By Stanley Collymore
Why can’t you leave well alone and stop sticking your
oar unwarrantedly and unwelcomed into what
frankly doesn’t concern you? Don’t you
think you’ve caused enough trouble
already as it is; and what makes
you think that your belligerent and unwanted
interference in a private affair, which to
be quite honest with you is none of
your business, is going to help
matters in any way? Because it won’t I assure
you, as I’ve heard it all before and I don’t
give a damn what you or others think
or say as what you’re indulging in
is both utterly senseless and
also downright irrational.
You’re my sister not my keeper, and as a responsible
adult I’ve a specific duty to myself to individually
choose how I legally want to live my own life
as well as ultimately determine what’s best
for me; and not be forced, whether out
of societal pressure, sibling coercion
or the undue influences of others
into subverting those inalienable
rights which I’m entitled to, to
the capricious or, worst still,
the perverse demands of
people who might very
well be complete
strangers to
myself.
Far less so have these rights summarily hijacked by a
scheming sister for the gratuitous satisfaction and
the sole purpose of her utterly selfish and biased
agenda, and who I categorically know that
while unasked nevertheless wastes no
opportunity that she can grab for herself
to tell anyone who’ll bother to listen
to her that her life is her own and
she’ll do with it as she damn
well pleases, still thinks
that she has a right to
control my life.
And to be fair to you Sis you’ve lived your life as you
pleased and effectively done so every since you
were a teenager. So what’s the difference
then between your right to choose who you want to
share your life with, and moreover do so without
your countenancing let alone tolerating any
criticism or input of whatever kind or
however beneficial it might be to
you from any source, and my
earnestly wishing to do
the same things too
with my life?
Except, of course, that while you’re ecstatically happy to
shack up with someone of your own race and unmarried
have his kids, you nevertheless in your sick mind
consider it rather infra dig for me to marry the
Blackman I very much love and who I know
genuinely and respectfully reciprocates
that love; and furthermore intend to
have lawfully conceived, born,
properly raised and immensely loved
children by him; which is a darn sight
more than can be said for the feral
and pallid bastards, in every
sense of the word, that
you’ve produced.
© Stanley V. Collymore
26 October 2013.
Commentary
On the 25 January 1964 a baby girl was born at a hospital in the North Riding of Yorkshire England to a maxed race couple. The black father was from Barbados and the white mother from Yorkshire and they had both met while they were student nurses at a major psychiatric hospital in the North Riding.
Both parents were 19 at the time and the young woman’s pregnancy caused quite a stir among the hospital’s administrators and even some of the white female nurses that were themselves routinely sleeping with the small number of black male nurses: the complement of black nurses, male as well as female, at the hospital in question was very small in any case; however this pregnant young lady was upbraided by her colleagues and superiors, at a time when the pill was unheard of and other forms of contraception were haphazard to say the least, not for having sex with a black man which they said she should have done covertly and was always deniable if openly challenged as many of the others were doing but because she had got herself pregnant which was a fait accompli.
On being told of her condition from the outset the child’s father offered marriage and although he had not yet reached the age of 21, the legal age of majority then, his parents not desirous of their son having an out of wedlock child, a sentiment shared by his grandparents and other close relatives but also happy about his relationship, since they were totally convinced that the young man genuinely loved this girl having communicated his feelings for her to them all, were very much in favour of his marrying the girl and happily and unanimously granted their consent. However the girl’s parents refused all such overtures and demanded that their daughter have an abortion, which then was illegal under any circumstance. The girl refused and decided to have her baby.
Already forced to give up her nursing job she was admitted to a home for unmarried mothers which were themselves quite replete in England at the time where she stayed until the delivery of her child at a neighbouring maternity hospital on the 25 January 1964. Still together despite the ostracism they’d been subjected to the father was at the birth, something quite usual now and certainly so then and probably only occurred because the matron of that hospital was herself Black and empathized with their plight.
It had been agreed from the outset of the young lady’s pregnancy, a suggestion made by the woman’s black partner and would-be husband, that whether or not her parents allowed them to be married he very much intended that their child be officially registered in his name. This happened with him even with the mother’s voluntary permission as well allowing him when he went to the local registry office to give the baby girl the names they’d both agreed on.
Unwilling to have her back home this young mother had to make do with returning to the home for unmarried mothers and when it was suggested and mutually agreed by the child’s father, his parents and even relatives in Barbados to have the baby entrusted to the care of his paternal biological relatives, the girl’s parents who didn’t want her home because of the shame they perceived she’d brought to their all-white community in Yorkshire, stepped in and blocked this agreement.
