As a Black woman, I’ve been discriminated against since birth

It’s a question that has its roots back in primary school and continues now into adulthood.

If the staff that had given me that school report had bothered to ask how I was, they would have discovered that I was being exposed to both physical and emotional abuse at home.

So yes, I was angry at the world, because I did not understand what I was experiencing and why no-one was helping me.

Why did the school not fulfil their legal safeguarding duties and see me as a vulnerable young girl that needed help? 

Because of adultification – a type of racial prejudice in which children from Black, Asian or minority ethnic backgrounds are viewed as more mature than they are.

While I struggled, my white male peers who displayed similar behaviour to me received support via family interventions and 1:1 assistance from our class teacher. 

There was also a time when I showed my friend at school some marks on my arm that had been inflicted on me by my caregiver. My peer was worried about me and found what I had shown her upsetting, so they told my teacher.

But my teacher was more concerned with comforting my friend (who was white), rather than me, the person who had experienced the abuse.

Again, I was not seen as vulnerable and I was expected to just get on with things.

And then I was faced with low expectations. At 13 years old, despite my academic ability suggesting otherwise, I was placed in one of the lowest sets for maths and told to do the foundation paper. After much debate, mainly because my mum kicked up a fuss, I was accepted for the higher paper and I achieved a B in GCSE maths.

Ironic really: I ended up getting either the same grade as some people in higher sets or even performing better than them.

It was clear I was being faced with low expectations because, despite my class tests being significantly higher than the average grade of the class, my teacher only reluctantly let me do the higher paper. 

At 18 years old I excitedly told my sixth form tutor that I had just finished submitting my applications for university. She replied by telling me that I would not get accepted anywhere, and that I would be better off applying for a job at McDonald’s because I ‘did not have the aptitude to complete a degree.’ 

However, I was the first person in the sixth form to get three offers – so clearly, the universities saw something in me that my teacher either couldn’t see or she simply chose not to see. 

I am proud to say that I graduated with a first class sociology degree.

Besides, if she didn’t think it was likely that I would get into university, why didn’t my form tutor suggest different pathways I could consider? Because of stereotyping. 

It became apparent from our conversations that, because some statistics have shown that Black people make up the smallest percentage in undergraduate classes, my form tutor thought I was wasting my time applying for university.

The systems we live in, and the people who work within them, need to do better

This unfair treatment continued into the world of work. 

At 21 years old, I had a managerial role in the education sector and within the first three months of being in the job I faced discriminatory and prejudicial behaviour from my manager.

He would deliberately leave me on my own at times when business was at its busiest, held meetings in which he would tell me to quit as it would be ‘for the best’ and held me to a different standard to my colleagues.

He bizarrely kept a diary about me and left it open on our shared desk one day at the office. It listed every single time I had made a mistake – anyone who is a new employee makes mistakes but he’d gone out of his way to document every single one I’d made from the start.

The whole thing was made weirder by the fact my colleagues – some of whom had been in the role longer than me – were fine to make similar and even worse errors without repercussions.

My colleagues were female and white and they were being treated visibly differently from me. So it became hard to ignore that my manager simply did not like me because I was Black because as he put it, he ‘did not like difference’.

What he did like was his team consisting of people that looked like him and unfortunately for me this meant that he made it his mission to get rid of me, one way or another. 

His continuous criticism of me also predominantly focused on my character rather than my ability to perform the job.

In his diary, he stated that I was ‘playing a game’ because he couldn’t tell if I was happy or sad, and that I could not be trusted – not just as an employee, but as a person in general.

I witnessed my manager also treat other Black females who were in a junior position to me negatively.

I complained to my company about my experience but nothing was done aside from mediation because the employer assumed that it was a simple conflict of personalities.

It was not a conflict of personalities, which after several months my employer eventually acknowledged. 

They ‘resolved’ the issue by moving the manager to another part of the organisation – something that they failed to tell me. 

Why was my manager able to get away with his behaviour for so long? Because of a lack of accountability. My employer did not believe that my voice mattered, clearly demonstrated by their failure to take action.

Does your gender and colour of your skin influence how you are treated throughout your lifetime? If my experiences proves anything – yes, it does

The experience severely impacted my mental health, to the extent that my doctor had to sign me off from work for several months.

These experiences weren’t just limited to education and work either. 

At 26 years old I went to the police station to report a rape that I’d been a victim of. I was questioned by a sexual offences investigative technique trained officer (SOIT) who asked me if the crime was gang-related. 

I thought that it was maybe just a standard question that everyone was asked, but as I was repeatedly asked if it was gang-related, despite my saying no, it became more like a statement than a question. 

I then realised that they weren’t asking if the crime committed against me was gang-related out of concern for my safety. I was being asked if I was in a gang because I was Black. 

I was disgusted, upset and shocked at this revelation. I had gone to the police for help and to receive justice. Yet, the SOIT officer thought it was appropriate to essentially tell me that I was wasting my time and implied that my sexual assault was due to me being in a gang.

The experience really opened my eyes to discrimination within the criminal justice system and how Black females are treated.

I want to acknowledge that progress has been made – some organisations and institutions are more open to hearing feedback from those that face race-based issues such as adultification, low expectations, stereotyping, accountability, and discriminatory and prejudiced attitudes. 

However, the systems we live in, and the people who work within them, need to do better.

If systems improved, Black girls and women would feel seen and they would have more confidence and trust regarding being treated equally to their peers. So, going back to my original question: does your gender and colour of your skin influence how you are treated throughout your lifetime?

If my experiences proves anything – yes, it does. But we should all work towards a world where this is not the case.