Seven Weeks, Four Women

Chapter one - Day one...

Multiculturalism. That great British acheivment of the 21st century. People of all nationalities and colours and creeds and religions and just about every shade of (in)difference, all melting together in this beautiful pot we call home. So harmonious is this state of shared identity that the greater the level of diversity, the more the dominant 'race' feels squashed and like their way of life is somehow threatened it would seem. Does this push different ethnic communities together or divide them? Questions, questions. I am here seemingly because I seek answers. Not sure I've particularly found them though.

I've been coming here, to this support group for six months now. Maybe I thought I'd find some acceptance in a group of non- white women. Maybe I thought I would find friendship and that sense of identity I have always been seeking. Other black or even mixed race kids didn't want to play with me growing up. On the estate me and my mum lived on, whites, blacks and the mixed crew were all pretty separate and for a time, I slotted in with the white kids, who thought my British Jamaican accent and frizzy hair was funny but at least they accepted me. At first anyway.

Last week Sharon, our glorious leader, made the statement that what most white people just don't get is what it is like to live in a society where most people are a different colour to you and how crushing it is to be aware that the colour we, as women of colour, represent is deemed to be of less value. She said maybe all white people should go and live in a West African country or India for a year or two as a way to get their heads around this. Everyone laughed. Everyone that is except for me.

She is going to be late tonight and sent Abeenah a text telling her to let us all know and for us to start without her. Laughable really that she would even suggest proceedings could possibly need her arrival to begin. She must be aware that the people here respect and accept her less than they do me, albeit for entirely different reasons.

"Must be busy preening that weave of hers and looking at dem pictures of Marilyn Monroe - what should we chat about dis week ladies? De-racialisation within the beauty industry or maybe just the idea of style over dyam content"

(Cue peals of muted laughter)

Elise, our resident orphan, obsessed with her unknown roots, seemingly has just spoken the words that have been resting upon the tips of everyone's tongue for months, because everyone is laughing now. All that is with the exception of humourless, colourless me. To emphasise her affinity with blackness further still, she exaggeratedly and, in my mind embarrassingly sucks her teeth.

"never mind coconut, gyal just need to bleach her skin and she's dere"

"Look now everyone, I am not seeing how this is fair or relevant. Are you not understanding that if it wasn't for Sharon's wonderful organisation skills and care and compassion, none of us would be here, none of us would have this opportunity for support – I mean have any of you got any idea how difficult it is to secure funding for social and community projects nowadays?"

"Na Bee, most of us got no idea 'bout the ins and outs of cuts to community and social grants, not from the side you and Marilyn be coming from, no, we jus' feel it on ground level"

This is the type of debate that has been just aching to happen since day one. If only popcorn was appropriate...lightly salted with the tears of the bourgeoisie in one pack, an edge of saccharine from the bittersweet sweat of the proles in the other. Class, as ever, trumping race and even bleaching out race when you get down to it. Abeenah versus Elise is ultimately a microcosm of the battle between the privileged and the un...but wait...enter our glorious leader, walking straight into a heated debate between the two, with Elise looming aggressively over the wheelchair bound but far from gagged Abeenah, who is taking the former down with a lecture on continuing the slave masters work by othering her fellow sisters. I just find it funny that seemingly no one in this room has any idea that Sharon a'int technically a sister...not strictly speaking anyhow.