How our stories cross over
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0:01 - 0:03This is a photograph
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0:03 - 0:05of a man whom for many years
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0:05 - 0:09I plotted to kill.
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0:09 - 0:12This is my father,
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0:12 - 0:16Clinton George "Bageye" Grant.
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0:16 - 0:18He's called Bageye because he has
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0:18 - 0:22permanent bags under his eyes.
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0:22 - 0:25As a 10-year-old, along with my siblings,
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0:25 - 0:29I dreamt of scraping off the poison
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0:29 - 0:33from fly-killer paper into his coffee,
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0:33 - 0:35grounded down glass and sprinkling it
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0:35 - 0:38over his breakfast,
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0:38 - 0:40loosening the carpet on the stairs
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0:40 - 0:43so he would trip and break his neck.
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0:43 - 0:45But come the day, he would always
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0:45 - 0:47skip that loose step,
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0:47 - 0:49he would always bow out of the house
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0:49 - 0:51without so much as a swig of coffee
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0:51 - 0:54or a bite to eat.
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0:54 - 0:55And so for many years,
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0:55 - 0:57I feared that my father would die
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0:57 - 0:59before I had a chance to kill him.
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0:59 - 1:04(Laughter)
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1:04 - 1:07Up until our mother asked him to leave
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1:07 - 1:08and not come back,
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1:08 - 1:13Bageye had been a terrifying ogre.
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1:13 - 1:16He teetered permanently on the verge of rage,
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1:16 - 1:20rather like me, as you see.
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1:20 - 1:23He worked nights at Vauxhall Motors in Luton
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1:23 - 1:26and demanded total silence throughout the house,
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1:26 - 1:29so that when we came home from school
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1:29 - 1:31at 3:30 in the afternoon, we would huddle
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1:31 - 1:34beside the TV, and rather like safe-crackers,
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1:34 - 1:37we would twiddle with the volume control knob
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1:37 - 1:40on the TV so it was almost inaudible.
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1:40 - 1:42And at times, when we were like this,
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1:42 - 1:44so much "Shhh," so much "Shhh"
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1:44 - 1:46going on in the house
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1:46 - 1:48that I imagined us to be like
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1:48 - 1:52the German crew of a U-boat
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1:52 - 1:54creeping along the edge of the ocean
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1:54 - 1:56whilst up above, on the surface,
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1:56 - 2:00HMS Bageye patrolled
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2:00 - 2:02ready to drop death charges
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2:02 - 2:06at the first sound of any disturbance.
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2:06 - 2:09So that lesson was the lesson that
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2:09 - 2:10"Do not draw attention to yourself
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2:10 - 2:12either in the home or outside of the home."
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2:12 - 2:15Maybe it's a migrant lesson.
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2:15 - 2:18We were to be below the radar,
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2:18 - 2:20so there was no communication, really,
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2:20 - 2:23between Bageye and us and us and Bageye,
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2:23 - 2:26and the sound that we most looked forward to,
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2:26 - 2:27you know when you're a child and you want
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2:27 - 2:31your father to come home
and it's all going to be happy -
2:31 - 2:32and you're waiting for that sound of the door opening.
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2:32 - 2:34Well the sound that we looked forward to
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2:34 - 2:36was the click of the door closing,
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2:36 - 2:40which meant he'd gone and would not come back.
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2:40 - 2:44So for three decades,
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2:44 - 2:47I never laid eyes on my father, nor he on me.
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2:47 - 2:49We never spoke to each other for three decades,
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2:49 - 2:50and then a couple of years ago, I decided
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2:50 - 2:55to turn the spotlight on him.
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2:55 - 2:57"You are being watched.
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2:57 - 2:58Actually, you are.
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2:58 - 3:00You are being watched."
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3:00 - 3:03That was his mantra to us, his children.
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3:03 - 3:05Time and time again he would say this to us.
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3:05 - 3:08And this was the 1970s, it was Luton,
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3:08 - 3:10where he worked at Vauxhall Motors,
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3:10 - 3:11and he was a Jamaican.
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3:11 - 3:12And what he meant was,
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3:12 - 3:15you as a child of a Jamaican immigrant
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3:15 - 3:16are being watched
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3:16 - 3:18to see which way you turn, to see whether
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3:18 - 3:22you conform to the host nation's stereotype of you,
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3:22 - 3:25of being feckless, work-shy,
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3:25 - 3:27destined for a life of crime.
