I’ve been tailed in supermarkets, pelted with snowballs and called a beggar
Being a brown European has never been easy
I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know what racism was. Maybe that’s because as the daughter of South Indian immigrants, I grew up on stories about it. The ways in which my parents had been snubbed for not knowing German when they first came to Austria, how they were mistreated by the authorities-those stories were my bread and butter growing up.
‘Make something of yourself’ was the mantra to follow in our household. Work twice as hard, study and get into University in order to score a good job was what I was used to hearing. The formula of the typical Asian success story-the only way to succeed in a society that valued titles and pedigree, especially if one lived in a country where not being named Franz or Anna still mattered.
I may have chafed at the strict rigour of this upbringing but I never doubted the veracity of these claims.
Because I’d already experienced the truth in my every day life as a teenager.
You never forget the first time you choose to mind your own business while witnessing an act of racism in public. Later on in life, you take action either directly or indirectly, but that first confrontation can still be a punch to the gut. For me, it still is.
A young woman in a headscarf was standing near the doors of a bus, rummaging in her bag. Suddenly, an older man started accosting her, telling her she had no right to be where she was, unlike him.When she politely asked him to explain his reasoning, he said: “Because I have the Austrian citizenship”. And she said: “So do I”. The tension fizzled out after that but when I got out at my station, I still felt ashamed. Where was my hard-won courage? I was more than ready to debate issues of race in the classroom but in real life, I’d lost my voice.
In taking a step to recover it, I discovered journalism for myself for the first time. It’s not a novel impulse, whatever the diatribe is against activism journalism and the need for absolute objectivity. At the very least since black journalists across US newsrooms have talked of their struggle of being stifled by the muzzle of objectivity and moral clarity has become the buzzword of the times, we know something is wrong with the idea of pure hard-facts journalism. At the time, I was hardy aware of the contentious nature of this debate despite spear-heading a publication on the immigrant experience as part of a Journalism elective-for me, the only thing that mattered was debating an issue that, over the years, had only grown more pertinent for me.
“A friend forgot her key at my place so I rushed out to catch up with her. As I was riding the tube at night, an elderly couple commented that I must be out prostituting myself if I was out that late”
This is only one story I heard in the course of making my online magazine, it would take too long to recount them all. Even my own, subsequent brushes with racism have become blurred as the instances of microaggression started to proliferate.
But throughout the years of my schooling, my days at University and later on in my working life, there would always be that common thread that was racial prejudice, serving as reminder that not everything was picture perfect in my world.
Whether that meant being automatically herded into a remedial English class after asking for directions to my first journalism class, being tailed by security while doing my grocery shopping with a friend or being offered money on the street because ‘I looked like I needed it’, it’s been something I’ve come to expect over the years.
With police brutality now being the main focus of the Black Lives Matter movement, I’m once again reminded of my own deep-seated fear of the men and women tasked in keeping our cities safe.
Last year was the 20th anniversary of the death of Marcus Omofuma, a Nigerian refugee who, in the process of being deported from Austria, died due to excessive use of police force-his airways and chest having been taped to such an extent that he died of suffocation on a plane. A right-wing media campaign slandering the ‘violent refugee’ and ‘police men doing their duty’ still makes me shudder, even after the victim/perpetrator debate has come to a truthful and satisfying conclusion.
Because some things have remained the same- for example, a black man wearing a hoodie, waiting at a tube station still risks being called a drug dealer by law enforcement.
My own father was once in danger of getting in trouble with the law.
As a bystander, he had witnessed a woman shouting for help after her purse had been stolen- a policeman on the spot asked her if my father was the perpetrator. I’ve interviewed the priest of our local Indian church community here in Vienna, who told me that he once called the police regarding a break-in only to have them suspect him after arriving on the scene. From fellow journalists, I know that the police force in Austria can be a catch-all for a variety of people-housing everyone from the academic to the near illiterate.As such, you never know when you are at risk of drawing a wild card-I’ve always felt the best approach was to quietly move out of the way or change streets if I happen to run into people in blue uniform.
Living in the UK exposed me to a life where I didn’t have to be that careful. I learned that a police officer was someone who could be trusted and who I could have a friendly chat with. Of course, I realise that is a simplified way of looking at things, considering the UK’s own fraught relationship with race but as someone hailing from what is commonly considered the most unfriendly country for foreigners in the world, it seemed like a respite.
I don’t regret making any of these experiences, though.
They led me to produce incredible work, both in the form of a magazine publication as well as an interactive podcast on the nature of racism.My personal encounters with racial prejudice have made my story rich and in its telling, I have been able to connect better with the world I try to portray as a media practitioner. It’s helped me discover the race beat for myself, one I wish to explore further given the choice. But most of all, it’s allowed me to grow into a more open-minded and well-informed person who is not only willing to fight for her convictions but also always ready to give others the benefit of the doubt.
I hope everyone reading this can attempt to do the same.
