My Blog

About June: Talking Brexit in the Land of Nexit

The hand of Fatima offers protection. Mine was an Eid gift from my mother when I was 15, a small silver piece on a simple chain that sits just below the jugular notch. Whenever I am nervous I grip it in my palm, twisting the links into my neck. After the massacre in Pulse I put it on, and again after Jo Cox was murdered. When Pride arrived in the aftermath of a pro-Brexit vote I once more fastened it to me. Those days in what seemed to be ever increasing public violence it seemed to be the first thing my hand stretched to in the morning rush.

I started writing this piece almost four months ago. Each time something else happened until it grew into such an ungainly monster I thought let’s just wait until things settle down, and I’ve finally moved and adjusted to graduate school. In times like these you don’t want to be just adding to the noise, letting your frustration meaninglessly join to all the other frustration in the world without having something more unique to say. I had written my last piece on how using wedge politics to demonise select group should mean you lose a moral right to govern an entire population. At the time I chose to tone down some of the language in the interest of not letting my anxious state seep in since I thought my fears weren’t as physically founded as I emotionally felt they were.

Brexit is not a prospect I supported, but my main concern after June was that it had been reshaped into a debate on something else entirely – on who has worth as a person in this country – rather than the fact that people in deprived areas understandably took the chance on the possibility of a better future (a choice I might have very well made in the same circumstances with similarly limited information). I was thankful for perspectives like this that showed more nuance, mainly because I saw the key danger as allowing the narrative to be “people only voted Leave to get them out”. The issue is not with Leave voters as a whole, even if I think the decision will prove to be a horrendous mistake. Racist attitudes and actions have always been around and though some people are surprised by this higher visibility it is not as if you ever had to look particularly far to find them before. The issue is that when people assume others voted for the same anti-foreigner reasons they do, they become more confident in voicing xenophobic and racist opinions no matter how unsavoury or violent. We are now in a place where these narratives are part of the mainstream political discourse; something ugly that is staying at the surface, at least for a large part of the time being.

Being a British student in the Netherlands nowadays seems to mean constantly discussing Brexit with incredulous fellow Europeans, and accepting our status as the joke country. The conversation becomes repetitive and a little shaming, though never anything undeserved. However in these debates I can see the same incomprehension regarding those who discount the multicultural project that so many of my contemporaries in Britain faced pre-referendum. Britain is seen as exceptional in the level of its fear of the other, since Brexit and its aftermath holds proof, even as a recent study shows these views are widely held across Europe. Geert Wilders, who recently posted on Twitter “They carry our passports but they do not belong to us. They spit on our identity and behave like conquerors” (the they is of course implicitly understood by everyone to definitely not be white, nor Christian) is on track to head the largest party in the Netherlands after the next election, even as he goes back to court yet again on charges of hate speech. Yet we still like to pretend that it is only in other places and not our communities where the worst views are held.

This same rhetoric that now alienates those like me who are assumed an “outsider” on the basis of name or looks should register to them and yet often they aren’t noticed until pointed out. I on the other hand don’t get the luxury; many of the anti-immigrant actions the UK government proposes will reverberate to me anyway so it is something one needs to be hyper-tuned towards. When discussion of a speech by May centres on her apparent ‘parking of the tanks on Labour’s lawn’ we have not learnt.

A large part of my life was spent with an immigrant parent – my mother was white British in Sudan – yet people in the UK will always think my father must have been the interloper, or even me, always asking “but where are you really from?” after I’ve said I’m British for the third time. It’s bound in the way that so many otherwise reasonable people think only of others as fractions of nationalities rather than multiples, and who think there is some definitive Truth of citizenship in borders rather than the nation as an imagined community that we get to define and redefine. Notions of race and religion and immigration are threads tightly bound together and people will use one in lieu of other even though they are not the same.