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3:27 - 3:29You are being watched,
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3:29 - 3:33so confound their expectations of you.
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3:33 - 3:38To that end, Bageye and his friends,
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3:38 - 3:39mostly Jamaican,
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3:39 - 3:43exhibited a kind of Jamaican bella figura:
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3:43 - 3:46Turn your best side to the world,
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3:46 - 3:48show your best face to the world.
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3:48 - 3:50If you have seen some of the images
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3:50 - 3:52of the Caribbean people arriving
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3:52 - 3:54in the '40s and '50s,
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3:54 - 3:55you might have noticed that a lot of the men
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3:55 - 3:57wear trilbies.
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3:57 - 4:01Now, there was no tradition
of wearing trilbies in Jamaica. -
4:01 - 4:03They invented that tradition for their arrival here.
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4:03 - 4:05They wanted to project themselves in a way
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4:05 - 4:08that they wanted to be perceived,
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4:08 - 4:09so that the way they looked
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4:09 - 4:12and the names that they gave themselves
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4:12 - 4:14defined them.
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4:14 - 4:19So Bageye is bald and has baggy eyes.
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4:19 - 4:23Tidy Boots is very fussy about his footwear.
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4:23 - 4:26Anxious is always anxious.
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4:26 - 4:29Clock has one arm longer than the other.
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4:29 - 4:32(Laughter)
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4:32 - 4:36And my all-time favorite was the
guy they called Summerwear. -
4:36 - 4:37When Summerwear came to this country
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4:37 - 4:40from Jamaica in the early '60s, he insisted
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4:40 - 4:42on wearing light summer suits,
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4:42 - 4:44no matter the weather,
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4:44 - 4:45and in the course of researching their lives,
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4:45 - 4:48I asked my mom, "Whatever
became of Summerwear?" -
4:48 - 4:53And she said, "He caught a cold and died." (Laughter)
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4:53 - 4:55But men like Summerwear
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4:55 - 4:56taught us the importance of style.
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4:56 - 4:58Maybe they exaggerated their style
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4:58 - 5:01because they thought that they were not considered
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5:01 - 5:03to be quite civilized,
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5:03 - 5:06and they transferred that generational attitude
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5:06 - 5:09or anxiety onto us, the next generation,
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5:09 - 5:11so much so that when I was growing up,
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5:11 - 5:13if ever on the television news or radio
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5:13 - 5:15a report came up about a black person
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5:15 - 5:17committing some crime —
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5:17 - 5:20a mugging, a murder, a burglary —
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5:20 - 5:24we winced along with our parents,
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5:24 - 5:27because they were letting the side down.
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5:27 - 5:28You did not just represent yourself.
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5:28 - 5:30You represented the group,
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5:30 - 5:34and it was a terrifying thing to come to terms with,
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5:34 - 5:37in a way, that maybe you were going
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5:37 - 5:41to be perceived in the same light.
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5:41 - 5:44So that was what needed to be challenged.
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5:44 - 5:49Our father and many of his colleagues
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5:49 - 5:52exhibited a kind of transmission but not receiving.
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5:52 - 5:54They were built to transmit but not receive.
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5:54 - 5:57We were to keep quiet.
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5:57 - 5:59When our father did speak to us,
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5:59 - 6:01it was from the pulpit of his mind.
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6:01 - 6:03They clung to certainty in the belief
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6:03 - 6:07that doubt would undermine them.
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6:07 - 6:11But when I am working in my house
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6:11 - 6:15and writing, after a day's writing, I rush downstairs
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6:15 - 6:18and I'm very excited to talk about
Marcus Garvey or Bob Marley -
6:18 - 6:21and words are tripping out of my mouth like butterflies
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6:21 - 6:23and I'm so excited that my children stop me,
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6:23 - 6:27and they say, "Dad, nobody cares."
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6:27 - 6:31(Laughter)
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6:31 - 6:33But they do care, actually.
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6:33 - 6:34They cross over.
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6:34 - 6:37Somehow they find their way to you.
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6:37 - 6:41They shape their lives according
to the narrative of your life, -
6:41 - 6:45as I did with my father and my mother, perhaps,
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6:45 - 6:47and maybe Bageye did with his father.
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6:47 - 6:49And that was clearer to me
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6:49 - 6:52in the course of looking at his life
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6:52 - 6:55and understanding, as they say,
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6:55 - 6:56the Native Americans say,
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6:56 - 6:58"Do not criticize the man until you can walk
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6:58 - 7:00in his moccasins."
