Gifty BurrowsGifty talks about her childhood leaving Ghana as a 7 year old girl with her younger brother without being able to speak English. Her upbringing in Huddersfield and Bury in an exclusively white neighbourhood brought her face to face with insidious racism. She describes how her self-confidence grew out of necessity whilst graduating as a nurse in Leeds. After meeting her husband whilst students at university she mentions the difficulties experienced in embarking on a mixed-marriage and the challenges of staying together whilst raising 3 children in a rural East Yorkshire market town. Her drive to challenge the stereotypes of blackness in all forms of life has brought her to this point where the African Stories project is helping to bring history of people of African descent to a wider audience.
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Transcription: Gifty burrows Interview
Interview with Gifty Burrows
Interviewer: Jerome Whittingham
Date: 2017
JW: So introduce yourself and most importantly though tell me what your connection is to Africa?
GB: OK. My name is Gifty Burrows and I was actually born in Ghana
JW: In Ghana. The name Gifty, it’s quite an unusual name isn’t it and I’ve always wanted to ask you why your parents called you Gifty.
GB: Well I presume they thought that I was a gift but I get asked that quite often and I don’t think I’ve ever asked them but I presume that it signifies something precious and.. well I like to think so anyway.
JW: Can we put a date on your birth?
GB: Ooh the late 60s.
JW: The late 60s that’s close enough. So, tell me something about the family background then the jobs that your Mum and Dad had, that sort of thing.
GB: My parents, well certainly my father came as a student to this country and then went into nursing so they were both psychiatric nurses. My mother was a SEN which is …. there used to be many tiers of nursing way back when. SEN was the lower of the two, with SRN being the other one. So she was an SEN and stayed, more or less, in that role. My father climbed up to be management. Historically a lot of certainly Black ethnic people were encouraged to do the SEN role which is the lesser role so you would find a lot of people of a certain generation did that and maybe later transferred to the more senior grade.
JW: What were your family involved with employment wise back in Ghana?
GB: A lot of Ghanaians are involved in farming because it’s a ‘needs must’ it’s a way of sustaining yourself. Even affluent people tend to have some sort of farming connection so yes so very much so. My parents, especially my father, was from a quite a privileged background I suppose, in relative terms but yeh farming was the main thing. So, you would have things like cocoa farms, which is cocoa where chocolate comes, you would have palm and all the citruses as well, oranges and lemons and that sort of thing.
JW: So what do you remember of your very very early childhood in Ghana?
GB: I don’t really remember very much partly because I have a terrible memory at the best of times even long term memory. I came here when I was 7 so yeh I should remember more than I do but I can remember living with my Aunt. At various points my parents were studying or they came ahead of my brother and I. I’ve got a younger brother. I’ve got a much younger sister as well but she was much later. So there was my brother and myself and I remember being with him I also remember being with …. my Grandma was very very important to me, she was quite precious and a lot of my fond memories are of her. I lived with my Aunt because my parents I say were elsewhere or studying or doing other things.So I can remember being by the coast. When I go the coast even now there’s a sort of recollection a sort of remembrance if you like of being little, and being by the coast. So yeh my Aunt worked in the bank and that was quite a high-status profession at the time so I can remember being quite proud and feeling quite proud.
JW: What about school life then. I don’t suppose you really remember a great deal of school life in Ghana?
GB: No not really. What I do remember is the uniforms and the perfectly turned out children. And it’s funny when I’ve been back on holidays it’s quite…it’s a lovely sight to see all the schoolchildren perfectly groomed, totally proud in their uniforms, quite colourful in their uniforms and with short hair. My recollection, I don’t know whether it’s the same now but young pupils, were, girls were encouraged to have short hair so that it wasn’t a case of pride you know your focus was on your studying rather than twiddling with your hair. So yeh.
JW: So did your Mum and Dad come over to the UK at the same time?
GB: My father came first then later my Mum. I think again I don’t know whether I’m generalising but it’s sometimes the case that one comes first economically so that, you know, the other can afford to come later
JW: It must have been quite a shock then for you, as a 7 year old, to come over to a place that you knew nothing of...
GB: Oh I can remember the wrench of being separated from my Grandma that was…it still is the sort of…you still remember it because it’s just so, it felt so dramatic at the time. I can remember that sense of loss. I can remember the cold that everybody talks about. I can remember that contrast of the cold but not really. I know that when we first came we lived in Huddersfield. I’ve lived in several places but Huddersfield was our first, the first place we lived so I’m a sort of a bit of a yo-yo I’ve been to Yorkshire then Lancashire and now I’m back in Yorkshire
JW: Which do you prefer?
GB: Oh well I like, I like Yorkshire, I do like Yorkshire but then having said that I used to live in Bury and I’ve visited, and near Ramsbottom and the likes, I like countryside and there’s a beauty in there as well
JW: So moving to Huddersfield, that’s quite multi-cultural, diverse background
GB: Well it is and it isn’t because my recollection of it. Yes it’s probably the most multi-cultural place that I’ve lived, as I say my memory’s not as it should be but I remember being in a school where there were different ethnic people of ethnic minorities because I simply remember for the bullying which ironically was from the West Indians against the Africans. Yes, it must have been a sense of multi-culturism there but I didn’t, we didn’t stay there long and when we moved to Bury it was certainly not that the case at all at that time. Bury has changed enormously in the years that followed but at that time it wasn’t multi-cultural at all. In fact, most of my life I’ve been the only one as it were, I’ve never lived in a Black area.
JW: So moving around as a young child, I suppose you talked about that loss of being separated from your Grandma but what about friends that you were making, your peer group.
GB: You mean from Ghana to here?
