Hint: It's Not The Americans Who Are Embarrassing Themselves Here...

I hadn’t even reached Ithaca, the tiny university town in upstate New York – my home for the next six years, as I studied for a PhD – when the confusion over my Blackness and British accent began. I was ill-prepared for Matt, the skinny white American in a cap sitting beside me on the plane.

“But you don’t seem like you’re from London,” he said (I’m from Hackney, and very proud). Matt had never been to the UK, let alone London.

Like a lot of Americans. I guess it's OK to sneer at them for that. Anyone sneering at young black British youth for their ignorance would no doubt draw ire so fast it'd make your head spin... 

This response emerges from the US’s own unique history of race and class. The British accent remains for some the epitome of white privilege, reviving memories of high-born English settlers and exuding an air of aristocracy. Blackness signifies the opposite. The property of those settlers. The lowest of the low. Slaves. And so I was violating the US’s time-worn prejudices. Matt was trying to put me back in my place.

Maybe he was trying to be friendly. Or chat you up? Raised, no doubt, on tv shows and films showing polite and friendly British folk, and not noticing the huge chip on both your shoulders... 

I think twice when crossing the road at night and hurry when I see a police car: a reflex that is as much response to the state violence that killed George Floyd as the realities of growing up Black in London.

I thought George Floyd's own violence played quite a big part in that. Funny how it never gets mentioned, isn't it?  

There’s also no shortage of Americans willing to embarrass themselves with stabs at “yes bruv” and “wagwan”. It’s music to my ears when I meet up with other Londoners (I’ve counted four so far) and we lay on an accent so thick some poor kid from Nebraska doesn’t know what language we speak.

Ah, yes. God forbid anyone treat you like that, eh?