Ripple

by Tara Flynn


I live in Dublin, but am from Kinsale, Co. Cork and mad proud of it. My husband is from far away Los Angeles, California. But apart from his having been lucky enough to grow up – as far as I was concerned – in an episode of CHiPs, we’re really very alike. Both around the same age, both work in similar industries, both love to see friends, hang out with our dog and cat and watch TV. Neither of us enjoys confrontation and we try to give people the benefit of the doubt. We both like Mexican food but neither of us is too gone on tomatoes. On paper, then, fairly similar.

But I am white and he is black.

The first time I went to L.A., we were just married. I was so excited. Not only were we going to be in our very own episode of CHiPs, but I couldn’t wait to see where he was from. To know him that much better. We visited the graves of his mother and grandma in Inglewood, near where he’d grown up. I met his brilliant sister. I was introduced to his old friends and favourite cinemas. We stayed in a clean-but-creepy motel and bought ice-pops to cool us down in the unseasonably hot weather.

We were having a lovely time when I suddenly, accidentally ruined it with a touristy question: could we drive back to the creepy motel via fancy schmancy Bel Air? We’d be taking Sunset anyway, and I was dead keen to see the fantasy homes with their lush lawns that may as well have been carpet, despite the drought.

My husband’s smile dropped for the first time since we’d landed in California. “Honey,” he said, “do you mind if we don’t? I don’t want us to get pulled over. Not on honeymoon.” “Why would we get pulled over?” (My tiny brain is very slow.) He patiently explained that in our shiny rental car, it was highly likely he’d be pulled over. “But why?” I asked again, quick as ever on the uptake. “Because I’m black,” he said.

And with that, years of privilege I knew to exist but hadn’t fully felt, weighed on my shoulders like lead. My whole body responded: blood drained from my cheeks. My ears rang and I thought I might faint. Nothing had happened, but everything changed: the reality hit me hard that someone I loved, someone just doing a fun honeymoon thing, would be treated differently from me solely because of the colour of his skin. The full realisation was important. I count that awful moment as one of the best of my life.

When someone you love is attacked, you have a visceral response. Adrenaline rushes, your fists clench. You want to stand with them at all costs. You want to fight. Now that I knew, really knew, what my husband faced all the time – some innocuous situations, others undeniably dangerous – I found myself constantly primed. I’m always ready to fight. Not physically – I’m not an eejit and I’m kind of small, plus we do still prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt. But I will not let it stand when someone humiliates someone I love. Because they are wrong.

Walking through Temple Bar recently, my husband slipped on slick cobblestones, and two D4 bucks outside a pub chipped in that he “probably tripped over his penis”. I saw red. Shaking, I called them out. Apparently “they meant it as a compliment” and had no inkling of the reason for my anger. Their eye rolls told me as much. No question of  “Are you ok? Did you hurt yourself?” Those words didn’t enter their minds - they saw a black guy and their heads filled with nothing but penis, god love them.

You may remember what happened when the same husband had racist epithets hurled at him in my hometown. I made a satirical video about a place where people like the epithet-hurlers might feel comfortable: a Racist B&B. Response was generally positive: it got people talking and put us in touch with ENAR and ROI Against Racism, but the trolls came out to play too. They said terrible things about both of us. Violent things. I’m getting used to that now, as my husband always has been. My tiny mind is expanding to meet his experience.

I used to consider myself pretty switched on. I had read about the Civil Rights movement. I knew about slavery. I couldn’t even get my head around the concept of segregation. Miscegenation is a stupid, stupid word, although we cannot forget that it would have been against the law for us to marry not so long ago. I consciously try to check my privilege all the time. But it’s different knowing a thing to living a thing. My journey’s only beginning.

When you abuse my husband, you abuse me. When you hurt a member of someone’s family, it ripples through that whole family and out into the community. Into society. It is impossible to witness the effect of racism on someone’s life, on the very core of their being, without being shaken by it and wanting to do something about it. If all we can do is not stand for idiotic comments, let’s start there. If we can do more, let’s.

The first step is to open our eyes.







Here is the link for the video mentioned in this blog post www.youtube.com/watch?v=J80q7Q3UIEM
You learn more about Tara on her website www.taraflynn.ie or on her twitter @TaraFlynn  https://twitter.com/TaraFlynn