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7:00 - 7:03But in conjuring his life, it was okay
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7:03 - 7:06and very straightforward to portray
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7:06 - 7:09a Caribbean life in England in the 1970s
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7:09 - 7:14with bowls of plastic fruit,
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7:14 - 7:17polystyrene ceiling tiles,
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7:17 - 7:20settees permanently sheathed
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7:20 - 7:23in their transparent covers
that they were delivered in. -
7:23 - 7:25But what's more difficult to navigate
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7:25 - 7:26is the emotional landscape
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7:26 - 7:28between the generations,
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7:28 - 7:33and the old adage that with age comes wisdom
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7:33 - 7:35is not true.
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7:35 - 7:39With age comes the veneer of respectability
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7:39 - 7:42and a veneer of uncomfortable truths.
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7:42 - 7:45But what was true was that my parents,
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7:45 - 7:47my mother, and my father went along with it,
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7:47 - 7:50did not trust the state to educate me.
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7:50 - 7:52So listen to how I sound.
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7:52 - 7:57They determined that they would
send me to a private school, -
7:57 - 7:58but my father worked at Vauxhall Motors.
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7:58 - 8:02It's quite difficult to fund a private school education
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8:02 - 8:05and feed his army of children.
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8:05 - 8:07I remember going on to the school
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8:07 - 8:09for the entrance exam, and my father said
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8:09 - 8:13to the priest — it was a Catholic school —
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8:13 - 8:17he wanted a better "heducation" for the boy,
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8:17 - 8:20but also, he, my father,
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8:20 - 8:22never even managed to pass worms,
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8:22 - 8:25never mind entrance exams.
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8:25 - 8:27But in order to fund my education,
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8:27 - 8:30he was going to have to do some dodgy stuff,
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8:30 - 8:33so my father would fund my education
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8:33 - 8:36by trading in illicit goods from the back of his car,
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8:36 - 8:38and that was made even more tricky because
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8:38 - 8:40my father, that's not his car by the way.
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8:40 - 8:42My father aspired to have a car like that,
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8:42 - 8:44but my father had a beaten-up Mini,
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8:44 - 8:48and he never, being a
Jamaican coming to this country, -
8:48 - 8:51he never had a driving license,
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8:51 - 8:54he never had any insurance or road tax or MOT.
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8:54 - 8:56He thought, "I know how to drive;
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8:56 - 8:59why do I need the state's validation?"
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8:59 - 9:02But it became a little tricky when
we were stopped by the police, -
9:02 - 9:04and we were stopped a lot by the police,
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9:04 - 9:05and I was impressed by the way
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9:05 - 9:07that my father dealt with the police.
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9:07 - 9:10He would promote the policeman immediately,
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9:10 - 9:14so that P.C. Bloggs became Detective Inspector Bloggs
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9:14 - 9:15in the course of the conversation
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9:15 - 9:17and wave us on merrily.
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9:17 - 9:19So my father was exhibiting what we in Jamaica
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9:19 - 9:23called "playing fool to catch wise."
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9:23 - 9:26But it lent also an idea
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9:26 - 9:28that actually he was being diminished
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9:28 - 9:30or belittled by the policeman —
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9:30 - 9:32as a 10-year-old boy, I saw that —
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9:32 - 9:35but also there was an ambivalence towards authority.
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9:35 - 9:36So on the one hand, there was
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9:36 - 9:38a mocking of authority,
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9:38 - 9:40but on the other hand, there was a deference
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9:40 - 9:42towards authority,
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9:42 - 9:44and these Caribbean people
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9:44 - 9:48had an overbearing obedience towards authority,
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9:48 - 9:51which is very striking, very strange in a way,
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9:51 - 9:54because migrants are very courageous people.
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9:54 - 9:56They leave their homes. My father and my mother
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9:56 - 10:00left Jamaica and they traveled 4,000 miles,
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10:00 - 10:04and yet they were infantilized by travel.
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10:04 - 10:06They were timid,
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10:06 - 10:07and somewhere along the line,
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10:07 - 10:09the natural order was reversed.
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10:09 - 10:13The children became the parents to the parent.
-
10:15 - 10:17The Caribbean people came to
this country with a five-year plan: -
10:17 - 10:19they would work, some money, and then go back,
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10:19 - 10:22but the five years became 10, the 10 became 15,
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10:22 - 10:24and before you know it,
you're changing the wallpaper, -
10:24 - 10:28and at that point, you know you're here to stay.
