You know, the one where you reach a tipping point; a cliff-edge; the point of no return? That happened to me recently.
With most of the world brought to a stillness by the Coronavirus pandemic, time paused & allowed racism to be witnessed by the masses. From police brutality to murder, every other day revealed yet another injustice, causing a wound to rip open in my soul. A wound in me I didn’t believe could ever be healed. But just as my heart couldn’t take anymore, I began to hear something that I hadn’t heard before – voices of people of colour joined in support by voices of white people at the global BLM demonstrations. I knew then it was important for me to share what had happened to me in my life – to share my experiences.
Rules & laws are not enough. I believe we need to share our experiences for our neighbours, our friends & our communities to truly understand our daily experiences – to become aware.
I believe that with this awareness, our neighbours, our friends & our communities will recognise & challenge racial injustices & prevent the experiences of me & my family, along with the millions of others, from ever being repeated. It’s within the power of the people – all of us – to create change. But change can only truly occur when there is a collective awareness that change is needed.
I wrote Brown Girl to share my experiences as a woman of colour living in Scotland to raise that awareness. Brown Girl in the Ring is a guide to understanding & changing racism in our society through the retelling of my brutally honest & inspirational journey from childhood to adulthood, detailing harrowing accounts of persecution, isolation, survival, resilience & justice-seeking all set within the recurring theme of racism.
Brown Girl is not about being invited to sit at the white man’s table the same way it’s not about inviting the white man to my table. It’s about going forward together, side-by-side & finding a new table that no one has ever sat at before.
Please join me at the awareness table.
Olukemi Ogunyemi is a Scottish-Nigerian author determined to raise awareness on racial inequalities. Born in Scotland to a white, Scottish mother and Nigerian father, Olukemi spent her early childhood in Thamesmead, London, before returning to a rural, Scottish mining village to be raised by her single mother in a completely white environment.
