My thoughts as a POC slave’s descendent on Queen Elizabeth’s passing.
A few years back I found myself in hospital, ICU to be precise. I can’t say I was fighting for my life because I had zero clue I was unconscious, lying in ICU with a brain injury. I woke up struggling to walk, talk, move. Incoherent. After about 20 hours in ICU, I was moved to the ward for people with brain injuries. While I understood what everyone was telling me —& it made sense given I’d fallen over and hit my head on concrete — it was also confusing why the words coming out of my mouth sounded like weird sounds. My neurologist got me to do an MRI. And that was my undoing. That was when I discovered something way more destructive, that brought up anger and deep hate that I thought was justifiable.
I had evidence of bruising on the left side of my brain, yet I’d fallen on my right side... The doctor said the “damage” to my brain looked like what he sees in individuals who’d had head injuries courtesy of a car accident, footballers who’d been in scrums over the years or professional boxers. Looking at me, I’m clearly not a footballer or a boxer, but maybe head trauma from a car-accident? No, no car accident. I was blunt-I can’t remember the words, but the meaning was on the lines of “a wretched human had King-punched me in the head a few years back.” She was/is white. I am not. And she was clear: she hated non-white people — “black people”. Apparently we don’t belong in Australia, and she wanted black people to either leave or die. The King Punch was aimed to kill me. Because I have brown skin.
Thankfully I did not die. Instead I suffered from deafness for 20 months, a bleeding retina for 6 weeks. I started having migraines, and incredible forgetfulness. My thoughts were scrambled and slow. I started having vertigo — although it was misdiagnosed as low blood pressure. And panic attacks — although the Victims In Crime psychologist said I was perfectly fine with no psychological impact, and the lawyer I’d been issued said I was okay and didn’t think I needed to take my assailant to court. FYI: they were all white people too. The assailant got about 100 days community service, is currently a teacher, married and has a few children of her own (Facebook is a great source of information). My brain was never scanned at the time of the incident (even though I was in hospital). Three weeks later, my GP (an Asian man) got me to do a brain scan and that’s when he found extensive bleeding on my brain. Blood clots galore. He wanted me to fight the system, take the hospital to court for negligence, and the racist to court for being a pathetic human. I would have, if I wasn’t dealing with deafness, possibly blindness, the inability to walk in a straight line, and the nightmares that kept me awake a night. Also, my workplace wasn’t very supportive: work or leave I was told. Alas, a single-non-white young women in her early 30s with $1000s of medical bills to fit, I fought to be as “normal as possible” so I could keep my job in order to afford my medical bills.
Eventually I left Melbourne. Moved from the pot into the fire so speak, under the direct management of a highly racist female leader. Psychological trauma compounded the impact of the physical trauma. Years later, my body couldn’t handle the stress, fear and trauma that had been festering away anymore, and a series of unfortunate domino events, I fell over hit my head on concrete and landed in the emergency department thanks to an African taxi driver who picked me up and took me in (for free!)
Finding out after all these years, the vertigo I’ve been experiencing almost on a daily basis was due to the King Punch was a huge blow. I thought I’d dealt with that race-hate crime, and here it was plaguing my life still. Ugh! Apparently my brain had extensive damage evident with the widespread bruising. The neurologist was an absolute legend — and while he was impressed that I’d been able to function so high for so long with a very bunged up brain (clearly I can function at a higher level than most), he was adamant: it should never have happened. And so on the 16 June 2020 — right in the midst of a global pandemic, during Melbourne’s worst lockdown, I started physical rehabilitation — to get my movement again and also see if they could treat the vertigo once and for all. It was a long slog but 24 months later, I have my range of movement back 100%.
Being reminded of the King punch, and the fact that my health, career, finances, relationships had all taken a hit because some racist punk from a place of hate, fear and ignorance could cause so much damage on another human — ideally death — purely because I have dark brown skin made me really start to feel the emotion hate. Hate the system, hate the historical privilege that comes with white skin, hate the privilege that comes with a western sounding name. And hate the people. Hate is a black emotion, darker than night and very cold and empty. I felt confused though — because I know many white-skinned people, direct descendants of the British/European colonisers who travelled the world looking for cocoa, spices, land and people they could enslave — who are lovely and who I considered “my friends” and I theirs. They are not bigots at all, and yet their skin colour was becoming a barrier — not from them, but from me. I didn’t want to be around them anymore.
Their openness, respect, kindness, fun was being marred with the dirty paint brush of hate, prejudice and fear that disdain for someone’s skin colour brings. I hid my pain. I hid my shame. I hid my confusion. I hid my questions. I tried to suppress it. I didn’t want to acknowledge what was plaguing me in the recesses of my mind. But here’s the thing, if you don’t deal with trauma — yours or inherited — it builds up like a dam and festers like warts. Eventually it will bring you down: either by hurting/hating on others, or by self-destruction. I chose the path of self-destruction. I wanted out of this world. I bought into the lie that white skin is esteemed and the darker your skin is, the less you’re valued. I started to hate. Hating others, but hating myself. I cursed the day I was born with my brown skin.