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10:28 - 10:30Although there's still the kind of temporariness
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10:30 - 10:33that our parents felt about being here,
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10:33 - 10:37but we children knew that the game was up.
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10:37 - 10:40I think there was a feeling that
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10:40 - 10:45they would not be able to continue with the ideals
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10:45 - 10:47of the life that they expected.
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10:47 - 10:49The reality was very much different.
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10:49 - 10:51And also, that was true of the reality
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10:51 - 10:53of trying to educate me.
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10:53 - 10:57Having started the process,
my father did not continue. -
10:57 - 10:59It was left to my mother to educate me,
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10:59 - 11:02and as George Lamming would say,
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11:02 - 11:06it was my mother who fathered me.
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11:06 - 11:08Even in his absence, that old mantra remained:
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11:08 - 11:10You are being watched.
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11:10 - 11:13But such ardent watchfulness can lead to anxiety,
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11:13 - 11:15so much so that years later, when I was investigating
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11:15 - 11:17why so many young black men
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11:17 - 11:19were diagnosed with schizophrenia,
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11:19 - 11:21six times more than they ought to be,
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11:21 - 11:25I was not surprised to hear the psychiatrist say,
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11:25 - 11:29"Black people are schooled in paranoia."
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11:29 - 11:33And I wonder what Bageye would make of that.
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11:33 - 11:35Now I also had a 10-year-old son,
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11:35 - 11:38and turned my attention to Bageye
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11:38 - 11:40and I went in search of him.
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11:40 - 11:43He was back in Luton, he was now 82,
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11:43 - 11:47and I hadn't seen him for 30-odd years,
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11:47 - 11:49and when he opened the door,
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11:49 - 11:52I saw this tiny little man with lambent, smiling eyes,
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11:52 - 11:55and he was smiling, and I'd never seen him smile.
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11:55 - 11:58I was very disconcerted by that.
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11:58 - 12:01But we sat down, and he had
a Caribbean friend with him, -
12:01 - 12:03talking some old time talk,
-
12:03 - 12:06and my father would look at me,
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12:06 - 12:08and he looked at me as if I would
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12:08 - 12:11miraculously disappear as I had arisen.
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12:11 - 12:13And he turned to his friend, and he said,
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12:13 - 12:16"This boy and me have a deep, deep connection,
-
12:16 - 12:19deep, deep connection."
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12:19 - 12:21But I never felt that connection.
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12:21 - 12:24If there was a pulse, it was very weak
-
12:24 - 12:26or hardly at all.
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12:26 - 12:28And I almost felt in the course of that reunion
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12:28 - 12:33that I was auditioning to be my father's son.
-
12:33 - 12:35When the book came out,
-
12:35 - 12:37it had fair reviews in the national papers,
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12:37 - 12:40but the paper of choice in Luton is not The Guardian,
-
12:40 - 12:42it's the Luton News,
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12:42 - 12:46and the Luton News ran the headline about the book,
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12:46 - 12:51"The Book That May Heal a 32-Year-Old Rift."
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12:51 - 12:54And I understood that could also represent
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12:54 - 12:56the rift between one generation and the next,
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12:56 - 13:00between people like me and my father's generation,
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13:00 - 13:03but there's no tradition in Caribbean life
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13:03 - 13:05of memoirs or biographies.
-
13:05 - 13:09It was a tradition that you didn't
chat about your business in public. -
13:09 - 13:13But I welcomed that title, and I thought actually, yes,
-
13:13 - 13:15there is a possibility that this
-
13:15 - 13:20will open up conversations
that we'd never had before. -
13:20 - 13:24This will close the generation gap, perhaps.
-
13:24 - 13:26This could be an instrument of repair.
-
13:26 - 13:29And I even began to feel that this book
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13:29 - 13:32may be perceived by my father
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13:32 - 13:36as an act of filial devotion.
-
13:36 - 13:39Poor, deluded fool.
-
13:39 - 13:43Bageye was stung by what he perceived to be
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13:43 - 13:46the public airing of his shortcomings.
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13:46 - 13:49He was stung by my betrayal,
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13:49 - 13:51and he went to the newspapers the next day
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13:51 - 13:53and demanded a right of reply,
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13:53 - 13:55and he got it with the headline
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13:55 - 13:58"Bageye Bites Back."
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13:58 - 14:01And it was a coruscating account of my betrayal.
