It doesn't take a genius to that anticipate that a black man who enjoys travelling to new places and experiencing different cultures is going to be subject to a wider than the usual number of unworthy incidents and coversations on account of his colour.
Of course there are the bog standard vocalised presumptions that you are from Africa, Jamaica or America, in that order of general concencus though regions visited can influence the choice of opinion
Of course we'll get compared to a black screen personality almost exclusively from the sportsworld
Of couse there will be eternal anthropological speculations about one's cultural characteristics, from music to food, objective stereotyping and possibly violence
Of course you might get all of these and more at home but it's more intense and worrying when you are alone and hundreds or thousands of miles from the fold
Unfortunately, it's unsophisticated sloppy racial stereotyping that seems to be the premise by which we as a people are generally received everywhere. Standing out like a sore thumb merely invites the opportunity. I know because i am that traveller and standing out landed me in one of the world's worst prisons, having been unlawfully arrested , ilegally charged beaten and abandoned by a host of capitulating authorities
Immigration ports have always been a trouble spot for me ever since 1991 when debarking a ferry at Dublin. The only afro Caribean on the trip, I approached the exit manned by a complacently sleepy pair. One was propped against the wall with his foot against it stabilising him as he stared into space.
I was about seven metres before him when he noticed me. Shamelessly startled he shouted, pointing "Hey, you, what's in that bag ?". I was carrying two bags of an acquaintence who was laden with children
"Er , it's not mine, it's his".
My colleague confimed. " Oh that's mine"
"Oh, that's ok then" were his exact words. "What's in the other one ?"
"That's mine too", said my colleague
"Oh, ok".
There is the esscence of discrimination 'Formulating opinions about others not based on their individual merits but rather on their membership in a group with assumed characteristics
I was unapologetically waved on. Two bags out of three approved he didn't embarrass himself further by asking about my rucksack. He went back to daydreaming , and as I studied backwards he didn't call call out anybody else.
In that bank holiday weekend in Dublin, where i saw four Nubian faces in as many days, I experienced one of the most unerving racial experiences ithat i ever would as I was told that if i ordered a drink pub in a certain busy pub in town that they'd "Slit your throat and leave you hanging." I had just walked in and straight back out of that pub as my entrance caused a wave of silence among the throng of socialisers.I vowed that I'd never return to Ireland
It was that year , leaving Canada (where one man's jealousy of the novel hospitality afforded me as a visitor made me very uncomfortable through spiteful racialy charged innuendos time after time) that I met bitter spite.
On an inland Canada to America flight, the frst baggage checking official called me to him with an index finger and a scorn. He immediately began discarding the contents of my suitcase as though he had a personal vendetta . He questioned and re-questioned me about my relationship with and history of the use of , or trading in drugs; or for that matter , if i knew anyone involved with drugs. When he drew a blank he asked me how much money I was carrying. Myself and my girlfriend had enough and were staying at my sister's house with her marital family. He looked at me with a twisted scorn and said
"I don't think you're going anywhere today pal".
Against his wishes and official endeavor I did travel and airport officials told me that pursuing an apology was pointless as airport staff are unanswerable to metropolitan law.
On return from Prague I was the only Nubian face on the flight. The passport check was a long but steadily paced smooth progression until; me. I was stopped and my suit case emptied. Having found nothing untoward they moved me on. An official scurried up and, miffed that she missed on the event she ordered that it be re-opened. As there were about seventy people lined behind me they moved me to a glaringly centralised open spot where I alone was re-checked in plain sight of all the airport travellers. My four white companions were flumoxed.
Though my Greece trip echoed that , my Australia and New Zealand trips were smooth sailing. Going to Thailand I told my travelling companion of my literal fear of airport immigration but all went smoothly.
It was on the return home that I was to meet an awful fate
With my white colleague, our bags were checked in, our passports checked and boarding passes issued. Straight through to imigration and my friend successfully presents his passport. My turn. The official glanced at it and handed it over her shoulder to her colleague in almost one automatic motion. To a monotone mutter a male takes it and brashly points to a chair implying that I should sit on it. After an hour and a half of the two of them and his supervisor constantly re-checking my passport with an old magnifying glass the plane is authorised to leave without me. I asked them over and over to tell me what is going on or to let me speak to some-body who would explain to me. They avoided eye contact. They actually responded by ignoring me, turning their backs and mimicking.I shouted "I'm not a fucking idiot."
Not until a week later when the fallout of this incident was at its ugliest am I taught about the Thai culture and the extreme ramifications of that interaction
Phuket had been good for me as holiday though to be absolutely honest I was often at my whits end for the endless staring and dumbfouded fascination on that the host nation had in droves whenever they saw me. It was a regular imposition, incredibly isolating, prominant and annoying. Having said that, weighed against the weather, the constant ease and simplicity of tourist life with the currency, it was well worth it.
