In early November 2020, Wimbledon High School alumna, writer and broadcaster, Afua Hirsch, spoke to students and alumnae from across the GDST about her life and career. Growing up in a majority white environment, Afua spoke of how she feels that, as a minority, there is always that gut-wrenching feeling that people are constantly racializing you. Particularly, as a young child, there is this real pressure to assimilate and ‘fit in’ with your classmates or characters that you saw in children’s books.
On writing her best-selling book ‘Brit(ish)’, Afua revealed that understanding racism through learning the history of it and ultimately, developing a language to speak about it has essentially been 'the project of my life’. She made it her mission to help people understand what racism entails without them having to go through the same ordeal she did. As a journalist, shifting the lens from habitually writing about other people onto herself understandably, made her feel very exposed and vulnerable. However, she reiterates the idea that racism is a problem that can be perpetuated in many subtle ways in our society. As a result of this, often, during her childhood, Afua admitted to being unaware of the structural racism inflicted on her. She recalls the time she first heard of the devastating murder of Stephen Lawrence when she was around 13-14 years old. For her, this was a pivoting moment in which she recognised that there was this language of institutional racism inherent - both socially and politically in Britain.
Her book, Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging, published in 2018, is a memoir that addresses a range of Afua’s central concerns pertaining black history, culture and politics in the context of Britain, Senegal and Ghana. To this day, it is undeniable that there is still a substantial misunderstanding of racism, not merely in Britain, but worldwide. One of Afua’s main motivation that encouraged her to publish this book was that she wanted to be able to ‘reach her younger self’. Perhaps there are people who wouldn’t typically read an article from the Guardian or pick up a book about race and identity – she wanted to reach out to these people and assure them that they are not alone. By sharing her personal anecdotes and exposing herself in such a candid light, she aimed to humanise these issues and create a story that people could really relate to. If you would like to gain a deeper insight into the stigmas surrounding racism, I highly recommend you check out her book Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging.
