‘I remember a time when I stopped at a furniture store to look at new pieces for my home,’ says Emmannuel Akin, a youth engagement officer.
‘When I walked in, I noticed only one staff member on the shop floor. Within a matter of seconds, another five or six appeared. They all looked at me strangely – and they were white.
‘This automatically made me feel like I was some sort of a threat to the shop, or that they thought I was going to steal something,’ Emmannuel goes on to explain. ‘I was completely thrown off by this and had no desire to continue with my shopping.’
As Emmannuel encountered, just going about your life in a public space is a different experience when you are Black.
‘My mental health has personally been impacted by the system as I’ve continually experienced overpolicing, a lack of support within my work life and career goals because there are so few people who look like me,’ he explains.
It’s not just these everyday experiences that are felt by Black and minority people. The UK criminal justice system has also been shown to be discriminatory.
In December 2020, nearly nine out of 10 children (87%) held in custody on remand – awaiting court trials after being found guilty of an offence – were from minority backgrounds, with 61% Black.
Meanwhile a report from the Ministry of Justice revealed that the proportion of stop and searches conducted on white suspects decreased from 75% in 2014-15, to 59% in 2018-19, but increased for all minority ethnic groups.
In the pandemic, Black and other minority ethnic groups continue to bear the brunt of heavy handed policing – with the former subject to the highest proportion of arrests.
For many Black people, their race has dictated how they’re treated while shopping, hanging out with their friends, trying to get into a club, or just minding their own business. Something that is likely to have a psychological impact on the lives of people who live and grow up under disproportionate scrutiny.
In comparison to Black, Asian, Chinese and other defendants, white offenders serve consistently lower average custodial sentence lengths between four to 11 months less.
According to an independent review on race and criminality by MP David Lammy in 2017, there is an even greater disproportionality in the number of Black people in prisons here than in the United States.
Despite making up just 15.5% of the population, Black, Asian and other minority men and women make up 25% of prisoners, while over 40% of young people in custody are from Black and ethnic minority backgrounds.
For Emmannuel, who works with HCVS – a youth-led community organisation that looks into overpolicing in Hackney – these statistics have real-life resonance.
He tells us: ‘Evidence shows that Black men are far more likely than others to be diagnosed with severe mental health problems and are also far more likely to be sectioned under the Mental Health Act. However, up until 11 years old, Black boys don’t have poorer mental health than others of their age.
‘Stigma, cultural barriers, and systemic discrimination are more directly experienced by Black boys and young Black men as they get older.
‘Growing up in Hackney hasn’t been most pleasant at times, feeling like a criminal without being arrested a single time makes living within a marginalised community more difficult.’
Thankfully, Emmanuel had youth clubs to provide a support system, but he laments the lack of options for today’s young people.
18-year-old Kiitan Amao from Dundalk, Ireland, says the impact of seeing police brutality against Black people sends a clear message to him: he feels hopeless.
‘It’s had a negative effect on my mental health,’ he tells Metro.co.uk. ‘No matter what I do, I will always live in fear of the police as I’ve seen no repercussions for such behaviour.’
Kiitan said throughout his childhood, he had to work to get people to warm to him, which he thinks played a part in how he was treated when he was younger – he was the ‘likeable’ minority.
‘As a young kid I managed to make people like me for me without them thinking twice, so I was blessed not to have received a lot of racial abuse,’ he explains. ‘But there would always be some immature people that would say racial slurs – just not to me.
‘It got a little more apparent when I became a bit older though, or maybe I just wasn’t as naive to it. In football there were racist comments at times, this also happened at some of the jobs I’ve held.’
Lolade, 27, feels that elements of his childhood were robbed due to the intense and disproportionate scrutiny he has faced as a Black man.
He tells Metro.co.uk: ‘The phase when you’re a kid where you’re first able to go around without your parents is meant to be fun.
‘However, the feeling of being surveilled while doing this with my friends took the fun out of it to the point where it wasn’t really something I wanted to do. In adulthood, I have left shops where I intended to spend after realising members of staff were following me around, but I’d rather not give them my money.
‘I remember when I first started to notice being treated weirdly by staff in shops, whether it was being approached by someone shortly after walking in or being not so subtly followed around. It was something that quickly began to feel normal simply because of the frequency with which it happened.
‘I couldn’t have been more than about 12 or 13 years old at the time, and I was already becoming used to myself being perceived as something of a threat.
‘It was around this time that I began to notice other things like people clutching more tightly to their belongings around me, old ladies stopping and letting me walk past, or crossing the road to avoid me. It went from feeling strange to just being a normal aspect of my reality in my mind fairly quickly.’
Those sinister associations followed Lolade into his adulthood.
He adds: ‘You will struggle to find a Black man who hasn’t had bad experiences with bouncers on nights out.
‘I remember going out with a group of friends and being turned away from four nightclubs in one evening, each for different reasons, and then just having to go home. There are too many instances like this from nights out for me to recount both in England and while travelling.’
Despite the ostensible progress made last year following the Black Lives Matter movement, Lolade is doubtful meaningful change will come at an individual level.
He says: ‘In the short-term, I do not believe these aggressions will stop. I think the kind of introspection needed for people to confront the biases that cause these experiences is not something people are genuinely willing to go through.
‘We have got to a place where people are somewhat willing to acknowledge the existence of these biases in a more general way and in others, but recognising it in oneself is a completely different matter and I think for it to stop that recognition really is the bare minimum.
‘People are sometimes afraid to confront these biases in themselves because it feels too close to calling themselves a racist and our discourse around race still hasn’t progressed to a place where racism itself is treated more seriously than the accusation of being a racist.’
But Lolade tells us he won’t stop calling it out whenever racism happens around him.
For Emmanuel, Lolade and Kiitan these microaggressions and overt experiences may not show any signs of slowing, but they all know it’s a failing of other people, and never of themselves.
Kiitan adds: ‘For me, all I can do is just to continue to try and spread love because karma is real and if you show love you’ll receive it. However, incidents that affect Black people make you take a step back and think some people are not worthy of love.’
The State of Racism
This series is an in-depth look at racism in the UK in 2020 and beyond.
We aim to look at how, where and why individual and structural racism impacts people of colour from all walks of life.
It's vital that we improve the language we have to talk about racism and continue the difficult conversations about inequality - even if they make you uncomfortable.
We want to hear from you - if you have a personal story or experience of racism that you would like to share get in touch: metrolifestyleteam@metro.co.uk
Do you have a story you want to share?
Email metrolifestyleteam@metro.co.uk to tell us more.
MORE : Is ‘unconscious bias’ just a convenient way to avoid acknowledging racism?
MORE : Black dad-of-four reveals 50 years of racism in the UK and says he fears for his children
MORE : Why ‘casual racism’ doesn’t exist – and shouldn’t be used as an excuse
source https://metro.co.uk/2021/03/11/the-psychological-impact-of-being-a-young-black-criminalised-male-13792143/
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