Coupled with me towering over these much shorter people, stocky, with an english accent and an air of solid self assurance that these people had not seen before their learned responses weren.t equipped to deal with my stature.The 'Thai visa' ex-pat internet forum states, 'Foreigners should avoid actions or words that may cause a Thai to lose face in public. Their giggling was a nervous smoke screen and veiled attempt to make me lose face instead of them. :an irrational reaction to an irrational confrontation. as I stormed off I saw that the adjoining check point staff were frozen to the spot, staring at me like scared rabbits.
The general concencus is that Thais still operate within the colour cast system. They aparently despise the foreiners in general who they perceive as a necessary evil good for nothing but the imperialist buck.The given theory is that the dark skinned faces that pass through the airport are generally directly from the African continent and passing through on a false passport .( Having said that I haven't seen or meet one)
I walked away flanked by staff ; the female supervisor trailing with "Sir you cannot leave this area" and half a dozen security who made no effort to stop me as they were generally about eight inches shorter than me an two thirds of my weight. In fact I was to stride up to a man outside the airport who was wearimng a jacket stating 'airport police' and demand of him "Are you a policeman. ?" He scurried away
The information desk attendant was no help either. I asked her for a policeman or superior airport but she succmbed to the associated larger group of her own cultural type that were surrounding me. She consequently mumbled evasively
I asked the two original staff members in the case for their identification, pen cocked. The man said "What do you want my name for" and the woman mocked me to her surrounding colleagues with the presentation of an i.d badge which I later discovered was a type i.d worn by airport related workers and not a personalised i.d
Eventually i found the head immigration officer. He was adamant that I did not look the age I stated which only black people seem to find undisputeable .After three hours of 'aparent' checking I was arrested for using a false passport
After seven hours of being refused water, food, a phone call and being teased in the jail I made a noose and flooded the cell, awarding myself some startled attention. Taken into a room , my case officer began
"Where are you from ?"
"London"
"Don't lie to me. I can send you back home or I can send you to London"
Having counted fifteen black people in the eight weeks that I've now been in this country, and the real fascination I drew in public whereby people even ran off to collect their friends to look at me. Indeed many Thais , in a country where the legal minimum wage is equivalent to four pounds a day have never travelled beyond their local suburb. I can only imagine that this officer had neither spoken to nor ever entertained the possibility of a black englishman. He simply didn't believe me.
I had a phone conversation with a british embassy representative Ray Keene who effectively sealed my fate. suggesting that I go to prison for a weekend as it was nearly Friday pm and everybody would soon want to wrap up for the weekend.He was discarding. I cringed, thinking 'I'm sure he's seen my picture and knows i'm black. Bang goes aympathy . The fact that I look like a real bruiser in my photo probably translates to him as a black urban crook prospecting his criminal sub culture in a fresh country.
Hours later I was escorted to the back of a pick up truck handcuffed to a local and bound for the court jail. We sat in the back with my luggage and the driver shouted at me pecifically to run. He did this twice then loaded his gun in the air as a threat.
When we got to the court, still cuffed, a guard took a strap to the local and beat him about a dozen times and struck me twice. I couldn't help thinking that if I were white would he'd acknowledge my imperial national status..
The weekend in prison became four days before I saw a british embassy representative who enthused that I should be released by day six. By day eleven I was told that the authorities had discovered that my passport was genuine so the police were going to probably charge me with insulting an immigration officer by using the 'f' word at the airport when I shouted at them. I was to remain there up to eighty-four days pending a court hearing.
A week later Martin Carpenter came back to the prison with an aparently prominent and respected representative Jeff Mitchel. We were of totally agreeable points of view until I defined literaly what we were saying: That I was in prison out of spite because i didn't concede status. One of them respnded with "Well, you could speculate that." a retreat veiled under the cadence of british discourse. Martin tried to appease me with the ridiculous note ; "Simon it's one of those technical things that happens once in every thousand", exposing the strength of their convictions. When I suggested the possibility of someone of reputable office explaining to my persecutors that western social protocol is different to Eastern protocol: That my reaction is as resonable under the circumstances as their behaviour was doubtless seen to be, one responded with "Simon I can empathise with your sense of self righteousnous".
I enterpret this as "you are not diplaying the submissiveness or dependance compatible with our plan of action.. We will label you as having an arrogant chest beating phsycological comlex. They used to say "You blacks have a chip on your shoulder". Therein it was always hopelessly genetic. This way they could justify closing the door on my case because I was creator of my own demise and ultimately a lost cause. It also lent credence to the case against me
The dye was cast. They weren't about to get their hands dirty or rock the boat for me.
Four days later , with bail paid, I was out. In court it transpired that the charges were exagerated against my favour but I am scheduled to be heard in two months. My life at home is generally shattered , this is financially cleaning me out and I am embarrassingly living on handouts. Were I to counter claim for unlawful arrest, good and profressional authority has it that I should go into hiding and expect a year long case
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