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14:01 - 14:04I was no son of his.
-
14:04 - 14:06He recognized in his mind that his colors
-
14:06 - 14:08had been dragged through the
mud, and he couldn't allow that. -
14:08 - 14:11He had to restore his dignity, and he did so,
-
14:11 - 14:13and initially, although I was disappointed,
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14:13 - 14:15I grew to admire that stance.
-
14:15 - 14:18There was still fire bubbling through his veins,
-
14:18 - 14:22even though he was 82 years old.
-
14:22 - 14:24And if it meant that we would now return
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14:24 - 14:28to 30 years of silence,
-
14:28 - 14:34my father would say, "If it's so, then it's so."
-
14:34 - 14:37Jamaicans will tell you that
there's no such thing as facts, -
14:37 - 14:39there are only versions.
-
14:39 - 14:41We all tell ourselves the versions of the story
-
14:41 - 14:44that we can best live with.
-
14:44 - 14:47Each generation builds up an edifice
-
14:47 - 14:49which they are reluctant or sometimes unable
-
14:49 - 14:51to disassemble,
-
14:51 - 14:55but in the writing, my version of the story
-
14:55 - 14:57began to change,
-
14:57 - 15:01and it was detached from me.
-
15:01 - 15:04I lost my hatred of my father.
-
15:04 - 15:08I did no longer want him to die or to murder him,
-
15:08 - 15:12and I felt free,
-
15:12 - 15:17much freer than I'd ever felt before.
-
15:17 - 15:19And I wonder whether that freedness
-
15:19 - 15:22could be transferred to him.
-
15:24 - 15:29In that initial reunion,
-
15:29 - 15:31I was struck by an idea that I had
-
15:31 - 15:34very few photographs of myself
-
15:34 - 15:37as a young child.
-
15:37 - 15:39This is a photograph of me,
-
15:39 - 15:41nine months old.
-
15:41 - 15:43In the original photograph,
-
15:43 - 15:46I'm being held up by my father, Bageye,
-
15:46 - 15:48but when my parents separated, my mother
-
15:48 - 15:51excised him from all aspects of our lives.
-
15:51 - 15:55She took a pair of scissors and cut
him out of every photograph, -
15:55 - 15:59and for years, I told myself
the truth of this photograph -
15:59 - 16:02was that you are alone,
-
16:02 - 16:05you are unsupported.
-
16:05 - 16:07But there's another way of looking at this photograph.
-
16:07 - 16:09This is a photograph that has the potential
-
16:09 - 16:12for a reunion,
-
16:12 - 16:15a potential to be reunited with my father,
-
16:15 - 16:19and in my yearning to be held up by my father,
-
16:19 - 16:21I held him up to the light.
-
16:21 - 16:24In that first reunion,
-
16:24 - 16:27it was very awkward and tense moments,
-
16:27 - 16:28and to lessen the tension,
-
16:28 - 16:31we decided to go for a walk.
-
16:31 - 16:33And as we walked, I was struck
-
16:33 - 16:35that I had reverted to being the child
-
16:35 - 16:39even though I was now towering above my father.
-
16:39 - 16:41I was almost a foot taller than my father.
-
16:41 - 16:44He was still the big man,
-
16:44 - 16:49and I tried to match his step.
-
16:49 - 16:50And I realized that he was walking
-
16:50 - 16:53as if he was still under observation,
-
16:53 - 16:56but I admired his walk.
-
16:56 - 16:58He walked like a man
-
16:58 - 17:01on the losing side of the F.A. Cup Final
-
17:01 - 17:05mounting the steps to collect his condolence medal.
-
17:05 - 17:09There was dignity in defeat.
-
17:09 - 17:11Thank you.
-
17:11 - 17:12(Applause)
- Title:
- How our stories cross over
- Speaker:
- Colin Grant
- Description:
-
Colin Grant has spent a lifetime navigating the emotional landscape between his father’s world and his own. Born in England to Jamaican parents, Grant draws on stories of shared experience within his immigrant community — and reflects on how he found forgiveness for a father who rejected him.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 17:25
Brian Greene edited English subtitles for How our stories cross over | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for How our stories cross over | ||
Morton Bast approved English subtitles for How our stories cross over | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for How our stories cross over | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for How our stories cross over | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for How our stories cross over | ||
Madeleine Aronson accepted English subtitles for How our stories cross over | ||
Madeleine Aronson edited English subtitles for How our stories cross over |