On 13 April 2021 Saarah Bhalwani and Muhammed Zia Ud Din gave a talk to Oxford Brookes University staff entitled ‘The History of Paki-Bashing: Educating on British BAME Experiences’, as part of the Oxford Brookes University series of talks on ‘Conversations on Race, Racism and Anti-Racism’. In this blog post, Saarah, a BA English Literature student, shares her experiences of the event and summarises her talk.
12 min read.
The talk that took place aimed to outline how it feels to be subjected to a racial slur, along with discussing the fears and social unrest around racial discrimination. We wanted to tackle the tough unanswered question – is there a correct way to approach educating people about racial slurs? And how can this be achieved without subjecting people to discomfort or offence on how this is conducted?
This blog post will briefly outline the significance of this topic. I also want to acknowledge the platform the staff at Oxford Brookes facilitated us with, which allowed fellow student Zia Din and I to discuss a sensitive topic in a safe space, as two British, South Asian, Muslim, English Literature students. We expressed a personal struggle with racism and Islamophobia, which we wanted to educate others on. By partnering with our university, we were able to make a small, impactful change, through unashamedly speaking our minds about our life stories and research that we believed created a valid learning experience, completely uncensored.
Speaking within the institution that we were also criticising did not lead to disgruntled looks or disapproving judgement by those who attended. Instead, we experienced a shared unity in listening to other’s stories. I believe stories function to maintain a sense of humanity, and allow the voices of unheard lives to be discovered, sharing lost memories to find hope, shaping our values by learning from past mistakes.
Nevertheless, that fond love of storytelling could just be the Literature student side of me talking.
Our overall aim was to reflect on the racial hate that surrounded Paki-bashing in the UK, and how victims were affected by it at the time. This then tied into the utmost need of British Black, South Asian and other POC voices being discussed within our education, in order to respect these equally as important aspects of British history. Racism should be a taught topic so that we can openly discuss how people were and still are affected by this discrimination. Understanding the histories behind racial slurs will ideally present the outdated and unacceptable nature of them, and which will truly highlight how these slurs do not belong in our contemporary and positively evolving society.
I wanted to bring light to BAME experiences lacking in substantial representation within the most integral institution in British society: the education system. The system which has a sole aim in equally teaching the future generations the basic knowledge of society, by shaping their views on the world they will be living and working in right from the beginning. In our talk we were questioning the consistent lack of BAME voices and stories within taught British history. The way I proved this was from researching my family, my community in Leicester, and Zia’s community in Bradford’s life experiences within this white-centred education system. We showed this lack of BAME history from discussing the little general knowledge on paki-bashing: a hate fuelled attack in the UK targeted towards South Asians, which was stirred up more so by the British National Party (BNP) in London and other known Asian cities from the 1970s to the 2000s. I spoke about the slur Paki, in the context of how my grandparents, my mother, myself and my two younger sisters having all been subjected to varying levels of what I call a continued generational cycle of victimhood to racist commentary. I discussed this ongoing racism over a span of 60 years from when my family were British.
My part of the talk was split into four brief subsections: ‘Paki Bashing – My mum’s experiences first-hand growing up in East London’; ‘Racism has not disappeared – experiences with the racial slur from 2020/2021’; ‘Increasing the visibility of BAME history’; and ‘Sharing what it was like going to University as a minority student’. The purposeful shock factor behind these subsections comes from the use of the personal connection my family and I have recollecting dehumanising racist experiences.
Here is a summary of the sections of my talk:
Paki Bashing – My mum’s experiences first-hand growing up in East London.
This first section highlighted my Mum’s story with Paki bashing when growing up in East London, Leytonstone from the 1970’s to the 1990s. The three main stories shared here were firstly my mother’s childhood friend in college being cornered by the BNP – being beaten with wooden and metal bats to the point that he suffered near death and then long-term brain damage as a result. Secondly, I talked about my mother being spat at and called a Paki in the 90s – from recollecting this story in my interview with her, she came to the realisation that racial slurs were used on the streets, but were not openly discussed in schools in a safe setting to raise awareness. And finally, I linked my mother’s experiences with the slur Paki to her parents’ relationship with this racist label as Indian immigrants. My mother recollects the family newsagent shop windows being broken in and racist slurs used towards her parents too.
Racism has not disappeared – experiences with the racial slur from 2020/2021.