Instead they suggested that the baby girl should be adopted or else failing that fostered by a white couple. At the home for unmarried mothers where all this was taking place the young mother was again subjected to endemic racism not only from the home’s warden, who told her that she should eschew marrying any Blackman since no matter how civilized they appear to be they were in actuality not so; and not having been to the West Indies herself, much less so Barbados voiced the opinion that a white woman, regardless of who she was, was a feather in a black man’s cap in these overseas countries, but also the all-white complement of unmarried mothers there whose children, or as yet unborn ones, were for the most part as a direct consequence of affairs that these young women had with married men still very much committed to their wives and the families from them, whether or they unwittingly knew in some of these instances that they were fathering kids they didn’t sire. As such these unmarried mothers views were the same as everyone one else; clandestinely sleeping with a Blackman was fine, getting pregnant by him in a love relationship, which in their opinion should never have taken place, was unforgivable!
Unable to exercise any legal force in the matter because he wasn’t married to this young mother, her parents still holding out against this, and his parents and relatives though keen to have the baby to raise and bring up as their own, and everyone fully cognisant that the courts would not rule in the father’s favour the father and his relatives accepted the inevitability; that while the girl’s parents didn’t want to have the child themselves they would dog in the major style do everything they could to stymie the father and his family from having the little girl. And they did!
Eventually the little girl was placed with white foster parents that told the father when he asked to be allowed to visit her that his presence would upset her as she had only seen white people around her and the presence of a black man, even someone who was her father, would be upsetting to her. As a condition of being allowed back home the young mother had been forced to consent to this state of affairs which obviously put a strain on her relationship with the child’s father; all the more so because her own parents were doing their very best to get her married off to any white man that would have her.
The child’s father meanwhile financially carried on supporting his child and eventually the child’s mother was allowed to resume her nursing training at another Yorkshire hospital. But the relationship between the two parents had become strained not least because the Barbadian male proud of his ancestry and lineage wasn’t prepared to compromise either for the sake of white acceptance. Sometime later he got word that his girlfriend had met and was about to marry a white man who was in the British Army. Born in Britain himself his parents and lineage weren’t English but he was white and acceptable.
Married, the little girl was ultimately allowed to go to the home of her maternal grandparents who told everyone that she was Portuguese, even though she had no such lineage, and that they were fostering her; but even the girl herself was told this. Uncaring at first about his wife having had a child by a Black man it was a case of out of sight and out of mind. However when he was unable to produce one of his own things changed and deep resentment set in. The girl, who had earlier been allowed to stay with her mother and him for economic reasons, child benefit and an army house, suddenly became a target of his abuse.
Shut out of his child’s life the biological father still refused to give up and since the other side wasn’t going to relent decided that he would wait until the girl in question was 21 and contact her personally. Which he managed to do, only to discover that she had been trying to do the same herself going by the details of him and her on her birth certificate but to no avail. That meeting happened in 1985.
The story this young woman had to tell was quite traumatic, including how she’d been kicked out of the home she shared with mother and stepfather when she was 16 and literally lived rough. Soon after that she fell in love with someone she met, who was white, said he loved her and got her pregnant but when she related her condition to him he simply deserted her.
Left to bring up a child on her own she got no moral or physical support from her mother, who desperately trying to salvage a marriage that was seriously on the rocks had no time for her daughter or grandchild. Ultimately, or rather inevitably, that marriage collapsed, she got a divorce and quickly went into another marital relationship with a divorced white man with several children from his former marriage. But the ironic and sad thing is that while this woman was more than happy to fully embrace and welcome these step kids of hers there was still no empathy shared with her own daughter.
Cruelly her own daughter was very much on the outside and when her deserted lover turned up and said he was sorry to have left her and their son she believed him and took him back. Not long after that she was pregnant again, he instantly disappeared once more, and she would be physically and psychologically lumbered with not one but two sons to raise on her own. But there’s a happy ending to this story; for at a time when she wasn’t looking for love and was committed to doing her best for her two boys come what may, a young man of principle met her through these same two lads; took to them, befriended the mother and ultimately persuaded her that he loved her and convinced her that she should trust him.
A most difficult task to accomplish; but through patience, endurance and personal integrity he managed it and they eventually got married and still are. Significantly too, he adopted both boys, encouraged her not to give up the search for her biological father, and with that task achieved, started a family of their own: a daughter to complement the two sons they already have. This remarkable man, incidentally, is white and British, but racism neither from the outset of their relationship nor at any stage throughout it, right up to the present, has never featured in the remotest sense in their beautiful relationship together. And why should it when they both see themselves and each other as worthy human beings?
Regrettably though this is far from the norm in racist Britain where the mantra is that black men are unreliable and make bad parents. It’s a mantra that even several of our successful mixed race English citizens of both genders and of black/white racial lineage actually believe, having been fed the same racist crap by their white mothers. The truth is that no self-respecting black man who is worth his salt is going to stick around with a white women, not even one he freely got married to, that asininely believes that her skin colour, and being regarded as or looked upon by that white clan she still desperately wants to feel a part of, no matter how many insults or acts of ostracism those who’re in it individually or collectively direct at her, is going to put up with that kind of intrinsic racial brainwashing which makes him feel infinitely less than the human being he is. Something that these white women would never subject a white man to.
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