The White Paint from Mr. Darcy's Shop

I have often wondered why Black and brown people hurt each other so deeply. I feel it in myself sometimes, more sharply than when white people hurt me. I think it is because the wound was already there long before I even knew my name; it was a wound sanctioned by the white world I lived in. That world decided who was seen and who was worthy, often teaching us, through violence, how to administer that same judgment. We absorbed it by osmosis and carried it into our communities as internalized racism, lateral violence, turning it sideways against those closest to us.

I grew up in England in the 1960s, during the era of the Teddy Boys and intense racial unrest, when the streets themselves seemed to watch you, ready and suspicious. Racism was not subtle then; it did not pretend confusion or politeness. It lived on the streets and announced itself loudly. The hostility was ordinary, woven into daily life. It showed up in schools, in shops, in the way adults spoke freely, assuming agreement. It was understood who belonged and who did not, who could move without consequence and who had to be careful.

Groups of white boys moved through neighbourhoods with a sense of ownership, their clothes sharp, their anger sharper. You learned early how to read footsteps behind you, how to keep your head down, how not to invite attention. The threat did not always need words. Sometimes it was enough just to be seen.

When I was five, I wanted to be white. I begged my parents to paint me white, to go to Mr. Darcy's little shop and buy the paint. I told them that if they loved me, they would do it. I don't remember the moment clearly, but the story is still there, like a scar: the desperation, the sense that whiteness meant safety, survival, even love.

Even before I was born, the world had already weighed, measured, and priced my value as a person with Black skin. When my mother went into labour at nine months pregnant, my father had to run to the police station to call a doctor because we