Coming Home a Mother - Seeing West Sussex Through a New Lens??

By Lucy Ward

Moving to West Sussex was something of a shock since I had forgotten what life was like outside of the city after living and working in London for more than ten years. Not only because of the change in environment but also because of the lack of diversity. The children went from a very mixed cultural and ethnic school and nursery to predominantly white institutions.  It was very apparent from very early on that this new area and some of its residents were a world apart from our lives in London and I began to understand why many black Londoners are reluctant to relocate to areas where there is not an Afro-Caribbean supermarket nearby. From our Trump-supporting neighbor who shared her disgust of London as I quote, “it is full of blacks” to the child who told my child that she couldn’t join their game because she was “the black kid”. I felt angry that life had forced me to leave Lewisham and that I had brought my children to a place that was so unaccepting of them. I became very conscious of the fact that in this space, my children were often black before they were Savanna or Esmée so I vowed to get back to the city as soon as I could. 

Our move to Sussex happened only a few months before the rise in the BLM movement due to the death of George Floyd in America. Based on what I was learning via the internet and social media, I was not only confronting my own biases and accepting my own white privilege, but I was also witnessing firsthand how these racial biases are impacting the society we live in. Reality really hit me when systemic racism encroached into our lives and my then 8-year-old approached me a week after attending a parents’ evening with her father, who lives back in London. She had noticed that her teacher had started treating her better since learning that she had a father involved in her life, meaning that her teacher had potentially racially profiled her and her father and assumed that he did not play an active role in her life. This is maddening to me as I know many amazing black fathers and just as many absent white fathers. It did not feel real as I had previously been able to stay naive to these issues and I wanted to take my children and run. It felt as though I could no longer protect them. This feeling persisted as anyone I spoke to from this area got it but didn’t really ‘get it’. The general consensus being 'we don't see colour' as a way of sweeping casual racism under the rug. This is not to say that racism does not occur in bigger cities such as London, but it is so much easier to be in environments where it does not.  
Unfortunately, it took me to move to a predominantly white area and for my children to experience racism for me to realize just how much responsibility I bear as a mother raising biracial children. I ensure we visit their paternal side of the family on a regular basis, attend cultural events, incorporate Nigerian and West-Indian cooking into our meals, teach them what I know of their cultures, and call out racism wherever I go. As a person who struggled immensely with speaking up in all situations, educating myself on this topic and standing true to my beliefs has enabled me to now do so naturally, and I encourage people to get uncomfortable and confront their societal conditioning wherever I go. 





I think it is important to emphasize that white parents and the education system should also bear the responsibility of helping us evolve into an anti-racist society. It is so easy to dismiss these issues when they do not affect you or your family, but the fact is young children are still being bullied for their skin color and are still being called racial slurs in the playground. Just because it does not involve you, does not mean you cannot and should not make a difference by having these difficult conversations with your children and diversifying your bookshelves as well as your social circles.  


Although I miss living in London terribly, I made sure to establish us into some wonderful, loving, and open-minded social circles in Sussex and have come to realize that instead of running away, we need to create societies everywhere where everyone from all cultural backgrounds and ethnicities can exist, integrate, and be celebrated for their differences.  

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