JW: Well, yes
GB: or moving around generally? Yeh I don’t really, ironically I don’t remember, although I don’t remember people from my childhood days when I was much older when I was about 16, 18 we went back on holiday there and faces became familiar. I remembered my family. I remembered close friends or certainly yeh there was some memories so that people weren’t entirely strangers. And then of course you get the, their memories that you absorb as your own. They tell you things how you used to be and suddenly you’re not sure where the blurred lines lie. Whether it’s a true memory or it’s a memory which they share with you that you then absorb. I don’t recollect, I certainly remember family members more from the time I was young. So their faces were familiar. But moving around the country, I moved from Huddersfield when I was about 11, I would say to Bury and then we moved several times within Bury. … no I’ve not really, I was never one for loads of friends. I had a few close friends and really, that stems from the fact that I was intensely shy as a child, so much so that I can remember… Aunts coming, Aunts that aren’t quite Aunts but close family friends and I would hide away and not want the conversation and that sort of thing. So yeh, I was painfully shy as a child so my friends were few.
JW: So when did that change?
GB: Oh people, people have a skewed sense. Inside I still feel like that shy, I don’t know, 10 year old or whatever. Unfortunately, that’s not what people see. My sense of self is far removed from what people think I am. I think that is often the case.
JW: …Subjects at school, what were your favourites, what were you good at?
GB: …Science, I loved science, and I loved history, I always loved history. Science partly because being from I suppose an African family, again I may be generalising there but certainly from my family, the aspirations were that you had to do well and doing well from my parent’s background was science and as I said they both ended up being nurses. So, science was the focus and I did enjoy it. I was good at physics and chemistry…and latterly biology but I loved history. But the encouragement was to go down the science route partly because I never really did know what it was I wanted to do and latterly came O levels and A levels. It was suggested that I did nursing so that honed in on human biology which I loved. I think our bodies are endlessly fascinating so…yeh science and my first degree was nursing,so.
JW: Did you practice as a nurse?
GB: Oh yeh, yeh, yeh. I qualified. I was one of the new cohorts back in the day of doing nursing degrees so we were the trailblazers. We got a lot of stick. I trained at Leeds Poly at the time and we got an awful lot of stick because there was the envy and disagreements of nurses should be in hospitals etc. And then many years later they all did follow and you know that was the norm and now they’re thinking of going back to how it was. But Yeh so I’m qualified and I did renal nursing on a ward. I did practice nursing for a lot of times. I did the care homes as well because when you have children you do things to fit in and I came out of nursing partly when I had my third child and because we didn’t have family living nearby it was tricky for child care. The shifts and that was difficult so I stayed at home because personally I wanted to bring up my own children for a time. I did work part-time while they were little but in the end with 3 small children it was more viable and I wanted to be at home. When the kids were all at school and friends started returning back to work I looked around and thought what else I could do and… my first, well I did various courses, just to stimulate my mind I suppose and then I got a little job as a census enumerator and in collecting the censuses one year I saw that there was a lot of people that kept saying things like ‘Oh I’ve left my glasses can you fill it in love’ and all the avoidance strategies that you get and it just coincided with the time when I saw a basic skills, a sort of little course that I went to, from there somebody suggested why don’t you do a PGCE so I went into that and ended up teaching. So again, that was by accident too and then latterly I became a dyslexia specialist because that tied in with the caring, I suppose the nursing, science combining the two that’s how it evolved really.
JW: OK, so how long have you been teaching?
GB: I’ve been teaching for ooh, something like, maybe about 14 years. I started off teaching people with learning disabilities. I’ve always been in the sort of teaching English that sort of thing.
JW: Let’s talk about influences outside of academia then. What are your interests, any cultural activity? Anything like that
GB: I’ve always had quiet hobbies. I loved reading. I read a lot or I used to read a lot ‘til this project when time allowed. I used to like sewing in the days of cross-stitch like everyone did in the 1980s, that was quite productive. So yes I’ve not been one really for team sports though I did love rounders and netball when I was at school so not being that sporty really I suppose maybe that’s a remnant of my shyness and wanting the quietness. I’ve always been quiet, so music I do enjoy music.
JW: Do you play an instrument?
GB: I would love to play an instrument but I was rubbish. Even the recorder when we were at school, everybody could play it except me. I’ve never been able to understand or read music but I have I suppose a deep appreciation, I admire people that can. Some of my family can and do and I think it’s magical to be able to do it but yeh I’ve got I enjoy it, I’ve got a good sense of beat, I love dancing.
JW: Have there been any major Black icons or others that have influenced you?
GB: … I can’t say that I do have any icons. There has been people you know on telly or whatever that has floated by and the rest of it. Good orators always sort of catches your eye, but partly because as I say I’ve lived in a mainly white area there was through my education there was no opportunity of seeing anything other than the indigenous population of white faces, white stories ,white narrative… so there was never an opportunity to sort of foster that, it would have been good to be open to people of history for example that were notable or even artists that were notable other than you know what you choose in pop yourself so and I think in some ways that’s missing that sense of somebody that is held up as somebody to admire that it hasn’t stemmed from popular culture.
JW: …., how did you meet your husband?
GB: … my husband’s Adrian. I met him at University, or rather I was at the Poly and he was at the University which he always tells me. We met at a party that a mutual friend threw. She was on my course and she actually came from his home town. Yeh, met in a pub and away we went from there, but strangely enough my husband lives near Cleethorpes, Humberston and um I was the first Black person that he had encountered. I mean he’d seen, his brother lived in London for a time, he’d been down to London and I think he said himself that the first time he visited his brother was the first time he’d seen Black people that weren’t on the telly and then he certainly didn’t know any Black people and then he met me and yeh, the irony of it.
JW: What sort of reaction did your marriage have at the time, or has had since?
GB: Well, it was a bit of a grenade shall we say. I would like to think that it was smooth sailing, but it wasn’t…from both sides of the family it wasn’t smooth sailing. And sometimes the reasons for objections are quite understandable and they are understandable from me as well because some of their fears and worries was mine. It’s often the case I mean marriages break up now more so than they used to in the old days but I got married at a time where it was deemed that mixed marriages don’t last because of, not often because of pressures between yourselves but external pressures. Pressures of judgement and other people’s opinions that they force into you know your lifestyle, your marriage, and it was a fact, I don’t know what the statistics are now but we’ve been married for, oh I’m going to get into trouble now,
JW: Some time?
