Brexit Day 29/3/2019

As the infamous Brexit Day (29 March 2019) passes us by with nary a flicker of change in the UK position, I can't help but feel irritated at where we are. Where I am is Poland (when written). My work cycle of seasons almost dictates my leave^[1] pattern and so I usually book some time off in March before my year end (I work for a company with a March year end and I help to create Statutory accounts - check them out at Clarion Investor Relations) work kicks off. This year, that happens to coincide with a weekend so I took the last week of the year off - mainly because I also wanted to be out of the country on Brexit Day. I had no desire to see the gurning faces of victory (and the potential disaster on day one if the many things not thought about had still not been thought about). Poland seemed appropriate for a few reasons.

• I hadn't been to Poland before
• I knew a few Polish people and I even liked some of them (this is soft power)
• Poland, as an Accession (2014) country, was arguably the reason why British people wanted to leave the EU.

The third item seems debatable but I'm happy to have that debate any time. Not one to go to one place, I decided to also go to Ukraine as it was neighbouring, I'd not been there either and I knew a few Ukrainians that I liked. And as it happens it was in an odd political space being pulled by Russia as an ex-Soviet state and pushed to the EU by desires to be a functioning part of the continent.

I travelled in a similar vein in 2010 when Cameron came to power which I didn't want to see. And like 2010, it hasn't quite been as smooth a transition to the next stage that I had feared. It has been a different kind of shitshow altogether.

Brexit has been a chastening experience, all told, and has seen me feel varying degrees of detachment and attachment to the UK as time has worn on. My blogging had always been a way to order thoughts (link) and pretty effective in making me feel better. The process, and the results, of that blogging has been having positive effects but I've been a little less forthcoming with posts (other than gyudon related posts)of late. The reason? Honestly? Brexit. Brexit has been quite debilitating for me and making sense of it all has been a journey that is unending and unyielding. I don't think I have been operating at what I thought was my normal level for a while now. I've tried to gather my thoughts on Brexit a few times but it is really hard to go back far enough, to order them in any meaningful way and also not become exhausted with rage.

This feeling has been pretty obvious to some and less obvious to others but it has asked some questions of me that I probably didn't want to answer. Chief among them -”Do I belong?”

Is the UK racist?

The interesting thing about this question is the difference between “is the UK racist? “ and “are British people racist?”. That's probably for another time, to be honest, but there would be different answers, I think, to those questions.

Running through my life as a Briton and Londoner, I'm not sure I noticed much racism within my lived experience^[2] . I cannot think of any that I comprehended at primary school and just some odd comments at secondary school that were passive rather than active. Racism wasn't on my radar at all and I remember, at secondary school, hearing about some form of prize or scholarship for minorities and wondering how that was fair. My school friends were all “white” to me to distinguish them from my friends via family who were largely of Bengali descent. It was only later that I realised how few of my “white” friends were actually white - it was a fairly classic multicultural environment.

University was my first, extended exposure to people that were not from London (or even cities at all) and, like a reverse of so many people that escape from small towns to the fresh air of University life, I was met by a new life. I didn't particularly like university life and regularly felt out of place in ways that I had not done before. I don't think this was racism either, in the main. But I do remember people often being a bit off with me in the first few weeks. It felt a little like a monoculture, to be honest. So far, so quiet.

After university, I went to Japan and that opened my eyes, a little more, to racism (in the sense of prejudice based on race). I taught English and the disappointment in some faces to be taught by a British person like me seemed palpable (but never voiced - so it could be paranoia). I think I generally won them over but that little kick of disappointment is one I sense in other situations now^[3] . I went to Japan in 2003 and the other big global event in that year was probably the Iraq war. Anti-Muslim sentiment ran high in the UK^[4] at the time and there were a few marches. One of those marches was said to be the biggest in modern political times^[5] and I was fairly anti-war at this point. I went to a demo/march in Tokyo too and my representative status there really gave me food for thought. If, for whatever reason, I'd been caught up in anything (such that the embassy would have to step in), I have no doubt that I would have been vilified by the right-wing press. How much would I belong to the British citizenship at that point? The biggest impact, however, was not my lived experience but my observed experience. Japan is a pretty monocultural environment and most of my friends there were other teachers - usually white. Some were very aware of, and sensitive to, (perceived) racism towards them in spite of not actually being able to understand Japanese to any real level. The classic exemplar of the time was when two white female teachers (and friends at the time) sat on either side of a Japanese woman on a train and the woman offered to swap with one. She offered in Japanese but also motioned to explain so that the friends could sit together. This seemed pretty kind and considerate to me (I was, of course, standing) and the teachers accepted. Afterwards, however, I was told that the woman had offered her seat because she didn't want to be surrounded by “gaijin” (foreigners ^[6]). This was claiming victimhood^[7] and made me think of all the things that they would definitely dismiss as not racist if it had happened to me in the UK.
One thing I've learnt is that British people are not racist (or xenophobic). They can't be - they are better than others. Brexit feels like this dissonance made flesh.

