→ 30 May 12 at 7 pm
I went to a secondary school in a massive inner-city, and it wasn’t particularly nice. Half the school had just been done up as I’d joined, but the rest of the school was old and there wasn’t much funding in many areas. It was also located in a moderately poor area of said inner-city - most of the students came from neighbouring council estates down the road.
I went to this school completely alone - I didn’t have any friends from my local estate because there were gangs that would hang out in the playground and my mum was worried or whatever, so I was pretty much completely friendless. It’s not particular difficult to make friends with other kids when you’re 11 or 12 and starting secondary school, if you make an effort, so I didn’t really have any problems. However, it was difficult to properly integrate with groups as we grew up together. In year 7, this wasn’t much of a problem. But by the time we got to year 9 or so, the groups (or cliques or whatever) in my school were more or less divided based on race and gender. As such, the large Bengali population stuck together (with separate boy and girl groups), the slightly smaller Somali population stuck together in the same manner, and so on and so forth with the smaller minorities.
I’m a white kid, but not WHITE white, because I’m not “properly” English, or so I’ve been told. My parents are Albanian immigrants from Kosovo, former Republic of Yugoslavia, so I’m a little tanned or Mediterranean looking. As such, I didn’t fit in with the above groups, and even the white kids didn’t really hang out with me.
It was weird coming to terms with this segregation at such a young age. Obviously there are a whole bunch of reasons for why these kids felt more comfortable with their “own kind”, but being in between groups gave me time to think and I realised that we’re all of equal moral worth and fundamentally the same - so why can’t we all be friends?
A lot of these kids were victims of racism from the local areas and felt comfortable in their own separate groups, away from racist taunts from others. Other kids had only recently come to England from their respective nation and didn’t speak English well enough to hang out with other kids. But there were two things that were crucial in my secondary school, that united this extremely segregated school.
- Football.
Come Monday morning, all everyone would speak about is the highlights from Match of the Day over the weekend. We’d taunt each other, laugh at each others misery and proudly flaunt our football kits we’d got for Eid under our uniform and show it off when we scored a goal at lunch. We’d spend break times and lunch times playing football with a tennis ball because for whatever reason, none of us had a football and whenever someone brought it in, they were worried one of the older kids would steal it.
Football kept us all together.
- Islam.
Despite the fact that my school was incredibly diverse, nearly 80% of the population was Muslim. I was born and raised a Muslim too, so this is what kept me safe and made the others relate to me. The Bengali’s and Somali’s would yell at each other in massive gangs outside school, but come Friday prayer, they would all sit down sit by side in the school prayer room.
Yeah, I said Muslim. And no, this doesn’t mean they supported 9/11, or advocate the implementation of Sharia law. It just means they are followers of Islam, a religion that is centred around the principle of peace.
Although I had a rough time at secondary school, it taught me so many lessons that I hold dear to this day. We are all bonded together through the common strings of humanity. Give people a chance - your bound to have something in common, be it football, religion or your favourite band. Don’t close your mind to other peoples beliefs - try to understand them, no matter what they are. But also - don’t ever let them get away with bigotry, ignorance or prejudice. Call people out on their bulshit. People only learn when they’re confronted.
