Every day, so the legend goes, is a school day. I don’t know if it’s literally true that you learn something new every day but I still get that frisson of excitement every time I find myself using a word I have never used before. It’s the same when I watch something on telly or hear something on the radio: if I find myself thinking or saying: “I didn’t know that” it makes for a brighter, or at least a slightly more interesting, day. This morning I read an article in The Guardian about the former snooker player, now snooker commentator, Joe Johnson and learned something that I never knew. He’s of mixed race.
Johnson was, it transpires, was born Joseph Malik. His father was from Pakistan and he lived with him until he was 12, whereupon for reasons which are not explained in the article and are anyway none of our business he was adopted by his mother and stepfather. Presumably, after that he became Joe Johnson, eventually becoming a superstar of the green baize and World Snooker Champion in 1986. My point about this is very simple: it never once occurred to me he was anything other than a snooker player from Bradford. His ethnicity was irrelevant.
I vaguely remember thinking about his swarthy good looks, but lots of people are like that. Not everyone has the same skin colour and I feel mildly envious when I am with someone with darker skin than my winter milk bottle white. We are accustomed to believe that darker skin, caused by the waves of the sun, are somehow healthier than white skin. Now we know about the dangers of excessive time spent under the sun, we know it actually isn’t so healthy, but that doesn’t stop me thinking: “I wish I looked like that.”
Although specifics of Johnson’s upbringing are barely touched on in the article, it is clear he suffered from racism. It was “tough” growing up is all we learn because, as he says, he was the “only one“, the only mixed race boy in school. Obviously, I cannot personally relate to how he felt a a mixed-race boy at school because I although I was more “foreign” than English, certainly in my ancestry, my DNA and my names, I was the standard model white English boy. The worst I had was having the birthmark and than scar on my face being taken the piss out of at school, as well as jokes about my surname. This was upsetting for a wet little snowflake, as I was prone to being, but it was hardly as bad as racism, was it?
To the best of my memory, there were a couple of British Asian lads in my year at school and one black boy. I hope this doesn’t sound like a cop-out but I don’t have any recollection as to whether they were the subject to racism. The black boy became a friend and still is to this day. The British Asian boys were not part of my social group, but to the best of my memory, they were certainly part of other groups. Given the era of the time, racism was on the rise, not least as a result of the anti-immigration polemic from right-wing politicians like Enoch Powell who, like Nigel Farage today, was very popular among many white working class people, it would not make sense to suggest that racism didn’t exist. It’s just that I didn’t really know what it was. I could see some people looked different to the way I looked, I probably didn’t understand why but most of all I didn’t care. I’d like to think most of us were like that.
The news about Joe Johnson’s Pakistani heritage was a bit of a “meh?” moment. It was, I suppose, interesting because it’s nice to learn interesting stuff about famous people, it was interesting to read that he has never been to the land of his father, but would like to, and that he is in touch with his family in Pakistan. But really, he’s not that much different to me, having a parent who wasn’t born in England, except that all my Dutch family are long dead and the Verburgs from my mum’s side live on only via me and my children. The main difference between us is that he was a great snooker player and that is all he should be remembered for, as well as being an all-round good bloke.
