Tavistock NHS Commission
This post is part of an on-going series of reflections for a commission from The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. You can read all the posts here. You can view the final images here.
Recently I was commissioned by The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust to make a piece of artwork that explores my experience of mental health services as a non-white and queer artist. The commission will be displayed in their building in north London. The project and corresponding public engagement programme is also supported with additional funding from Arts Council England. I’ll be working on this project for a year.
Since the commission I have been reflecting a lot on my experiences of racism (or the lack of anti-racism), not just within the mental health system, but in general throughout my life. I grew up in a deprived part of Essex where both racism and homophobia were rampant. My father is black and my mother was white. Before I was old enough to even understand the concept of racism, I was introduced to it by strangers who would stop my mother and question her on how we could be her children. Or as people would call her names as she walked down the street with my father and us. One time, whilst on holiday, a man spat at her. My father was adopted — a black child raised by well-meaning white folks who had the best intentions but no experience or knowledge on how to raise a black child in a primarily white, racist area. He experienced a great deal of racial violence growing up. He has also experienced mental health difficulties.
As a child I became acutely aware that we were different from other families simply because of the colour of our skin.
It's interesting that it's only recently that I’ve started to understand how some of the adverse and racist incidents I experienced as a child would of course feed into my mental health difficulties. I think I was around 8 years old and staying at a childminder's house with my older brother when a group of racist children shouted racial slurs and attacked us. A girl threw a wooden plank at me which happened to have a nail in it. It hit me in my forehead and blood poured out everywhere. My brother defended us by throwing a brick back at her. I cringe at the idea of him doing that, but at the same time I expect he felt he had no option but to defend us. I have put experiences like this out of my mind for so long because they were too painful to think about.
In primary school I was often called a Paki. My Dad’s heritage is Caribbean. At first it was hurtful. After years of the name-calling it actually became easy to laugh and ignore it. They can't even get their slurs right, I used to think. Later on in school I would still be called a Paki, or sometimes a nigga. I travelled quite far for school — an hour each way on the bus — and for around two of those years I was bullied daily by an abusive white teenage racist on the way home. This was on a public bus, often packed. This person would publicly call me a nigga and threaten to physically attack me. At times I would stay on past my bus stop because I was too scared to get off the bus with him, for fear of being attacked. I would rather walk home in the dark than deal with him. Not once did anyone speak up or ask if I was OK. At a friend's house on a housing estate a child publicly sang a racist song ("there's no black in the union jack, so send that Paki back!"). Families just watched on, said nothing. The lack of acknowledgement from adults who could have stopped these incidents was and is astounding.
I think these experiences are often the root of some of my anxieties in childhood. Being around other people, just simply existing, became something to be scared of. Not because of my behaviour, but because of the inescapable colour of my skin. I never knew if there would be a racist comment, or even worse, a racist and homophobic comment. I felt that with my queerness I could try to hide it, but I would never be able to change the colour of my skin. I never wanted to be any different or change who I was, I just had to constantly be vigilant in going about my business.
In my experience almost all of the mental health professionals that I have seen have been white. There are many factors I can cite as reasons why I developed mental health difficulties, and racism is one of them. Whilst I don’t experience racism now as often as I did (because I now live in London), the effects of it have stayed with me. Previously when I have tried to express this in therapy, some white therapists just cannot seem to grasp the magnitude of how racism would impact someone long term. Whether it's violent incidents such as being attacked by other children, to the microaggressions of constantly being asked where are you from when what people really mean is why are you brown? Sometimes the frustration of these seemingly small questions — with huge impacts on my identity as a young person — have been glossed over as minor inconveniences.
I don’t believe that someone has had to experience racism or homophobia to be able to understand what it is like — we can't and won't all experience certain prejudices in our lives. Yet in my experience the lack of sensitivity, or the severity of incidents being undermined simply because it's difficult for other people to comprehend, is dangerous. When I have been shut down or my thoughts on my experiences with racism have been minimised it means I will simply stop sharing them. I get smaller because someone isn't willing to go on that journey with me because of their discomfort.
Throughout this project I'd like to keep having open dialogues about what it means to not be white, to experience racism in the world, and then within a system that intends to help, but sometimes ends up being racist itself. Alongside the commission to create my own art piece I'll be commissioning ethnically diverse artists to deliver a series of creative workshops with mental health staff, exploring their own mental health experiences with opportunities for learning (for all of us!). Within my practice it's common for me to deep dive into my lived experience, using my own experiences as the catalyst for wider conversations about difficult subjects. This will be the first time I've really had the time and resources to reflect on my experiences of racism and how the work can be used to challenge some of the biases and systems in place to support others.
A few months ago, during a period of Zoom fatigue, I started drawing. It was mainly so I could look down and not at the screen to help take some of the strain off. I wasn't quite sure what I was drawing. Some people said they looked like maps, labyrinths or even fingerprints. Lately I've been doing more of these drawings when thinking about this project and reflecting on my experiences. It keeps me focused to not become distressed by some of the memories of the incidents I've mentioned. The more I look at them the more they feel like a representation of my experiences with mental health services.
They're like an impenetrable maze. Where does it start and where does it end? When I think back to the scared 14-year-old talking to his GP, to now being 36 and still seeing a therapist, I'm acutely aware of just how many services I've been through and how many people I've seen. Some better than others. Some I have had to fight to access. It feels like this project is an opportunity to start unpicking some of these mazes, to start putting clarity to the experiences.
