Free Black Gold of the Sun by Ekow Eshun

Caribbean couple who moved next door to a white racist and his wife. It was supposed to show prejudice as farce by revealing both men as bigots who traded insults across the garden fence.
    â€˜Sambo.’
    â€˜Honky.’
    â€˜Nig-nog.’
    â€˜Whitey.’
    To my ears, the white barbs dug deeper than the black ones. Any time I watched the show, I could feel my skin prickle.
    â€˜Coon. Monkey. Wog. Jungle bunny. Rubber lips. With your smelly food and your jungle drums. Taking our jobs. Go back to where you come from.’
    The audience laughed and laughed, but I could never see what was funny. Or for that matter what was amusing about
Rings on their Fingers
,
Mind Your Language
,
Till Death Us Do Part
and the other comedies based on the notion that black people were as entertaining as chimps in the zoo.
    From what I could make out race was the great obsession of 1970s Britain. When Cyrille Regis, Laurie Cunningham and Brendan Batson signed for West Bromwich Albion, the crowd hurled bananas at them. If one of these players came near the touchline the fans dropped the fruit and spat instead.
    On August Bank Holiday, Kodwo, Esi and I would watch TV news reports of the Notting Hill Carnival, howling at the screen. It was the same every year. First a grave-voiced announcement about the number of arrests that year, as if the festival was nothing but a face-off between the police and black youth. Then images of policemen dancing in the street with an overweight black woman. Threat followed by passivity. Black people might seem frightening, but at heart they were really happy children.
    â€˜They could at least vary it one year,’ said Kodwo, afterwe’d turned off the screen in disgust. ‘Like they could arrest some fat women or something, or ban pictures of police posing with coconuts as fake breasts.’
    Did white people act as they did out of ignorance or malice? It was hard to say, but the question seemed to be getting more urgent. Eyebrows knitted, Mrs Thatcher worried that Britain was in danger of being ‘swamped’ by ‘people with a different culture’. The British Movement was marching on Brick Lane, and bands with skinhead fans such as Sham 69 and Cockney Rejects were playing
Top of the Pops
.
    A fashion for fourteen-hole Doc Marten boots swept the third year of Queensbury Juniors. Kids essayed furtive ‘Sieg heils’ when teachers turned their backs. They chalked ‘Wogs out’ on the playground walls and carved National Front logos in the desks with their compasses.
    Leaving assembly I accidentally knocked into Kevin Dyer. As I stepped back he flung a punch at my head. My glasses spun to the floor. Blinking, I saw him crouched before me, fists balled. A crowd of boys formed round us. ‘Cunt,’ he said, pale eyes bulging.
    â€˜Blackcunt.’
    â€˜Fuckingblackcunt.’
    Hands shoved me towards him.
    Voices hissed in my ear.
    â€˜You’re not going to let him get away with that, are you?’
    I clenched my fists and set my legs apart. Kevin Dyer snarled at me.
    â€˜Come on then, you cunt,’ he said.
    I wanted to hit him. I could feel my fist dent into his cheek until it met the resistance of bone. I wanted his lips bloody and his eyes swollen shut. But even as I imagined this I watched myself break free of the circle of boys and pick up my glasses.
    â€˜He’s bottled it,’ said a voice behind me, as I walked away.
    Why didn’t I stay? Was I too scared to stand up for myself? It was true I felt shaken. But the sensation of fear was missing when I turned away. Even anger had drained away. I was quite calm.
    What did it matter what Kevin Dyer called me? If I went looking I could find the words ‘black cunt’ scratched into a desk just as easily as hear it from his lips.
    â€˜Wog’, ‘rubber lips’, ‘sambo’, ‘jungle bunny’– the words drifted through the school like background