GB: For 27 years. So we’ve been the statistics that’s proved it wrong really. But no it’s not been plain sailing, it hasn’t been plain sailing, even when we got together, as I say having lived in a white area all my life I was quite used to the asides, the looks, everything else. I think it was an eye opener for my husband when he observed and heard mutterings and things. For example, when I was at school, there was racism there. I wasn’t always aware of it but latterly with conversations with my parents it became apparent. Little things like… all the kids were entered for Maths O level, and Maths wasn’t my strongest subject but they wouldn’t enter me for Maths O level even though I wasn’t any worse than some of the kids that were and my father, this is something that he tells me later. I didn’t know then because you don’t always know as children but he went in and insisted that they entered me, and I got a C. I, I, he was right but that opportunity was not afforded to me and it couldn’t be anything other than on a racial line because the other kids that were just the same on the same group were. Those the things that pass you by as a child because you don’t know and you haven’t learnt the subtleties but as an adult you can see that. So for the similar reason when I would go in ‘cause there was issues at school my children probably thought that I was making a big deal out of nothing but I could see the bigger picture and I could see where that would stem from and how that would impact on them and how they might carry some of those scars if I didn’t address it because being impotent isn’t good, but you’re tainted with that tone of you’re aggressive and if you stand up for yourself you’re deemed to be, you know it’s not what one expects and maybe, again its going back to the stereotype, you should be pigeon holed into a sort of behaviour and if you step out of that or if you buck the trend or if you challenge, you know it’s not comfortable for the other person but that gets transferred onto, it’s your problem and I think that becomes an issue.
JW: Sticking up for yourself, has that sort of crossed over into sticking up for other minorities?
GB: Yes, yes it has and I suppose the job I chose to do says that… I’ve always been one for looking at the disadvantaged thinking why? I think why was a constant question on my lips. But too often people just accept. Things are said and people just nod and accept it as fact but, I don’t know, maybe I’m a bit more inquisitive than that, the why question comes in and why is somebody less worthy because their skin colour is different. Why is somebody not able to go into the main entrance because things haven’t been, simple things haven’t been put in place to allow that. You know it’s about fairness and fairness is always, you know as I’ve got older fairness has always rankled and really as I’ve read and as I’ve had the confidence to be able to justify my position, yes I do challenge things and part of this project is about challenging pre-conceived ideas and long held beliefs that aren’t necessarily from any shape or thinking. And I think in some ways science does that for you and that’s what I say to my husband and kids. Science gives you a bit of common sense, of reason and think and yeh think why things are.
JW: So tell me about Hull, well you don’t live in Hull do you live out in…
GB: I don’t live in Hull, I live in Driffield and have done for something near towards 24 years, and again that’s different
JW: I was going to say why did you choose Driffield?
GB: We meandered to all different sorts of places, partly because of my husband’s job. We’ve lived across the water and now we live here and as I say we’ve lived in Driffield for a long time. Driffield has and hasn’t changed, it’s grown in size, there are a few more mixed families, but not so and to some extent because of that I was very very protective of my privacy, because of the lack of anonymity because when you are the only one, the only family, you only need to mention a name, or a reference, and everyone knows where you are, where you live. I can remember we were once, when we first moved to Driffield we had a huge fence to paint and it took ages. We met, we lived on a corner, and we met nearly the entire population it felt like during the time we were painting and I can remember being on the other side of the fence painting and hearing conversations about us that were going on as people were passing and the novelty of ‘oh this is where that Black one lives’, you know ‘the Black one’, and thinking bizarre, but in addition to that an example of their surprise I suppose and still is I can remember phoning up for work and sounding as I do they come to the door and they don’t expect a Black woman and I’ve had it where they’ve actually said ‘is the lady of the house in’ and or look past me to find who they should be speaking to and you can see the surprise registering on their faces when actually it’s me and they hear me. And it’s the expectation, and it’s the expectation as well that people come into my, and people I don’t know, or maybe people I know and this is something that maybe I haven’t been privy to and somehow they expect it to be different, but then maybe the media perpetuates that but they find that we’re very ordinary and same as anybody else really.
JW: So being Black, for some people it’s a positive or the experiences that they have being black is positive for some people it’s negative. How do you feel your life balance has been? Have you encountered a lot of racism or are you just generally accepted for who you are?
GB: I’ve encountered a lot of racism and you know going back to the fact that all the areas I’ve lived I’ve been the only one, very few occasions have my brother and I even been in the same school and it’s the sort of racism that it’s insidious but you get used to it. You don’t get used to it that’s perhaps the wrong way, but you learn to ignore to some extent or I did in my younger years only because it would drive you crazy. If you addressed everything and jumped at everybody that thought they were being subtle then it would drive you crazy. And the daft thing is that many people think that you don’t know but everybody that has that sort of negative attitude towards them know, whether they choose to let you know that they know is another matter entirely and this is part of the annoyance if somebody says that somebody is being racist towards them and somebody very well meaning and very well intended or somebody who isn’t racist themselves can’t perceive other people being, to deny that person their experience is appalling and yes it isn’t blatant and yes the little subtleties are not necessarily there for those that aren’t the victims to see or feel but we know, we do know. So in answer to that a lot of it has been negative but as I’ve got older, particularily, in a way my personality has changed, it’s evolved as we all do as we get older we all gain that confidence don’t we but when, in my nursing, as I say I was a very shy teenager a very shy child but in my nursing I had to be assertive. I can remember my tutors almost despairing and forcing me onto the ward and saying ‘You’ve got to speak to these patients’ so I learned to be, more, you know, conversational starter and the rest of it because the job needed it. Going into the ward was more than just the cloak you wore, you became a personality because you had to be as it was, out of it myself and I developed that but more so when I had children being protective of them and not putting up with the nonsense anymore I saw it and what you don’t do for yourself you do for your children and that protective feeling I think sometimes was not necessarily welcomed by my children because I would address things that I felt was unjust or made things a bit more equal for them but that meant stepping out of, you know, the making a stand and children don’t always want that because they see themselves as different.