I continued by tackling the misconception of racially targeted slurs being a thing of the past. I did this through sharing a personal story about my family and I being called Paki’s whilst bike riding during the first lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic in April 2020. The raw nature of this specific story, that I so openly shared to our audience, was to present how easy it is to become blinded by our progress to then in consequence forget the large gaps in our education in Britain, which seems to ignore BAME experiences like mine. Instead, we brush off each racist experience as a one-time occurrence, instead of an ongoing struggle faced by many minorities. This resulted in concluding this section with a reminder that we need to collectively understand why we have such a multi-cultural society, re-enforcing knowledge in how we all have ended up belonging in this country.
Increasing the visibility of BAME history.
I began this section with one of my family’s most recent experiences with racism and slurs. My 11- and 14-year-old sisters faced the same struggle in their schools in the past few months in the beginning of 2021. The phrases targeted towards my sisters as listed: curry muncher, paki, terrorist, and bomb jokes accompanied with Allahu Akbar.
I found it important to mention how POC feel like they are missing from taught British history. The example I used was from my own experience of being taught next to nothing in my secondary school education about colonialism, slavery, or the voluntary contributions the African and Indian soldiers made during WW2. The knowledge on Indian Sikh soldiers was a shock to me, as a child I understood that the majority of soldiers during the world wars who fought for Britain were white, until my GCSE Drama teacher took our class to watch Wipers in the local theatre, a play which highlighted these forgotten POC soldiers.
I concluded this section in criticising how BAME history and literature fails to be seen as a mandatory part of the education system – our stories are taught as optional modules or extracurricular activities in school – a prime example being black history month. I briefly brought attention to how ignored Asian racism generally is by discussing the current rise in East Asian racism, largely from Covid being labelled as the “Chinese virus” as said by ex-president Donald Trump.
Sharing what it was like going to University as a minority student.
My part of the talk came to an end with a moment of reflection on how my degree has shaped me as an aspiring academic. I compared my initial thoughts on the parameters of what I thought I would be taught within Literature, as a degree. I had a preconceived notion that to integrate well with the academics in Oxford, the respectable dissertation topic would be a subject such as Shakespeare. Looking back on my undergraduate degree, I realised that the inclusion of modules such as Word Literature in my first year, Crime Culture and Transgression in my second year and my third-year modules Poverty in the Novel and Windrush Literature from 1948 to the present, shaped not only my thesis, but my feeling of belonging to this British institution. Varying POC stories were taught as equally respected parts of the university canon, just as your Chaucer, Dickens, Austen, or Yeats would be.
My thesis question: ‘Redefining Britishness from a Muslim perspective. How does writing by contemporary British Muslim authors fight back against Islamophobia?’, is a direct reflection of my changed view on my importance within a subject I am passionate about. My identity and my state of belonging finally feels rooted within the education system. I found my passion and my voice through being represented in the literature I studied, knowing that as a writer my stories, as a British Asian Muslim, are validated to be interpreted, questioned, criticised, and learnt from – not as lost forms of self-expression.
My writing was shaped from the diversity in my degree and the racism I experienced in this last year. I shared with the audience the basis of my script published on YouTube, ‘Punish A Muslim Day’ – a fictional story that I wrote for the Human Story Theatre in 2020, based on the punish a Muslim day letters sent as aggravated targeted hate towards the Muslim community in 2018. Well known British South Asian Muslim creatives, such as Riz Ahmed, share this same struggle with identity as a British BAME. Ahmed’s short films, ‘The Long Goodbye’ and ‘The Breakup (Shikwa), highlight how hard it is to determine your place within a society that doesn’t seem to reflect who you are as being a part of Britishness. To quote my favourite line from ‘The Long Goodbye’ which summarises this displaced feeling, “if you want me back to where I’m from then bruv I need a map”.
I concluded my thoughts by acknowledging to the audience how hard it is to speak about these personal experiences as victims of racial slurs. It is deeply pitiful to speak openly about being called a slur along with your family. The terms are used to make the victim feel insignificant due to how they look, their cultural background and religious beliefs. By being so outspoken about these dehumanising stories, we can progress past the fear and the uncertainty we have towards those we do not understand. By speaking and sharing the hard to hear stories, we can bridge the gap between communities who are more similar than they would initially think.