My fortune is that I can escape if need be – it is a sign of privilege to be relatively assured that you can move most places and be fairly accepted; always the expat and never the immigrant so long as I pick location wisely. In comparison some of the best people I know will now have to spend time in limbo, not knowing what will happen to them in the country they have called home. Others will have to additionally deal with the likely rise of even more open xenophobia and racism from people who will never consider them British. And some of the worst off will likely get an even worse deal, as more parties are tempted to out-xenophobe each other in pursuit of votes, rather than focus on beneficial change.

Last week I had a chance to practice my language skills, but it was Arabic and not Dutch that I spoke to the shopkeeper. I wasn’t surprised, though a little saddened, as the rest of the people in the shop looked momentarily scared when he let out a joyous “Allahu Akbar” at someone he could chat to in one of his native languages. In this environment, where being yourself carries a danger of invalidating your nationality in the eyes of others, we are wrecking chances for expressing a more nuanced identity. We self-monitor because the consequences can be further alienation, and that in turn allows others to ignore that this is happening. In an environment like this why would you not cling to something that gives you a little hope, whether it’s a silver necklace or a foreign move or a conversation with someone in the same boat, and pretend that everything could be okay?

I have little faith that this will be solved in the coming years, because it an undeniable part of our political culture. We know where this road leads and yet here we are again, rumbling towards more exclusionary populism. In the meantime though I am embracing the fact that here – for once – I am just being treated like a foreigner because now I am actually one.

Beyond Scare Tactics

The EU referendum campaign is in full swing, and Turkey is a problem. From Vote Leave a new leaflet highlights not only countries looking to join but spotlights Turkey by shading in the bordering countries of Iraq and Syria. Turkey is a good political pick because of its strong association with both the migrant crisis and the movement of terrorists. This insinuation that if we don’t vote to leave the EU Turkey will overwhelm us with migrants and terrorists from IS has extended to discussing how we’ll become the victims of crime due to a supposed Turkish predisposition. It is a dog-whistle at its finest.

One could argue the reason Turkey is featured in many Vote Leave advertisements is that it is simply one of the EU candidate states – yet one of the intriguing parts about the decision to highlight Turkey is how hard it would be for Turkey to actually become an EU member. To give a brief overview Turkey has been an associate member of the EU since 1963, applied for membership in 1987, got candidate status in 1999, and finally had their (still ongoing) candidate negotiations start in 2005 which – regardless of anything else (such as opponents using vetos, arguments about geographical relevance) – cannot be resolved until Turkey opens its ports to Cyprus. In comparison Croatia applied for membership in 2003, started negations in 2005, and joined in 2013. For many the question is ‘if’ not ‘when’; Turkey joining the EU is a long way off and requires a lot of political manoeuvring. Billboards are using a very distant possibility to drive fears of terrorism and free movement of Turkish people, relying on unfavourable associations being brought to mind.

Watch out, the Muslims are coming.

The campaign run by the Goldsmith team against Khan during the London Mayoral race was another demonstration of scare tactics that rely on this “scary outsider” bias. The absurdity of painting Sadiq Khan – as much a radical Muslim as a plate of custard – as a terrorist sympathiser demonstrates clearly how little interest modern UK politicians have in even pretending to be for all people in their push to exploit wedges in society.

The mayoral race was important because it came down to the Conservatives either genuinely thinking that the political blancmange of Sadiq Khan was a dangerous man and sympathetic to terrorists, or they pointedly decided that public perception of Sadiq Khan and other Muslims by extension as regular Brits with a multitude of opinions is fine to sacrifice for some political gain. When the PM uses fancy footwork to say a man supports IS knowing that people will interpret this as referring to the terrorist group and not just the ideological concept of a state based on Islamic thought to legitimate false criticism of his opponent he loses credibility to govern fairly for all his citizens. With scare tactics you not only say a huge segment of your population are inherently dangerous, but you also say you have no interest in dealing with the divides in society if there is a chance for you to make a personal gain from it.

A calculation was made; Muslims won’t vote for us so it is okay to demonise them in the hopes that we win. And again with the EU Referendum a calculation has been made; let’s just play up these divisive fears to attract those who don’t know the nuances of Turkey and EU politics. Yet this gamble entrenches divisions that have real and harsh consequences to the actual population.