JW: In terms of racism, are there any differences being Black and being of mixed parentage, thinking about your children
GB: Their experience you mean to mine?
JW: Mmm
GB: Definitely different and I’m learning all the time. There is a difference and even through my own reading there is difference amongst ourselves, amongst Black population of how we perceive ourselves. That lends itself to why I started this project, in that for me for a long time certainly in my education I felt that being here was something new, I felt that the Black presence was something new and something that there was an element that there was an expectation that the population that you should be grateful being here and certainly having read, having seen, having done this project the presence has been long standing so it isn’t new, it’s a myth and a lie.They say that Black presence is new and makes that sense of gratitude and keeps that sense of gratitude that you know Black people owe.That sense of being here and accepted but it’s, and part of that is the learning of slavery and race, some of those attitudes have been long standing and track back way way back. Coming back onto the difference of mixed heritage and being Black, that feeds back into the slavery issue in that there’s this huge perception that Black people absorb as well as the white population of shades of whiteness, shadism, colourism as it’s called where the closer you are to white the better you are because that’s the European vision of beauty. So in having children myself, especially my daughter she’s experienced that notion of the lighter you are the better and even in the mixed population that still holds true. It’s a nonsense that have been absorbed by a lot of Black people which causes, and maybe there’s a reason why it’s perpetuated, maybe it serves some sort of purpose, the in-fighting that happens. The comparison, it’s fighting amongst yourself, it’s destructive. So there is the difference, again as I say I was bullied when I first came to this country by West Indian girls I can remember and that was, looking back, that was that was about. It was about colour even with them and it was about this notion of Africa being less favoured than the Caribbean or West Indies which is ironic because as time has gone on and consciousness, people’s consciousness has been arisen people of the Caribbeans are celebrating their heritage and understanding more of where their origins are and some are changing their names back to where they think they might have originated from. So that is certainly a positive move but the colourism and the shadism and that internal fighting remains and it’s perpetuated.
JW: Is it, is it changing though, slowly decade by decade?
GB: Racism you mean?
JW: Are we becoming more accepting?
GB: No
JW: You don’t think so?
GB: I can only answer on my personal perception and my personal perception is that racism hasn’t changed on iota. What racism is now is a polite face in that, yes there’s legislation that’s been long standing, so people know that it’s not right but what people choose to do is different to what they know to be right. The de-humanising of Black people carries on because that way you can absolve yourself of blame or responsibility. I think people are clever or more mindful of how they exert their racist views and the polite face says that you don’t do it blatantly but it still goes on, very much so. The huge debates that goes on now is very much on the inevitable Brexit, that in itself was a sign. We look at the rise of the right and where there’s poverty or there’s perceived austerity there’s always a fall guy and often that’s immigrants. And the language of the press, the language that we use to describe different things fuel that. The notion of Brits, you know ex-pats against immigrants. People emigrating, they don’t think in those terms it’s a polite form but it’s different. It’s the same thing but under a different name therefore it makes it more acceptable and yeh the othering of everybody else you know, somebody less than themselves and to some extent it’s human nature that we do that that we want to feel that one rung better than somebody else, but it doesn’t make it right and it’s about seeing a bit of humanity in other people.
JW: Have you heard…something of yourself in the other interviews we’ve done for this project?
GB: Yes, I think that’s the strength of this project, the strength of oral histories and I’m not talking about race here. I think lots of races will see themselves in a lot of the stories and that is why I wanted to do it. I wanted to show in doing this that in presenting people that had encountered people of different races that some of their dreams, aspirations, wishes are exactly their own regardless of the colour but I also wanted to demonstrate to people what it felt like to be in a different skin to have a different experience to view the world from a different eyes. In some ways I often say to my husband that it’s different for him to me even as we are in the same relationship. I don’t mean the obvious but I see out, I look out. I’m not presented with my face all the time, he looks at me, he sees the difference and he sees the difference amongst everybody else. I stand out and just as it’s easy for my kids to have spotted me in a crowd, it is whether subconsciously or overtly I, people see me, differently and they will see me differently and…it’s just a fact of, it’s just a fact of life. There is advantages of being different in that in a place where most people are white is that for a long time I become their standard of what Blackness is or what Black people should or shouldn’t do and they perhaps get their construct of Blackness from encounters with me and it’s not true I’m just one person I could be very different from everybody else….but I like to think that I’m a positive experience for them compared to the negative that’s constantly perpetuated in the press and on the telly…and the rest of it. You know it’s…constant. I went to see Richard III and I’m not necessarily there’s some Shakespeare the story line grabs me and some don’t and it was wonderful that the casting but it still made me smile that the witch had the negative character, was the only Black,not the only, but a Black actress. And I did say to my husband why didn’t they cast the Queen as Black that would have been controversial. It’s talked about because one day it’s different but one day it should be part of the story it’s you know there’s that presence, everywhere it’s part of the norm. It’s, I’m not the standard I’m just one person but yes the stories of the races and the stories of the non-races parts of these oral histories, yeh I can see a resonance in all of them
JW: What of the future, after this project?
GB: Oh after this project? Oh gosh get me through this project first. …I don’t know, I’ve learnt so much in doing this project, so much, and I hope certainly… I suppose my mind is so much about this project that I can’t think about, life will carry on as it always has and always will and I’d like to think I can do other things that will make people think because this project for me is just stopping the notion, or helping to stop the notion of Black history, because it isn’t Black history is a history that should be embedded because it’s a normal history and It shouldn’t be segregated because history so much is. I went through all of my education and didn’t read anything from a Black author, none of the historic figures had any Blackness in it. I’m not saying artificially place people in it but there are, they do exist and this project is showing that they did exist. So you know it’s about not limiting your thinking and the world vision is seeing it for what it is rather than censoring it, because I think history is censored, it’s censored on the way the pop,,you know the majority want to see it. I’d like to think that from this I don’t know something comes off this, something positive. I’d be happy but in the meantime yeh life carries on.
