Page 103 - White Lives The Interplay of 'Race', Class, and Gender in Everyday Life

96 Seeing, talking, living ‘race’
him...it was very strange, I mean, he wasn’t really that different in
physical appearance. I mean, he was a whiz at origami-type things, we
used to get him to make us bookmarks and things like that. But that was
quite odd.
(Jennifer, Interview 25)

You have to remember that when I first got there [university] I’d come
from a small village [. . .] I didn’t know any black people [. . .] oh, there
was one, I can remember him, called Marcus Thomas, but it was ...so
that was a whole new world.
(Rosalind, Interview 36)

As well as emphasising change and generational difference – in terms of
providing a contrast to how their children were growing up – I would ar-
gue that this particular way of spotlighting an individual child also served
to highlight the whiteness of all that surrounded them in childhood. The
narrative of the white childhood – highlighted by the few exceptions – con-
tributed to a common narrative that was told about the respondents’ move
to London (few of the interviewees had grown up in London). This was a
narrative of a loss of innocence telling of: the first encounters with non-
white people; the need to alter one’s way of being and behaving; the need to
understand new codes and politics; the process of adopting a new identity;
and, in particular, the need to understand the nature of different areas of
London. In the following extract, Helen, who grew up in a small village in
the north of England, describes her first impressions of London. When Helen
referred to the different areas, they needed no introduction or explanation.
She was working on the assumption that I would ‘know’ that Brixton is an
‘Afro-Caribbean’ area, associated as it was not only with African Caribbean
residence but also black political activism. There is no doubt in the way she
characterised these areas, nor doubt that I would understand what she was
referring to.

Yes. Size first of all. The obvious thing. Just so enormous. I remember
getting to grips with getting around the Tube system, everything was
just, you know, a bit difficult at first. But exciting because it was ...I
quite like cities ’cos you can be anonymous in them if you want to be.
It’s quite nice. Yes, it can be so claustrophobic in a small place. What
else? I remember going to Streatham so I was close to Brixton, and I’d
really never come across Afro-Caribbean people before, and of course,
it’s got to be one of the biggest concentrations in the country, and with
Peckham just along the way as well, I remember that being sort of, not
a huge shock ’cos I’d been to university by then and I had come across
people of different races, but not really Afro-Caribbeans at all. And I
remember remarking on it, mentally if you like, but, ‘God, it . . . this