I ended up in a mental health rehabilitation centre, working through all different types of trauma — illness, ICU, Melbourne’s lockdown, sexual assault (at the hands of white men)… and we eventually started to chip away at racism. I had come to realise that in my mind, I was becoming like that prejudiced woman who punched me, or the white man who tried to rape me “to see if women of colour are physically normal like white women”(true story, he thought POC are still half-ape): fearful, prejudicial, closed-minded & filled with anger. Fear is a powerful motivator, it can make you do things you would never want to do: “kill or be killed” for example. Reverse racism. I was becoming like all the oppressors in my history (living or inherited). And while I felt justified in my hate, I also didn’t want to be one of the many racists I’d encountered.
There is no justification for racism or reverse racism. Two wrongs don’t make a right. An eye for an eye may feel good temporarily until you realise you’re both blind, and we all now what happens when the blind lead the blind: we both fall in the same ditch of destruction. A black soul does not lead to a joy-filled, purpose-driven, unified life. You’re constantly on the lookout for opportunities to be hurt, and in doing so hurt others back. The irony in all this, the psychiatrist I was given was born a dark-skinned man. He is now a white skinned man courtesy of vitiligo, a condition in which the skin loses its pigment cells (melanocytes). He understood my pain and shame at being the victim of race-hate crime from first hand experience. He had insider knowledge of the nasty things white people have told him about POC — thinking he’s a white person too — and their shock when he stops them dead in their tracks. He was perfect to help me deal with my trauma. His skin colour may have changed, but he was still the same person underneath. He challenged me with this question: Why did I change my attitude towards him after I’d learnt of the vitiligo disease he had?
Ooh that’s tough.
It led to deep soul searching and unpacking and getting rid of emotions that had been festering away unhealed for years.
My great-grandfather was an indentured servant (aka the politically correct term for slave after slavery had “officially” been abolished, but human ownership & control had not) during the British colonisation era. As a 6 month old baby, he was taken with his mother to South Africa where he would eventually work in the sugar cane fields his entire life. He was never a “Free Man.” His son, my grandfather was born officially “free” but was displaced and controlled during apartheid — a heinous regime I was born into years later in a little town called Port Elizabeth (named after the British colonising Governor’s wife of the time in 1820).
Oh historical oppressions run deep in my roots.
My psych’s question was amazing. It hit home so deeply. It still hits home so deeply.
And so I reflect on Queen Elizabeth and the trajection of her life based on her birth & the life she chose to live vs my life & where I am courtesy of those before me & the life I choose to live. Sure it would have been great for the Queen to force a change in policies of governments around the world to undo the past atrocities, except for 2 things:
- She did not (& neither does the current reigning Monarch) have the power to do so — if she did do so, we’d be back to the days of the Empire where the Crown controlled everyone over-riding the value of a government elected by the people for the people,
- She devoted her life to trying to be an agent of influence for the betterment of society and an agent of freedom — the complete opposite of the British Empire leaders who reigned with brutality and force for 100s of years until her father’s reign, and then her own reign.
I find the comments from POC celebrating The Queen’s death, wishing her pain and torment both disgusting and highly racist. Reverse racism is still racism. And there is never a justification for any type of racism — direct, indirect, or reverse. Reverse racism doesn’t heal, it causes more division. Instead of coming together as one — you’d think at this point in history we’d be rowing together in the same direction — it keeps us apart, keeps us trapped in victim-mentality or guilt-mentality, unable to move forward and upward. And given that we’re all connected, not solo islands, how we treat others is vital. Racism is 1000% wrong. And reverse-racism is 1000% unjustifiable.
When you look at the grace in which Queen Elizabeth possessed, the fact that she was able to counsel dozens of world leaders, share her wisdom and thoughts with them — speaks volumes for the person she was. She couldn’t make anyone do anything — and none of us should be controlling — she deliberately lived a life that was very different to the previous monarchs before her.
I look at my life, and I hope it makes my great-grandfather proud of what I have done with it, but more importantly proud of the person I am and continue to become. I am not my history. And I actively choose to write a completely different present and future filled with freedom, understanding and hope over fear, ignorance and hate.
Skin colour aside, the thing that matters most is how we choose to live our life, and what we do with our life. We cannot have a different present and future if we do not let go of the chains of history. Guilt and shame should drive forgiveness (from the hurt) and changed behaviour (from the bigot) instead of keeping us stuck in quicksand or tied to a whipping post.
It is possible to be a seeker of justice and fairness, AND be equitable and kind at the same time. Gotta hand it to Her Majesty The Queen, she definitely personified that as best she could. RIP Queen Elizabeth.
