It did not matter that there was a lack of blackness in my world to relate to, both subtle and overate messages every day gave negative, positive assurance of my sense of self, I felt black, it was certainly not the case of being proud of this fact after all I had been sexual abused as a child.
Even so the sexual abuse had not affected the real sense of ‘uniqueness’ my situation gave me. Having to live with experiencing sexual abuse has had a huge effect on me anger, depression and anxiety have been emotions which were hard for me to live with but easy for me to relate to. My contact with blackness was watching Muhammad Ali win the heavy weight championship of the world, the Jackson Five singing ABC and the Brazilin footballer Pele being my school nickname given to me by my white peers. This is mentioned for the reason of if I was reading this I may ask ‘where was my dad when this was happening? Dads are supposed to protect you aren’t they?’ He lived in Ghana working and living with my Mum where he would spend nine months in Ghana and three months in England.Īs a black child, young adult who had no black friends, no black family members or black role models there has been a visible lack of ‘group identity’. He was eighteen at the time and the abuse would always happen in mine and my dad’s room. I was forced to act out sexual favours for him. From the age of seven up until the age of ten I was sexually abused by one of the boys on a weekly basis, apart from a three month period in each year.
This was my home and where I lived with them, my cousins, my Auntie and my Uncles. Being sent to live in Egremount in West Cumbria had a number of challenges, not just for its white working class identity which served up a lot of prejudice for me it was also the beginning of the sexual abuse that I had to endure as a child. ‘It was for the best reasons’ I have remembered my Auntie saying and after all it was the brave new world of the nineteen sixties, where the ‘civil rights’ movement was in its ascendency. When I was four it was decided by my parents that I would live in England with my dad’s sister my Auntie Dot. My Mother is a Ghanaian and my Farther is from England, the North West a West Cumbrian. The village is called Dixcove after the British Captain who was called Captain Dixon who colonised the region in the 16th Century. Being born in a small village in the West African country of Ghana gives me my uniqueness and an identity that has culture, history and politics in it. My personal life story begins like all of us at my birth.