The fact is, decades after I first encountered it, and years after I imagined it would disappear, fall away like some old, rotting wooden structure, this quotidian bigotry is still very much alive. You can hear it when someone starts to speak slowly, assuming you don’t know the English language or their accent too well.
You can hear it when someone makes sweeping assumptions about ‘the culture you come from’. You can see it in the looks people in a pub garden give a mixed couple who are kissing, especially if it’s the woman who’s White and the man who’s Brown. You can feel it at a bar when you’re suddenly invisible, as White customers who’ve turned up way after you get served first.
Recently, I caught the Tube from a nodal station in London. It isn’t a station I’ve used that often and I got a bit confused looking for my line among the several. This was way underground and Google Maps wasn’t working. As I went into 19th century Dickensian mode and started asking people, a man about my age, short, warm, ebullient, White/English, briskly said, ‘Follow me, I’m taking that line and going in the same direction.’
I gratefully trotted behind the man, got into the train and sat down next to him. I told him I was from India. We started chatting about the new job he’d started as a caretaker of an upper-end building in a very posh part of town. I learned that he lived in a nearby county and commuted into work. He then told me he used to be part of the hospitality industry and used to manage a seaside hotel and restaurant.
‘Why did you leave?’ I asked, and so it started. In that manager’s job, he was actually employed by a friend. In fact, the hotel-owner friend was Bangladeshi, and ‘lovely bloke, mind you’. But the thing was, when this owner was doing up the hotel, he cut corners as ‘Asians’ – the man in the train meant Bangladeshis – often do. The man went on: ‘He got in these Indian builders and, you know, don’t mind me saying so, but they’re just not going to be as diligent and meticulous as English ones. I know because I was a builder myself, you see. So, naturally, I was miffed and I told my mate off. Finally, he’s got proper builders, people I’ve recommended, like, and there’s no hard feelings between us, but I had to move on.’ The thing about these moments is that they are not in the open enough for you to call them out as racist. Often, they are so borderline, you almost feel that if you say something, people, including people who are not White – or even your own friends – will accuse you of overreacting.
The other thing is often the people doing the borderline stuff actually know this, and use it fully. I didn’t doubt that my guide’s owner-friend cut corners while building and repairing and employed desis to take shortcuts. My problem, of course, was with the suggestion that all desis are bad craftsmen and that all White/English builder-craftsmen are incorruptible and meticulous.
The only way to counter a friendly man like my guide would have been to politely but firmly take him down the route of his reasoning. But as often happens, there just wasn’t the time for that. When my stop came, I thanked him and got off the train. All sorts of subtle wisecracks and questions pushed back into my pocket.
(The writer is author of The Last Jet-Engine Laugh)