This is not an issue limited to one end of the political spectrum. Most political parties and groups in the UK are only interested in a narrow section of people they feel represent their voting base and frequently throw those deemed outside of this under the bus. Both sides of the EU debate are trying to out terrify the other with what will make us more susceptible to terrorists. I’ve heard someone discuss how “the Jews” don’t vote for Labour anyway so why bother dealing with antisemitism? Scottish voters are demonised for voting SNP and therefore there should not be a solid Scottish policy because they are not on “our” side anyway. Rural and coastal voters don’t get talked about as much as London and other cities. And god forbid the vitriol for those who don’t vote. Huge swathes of people get their needs ignored, or directly worked against in vote chasing, and groups of multitudes are portrayed as monoliths in order to appeal to those opposed to them. In the midst the actual humans of this country are forgotten.

If political groups only existed to win that would be one (still terrible) thing but the policies and words a political group chose not only shape the conversation around an election but become the spectrum for what is possible to be implemented and who gets to be involved. Once something outrageous has been said everyone else has to respond to it, lending it some legitimacy and further exposing it to the public. We need to respect people who wouldn’t ever vote for us and appreciate their needs as citizens even if we disagree with their thoughts. Turning around and using dog-whistles against huge parts of the population only succeeds in spreading both alienation and extreme misinformation.

A lot of people believe it is better to have a chance in power than to remain in opposition and therefore these tactics may be undesirable but ultimately worth it. But opposition – true opposition – is the process of calling that power to heel, and articulating the voice of everyone else. And democratic power is supposed to be about ruling with consideration of everyone, even those who won’t vote for you, rather than just a chance to rule to ensure that you continue to have a chance to rule to ensure that you continue to have a chance to rule ad infinitum. MPs are not there only for the people that voted for them, or even just the people that voted. They are there to represent the whole borough and that thought has to come first.

This is partially the fault of our political system being so heavily tilted to “not them” voting. Voters are either seen as our tribe or our enemies. When the not-we voters start to be generalised in broad descriptors – Muslim, Asian, Jewish, Scottish – it triggers an opportunity to make use scare tactics rather than generating good policies and working towards opening up a political system that will naturally draw in people in a positive way. This obsession with voters is creeping into other aspects which will permanently tilt how politics is played out, with constituency borders based not on the actual amount of people living there but on those who are registered to vote, as if those who don’t could never have concerns in their borough.

Wedge politics pushes people out of having an actual voice as politicians pander to only those whose votes they may win (and frequently ignore “safe” voters concerns). Each time there is a vote people are chastised for not participating (or recently for signing up “too late” to participate, as if becoming engaged is something we have to decide months in advance or else we don’t deserve it) which takes away the responsibility of groups to look at how to appeal to them beyond scare tactics. Politics is meant to be about articulating a vision of the future – the best way to serve everyone in a society. To create a consensus where we abandon that for power is incredibly dangerous. It’s a slow dull trundle to a backwards and unrealistic representation of society and one where soon only an incredibly small sliver of people will be competed for and thus become the only ones who politically matter.

The Other Sudanese! 500 Words! Identity!

Who I am has always been a tricky question for me. I think that in some ways a secure identity comes easier when you aren’t placed in situations where people feel the need to ask “Where are you from?” (the other day a woman wanted to know “what” I was as it was obvious I wasn’t a “thoroughbred”). As it stands I feel like I fluctuate between being Sudanese and being British, and it’s still something I’m figuring out.

Recently I started a fortnightly column over at 500 Words Magazine looking at this very question – who is Sudanese? Every week I’ll focus on different groups that don’t quite fit the mainstream idea of Sudaneseness; the next one up on Sunday 5th June is of particular interest as I’ll be looking at the Jewish Sudanese community which people are always surprised exists.

Read it here (with a bonus baby photo of me) and follow new additions here!

I’m also helping edit over at 500 Words so if you have any articles or pitches about either of the Sudans’ send me an email or message me on twitter!

