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This weekend the KKK marched without their hoods. Do you understand what that means? That sounds ridiculous right? And yet an angry mob of KKK white supremacists just marched with burning torches screaming racist and anti-semitic slogans in Charlottesville USA this weekend. And Donald Trump and others have said too little, too late.
I was born and grew up in Cardiff, Wales. I have lived in Wales, Africa, England and Qatar. I am a first generation British daughter of immigrant parents.
I moved from the UK to Qatar when I was 15 years old. That is not to say I had a terrible childhood. I had a great childhood that was privileged in many other ways. And that affected me in many ways into my adulthood of which I have had to do a lot of healing and reclamation work around. My brother and I would go there everyday by ourselves, especially when the weather was good, to play on the swings and slides.
We loved that park. And the first time I saw him, he sneered at me and told me that my skin was the colour of poop. My face still feels red just thinking about it. I felt so ashamed. All I felt was the shame of being in the skin that I was in. Of not being white like everyone else. I ran straight home with tears in my eyes. After that day I refused to go to the park anymore without my mum. I never told her what happened. I felt too ashamed to even say it to her.
I believed that everyone must be laughing at me and people who looked like me, because our skin looked like the colour of poop. I took that shame and buried it deep inside myself. I internalised this idea that I was other. That I was in some way, wrong.
And that I was less than. And most damaging of all, that I did not deserve to be seen, because you know, my skin was the colour of poop. I recognise how ridiculous that sounds now, but as a 7 year old I took it as total truth. As I grew up, I experienced more instances of racial prejudice like this. Some small, some big. Each time, I took these situations and buried them deep inside of myself, adding to this story that being who I was was intrinsically wrong and unworthy.
I had lots of friends growing up. Most of them white. And while I loved them deeply, and I knew they loved me, I never quite shook off the feeling that I was in many ways less deserving of love and visibility than they were. In the summer of , when I was 15 years old, our family moved from the UK to Qatar after my dad was head-hunted for a job.
Up until that point, I had always been in the minority black and muslim. But moving to the Middle East was a revelation. I was now the norm. People who looked like me and who worshipped like me were not the odd ones out. We were the majority. And that really turned my paradigms of what was normal upside down and inside out. For the first time it felt like my identity was validated.
I was in the library searching for some books to help me pass the summertime while we waited for school to begin. I stumbled across the book Roots by Alex Haley. First published in , Roots tells the story of Kunta Kinte - an 18th century African who was captured and sold into slavery in America. The book follows his life and the life of his seven generations of his descendants all the way to the author himself, Alex Haley.
The book was massive and so I thought it would keep occupied for at least a few days. Little did I know that I was about to get an education in the horrific history of slavery, racial discrimination and white supremacy. Up until that point I had never heard of or studied anything to do with slavery. I was horrified as I read about slave ships, people being sold as if they were cattle, the rape of black slave women by their white masters and the terrifying punishments inflicted upon any slave who tried to escape. My 15 year old self could not wrap my brain around this. Of course we are human!
And yet, that was the belief. But still, reading that book made a huge impact on how I saw myself as a black person in the world. And so do the oppressive systems of white supremacy that allow white privilege and racial discrimination to still exist. We are not living in a post-racial world.
Because this past weekend a white supremacist rally took place in Yesterday I was planning on releasing a new podcast episode with one of my Love. I'm going to share a few of my own experiences with racism A young black man was surrounded by these hateful neo-Nazis and beaten with poles. (WHAT A SAD WAY) TO LOVE SOMEONE Ral Donner, Gone 78 82 96 96 I FOUND A LOVE Falcons, LnPhie NUMBER ONE MAN Brace Channel, I LEFT MY HEART IN SAN FRANCISCO Tony Bennett, Columbia 1 TWISTIN' WHITE SILVER SANDS Bill Black's Combo, Hi .
While the events in Charlottesville may be shocking and outrageous to many white people. It is sadly not for many black people and people of colour. From the time we were 6 or 7 years old, we already knew that we were other. We already knew that society did not center us as normal or beloved or worthy of just treatment. We have been taking on this burden of white supremacy and fighting this shit our whole. Wanting to do everything you can to stop this and yet feeling like you have no idea what you can do or say? But while for you this may be really emotionally distressing, for people of colour this is way more than that.
This is about the right to black lives.
About black human rights. About the simple right to exist in the skin we were born in without harassment, discrimination or injustice. You did not create white supremacy. But you benefit from it every day because of the white skin you were born in.
Many marketers like to style themselves as leaders, but that doesn't mean they ARE. It is my belief that if you have a platform, you also have a responsibility. But what I am witnessing is that many but certainly not all of those with bigger platforms are much more hesitant to speak out.
Perhaps because of how it might affect their positioning or the optics of their brand. Or perhaps because, as Jess said, they are more marketers than leaders. These are not my leaders. FLEB focuses on the empowerment of the individual, rather than the collective. FLEB casually uses the hard-earned language of activism and revolution to sell empowerment to those who already hold a lot of privilege in this world. And this is not to say that your whole business has to become about activism.
And not the privileged few who could afford to work with them and who fit into the mould of the archetype of the Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand. When I first started writing this letter, I did not anticipate it would be this long.
Because of the colour of my skin. Every person with a favorite band wishes they had a gold mine of footage like this. As "In Dreams" was released in April , Orbison was asked to replace the guitarist Duane Eddy on a tour of the UK in top billing with the Beatles , whose popularity was on the rise. Bonnie catches Buck making time with other girls. Otherwise, each seems to follow a separate structure.
I knew I had a lot to say but writing this letter seems to be activating me too. Burning away the irrelevant masks and helping me to become a clearer channel of service. So I intuitively knew it was time for me to step away from writing instead of forcing the rest of the letter through. Logan is shocked by this. And William gets rid of Logan by sending him galloping away naked on a horse. It shows that he enjoys the rest of his first stay and his mission to find Dolores. As his Westworld gaming progresses, he turns into a brutal man fixated on getting to the core of the game, mowing down any hosts in his way.
William is a repeat offender, and his rap sheet is long. We learn that he is likely sexually assaulting Dolores in unseen barn scenes, and at one point, he stabs Maeve Thandie Newton.
But perhaps most surprising of all, he kills Lawrence Clifton Collins Jr. They have some laughs, but the Man in Black ends up hanging Lawrence once he is no longer useful to him. To him, everyone is just a pawn in this game. Ford by his first name. He spends a good chunk of time trying to figure out what it all means. The maze is really an inward journey Arnold set up for the hosts.