{"id":57573,"date":"2019-02-15T21:09:49","date_gmt":"2019-02-15T21:09:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=57573"},"modified":"2019-02-15T21:09:49","modified_gmt":"2019-02-15T21:09:49","slug":"i-walked-over-to-the-white-side-of-the-room-it-was-ironically-where-i-felt-most-at-home-all-my-friends-my-boyfriend-my-flatmates-were-white-but-my-fellow-workers-had-other-id","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=57573","title":{"rendered":"\u201cI walked over to the white side of the room. It was, ironically, where I felt most at home \u2013 all my friends, my boyfriend, my flatmates, were white. But my fellow workers had other ideas and I found myself being beckoned over by people on the black side. With some hesitation I crossed the floor.\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>After studying textiles at Middlesex Polytechnic, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Andrea_Levy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">[Andrea] Levy<\/a> worked briefly as a designer, a dresser and a receptionist. But it was not until she was 26 that a racial awareness session with colleagues at an <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Islington\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Islington<\/a> sex education project gave her a \u201crude awakening\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe were asked to split into two groups, black and white.\u201d Levy wrote. \u201cI walked over to the white side of the room. It was, ironically, where I felt most at home \u2013 all my friends, my boyfriend, my <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Roommate\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">flatmates<\/a>, were white. But my fellow workers had other ideas and I found myself being beckoned over by people on the black side. With some hesitation I crossed the floor.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As someone who was \u201cscared\u201d to call herself a black person, the experience was shocking enough to send her to bed for a week. But the writing course she had begun part-time came to her rescue, sending her back to explore the shame and denial that had marked her childhood and to rediscover her Jamaican roots.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Richard Lea, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=57567\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Andrea Levy, chronicler of the Windrush generation, dies aged 62<\/a>,\u201d <em>The Guardian<\/em>, February 15, 2019. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/2019\/feb\/15\/andrea-levy-chronicler-of-the-windrush-generation-dies-aged-62\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/2019\/feb\/15\/andrea-levy-chronicler-of-the-windrush-generation-dies-aged-62<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After studying textiles at Middlesex Polytechnic, [Andrea] Levy worked briefly as a designer, a dresser and a receptionist. But it was not until she was 26 that a racial awareness session with colleagues at an Islington sex education project gave her a \u201crude awakening\u201d. \u201cWe were asked to split into two groups, black and white.\u201d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[29450,29462,2103],"class_list":["post-57573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-excerpts","tag-andrea-levy","tag-richard-lea","tag-the-guardian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57573"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57574,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57573\/revisions\/57574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}