Edit: You can now read the Jewish Sudanese article here

Hello Again!

I haven’t posted in a while.

This has been a keen calculation as much as it has been an accident of a very busy and emotional time in my life. I have wanted to wait for the push for more stability to die down so that I could properly reflect on where I wanted to focus my work. Of course, it is apparent that waiting for those times only really works when you can afford to separate yourself from the hectic situation you are in and so I got stuck in a circle of negative reinforcement.

In the intervening time huge changes to the political landscape have manifested. Across an ocean it becomes apparent that the Republican nominee for President will be either Trump or Cruz and both are riding a wave of huge resentment that has manifested into something that genuinely terrifies me. Over in the UK the EU referendum and the refugee crisis have trigged the outpouring a whole raft of similar views that some people have kindly articulated to me in person. I am not sure if these words were said as a warning to me to be one of the “good ones” or as a misguided compliment that they already thought I was. Alongside this Labour refuse to push forward a unified image of their party in order to better combat devastating measures that are being proposed and implemented in many different areas in our lives and I am worried about the future of the Left in general as it seems over and over again we never quite put up the best fight (myself included).

It appears that whilst I have been wringing my hands with existentialist and practical fears on a personal level, the world in general has grown more dangerous. I need to figure out where to stand on this, how boldly to go fight outside of just talking one-on-one with a stranger over a drink as to why their statement was offensive. I need to suss out which things are most pertinent to focus my time and mental energy on with regard to the “public me” and , most importantly, I need to decide what I am actually doing with myself in the long-term.

Hence the brief pause in output.

I am working on some things at the moment – more jovial items that I shall link to when they finally come out, but for now I will be aiming to focus here on longer and more explicitly political perspectives on events. Obviously I cannot (nor I think should) comment on everything however I will aim to post something at least once a month of substance.

In the meantime you can find me on Twitter

Khartoum, Berlin, and Change

I can’t say my life isn’t filled with lovely parts. I know fantastic people and I have fantastic opportunities to experience much of the strange stuff that this world offers. I’m not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, but I have people who can lend me a sofa in times of need and at the end of the day that gets me by.

A little less than 2 weeks ago I came back from Berlin. Before that I was in Khartoum for a few months working on my Arabic (which I can now report no longer has the Japanese accent it apparently mysteriously acquired). These two places are wonderfully different, but in them both there was a chance to do some reflecting on what it is I want out of life and out of myself. On that list is pursuing further study and to live in somewhere other than the UK during my 20s. I’m not sure when exactly these will happen but the machinations are already in progress so that it doesn’t just become another idle “one day”.

*

My trips were worthwhile. Khartoum was so huge and stretched out. Days there seemed to all merge into all the others making time quite a pointless formality. I got to hear interesting stories and met lots of new people who all greeted me the first time as if we were long-lost cousins. It’s those parts of Sudan that people always forget about when they leave it for too long. There are stories I feel it is almost wrong to try and share because only other Sudanese people would understand why they are quite so special. For too long I only saw Khartoum as a child, that seeing it as an adult has given it an far more nuanced shape that I can actually say I appreciate it.

Berlin, in contrast, was an organised cliché and when I stayed there the winds felt like ice shards. There people were also warm and welcoming, but in a more reserved manner than the Sudanese, and I appreciated the opportunity to just wander around the streets at night alone without getting hassled by drivers. Berlin feel like I had always been waiting for it.

Coming back to London after these two trips I’ve also had to acknowledge that though I always say I am somewhat tired of this city, it is so familiar and easy to be in. I get wanderlust very easily, yet London shelters me a lot from that temptation. All these fashionable essays writing about how London being too much made them have to leave miss the specialness of that “too much”. I enjoy being another face in the crowd because it means that each day you get to play a different role until you figure yourself out a bit better. Being in a city where everyone knows you and where you know everything traps you far more. London I can now recognise as my home and not just a wait station for a grand return or a new adventure.

So Khartoum, farewell.

