The Life and Times of a Very British Man by Kamal Ahmed

Author:Kamal Ahmed
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Sudan has twice as many pyramids as Egypt.

6

Dear Sudan

My mother comes from England, my father from Sudan. Now, in straightforward terms, my father living in Britain was the victim. Was the victim of all the slights and pains of living in a country where you are not in the majority, as a black man. And are not in power, as a black man. And, of course, that is true. My father believes that he never rose to the highest ranks of the NHS or ophthalmology in Britain because he was a first-generation immigrant. Now, his colour and Muslim background may have had nothing to do with his lack of ultimate promotion – maybe he was a bit rude, a bit mediocre, a bit all the things that, if you are white, are not necessarily a barrier to rising up the ranks. Black people are quite capable of being lazy and not very good, just like white people. Just don’t imagine it to be a group trait.

My father may have been bad at lots of things. But I knew him. I saw him working past midnight and up at 5 a.m. to complete his projects. I knew that he was working in his scientific field in a language that was not his mother tongue. And, we may never know how much his colour mattered, but know it mattered in some way, the data have to push you towards that conclusion. Not just for him but for many like him. In the labour market, non-white people are over-represented at the lower end – the cleaners and the carers – and under-represented at the upper end – the managers, the executives. Black African unemployment in the UK is running at about 16 per cent, white unemployment at about 4 per cent. Only 6 per cent of British Muslims are in ‘higher managerial, administrative and professional occupations’ compared with 10 per cent of the overall population. Try applying for a job with the name Abubaker Ahmed and try again with John Smith. Mr Smith will receive more interview requests and employment offers than Mr Ahmed. My father faced that tiring, always upwards, climb throughout his life, the slope millions of non-white people wake up to every day. The black tax. To arrive at the same position you have to work twice as hard.

Whatever the causes, and this is where it becomes more interesting, my father also had an explanation as to why. What would happen, he suggested to me once as we sat and chatted about life in Britain, if a white, first-generation immigrant to Sudan had come to Professor Seddig Abubaker Ismail Ahmed at Alzaytouna Specialist Hospital on Sayed Abdul Rahman Street near the airport in Khartoum and applied for a job? And what if that applicant, good as he or she was, was up against a Sudanese doctor of approximately equal talent? Well, Professor Ahmed would probably plump for the Sudanese doctor, now wouldn’t he? ‘He would understand him, where he came

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.