Interviewer: Jerome Whittingham
Date: 2017
JW: So introduce yourself and most importantly though tell me what your connection is to Africa?
GB: OK. My name is Gifty Burrows and I was actually born in Ghana
JW: In Ghana. The name Gifty, it’s quite an unusual name isn’t it and I’ve always wanted to ask you why your parents called you Gifty.
GB: Well I presume they thought that I was a gift but I get asked that quite often and I don’t think I’ve ever asked them but I presume that it signifies something precious and.. well I like to think so anyway.
JW: Can we put a date on your birth?
GB: Ooh the late 60s.
JW: The late 60s that’s close enough. So, tell me something about the family background then the jobs that your Mum and Dad had, that sort of thing.
GB: My parents, well certainly my father came as a student to this country and then went into nursing so they were both psychiatric nurses. My mother was a SEN which is …. there used to be many tiers of nursing way back when. SEN was the lower of the two, with SRN being the other one. So she was an SEN and stayed, more or less, in that role. My father climbed up to be management. Historically a lot of certainly Black ethnic people were encouraged to do the SEN role which is the lesser role so you would find a lot of people of a certain generation did that and maybe later transferred to the more senior grade.
JW: What were your family involved with employment wise back in Ghana?
GB: A lot of Ghanaians are involved in farming because it’s a ‘needs must’ it’s a way of sustaining yourself. Even affluent people tend to have some sort of farming connection so yes so very much so. My parents, especially my father, was from a quite a privileged background I suppose, in relative terms but yeh farming was the main thing. So, you would have things like cocoa farms, which is cocoa where chocolate comes, you would have palm and all the citruses as well, oranges and lemons and that sort of thing.
JW: So what do you remember of your very very early childhood in Ghana?
GB: I don’t really remember very much partly because I have a terrible memory at the best of times even long term memory. I came here when I was 7 so yeh I should remember more than I do but I can remember living with my Aunt. At various points my parents were studying or they came ahead of my brother and I. I’ve got a younger brother. I’ve got a much younger sister as well but she was much later. So there was my brother and myself and I remember being with him I also remember being with …. my Grandma was very very important to me, she was quite precious and a lot of my fond memories are of her. I lived with my Aunt because my parents I say were elsewhere or studying or doing other things.So I can remember being by the coast. When I go the coast even now there’s a sort of recollection a sort of remembrance if you like of being little, and being by the coast. So yeh my Aunt worked in the bank and that was quite a high-status profession at the time so I can remember being quite proud and feeling quite proud.
JW: What about school life then. I don’t suppose you really remember a great deal of school life in Ghana?
GB: No not really. What I do remember is the uniforms and the perfectly turned out children. And it’s funny when I’ve been back on holidays it’s quite…it’s a lovely sight to see all the schoolchildren perfectly groomed, totally proud in their uniforms, quite colourful in their uniforms and with short hair. My recollection, I don’t know whether it’s the same now but young pupils, were, girls were encouraged to have short hair so that it wasn’t a case of pride you know your focus was on your studying rather than twiddling with your hair. So yeh.
JW: So did your Mum and Dad come over to the UK at the same time?
GB: My father came first then later my Mum. I think again I don’t know whether I’m generalising but it’s sometimes the case that one comes first economically so that, you know, the other can afford to come later
JW: It must have been quite a shock then for you, as a 7 year old, to come over to a place that you knew nothing of...
GB: Oh I can remember the wrench of being separated from my Grandma that was…it still is the sort of…you still remember it because it’s just so, it felt so dramatic at the time. I can remember that sense of loss. I can remember the cold that everybody talks about. I can remember that contrast of the cold but not really. I know that when we first came we lived in Huddersfield. I’ve lived in several places but Huddersfield was our first, the first place we lived so I’m a sort of a bit of a yo-yo I’ve been to Yorkshire then Lancashire and now I’m back in Yorkshire
JW: Which do you prefer?
GB: Oh well I like, I like Yorkshire, I do like Yorkshire but then having said that I used to live in Bury and I’ve visited, and near Ramsbottom and the likes, I like countryside and there’s a beauty in there as well
JW: So moving to Huddersfield, that’s quite multi-cultural, diverse background
GB: Well it is and it isn’t because my recollection of it. Yes it’s probably the most multi-cultural place that I’ve lived, as I say my memory’s not as it should be but I remember being in a school where there were different ethnic people of ethnic minorities because I simply remember for the bullying which ironically was from the West Indians against the Africans. Yes, it must have been a sense of multi-culturism there but I didn’t, we didn’t stay there long and when we moved to Bury it was certainly not that the case at all at that time. Bury has changed enormously in the years that followed but at that time it wasn’t multi-cultural at all. In fact, most of my life I’ve been the only one as it were, I’ve never lived in a Black area.
JW: So moving around as a young child, I suppose you talked about that loss of being separated from your Grandma but what about friends that you were making, your peer group.
GB: You mean from Ghana to here?
JW: Well, yes
GB: or moving around generally? Yeh I don’t really, ironically I don’t remember, although I don’t remember people from my childhood days when I was much older when I was about 16, 18 we went back on holiday there and faces became familiar. I remembered my family. I remembered close friends or certainly yeh there was some memories so that people weren’t entirely strangers. And then of course you get the, their memories that you absorb as your own. They tell you things how you used to be and suddenly you’re not sure where the blurred lines lie. Whether it’s a true memory or it’s a memory which they share with you that you then absorb. I don’t recollect, I certainly remember family members more from the time I was young. So their faces were familiar. But moving around the country, I moved from Huddersfield when I was about 11, I would say to Bury and then we moved several times within Bury. … no I’ve not really, I was never one for loads of friends. I had a few close friends and really, that stems from the fact that I was intensely shy as a child, so much so that I can remember… Aunts coming, Aunts that aren’t quite Aunts but close family friends and I would hide away and not want the conversation and that sort of thing. So yeh, I was painfully shy as a child so my friends were few.