Berlin, I’ll see you again.

London, I’m glad to be back for now.

Things I’m Going to Do Differently in 2016

At the beginning of 2015 I wrote a little bit about what I was hoping to do in the new year. It wasn’t grandiose – if anything the piece was a tad dejected. I expected a level of failure before I even tried.

My plan was to go boldly into something that I loved, and also treat myself as someone I loved. My path has been a little mixed as I’ve certainly not come to any financial security but at the same time I am becoming more and more confident in my writing. It feels a lot like I am the mythical ship Argonaut in that famous thought experience. Slowly I too replace parts of myself, editing my humour, or how I approach work, or the way I laugh or how my hair is carved until I am not sure what is left of my original self yet I am certain I am still me, just a little better each time. 

So I have figured that this upcoming year I can build on this by returning to actual cliché goal set-up, except without any set way of measuring progress (I do still want to feel like a rebel occasionally).

  1. Seek out and accept interesting opportunities more, regardless of whether they are professional, personal, or just general fun.
  2. Practice and improve my Arabic.
  3. Actually ask for help when I need it, and graciously accept charity as well.

I think that these things, whilst not being super measurable soothe my desire to actually work towards something without feeling trapped by it. Years ago I used to set up 10 to 40 different mini-plans and they would inevitably crumble. There were times when I felt that goals were counter-productive; too often in my desire to make a yearly list I wrote aims I would later change my mind about pursuing, but would try to power on anyway just so I would get that sweet cross-out. It turns out that using this tactic just makes you miserable.

Anyway I’m in Berlin at the moment so I already feel that I’m on the right track before the year even officially begins. Currently I’m toying with the idea of finally dying my hair for the first time ever (I’m thinking a white/silver blonde because I’ve always wanted to be more like Storm). I’m trying out the boldness and so far it works.

Who knows what happens next.

More Vitiligo! Dazed! Beauty!

If you personally knew me back in May then you would have probably heard my giggles about being approached for “Too Ugly For Love?” on the basis of my vitiligo essay over at Buzzfeed. I found it pretty funny at the time considering my essay they found me from discussed my resentment of people who assume that my skin makes me inherently ugly. Anyway I’ve finally written up some of my thoughts for Dazed on the ridiculous notions that we have about attraction and what makes someone appealing in the first place. Let it be your first read of the week!

Thoughts About Stigma

Six ago I remember going on a class trip to an orphanage. In the middle of group-play with the children a young boy was singled out by a nurse. She said that he was HIV+, and suddenly a wealth of blank space opened up around him as people rapidly moved away. He sat in the middle, dejected, playing alone with his ball.

I always reflect on that moment each year on this day. In 1988 the World Health Organisation declared December 1st to be World AIDS Day. Perhaps more than anything World AIDS Day highlights the fact that stigma kills; too many people are not tested, or do not get access to medication because of fear of engaging openly about HIV. In some countries this stigma manifests in false conspiracies about those with HIV as being either promiscuous, sex workers, or drug users who therefore “deserve it”. In others governments deny there is even such a disease within the borders of their nation.

For some HIV remains stuck as a Western 80s Gay horror, or a impoverished African nightmare, but really it is just a virus that can impact anyone. Advances in medication mean that with the right treatment many doctors declare it more manageable than diabetes, but still the language we use to describe it betrays a harsh moral judgement – “Are you clean?”

Six years ago I instinctively moved away from the boy and then spent the rest of the day guilty playing with him, allowing him to sip from my water bottle. Other students were horrified, but they lacked an awareness about how the virus worked outside of “knowing” that it was a death sentence. Even with my education the stigma meant I too remained hesitant and stiff with him, wondering what I would feel if he somehow infected me.

There are approximately 36.9 million people in the world living with HIV. Harm reduction measures are often labelled as encouraging “risk-taking” behaviour – PrEP medication is not widely accessible, needle-exchanges are frequently shoot down, and safer sex measures necessitate that people are actually educated about safer sex in the first place.

Stigma is most of the hurdles. The tools are already here.