We were all representatives in Japan and I didn't take that responsibility lightly. I felt the weight of responsibility from a young age (maybe five or so) when I used to go to Bangladesh with my parents. I don't think I was ever told this, but I had to be engaging and Bengali enough to represent British Bengalis as part of the culture. It probably was never going to be enough for some - as I felt on later visits. In the same way that I will never be British enough for some people and, caught between those two stools, sometimes it feels inevitable that this means falling into the abyss.

Returning to the UK in 2006, it all seemed fine in my lived experience but I could see more and more anti-immigrant rhetoric from the mainstream media with the added benefit being that it could not be “racist” because we now disliked some white people too (Romanians [Farage says this: link], for example). This was the poison injected into the country's bloodstream and the amazing wrongness of the position was clear to me and then made even clearer at a talk I went to by David Goodhart [link]. That takes me to 2013 - and not June 2016. June 2016 was not the beginning of the sense of it, it was a tipping point though and I felt the split a month before the vote [link] when I visited Yorkshire. Ultimately I have not really suffered directly but have seen and heard enough to feel anxious about my place. And not just my place, but the place of people that are not like me and the fact that the clarity of Goodhart's position is never swayed by facts. And he is meant to be a clever one. The Pandora's Box is clearly open and I'm not sure if it can be shut soon.

This all predates the referendum itself and is worth pointing out to the many that seem to think it was all OK before that. But, it was better. The difference is how much people have been emboldened by now feeling that loads of people are actually racist/xenophobic like them.

The referendum and all that has come after it has absolutely shaken my sense of belonging to the country and also my belief that people in power actually knew when they didn't know something and would then defer as a result of that self-awareness.

I often feel like an alien in the UK and I also feel burdened with this sense that people that hate immigration actually hate me. And that I have not done enough to make them not hate me - and by extension anyone else, other people considered as immigrants, that is lumped with me.

I don't think people necessarily realise the pressure that some people from minority groups can feel in the representative sense. I know that my actions will, for many people, define a whole group of people. If I act badly, many will see that as people like me acting badly. For white men, they will not tar all white men with the same thing.

I have always thought this, but travelling with a friend recently reminded me of this disconnect more. I thought of how I try to stay calm and not raise my voice when speaking to staff at airports/airlines for example. And how if I spoke any differently, I am far more likely to be hauled away. As one of them.
I'm not coping well. I look around and wonder:

"Why are you not concerned?"; "Why do you do nothing?".

And then I think:

"Is it because you know you won't be first against the wall?"; “Is this solidarity?”

Brexit has sort of broken me, to be honest, by breaking that sense of belonging. And we all need a sense of belonging, we all choose what group we decide to belong to, to some degree but some of those choices are taken away.

I don't know how to put this really. I have a sense of loss. A disconnect from society. I guess I always knew that they never really had my back but then tried to pretend it wasn't the case. And I always felt that the "they" here were not as numerous as they are.

But they probably are that numerous.

I'll never forget, of course, but I'm also not sure I will ever forgive.

<sup>1. This word. This word… ↩
2. I was clearly aware of it outside my circle but, as someone that didn't go outside of London much as a child in the UK, I didn't feel it. I felt at home here but I didn't know that particular feeling was what I felt - I didn't have anything to compare it to. How would anyone feel at home if they've never felt not at home? ↩
3. Usually, when I tell people I am an accountant, for example.↩
4. More often called Islamophobia now to the disgust of racists, such as Melanie Phillips, who think this is a made up word. Because, of course, most words are given to us from up on high as any etymologist would tell you. ↩
5. Some are saying that the Brexit march of 23 March 2019 which I missed due to this holiday in Ukraine might have been bigger. ↩
6. I use this word as this is the word they knew for foreigners and is often pejorative (instead of gaikokujin). ↩
7. I think claiming victimhood is a major driver of the right wing's populist movement and this can be seen regularly in the claim of being against an elite and having an incredibly pliant media still be against them. ↩</sup>