Launch of 'IN SEARCH OF DESTINY: Returning to Mother by Sonia Lye-Fook

Author:Sonia Lye-Fook [Lye-Fook, Sonia]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Biographies & Memoirs, Children's eBooks, Children's Books, Ethnic & National, United States, African-American & Black, African American, Women's Fiction, Literature & Fiction
Amazon: B00RD9JJYY
Publisher: BIS Publications
Published: 2014-12-22T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13

Racism

Racism works in subtle ways and as a young Black woman in England I began to experience certain systems set up to keep us in ‘our place’ and to have low expectations of ourselves. I had no idea what career path I wanted to follow but I wanted to stay on at school to gain qualifications that I believed would open doors for me and give me time to work out what I wanted to do with my life.

The school I attended was a Secondary Modern and we were expected to leave at sixteen with minimum qualifications. Then some kind of change occurred in the education system and some of us were able to stay till eighteen to take GCE exams. However, on entering the sixth form I realised to my horror that I was expected to join the pre-nursing group. Now I had no interest in nursing. I secretly wanted a job where I could travel the world. I was told that the teachers felt that nursing would be a good career for me. Their reason? I had been working as a volunteer after school at the local hospital because I wanted to gain some experience outside of the home and school. I made tea for the patients, chatted to them changed the water in vases and did small jobs for the nurses and generally made myself useful. I did well and this was reported to the school who decided that nursing had to be my career. I asked my mother to go to the school and tell the teachers that I didn’t want to be a nurse. My mother obliged and met with my teachers who convinced her that nursing was the right thing for me. I would be able to go anywhere in the world with such qualifications they told her. I was very upset but gave in and joined the pre-nursing group. However, what I realised was that all the girls in the group, except one, were Black. Now how does that work? I befriended the one white girl in the class and we seemed to have a lot in common and got on well, we didn’t visit each other’s homes but we were close in school.

One Saturday I was walking down the high Street near my home when I spotted Georgina in the distance, coming towards me with a woman who I presumed was her mother. I started to smile and getting ready to greet her. As she got closer to me I could see she was looking straight past me at something more interesting behind me. I carried on smiling and the closer she got to me the more she looked as if she didn’t recognise me. I quickly got the message and wiped the embarrassed smile off my face. She turned away her head as she passed me and did not say a word. I stopped and turned around to look at her back and she did not turn around even once. I realised she did not want her mum to know she was friendly with a Black person.

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