Lookbook Diary | 2021: Week 11
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Hello all and Happy Monday to you all! I am back after a week off of not writing my usual Weekly Lookbook Entry. I took the week off, following the airing of the interview of Meghan Markle and her experience with the Royal family and the kidnapping/murder of Sarah Everard. I found that week incredibly hard to work through the emotions I was feeling and didn’t post on Instagram that week, which also led me to not have an entry for my weekly Lookbook post.
After the airing of the Meghan Markle interview, I found myself experiencing unexpected feelings… whilst I know racism still exists and very much so in England. It was tough to watch and to hear of how an institution (which is a part of the very backbone of the country I call home), chose to not use the union of Harry and Meghan, as a chance to unite races and set a grand example of how to deal with the ‘issue’ of race, for other institutions and the very citizen’s of their country. Whom in fact chose the very opposite path. It was very hard to watch and represents one of those occasions where, racism is so hard to deny or choose to feel as if racism is no longer around as much as it used to be.
As a mixed race person, I have experienced my fair share of racism in my life as well as feeling scrutinised for the colour of my skin. I have experienced the not so blatant feelings of racism, where people make indirect comments about Caribbean people, in a way that its as if they don’t recognise that, being caribbean is a part of my heritage. I too have also struggled with my identity and the mixture of my heritage, trying to align myself with both parts of my heritage, whilst predominantly being brought up in a very white community and teachings coming from, in the majority, the white side of family.
Its interesting as upon reflection, the very complexity of issues of race and how it is dealt with publicly, too exists within me, a mixture of emotions from my experiences and the emotions that bubble up when experiencing racism personally or hearing about the experiences of others.
Last week, got me thinking, will these emotions surrounding race and racism ever fade or will they be present throughout the rest of my life…and in short, I came to the conclusion that I think they will always present for me. However, I recognise that there is a more progressive amount of people aware of how wrong it is, more people willing to understand the complexities of feelings which surround the topic of race, and more people willing to understand the privileges that are afforded to people, based on the colour of a person’s skin.
With that, I ended the week – after allowing myself to feel all the mixed up emotions I was experiencing – with the feeling of hope, not necessarily for my generation or even the several generations after me… but the feeling of hope for my unborn children, the feeling that they will eventually and hopefully grow up throughout their teenage and young adult years, in a world where the disparities of race may not be as wide and people’s feelings and understandings towards the topic of race will be more knowledgeable, more understanding and more progressive, in a way which I do indeed hope, will mean that our children won’t have to feel the complex emotions of race and racism, in the same way that I feel. Whether this hope, becomes true or remains but a dream, will be determined by history… but for now, I remain hopeful. For, without hope, love and learning, we have nothing.
““I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality…. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr