- After leaving "Love Island,"
you could clearly see a gap and a separation
between myself and my other counterparts,
the opportunities that they were being given,
the stuff that was coming their way.
I wasn't getting the same amount.
And do you know what people used to say?
"You're going to have to work twice as hard."
And I was just like, "You know what, I'm doing really well.
I liked my whole journey so far,"
but, coming out, I'm like,
"Yeah, this is real.
It's so real.
I do have to work twice as hard."
(typing)
- [Producer] Hey, thanks for joining.
All we're going to do is I'm going to say a phrase,
and all I want is your reaction to the phrase
and then an explanation to your reaction.
So the phrase is, "The UK is not a racist country."
- That is just such a weird, backwards, ignorant,
ridiculous statement.
I think if you truly believe that,
your head is in the clouds,
or you do not actually see the plight of black people.
- Please, I don't know what rock you've been hiding under,
but racism is very apparent.
But with the UK, a lot of the racism is systematic racism.
- From where I come from, Southeast London,
I've been exposed to some awful, awful pain.
Me, I've been stopped, I've been harassed,
I've been abused, I've been this...
- That doesn't mean to say that the UK as a whole is racist,
everybody in the UK's racist,
because that is not true at all.
But it is a place where....
Sad to say, a lot of industries are propped up
on this ideal that, you know,
black people are less than.
- Our economic structure was built on slavery.
We have slaveowner statues hanging about.
You cannot tell me that this country is not racist.
I'm tired of that.
- I'd love for it to be completely false,
do you know what I mean? For it to be completely true
that this country wasn't racist,
but I think this country is,
and a lot of places are.
And I think...
Yeah, we've all just got to accept that
before we can start moving forward, I guess, in any way.
(grim music)
A lot of the time being young and black and male
in this country is sort of people just assuming
the worst of you in the most benign situations,
do you know what I mean?
Whether that's, you know, someone...
If you're walking too close behind someone,
it's like they think you're following them,
or you're going to buy something in a shop,
they think you're about to rob the place.
And it's just strange, and it's like,
no matter what you do, no matter how polite you are,
you'll always come up...
You'll often come against those sort of
really quite hurtful presumptions.
- I remember when I had my hair natural,
and people would be like, "Oh, your hair looks like pubes."
And these are my friends.
My hair looks like pubes, apparently.
And I was like...
"Just tell me you don't...
Just tell me you're racist;
just tell me you hate me and move."
- There was times I've gone to castings,
there were times I've gotten to open calls for agencies,
and I always get,
"Oh, you're not quite what we're looking for,"
or, "You're not the direction that we're heading in
at the moment."
And that's obviously because I'm black.
Like it's fine; just say it.
"We have one black girl on our books,
and we don't need another one right about now.
We've ticked the quota."
- I think every black person's got an experience
where they have, you know,
experienced racism in the UK.
Probably me, more recently, would be,
you know, walking into a shop,
and I was very well dressed because I'd come
from a meeting with a very important client and, you know,
age old thing where the security guard followed me around.
And I actually turned around and said,
"Can I help you?"
And he stopped me.
And like, not even a moment, not gonna lie,
two minutes after that conversation happened,
the alarms went off, and it was two young Caucasian girls
who had stolen some lipsticks and eyeliners.
- I've not experienced, necessarily,
what people would term "overt racism,"
which is being called the N-word or racially profiled,
so on and so forth.
But I have experienced covert racism
in terms of the educational system,
like people touching my hair unwarrantedly,
people making fun of my name for no reason.
The trauma that comes with being black,
just waking up everyday,
seeing a new death or someone that looks exactly like you,
all of this stuff takes a toll on the black woman.
- I remember being in Primark and seeing
a young black man get arrested for shoplifting.
And the police came, and they were like kicking and punching
and all that stuff, like, very unnecessarily.
And I was with a family member who kind of said
to the police, like,
"Please stop, stop kicking him.
He's not resisting arrest."
At which point they kicked her in the back of her legs.
She fell to her knees, got arrested,
and this is purely for pointing out
the brutality of the arrest.
It was so undignifying...
Watching the kind of pool of black in her trousers
as she went herself just from being shocked and scared.
And that's probably one of the most scared times
I had growing up.
- I was on a night out.
It was the end of the night.
We had got our McDonald's; we were walking to the bus stop.
And then this man saw me, a white man,
and then he kicked the bus stop right where my face was
and then held his fingers, I'm not kidding,
held his fingers in a gun pose and went,
"I should kill you."
And I was like, with my McDonald's, like...
I'm like..
(stammering)
'Cause like, one second, I'm eating chips.
The next moment I'm being literally like verbally attacked
by a guy who's bigger than me
and looks like he's about to take me down.
So yeah,
that was all good.
- I've had so many stop and searches when I was like 14.
I've got...
Literally, I was going to a Halloween party.
I lost my friends off,
didn't have any phone...
Phone credit, or anything.
'Cause this was the days there was no contract.
There was like a five day pass.
If you know, you know.
So I didn't have no phone credit or anything.
I lost them, but I'm like, "I think I know where it is."
I'm walking, I'm walking.
Next thing I know, a big old van just rolls past,
four men jump out in, pin me against the fence.
"Oh, search him and touch him up in that."
I'm 14; I'm a child.
I'm not an adult.
Touching me up trying to search me.
Didn't tell me no name, no badge number, no unit,
why they're stopping me, for what reason.
Like, I'm 14.
I'm there, petrified.
Even took my afro comb as well.
And I was pissed with that
because it was a plastic afro comb,
it wasn't even a metal one.
So they had no right to take that comb, it's plastic.
But again, they're just trying to...
Just trying to be pricks.
(somber music) - If we don't get it --
- [Crowd] Shut it down! - If we don't get it --
- [Crowd] Shut it down!
- If we don't get it --
- [Crowd] Shut it down! - If we don't get it --
- [Crowd] Shut it down!
- I think people believe that the UK is not racist
for several reasons.
Firstly, because there are countries
with a far larger problem with really overt racism.
- Everyone thinks that it's like
someone going out, trying to lynch someone,
or something like that.
They think 'cause they're not, like, outright, like,
in your face doing it, then it's not.
But then they'll just show their prejudice
through other means.
- Well, Britain's history in inventing the idea
of white supremacy isn't addressed.
Like we paint people as heroes
when we should at least be discussing the other side
of the...
Of what...
Of what their legacy is.
- We paint people as white saviors
instead of holding white people in this country accountable
for what they've done.
- Which gives people a false sense
of unadulterated British pride,
which then trickles down into seeing other cultures
or other people in the UK as inferior.
- It's a lot more insidious
because it's not as tangible
for people to understand.
Because I'm not laying there dying,
it doesn't mean I'm not suffering.
- I think more so now than ever,
we've got lots of great black role models,
like from like Stormzy to, like, Zadie Smith
to like Clara Amfo and stuff like that.
And you'll see these people's success,
and then people will tell themselves like,
"Oh, well, these guys are doing well,
so it's fine for everybody else."
Not thinking that, like, the reason we love, you know,
Zadie Smith, the reason we love Clara Amfo is...
All these sorts of people who are great success stories
is because there's so few of them.
And I think that people...
White people don't often realize those people
are one of very few.
And I think, also, just people are very willing
to sort of pat themselves on the back
because they sort of think,
"Well, I didn't leave the house
in a Ku Klux Klan costume today,
so I'm not racist."
(somber music)