JW: So when did that change?
GB: Oh people, people have a skewed sense. Inside I still feel like that shy, I don’t know, 10 year old or whatever. Unfortunately, that’s not what people see. My sense of self is far removed from what people think I am. I think that is often the case.
JW: …Subjects at school, what were your favourites, what were you good at?
GB: …Science, I loved science, and I loved history, I always loved history. Science partly because being from I suppose an African family, again I may be generalising there but certainly from my family, the aspirations were that you had to do well and doing well from my parent’s background was science and as I said they both ended up being nurses. So, science was the focus and I did enjoy it. I was good at physics and chemistry…and latterly biology but I loved history. But the encouragement was to go down the science route partly because I never really did know what it was I wanted to do and latterly came O levels and A levels. It was suggested that I did nursing so that honed in on human biology which I loved. I think our bodies are endlessly fascinating so…yeh science and my first degree was nursing,so.
JW: Did you practice as a nurse?
GB: Oh yeh, yeh, yeh. I qualified. I was one of the new cohorts back in the day of doing nursing degrees so we were the trailblazers. We got a lot of stick. I trained at Leeds Poly at the time and we got an awful lot of stick because there was the envy and disagreements of nurses should be in hospitals etc. And then many years later they all did follow and you know that was the norm and now they’re thinking of going back to how it was. But Yeh so I’m qualified and I did renal nursing on a ward. I did practice nursing for a lot of times. I did the care homes as well because when you have children you do things to fit in and I came out of nursing partly when I had my third child and because we didn’t have family living nearby it was tricky for child care. The shifts and that was difficult so I stayed at home because personally I wanted to bring up my own children for a time. I did work part-time while they were little but in the end with 3 small children it was more viable and I wanted to be at home. When the kids were all at school and friends started returning back to work I looked around and thought what else I could do and… my first, well I did various courses, just to stimulate my mind I suppose and then I got a little job as a census enumerator and in collecting the censuses one year I saw that there was a lot of people that kept saying things like ‘Oh I’ve left my glasses can you fill it in love’ and all the avoidance strategies that you get and it just coincided with the time when I saw a basic skills, a sort of little course that I went to, from there somebody suggested why don’t you do a PGCE so I went into that and ended up teaching. So again, that was by accident too and then latterly I became a dyslexia specialist because that tied in with the caring, I suppose the nursing, science combining the two that’s how it evolved really.
JW: OK, so how long have you been teaching?
GB: I’ve been teaching for ooh, something like, maybe about 14 years. I started off teaching people with learning disabilities. I’ve always been in the sort of teaching English that sort of thing.
JW: Let’s talk about influences outside of academia then. What are your interests, any cultural activity? Anything like that
GB: I’ve always had quiet hobbies. I loved reading. I read a lot or I used to read a lot ‘til this project when time allowed. I used to like sewing in the days of cross-stitch like everyone did in the 1980s, that was quite productive. So yes I’ve not been one really for team sports though I did love rounders and netball when I was at school so not being that sporty really I suppose maybe that’s a remnant of my shyness and wanting the quietness. I’ve always been quiet, so music I do enjoy music.
JW: Do you play an instrument?
GB: I would love to play an instrument but I was rubbish. Even the recorder when we were at school, everybody could play it except me. I’ve never been able to understand or read music but I have I suppose a deep appreciation, I admire people that can. Some of my family can and do and I think it’s magical to be able to do it but yeh I’ve got I enjoy it, I’ve got a good sense of beat, I love dancing.
JW: Have there been any major Black icons or others that have influenced you?
GB: … I can’t say that I do have any icons. There has been people you know on telly or whatever that has floated by and the rest of it. Good orators always sort of catches your eye, but partly because as I say I’ve lived in a mainly white area there was through my education there was no opportunity of seeing anything other than the indigenous population of white faces, white stories ,white narrative… so there was never an opportunity to sort of foster that, it would have been good to be open to people of history for example that were notable or even artists that were notable other than you know what you choose in pop yourself so and I think in some ways that’s missing that sense of somebody that is held up as somebody to admire that it hasn’t stemmed from popular culture.
JW: …., how did you meet your husband?
GB: … my husband’s Adrian. I met him at University, or rather I was at the Poly and he was at the University which he always tells me. We met at a party that a mutual friend threw. She was on my course and she actually came from his home town. Yeh, met in a pub and away we went from there, but strangely enough my husband lives near Cleethorpes, Humberston and um I was the first Black person that he had encountered. I mean he’d seen, his brother lived in London for a time, he’d been down to London and I think he said himself that the first time he visited his brother was the first time he’d seen Black people that weren’t on the telly and then he certainly didn’t know any Black people and then he met me and yeh, the irony of it.
JW: What sort of reaction did your marriage have at the time, or has had since?
GB: Well, it was a bit of a grenade shall we say. I would like to think that it was smooth sailing, but it wasn’t…from both sides of the family it wasn’t smooth sailing. And sometimes the reasons for objections are quite understandable and they are understandable from me as well because some of their fears and worries was mine. It’s often the case I mean marriages break up now more so than they used to in the old days but I got married at a time where it was deemed that mixed marriages don’t last because of, not often because of pressures between yourselves but external pressures. Pressures of judgement and other people’s opinions that they force into you know your lifestyle, your marriage, and it was a fact, I don’t know what the statistics are now but we’ve been married for, oh I’m going to get into trouble now,
JW: Some time?
