I am about to go on a permitted journey, but how weird to think that an unessential journey is illegal. I have tried booking two permitted journeys, but with one, the hotel has just cancelled so legal or not it is tricky. However, having hoped in the process to be able to stand outside a family home and wave at the people inside, but now one of them is in hospital and so legally it looks like I cannot see them. In lots of countries of course doing normal things like visiting someone is illegal, but in the UK it feels unnatural and frightening to be told something normal is illegal. And presumably in countries where normal things are illegal presumably that feels oppressive.
Meanwhile the hottest topic this week is not the virus for once, but the Oprah Winfrey interview with Meghan and Harry. I choose to watch it, despite not thinking I was that interested in it, so that I would know what they said, rather than what a commentator said they had said and in the end I am glad I made that decision. When they had first met, I just had the feeling things would be difficult, just so much baggage and such different lifestyles and of course since then the press and even the BBC have often portrayed Meghan as a bit high maintenance, very American and she has definitely been a victim of racism. But I was pleased to find how natural she seemed and how much in love they seem, the conversation of course brought up a lot to me.
Coming from a family where most of the family were white, but now a substantial number are black and mixed from a variety of black cultures some of the discussions were very familiar. Sometimes both sides do not understand the other's cultures and sometimes both sides can experience pain and alienation as a result and finding a safe place to try and understand each other is sometimes difficult. For example one of my aunts cut me out of her will for having a black child But in many ways talking of both sides is an issue, really we are just people and each family regardless of colour has a different culture so in some ways we just need to know each other as individuals and families but sometimes differences can be cultural but basing that on colour worries me. As a white person I often find I am accused of lots of things, so I am treated as a colour quite often and I find that quite weird and of course many black people are mostly treated as just being a colour and in a way that is derogatory. But I would accept that culturally I am culturally very English, whatever that means, and until after WW2 the majority of English people would have been white. However, all my life time and for a long time before then Britain has had a black population and scratch the genetic culture of many British people and all sorts of backgrounds might emerge, so seeing things in just black and white terms seems to reduce things to an almost meaningless point, most of us are such a mix, but as cultural historian Em Dab reminded viewers after the Meghan and Harry interview, just one dot of black, has been the way white cultures have excluded black members of the community from equality. Slavery and racism make having a conversation on the topic of dual heritage black and white children, very charged and the language of it is very difficult for example I do not like the term mixed race as we are one race, but dual heritage could mean anything and it perhaps does not address the historical and cultural differences in our histories Long before predominantly white people enslaved black people in the most ghastly fashion, slavery had been a part of many cultures and sadly slavery is a major problem today. Most people are judgemental, many people are prejudiced. All of us have to catch our thoughts and challenge them at times. But where does the power lie and how does that impact on people, that is a key part when addressing racism for when most of the systems are historically white and the power is mostly in white hands and embedded with colonial and racist ideologies, discrimination is embedded and people of colour continue to be disadvantaged. And so even the son of an in theory powerful Prince would seem to be a victim of this distorting history.
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