Thread by @adamsmet66

A THREAD:

On Friday it was my birthday. I celebrated at home with my family. I had cake. I was spoiled. I couldn't have been happier. But it was different of course this year. And not just because of coronavirus and lockdown.

Over the past 54 years the ways of marking my annual milestone have naturally changed. Evolved. In childhood there were the parties. All boys, sports mainly, in the rambling back garden of our beautiful family home in a comfortable corner of Hertfordshire.

The teenage years are a bit blurry. An awkward Chinese meal in Beaconsfield - with parents still present - flickers into view. The abiding memory of my 18th at Chorleywood tennis club is of confronting gate crashers, a damaged parquet floor and a swiftly terminated membership.

Early adulthood is fuzzier still. Largely forgettable occasions garnished with alcohol, from Tex-Mex diners to subterranean Soho dens.
As I reflect on birthdays past I am drawn to the TV screen with visions of masked protesters, angry mobs and statues.

And I realise the most significant change that has taken place to my birthday celebrations over time is the complexion. What were once exclusively white affairs have now been replaced with colour. With blackness.

I have celebrated the past 20 birthdays with my wife Rakie. The past 15 as father to our beautiful daughters Tansy and then Shani.

Let's go back. Between the ages of five and nine years old I was the boy whose dad starred in one of Britain's most popular sitcoms, Love Thy Neighbour - the notorious problem child of 1970s TV.

My dad, Jack Smethurst, played the bigoted racist Eddie Booth, Kate Williams his long-suffering wife Joan. Rudolph Walker and Nina Baden-Semper were the black neighbours Bill and Barbie Reynolds.

Mum & Dad were always at pains to point out to me and my sisters that Eddie was an ignorant fool and a loser. The biggest problem my 6 year-old self had with the show was the acute embarrassment I felt after an episode when Eddie was convinced by Bill to run around a tree naked.

My childhood during these years was characterised by the kind of privilege that accompanies tv celebrity. Photo shoots for TV Times, an appearance on This Is Your Life, invitations to Man Utd family Christmas parties. Doors were open to us. We were privileged.

Contact with the black community was rare for kids where I grew up. Yet here I was, a white middle class child of the Home Counties with a relationship with the two most famous black people in the country. Privileged again. And this is how I first encountered black culture.

We became close friends with Nina and her husband Murray - a white Anglican vicar who led a church in Pimlico with a large black congregation. Nina & Murray would invite us to the various church fetes, carnivals and garden parties.

It was here the I first tasted Caribbean food and listened to steel drums and reggae music. And it was here, for the first time, I would have found myself as part of the minority in the room. Was I aware of this? Certainly. Was it daunting? Not in the least.

There was always a happy, friendly vibe. We received nothing but a warm, generous welcome. Was this where my sensibilities towards multiculturalism were conceived? I don't know. If this experience taught me anything though, it was to not fear other.

In the years since LTN was taken off the air in 1976 I have heard a wide range of responses to it. Clearly it still divides opinion, though not, from my experience, down ethnic group lines. I have encountered black people who hated it for all the name calling it inspired...

...and others who loved it as it was the only show that featured black people in leading roles with a bigoted racist as the fall guy. Each response has equal validity and as such should be equally respected.

I find this dichotomy instructive as we respond to the murder of George Floyd. I studied history to degree level. it's not a fashionable subject these days but it's importance to our society is probably greater today than at any point in our lifetimes.

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” So said F Scott Fitzgerald.

I don't claim “a first-rate intelligence” but I know it’s possible to support the removal of public memorials without erasing history.

In the case of LTN it’s possible to argue that the absence of such a show contributed to the misconception that racism had been seen off in this country, whilst at the same time remaining of the view that it (and those like it) be consigned to the archives for historical record.

For 2 decades I have worked, loved, laughed & argued with Rakie. It has been an education. I've learned to recognise the insidious nature of misogyny, prejudice and racism. How each cloaks itself as reasoned authority, playing on stereotypes and timeworn tropes,

...safe in the security of long held assumptions. I have seen how much energy it takes for black people to remain on constant high alert in white spaces, ready to counter the most micro of micro aggressions that may come their way at any given moment.

I have seen how much courage it takes to challenge hurtful prejudice, intended or otherwise.
I am a white middle class man. The spaces that cause me greatest anxiety are those populated exclusively with white middle class men. This is an arena that represents danger.

When prejudice arrives in the form of shared assumptions
I have a choice. Just as Rakie — the most courageous person I know — has a choice in such moments. To rise up with courage is the harder choice with the greatest reward — that of dignity and self-respect.

To stay silent is to shrink with fear and die a little inside.

The truth is I do both. Sometimes I’m brave sometimes I’m not.

We have arrived at a moment that has been a long time coming. We must all ask ourselves who we want to be. Whether we are willing to choose courage and rise up.

#BlackLivesMattter