...sometimes I actually don’t use the word.
I don't use the word racism because it's so often misunderstood.
Being young and growing up in Britain,
overt racism was casual.
But you kind of got used to the fact that in any kind of public arena
you could be racially abused.
You said he was born in Manchester!
-Yes, yes.
Well he ain't a proper blackie then, is he?
Haven't heard that terminology for a long time, blackie.
Yeah, it reminds me of school.
I mean the ones I'm talking about, they're your proper blacks,
the ones that was born in a jungle, your natives.
I mean don’t tell me they're educated,
half of them are still eating each other.
About three years ago, I was walking through White Hart Lane station,
I heard someone shout very loudly the N-word.
It's a word that I don’t use.
I thought at first it was someone listening to an Eminem song
or something, and they were thinking they were Jay-Z.
So I just kept walking. The word was shouted again and,
"Who do you think you are?" Well, I know who I am.
So I looked round to see what was going on, in case it wasn’t directed
towards me, I didn’t think instinctively that it was.
And it was directed towards me, there was a woman in a flat,
looking out of the flat and she was screaming and yelling at me,
I said, "Why are you shouting at me and why are you shouting the N-word?"
"Because that's what you people call yourself."
I said, "You people?"
This was a woman who doesn't know me.
And has never seen me before, and yet she felt empowered -
not 20 years ago, not 30 years ago -
to use such terminology to refer to me.
And that's to show you that those overt forms of racism still exist.
I work with a lot of white, middle class people
who like to feel that they're not racist, sexist, homophobic
and all these other things, but they are.
They are - but they are instinctively and they do it
not knowing that they're doing it.
And...
when I'm there, they self-censor themselves
on issues of ethnicity
or issues that they feel that I would be sensitive about.
Does that mean that they've changed?
I means at least that they're thinking about them in a certain
kind of way, because I'm in their social space.
If I wasn't in their social space,
perhaps they wouldn't be thinking about it.
That's the problem with racism.
Yet even in human interactions, one is second guessing oneself as to,
"Did that happen because of colour?"
"Did that happen because of ethnicity?"
I like to go to the cinema and watch films.
I don't think while I'm enjoying that film, all those millions of people
throughout the world that can't see.
I have privilege. I have the privilege of sight.
That privilege of sight means that I don’t think about those people
that don’t have the same privilege.
Does that make me prejudiced?
I think in a way it does, it makes me prejudiced against those that cannot
see, but it's a kind of privilege and prejudice that seems natural to me
because the world is effectively made for those that can see.
I think the only way you eradicate racism is by changing
peoples beliefs and ideas.
And the only way you get to do that is through education
and information.
You can
punish people for their ideas or their beliefs,
but you might not change their views and ideas.