I think I’m only just beginning to process the reality that I’m being kicked out of the UK in little over a month. I cried on the phone to my mom about it. The biggest realizations I keep reckoning with are: I’ll be losing access to free healthcare, I might have to own a car again, travel is going to be expensive, and I’m going back into the war machine after feeling like I’d escaped it.
Now don’t get me wrong, England is far from perfect. I understand– I am amongst the OG colonizers, at the damn seat of colonialism! The city I live in is primarily: old, white, and affluent– so I still experience the physical and societal isolation of being Black. I only have two close friends here who are Black, as a result of there only being a smattering of us across the city. Even so, living here has still been better than the white, affluent, city-equivalents in America.
Here, people haven’t as thoroughly erased their cultural identities to fit under the bland umbrella of white supremacy. The white people I’m around are straight outta: Ireland, Scotland, England, Netherlands, etc.. They get into their own version of diaspora banters, similar to the way we do as international Black peoples. One of my close friends here has shared stories with me of her own experience with people hurling slurs at her because they can pinpoint her Irish features long before her accent confirms it. She was the person who taught me the historical meaning behind the phrase “No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs.”
And class-based oppression is as stark as night and day. Here, your accent doesn’t just give up what region, city, and sometimes neighborhood you’re from– it holds the power to
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reduce you to the harmful stereotypes often perpetuated in mainstream media for entertainment, in a way that makes me think of Pillboy’s “This Person is Not Real” video essay. There is such a pervasive, accent-based class bias that you have the opportunity to opt-in to accent lessons as the British equivalent of a high-schooler preparing to apply to universities. For example if you were deemed smart enough to attend Oxford or Cambridge but you yourself were from the North of England– you might discuss attending accent lessons, to sound less Northern, with your teachers and family. Despite these truths, I’d be lying if I said my overall health and wellbeing didn’t dramatically improve (even as a PhD student, maybe especially as a PhD student) as a result of residing in England these past three years.
In my first year here, I was nearly brought to tears, in shock, after a doctor’s appointment to get birth control. I did a quick phone search to find my nearest sexual health clinic, called and scheduled an appointment, and got my Nexplanon implanted alongside a pamphlet and conversation on healing and potential side effects. As I left I stopped at the front desk and asked how much I owed or if I had a co-pay. I remember the receptionist just raising her eyebrows, the two of us slowly growing confused. She explained to me I had nothing to pay, as the healthcare here is free. I felt my body release stress-tension in a way that I didn’t realize existed.
My mind was processing this new reality; I was having flashbacks of being anxiously surprised with $3,000 medical bills as a broke 20 years-old college student along my stressful journey to find out I was suffering from GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease). I also thought about the $600 lesson I’d learned after an optometrist appointment at a clinic that was “no longer in [my] network” for insurance. This is the system I’m coming back to– and it fucking sucks.
For the past three years, I’ve walked to any given destination within 30 minutes of my location: school, work, my local groceries stores, my local bouldering gym, pubs, etc.. I’m a
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regular to some amazing local businesses. Though I can’t quite hang on a night out, I’ve still had my handful of celebratory nights walking back home by myself slightly drunk at 2 a.m.. If I truly didn’t feel like walking, I’d treat myself to an uber or local taxi.
My lack of a personal vehicle in no way hindered my ability to satiate my fervor for exploration. Five Great British Pounds (GBP, also known as ‘Pound Sterling’) is the equivalent of $6.76 and is the cost to allow travel via an hour-long bus ride from my city to the city next over, Leeds. For double the cost, I could take the train and be there in 30 minutes. A two-hour train ride could take me down to London. If you have the patience to really look, you can spend $40 for roundtrip airline tickets from England to Spain for the weekend. No personal vehicle necessary; just my two legs, double-decker buses, trains, or planes. While living here, I’ve been to: France, Spain, Denmark, Italy, Ireland, and frequent stints in Reykjavik-Keflavik airport. I’m going to try and squeeze in a trip to Scotland before I go, since it’s only a three-hour train ride.
When I broke the news to my mom that I didn’t think I could move back home to Houston; it was because just the thought of driving two hours a day for work again or not being able to walk two miles to the grocery store for a literal lack of sidewalks– makes my soul start to
wilt. Returning to the States feels like the threat of mental and physical poverty again. Here in the UK, the bottom line is– it’s easier to be poor.
Yet and Still! There are also so many reasons I am excited to come back. First and foremost; I am ready to be back with my people– I’m ready to be back with the niggas!! All shades of negroes: ignorant, academic, radical and revolutionary, old, young, you name it. I’m ready to jump off nigger island, thank you God. What I find so ironic is even though on paper my overall community environment looks the same as it did in my early twenties– essentially I’m still a token Black person in a predominantly white, Western-centered, academic space. The smallest detail that catalysed the biggest change was that I came to the UK not solely as a
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Black person, but as a Black American. The realization oddly brings me peace and validation; I grew up in a home with a mother who was born and raised in Jamaica and as such, didn’t know to allow me the safe space to express myself as equal parts Jamaican and Black American. I won’t go into detail here, as that is another essay on its own.
Imagine though, if I were to get this scholarship to England as a young Black woman born and raised in Jamaica. There’s a chance these past three years wouldn’t have affected such a radicalization of my consciousness. I would’ve grown up in an environment already set to the British systems of living; Jamaica survived through British Commonwealth rule until independence in 1962. That’s just eight years before my mom was born. Coming to England with my Black American identity provided a comparison of personal lived-experience: the resulting view brought American Systemic Oppression and White Supremacy out in sharp relief with real-life examples. I came to England to get a PhD, I’m instead leaving with an MPhil and a backbone– I feel blessed.
As I prepare to return, I am searching for my next place to land with intent. Now I have some wisdom to recognize the essential necessities of nature I need for my Spirit to function: somewhere with a consistent warm and sunny climate because I’m no better than a plant, a city with some sort of walkability and greenery, and a semblance of public transport– shitty or otherwise. In general, what I have to say about the UK is– although the grass isn’t greener on the other side, gotdammit if the soil ain’t good! As I transplant my roots back to Amerika, I’m making sure to look for good soil.
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Did your ED visa expire??
ATL, NYC or the DMV shorty! Welcome home!
So well written👏🏿