St George’s flags in their gardens. Because fuck that shit. But that's how it is. And it has always been thus - the unskilful and malicious demonstration and proclamation of positionality, nationality and identity.

I don’t want to talk about it, but it’s infiltrating my headspace and counter narratives need to be spoken. I feel the need for my own sanity to say it like it is. Representation and balanced expression matters. Speaking truth to misplaced and nefariously assumed power matters.

This conversation around who we are and how we are perceived occurred at the end of a night where I'd been anxious all day as well as determined to defy the fear being pedalled and the domestic terrorism being enacted and enabled by racist and Islamophobic systems, institutions and mobs - and let’s be clear, it is violence, not “mischief” as the judge who decided to name the boy accused of the crimes that have been used as a lame and shameless excuse for rioting and violence called it. Thuggery facilitated by social media as a fundamentally polarizing platform that its orchestrators and amoral moderators allow it to be.

As we stood on the stage with the bride and groom for photos, another relative laughed saying we sounded louder than the EDL as we whooped with joy. It made me nearly cry with relief at how we could make light of what is really a terrifying situation.

Another cousin rightly said the racist mobs are exposing themselves for who and what they are - idiots - and this will only show the rest of the nation what a farce this rhetoric is.

We, as in those with awareness, sense and a confidence in who we truly are and what matters, who stand in defiance for the truth, are louder than those who under the guise of misinformation and willful stupidity, want us to be quiet and go away. I've not the energy to get into where they think we should go, when we have every right to belong where we are. 

They say “we want our country back” knowing fuck all about “their country”. We wanted our countries back a long time ago, the countries that the ancestors of the so-called nationalists who don’t actually know what this nation has stood for in the past and clearly still - namely theft, brutality, subjugation, arrogance and dehumanisation, to name a few.

I don't want to engage in this reductive, divisive and colonial "us and them" conversation. I, we, didn't make it this way. I don’t want to feel bitterness and resentment, but the truth is that I do. Because I, we, carry the wounds of the past, and I wish more people would take the time to understand the repercussions of that. I'm not here to and nor do I wish, and nor do I need to give a history lesson. It's all out there for anyone who cares to properly understand what's going on.

So I was glad when I saw Akala take down Tommy Robinson in Akala's inimitable, articulate, emboldening and empowering way - speaking truth to misplaced power. Watch it, there's a lot of sense that many could do with being reminded of. This shit is systemic, it's historical. 

It might be the dumb-assery of a loud minority on the streets rioting, but where we are now is the result of politically devised strategies led by those who do know better and have created and embedded systems of hate and division from that place of knowing. Knowledge is power as they say, and the lust for power is the worst of what we can be. 

I felt the whole of my insides begin to judder as rage, anxiety and fury built up in my stomach and chest as I listened to Akala. All while I sat in my childhood bedroom with my parents downstairs in the early morning of a new day, a new week, when I was preparing to leave one Home to return to my own, feeling guilty that I get to walk away to a place of relative peace - where I wonder if my neighbours with their various flags waving with some kind of pride even know what is going on and what it means when they call this a "quintessentially English" place, as some have.

All this after I purposely started the day with a meditation by Sebene Selassie about letting things be, as in not getting stuck in storylines and resisting being dragged asunder by toxic thoughts. Followed in the days since by listening to the poet Andrea Gibson talk about approaching forgiveness from a place of love, and how forgiveness opens the heart wider than blame. And turning to other trusted guides like Thich Nhat Hanh who encourages us to counter hate with love, to see the roots behind the anger and not succumb to poisonous thoughts and emotions lest we water the seeds of rage as opposed to collective restoration.

Well, I’m not there yet. I was. And now I’m back in the headspace of the child in me who was forced to feel different, forced to see myself through the eyes of those who other us, remembering the times I used to ask my sister what side we thought our friends and neighbours would be on if we found ourselves confronted by the National Front (who were there to greet people like my Mum and Dad when they had to come to the UK in the 1970s because they were forced out of Uganda, a country whose dictator was wined and dined and trained by the British government and the Queen - a memory my Mum recalls as we watch the newsreels of rioters attacking the so-called places of refuge for asylum seekers), recalling the times I was spat at by school kids and the times that elderly people crossed the road instead of walking past me on my walk home from the local village.

All these memories rise to the surface, and I am left wondering how far we have truly come.

Yes, I know there are more helpers than haters, that there are more people in communities who are standing for what is truly right than the Far Right, that there are narratives and conversations that contain more sense and empower people to understand what's actually going on beneath the surface of the shit-storm.

And even then, this is kicking up so much dirt that I wonder if it ever really settled, if we can ever really settle, and if/when we will ever be allowed to heal, move on and let each other be.