GB: For 27 years. So we’ve been the statistics that’s proved it wrong really. But no it’s not been plain sailing, it hasn’t been plain sailing, even when we got together, as I say having lived in a white area all my life I was quite used to the asides, the looks, everything else. I think it was an eye opener for my husband when he observed and heard mutterings and things. For example, when I was at school, there was racism there. I wasn’t always aware of it but latterly with conversations with my parents it became apparent. Little things like… all the kids were entered for Maths O level, and Maths wasn’t my strongest subject but they wouldn’t enter me for Maths O level even though I wasn’t any worse than some of the kids that were and my father, this is something that he tells me later. I didn’t know then because you don’t always know as children but he went in and insisted that they entered me, and I got a C. I, I, he was right but that opportunity was not afforded to me and it couldn’t be anything other than on a racial line because the other kids that were just the same on the same group were. Those the things that pass you by as a child because you don’t know and you haven’t learnt the subtleties but as an adult you can see that. So for the similar reason when I would go in ‘cause there was issues at school my children probably thought that I was making a big deal out of nothing but I could see the bigger picture and I could see where that would stem from and how that would impact on them and how they might carry some of those scars if I didn’t address it because being impotent isn’t good, but you’re tainted with that tone of you’re aggressive and if you stand up for yourself you’re deemed to be, you know it’s not what one expects and maybe, again its going back to the stereotype, you should be pigeon holed into a sort of behaviour and if you step out of that or if you buck the trend or if you challenge, you know it’s not comfortable for the other person but that gets transferred onto, it’s your problem and I think that becomes an issue.
JW: Sticking up for yourself, has that sort of crossed over into sticking up for other minorities?
GB: Yes, yes it has and I suppose the job I chose to do says that… I’ve always been one for looking at the disadvantaged thinking why? I think why was a constant question on my lips. But too often people just accept. Things are said and people just nod and accept it as fact but, I don’t know, maybe I’m a bit more inquisitive than that, the why question comes in and why is somebody less worthy because their skin colour is different. Why is somebody not able to go into the main entrance because things haven’t been, simple things haven’t been put in place to allow that. You know it’s about fairness and fairness is always, you know as I’ve got older fairness has always rankled and really as I’ve read and as I’ve had the confidence to be able to justify my position, yes I do challenge things and part of this project is about challenging pre-conceived ideas and long held beliefs that aren’t necessarily from any shape or thinking. And I think in some ways science does that for you and that’s what I say to my husband and kids. Science gives you a bit of common sense, of reason and think and yeh think why things are.
JW: So tell me about Hull, well you don’t live in Hull do you live out in…
GB: I don’t live in Hull, I live in Driffield and have done for something near towards 24 years, and again that’s different
JW: I was going to say why did you choose Driffield?
GB: We meandered to all different sorts of places, partly because of my husband’s job. We’ve lived across the water and now we live here and as I say we’ve lived in Driffield for a long time. Driffield has and hasn’t changed, it’s grown in size, there are a few more mixed families, but not so and to some extent because of that I was very very protective of my privacy, because of the lack of anonymity because when you are the only one, the only family, you only need to mention a name, or a reference, and everyone knows where you are, where you live. I can remember we were once, when we first moved to Driffield we had a huge fence to paint and it took ages. We met, we lived on a corner, and we met nearly the entire population it felt like during the time we were painting and I can remember being on the other side of the fence painting and hearing conversations about us that were going on as people were passing and the novelty of ‘oh this is where that Black one lives’, you know ‘the Black one’, and thinking bizarre, but in addition to that an example of their surprise I suppose and still is I can remember phoning up for work and sounding as I do they come to the door and they don’t expect a Black woman and I’ve had it where they’ve actually said ‘is the lady of the house in’ and or look past me to find who they should be speaking to and you can see the surprise registering on their faces when actually it’s me and they hear me. And it’s the expectation, and it’s the expectation as well that people come into my, and people I don’t know, or maybe people I know and this is something that maybe I haven’t been privy to and somehow they expect it to be different, but then maybe the media perpetuates that but they find that we’re very ordinary and same as anybody else really.
JW: So being Black, for some people it’s a positive or the experiences that they have being black is positive for some people it’s negative. How do you feel your life balance has been? Have you encountered a lot of racism or are you just generally accepted for who you are?
GB: I’ve encountered a lot of racism and you know going back to the fact that all the areas I’ve lived I’ve been the only one, very few occasions have my brother and I even been in the same school and it’s the sort of racism that it’s insidious but you get used to it. You don’t get used to it that’s perhaps the wrong way, but you learn to ignore to some extent or I did in my younger years only because it would drive you crazy. If you addressed everything and jumped at everybody that thought they were being subtle then it would drive you crazy. And the daft thing is that many people think that you don’t know but everybody that has that sort of negative attitude towards them know, whether they choose to let you know that they know is another matter entirely and this is part of the annoyance if somebody says that somebody is being racist towards them and somebody very well meaning and very well intended or somebody who isn’t racist themselves can’t perceive other people being, to deny that person their experience is appalling and yes it isn’t blatant and yes the little subtleties are not necessarily there for those that aren’t the victims to see or feel but we know, we do know. So in answer to that a lot of it has been negative but as I’ve got older, particularily, in a way my personality has changed, it’s evolved as we all do as we get older we all gain that confidence don’t we but when, in my nursing, as I say I was a very shy teenager a very shy child but in my nursing I had to be assertive. I can remember my tutors almost despairing and forcing me onto the ward and saying ‘You’ve got to speak to these patients’ so I learned to be, more, you know, conversational starter and the rest of it because the job needed it. Going into the ward was more than just the cloak you wore, you became a personality because you had to be as it was, out of it myself and I developed that but more so when I had children being protective of them and not putting up with the nonsense anymore I saw it and what you don’t do for yourself you do for your children and that protective feeling I think sometimes was not necessarily welcomed by my children because I would address things that I felt was unjust or made things a bit more equal for them but that meant stepping out of, you know, the making a stand and children don’t always want that because they see themselves as different.