Sorrow for Paris, France, and Everyone Everywhere

Yesterday I stayed up all night waiting for news from friends. What happened in Paris is almost incomprehensible – large scale rapid and sporadic attacks, bombs, and then a hostage and siege situation. I send my thoughts and my love through a screen and feel so helpless.

Time has shifted how terrorism operates, now designed in the West to generate maximum hysteria and misinformation. I spoke about it briefly on Twitter. The attack was similar to the Mumbai Model where terrorists pulsed through the city creating a situation that is hard (perhaps one might even say almost impossible) for police to initially manage. Essentially it is guerilla warfare transposed to a Western urban policing situation where the cops are mainly trained to deal with local small-scale beats and large crowd control focused on protests. Hitting a huge variety of locations sporadically makes it complicated to capture gunmen at the beginning as policing is more designed for follow-up checks rather that interventions. This ensures dominance of the 24 news cycle, social media, and the theatre of watching an ever increasing death toll. After such an attack the number of gunmen vary wildly with different reports, and a general panic sets in for days as people worry about loose gunmen, second stages, and copy-cat attacks.

I spent last night staying away from most feeds, restricting myself to prevent feeling more tight and sick than I already was. Each new piece of information confirmed was a new bit of horror. Last night I furiously debating my fears over what different parties claims of responsibility might mean with regards to the MENA region. I spoke with people who said Friday the 13th was chosen for its symbolism, others that the important thing was it was the date for the France vs. Germany match, prompting speculation that Germany is “next” and that the plan was even designed to kill on a much larger scale but that parts failed. This is part of the play, to make it the topic for days and weeks as we worry about how our lives will slowly change, even those of us who are not in France.

In the coming days there will likely be “reprisal” attacks against those suspected of being Muslim and/or migrants. We have a duty to speak out about them too, on top of mourning the dead like we are now. The attackers – regardless of which group claims ultimate responsibility – want to drive this wedge further down, and to bait far right groups. And it will work, it always does. After the Charlie Hebdo attacks my mother begged me to promise that if someone approached me in the street I would speak Spanish and then run away.

They don’t just use bombs these days – they use our minds against us too. Terrorism tries to make us hate just as much as it tries to make us scared. This must be resisted most of all.

More Lesbians! Consent! Violence!

Lesbian relationships in film often carry the burden of limited storytelling which focuses on coming out stories, pregnancy, affairs, and/or death. Peter Strickland’s The Duke of Burgundy has none of these traits. Rather it is a universal story about love and the ways in which we can be undone by it, exploring the emotional violence that can be carried by a relationship. Most importantly, unlike another film that shall not be named, The Duke of Burgundy highlights this as a failure of communication, not as an evil of kink itself.

It’s no secret I have a great soft spot in my heart for The Duke of Burgundy – it’s a amazing film about people that features a queer couple who’s issues are not rooted in their queerness. As part of their Violent Women Week I’ve got a guest piece over at BitchFlicks looking at the emotional violence inflicted in the film. It has spoilers so I recommend you watch the film first, but you can check it out here.

People can sometimes find it weird that I see a lot of the negotiations in the film as cruel – after all no one said they didn’t want to do anything. The truth is that good partners try to look out for signs of upset – people are often socialised to subordinate their own personal feelings for those of others, and there are a whole host of reasons why someone may not be comfortable enough with a partner to articulate them. A simple example would be to think of all the things you’ve done that you would rather not for the benefit of your family; in my case it would be wearing a dress to my graduation. Not all of these are wrong or a sign of abuse, but they might make someone uncomfortable or always feel off, and the more intimate the situation the more we must look out for this. When we play by the rules that everything must be explicitly stated (otherwise it doesn’t count as a no) then we risk straying into territory where we can wilfully ignore what we sense in others in order to ensure we get our own way. Instead of checking for a happy yes, we just look for a clear no.

Yes people should be able to speak up, but in this world that is hard. We have a responsibility to make sure that the level of trust to speak is actually there in the first place.