I met my housemates on SpareRoom. As with all good house-related stories, things didn’t start out weird - the decline into mega-awkward territory has taken a solid three months. I currently share with a couple - let’s call them Gemma and Matt - one other girl who is rarely in, and a cat. At first, everything seemed totally normal and I thought myself lucky to find a cheap south London house in which there was more than enough space to ensure we weren’t in close proximity all the time, but things have now taken a strange turn for the worst and I’m contemplating moving out.
It all started after Gemma and I began to open up to each other during periods in which we were working a lot from home. On our coffee breaks and at the weekends, Gemma told me how she was overcoming some seriously awful personal struggles and the strained relationship with her family. I told her I was going through a different but similarly difficult issue with my own Mum and that I was struggling to embrace my mixed-race identity, having uncovered a big fat, family secret that was forcing me to reexamine my position in the world. We offloaded to each other, as girls do when they start to get comfortable in each other’s company, and I thought my housemates would soon turn to just, actual mates.
I can’t remember when I first picked up on some of the weird, race-related comments from Gemma and her boyfriend, but it was within a few weeks of moving in. I think perhaps the first was in relation to me saying I wanted to try the jerk chicken spot around the corner from our house. Matt responded by saying something like 'well it’s full of black people, so the only reason I’d go in there is to pick up some drugs!' I think I was chopping a pepper at the time and almost sliced a quarter of my finger off whilst suppressing the urge to be sick. What the actual fuck? I silently seethed.
Then a few weeks later, Matt came back from cycling with oil on his arm. Gemma looked at the black smudges, then asked loudly; ‘Oh are you blacking up to make Georgina feel less alone in the house?’ My eyes widened in surprise, my stomach felt as hollow as a paper bag. I remember feeling as if I’d swallowed a stone. But I said nothing and went to my room. Then there were the countless comparisons between me and the cat; Gemma had adopted this black, three-legged cat from Battersea. ‘You’re both double minorities because you’re black and female and he’s black and disabled!’ Gemma giggled on more than one occasion.
The final straw was when Matt stated that he’d seen a poster for HIV and AIDs testing on the back of a bus in our area. The poster had a photo of a black woman on it and he’d remarked; ‘at least they know their audience.' When I hit him with stats that proved that white men are the demographic most likely to be HIV positive in the UK, he grew defensive and attempted to derail the conversation asking; 'what about me? I’m a minority as a white man living in part of South London?’ I was incensed.
That night I requested a house meeting with the three of us and finally mustered up the courage to be direct. ‘I need you to explain some of your comments’ I said. What followed was two-against-one case racial tug-of-war. I was told I was being over-sensitive, that I was reading into things too much, that I couldn’t possibly be offended because they had ‘ethnic friends’. It never dawned on Gemma and Matt that not all ‘ethnic’ people have the exact same sense of humour, that we all react to things in different ways and that some of their comments simply bellied a worrying tone of complete intolerance. As I slowly explained that I didn’t want to have to think about being the only brown person in the house (because why the fuck is it even an issue?), that I didn’t find their comments to be funny and that it was draining having to navigate my identity amongst people who constantly made jokes about it, I eventually received an apology from them both. ‘We now know the boundaries and won’t talk about your race or make those kind of jokes around you again’, they assured me. My friends and family advised me to move out.
The thing is, I’ve had a similar upbringing to Matt and Gemma, we’ve attended similarly good Universities, have similarly interesting jobs and have many of the same cultural reference points. The only difference is, that the colour of my skin and my mixed-race heritage seems to be the subject of what I consider ridicule, but what Gemma and Matt say is simply ‘banter’. Each time I have to call out my housemates on comments that I find completely reprehensible, I have to give up a little piece of my soul. I don’t want to have to explain why being compared to a black furry animal is dehumanising and I don’t want to have to suppress any of my natural self to appease the people I’m living with. I’m now worried about playing certain types of music around them, of cooking certain foods and of just being myself. My penchant for reggaeton and foods with spicy peppers has resulted in curious comments and looks of intrigue - but there’s really nothing exotic or particularly exciting about the way I live my life and to suggest otherwise makes me uncomfortable.
It seems I’m not alone in my thinking. Kenny, 24 who’s British-Nigerian told me how she became the go-to racial explainer for her white housemates whilst living in Bavaria, Germany, but that sometimes people just didn’t get it. ‘Usually in Germany most people tip-toed around race because of the national history’ she said. ‘But one time my housemate said something like “what’s up my nigger” and I was in complete shock - it was almost as if he’d watched too much American TV but I was still not having it. My other housemate had to explain why it wasn’t cool, as did I’.
When I ask her what she thinks of my experiences, Kenny tells me that she doesn’t think I didn’t reacted strongly enough. ‘What you’re telling me is completely insane’ she said. ‘At least my housemates used to check-in with me if they were unsure about what to say. Someone would say something like “is it racist if I say this?”. They wanted me to feel comfortable so that checking-in was kind of nice. Your housemates didn’t once check in to see what you find appropriate. It’s mad they think you’d be OK with all that.’
Of course, I didn’t see any of this coming. When I looked at houseshares, I was only interested in sharing with people who I thought I would click with; I didn’t filter by race. But other black and mixed-race people aren’t doing the same thing and I’m starting to understand why. Facebook groups such as
(https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/9abny3/should-you-be-able-to-choose-the-race-of-people-you-live-with-uk) - even if it's to avoid racism - as they deem it discriminatory.
Margaret, 24 who is of Tanzanian heritage told me she had several awkward encounters in a houseshare with a white landlady. She explained to me why black houseshare groups were important: ‘We have to deal with so much race-related bullshit at work and when it happens it makes us tense up, it makes us uncomfortable...these groups enable us not to have to go through that at home too because it’s long’.
At the moment in my house things are calm again, but I can’t help but approach each interaction with a bubbling sense of trepidation. When’s the next racist joke? How should I react to the future cat-comparisons? I’m lucky in that I have a solid group of socially-conscious black and white friends and family in my life, who I can call on for advice whenever things get tricky or weird. But should my first time living in London away from home really be about swallowing and ignoring racially charged comments in an attempt to keep the peace? I should move somewhere else, but the prospect of hunting for a new house fills me with dread and now we’ve just found a new third housemate, I’m hoping the dynamic will change for the better. I just want to be able to be me, in my own home.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.