JW: In terms of racism, are there any differences being Black and being of mixed parentage, thinking about your children
GB: Their experience you mean to mine?
JW: Mmm
GB: Definitely different and I’m learning all the time. There is a difference and even through my own reading there is difference amongst ourselves, amongst Black population of how we perceive ourselves. That lends itself to why I started this project, in that for me for a long time certainly in my education I felt that being here was something new, I felt that the Black presence was something new and something that there was an element that there was an expectation that the population that you should be grateful being here and certainly having read, having seen, having done this project the presence has been long standing so it isn’t new, it’s a myth and a lie.They say that Black presence is new and makes that sense of gratitude and keeps that sense of gratitude that you know Black people owe.That sense of being here and accepted but it’s, and part of that is the learning of slavery and race, some of those attitudes have been long standing and track back way way back. Coming back onto the difference of mixed heritage and being Black, that feeds back into the slavery issue in that there’s this huge perception that Black people absorb as well as the white population of shades of whiteness, shadism, colourism as it’s called where the closer you are to white the better you are because that’s the European vision of beauty. So in having children myself, especially my daughter she’s experienced that notion of the lighter you are the better and even in the mixed population that still holds true. It’s a nonsense that have been absorbed by a lot of Black people which causes, and maybe there’s a reason why it’s perpetuated, maybe it serves some sort of purpose, the in-fighting that happens. The comparison, it’s fighting amongst yourself, it’s destructive. So there is the difference, again as I say I was bullied when I first came to this country by West Indian girls I can remember and that was, looking back, that was that was about. It was about colour even with them and it was about this notion of Africa being less favoured than the Caribbean or West Indies which is ironic because as time has gone on and consciousness, people’s consciousness has been arisen people of the Caribbeans are celebrating their heritage and understanding more of where their origins are and some are changing their names back to where they think they might have originated from. So that is certainly a positive move but the colourism and the shadism and that internal fighting remains and it’s perpetuated.
JW: Is it, is it changing though, slowly decade by decade?
GB: Racism you mean?
JW: Are we becoming more accepting?
GB: No
JW: You don’t think so?
GB: I can only answer on my personal perception and my personal perception is that racism hasn’t changed on iota. What racism is now is a polite face in that, yes there’s legislation that’s been long standing, so people know that it’s not right but what people choose to do is different to what they know to be right. The de-humanising of Black people carries on because that way you can absolve yourself of blame or responsibility. I think people are clever or more mindful of how they exert their racist views and the polite face says that you don’t do it blatantly but it still goes on, very much so. The huge debates that goes on now is very much on the inevitable Brexit, that in itself was a sign. We look at the rise of the right and where there’s poverty or there’s perceived austerity there’s always a fall guy and often that’s immigrants. And the language of the press, the language that we use to describe different things fuel that. The notion of Brits, you know ex-pats against immigrants. People emigrating, they don’t think in those terms it’s a polite form but it’s different. It’s the same thing but under a different name therefore it makes it more acceptable and yeh the othering of everybody else you know, somebody less than themselves and to some extent it’s human nature that we do that that we want to feel that one rung better than somebody else, but it doesn’t make it right and it’s about seeing a bit of humanity in other people.
JW: Have you heard…something of yourself in the other interviews we’ve done for this project?
GB: Yes, I think that’s the strength of this project, the strength of oral histories and I’m not talking about race here. I think lots of races will see themselves in a lot of the stories and that is why I wanted to do it. I wanted to show in doing this that in presenting people that had encountered people of different races that some of their dreams, aspirations, wishes are exactly their own regardless of the colour but I also wanted to demonstrate to people what it felt like to be in a different skin to have a different experience to view the world from a different eyes. In some ways I often say to my husband that it’s different for him to me even as we are in the same relationship. I don’t mean the obvious but I see out, I look out. I’m not presented with my face all the time, he looks at me, he sees the difference and he sees the difference amongst everybody else. I stand out and just as it’s easy for my kids to have spotted me in a crowd, it is whether subconsciously or overtly I, people see me, differently and they will see me differently and…it’s just a fact of, it’s just a fact of life. There is advantages of being different in that in a place where most people are white is that for a long time I become their standard of what Blackness is or what Black people should or shouldn’t do and they perhaps get their construct of Blackness from encounters with me and it’s not true I’m just one person I could be very different from everybody else….but I like to think that I’m a positive experience for them compared to the negative that’s constantly perpetuated in the press and on the telly…and the rest of it. You know it’s…constant. I went to see Richard III and I’m not necessarily there’s some Shakespeare the story line grabs me and some don’t and it was wonderful that the casting but it still made me smile that the witch had the negative character, was the only Black,not the only, but a Black actress. And I did say to my husband why didn’t they cast the Queen as Black that would have been controversial. It’s talked about because one day it’s different but one day it should be part of the story it’s you know there’s that presence, everywhere it’s part of the norm. It’s, I’m not the standard I’m just one person but yes the stories of the races and the stories of the non-races parts of these oral histories, yeh I can see a resonance in all of them
JW: What of the future, after this project?
GB: Oh after this project? Oh gosh get me through this project first. …I don’t know, I’ve learnt so much in doing this project, so much, and I hope certainly… I suppose my mind is so much about this project that I can’t think about, life will carry on as it always has and always will and I’d like to think I can do other things that will make people think because this project for me is just stopping the notion, or helping to stop the notion of Black history, because it isn’t Black history is a history that should be embedded because it’s a normal history and It shouldn’t be segregated because history so much is. I went through all of my education and didn’t read anything from a Black author, none of the historic figures had any Blackness in it. I’m not saying artificially place people in it but there are, they do exist and this project is showing that they did exist. So you know it’s about not limiting your thinking and the world vision is seeing it for what it is rather than censoring it, because I think history is censored, it’s censored on the way the pop,,you know the majority want to see it. I’d like to think that from this I don’t know something comes off this, something positive. I’d be happy but in the meantime yeh life carries on.