A Modern Generation

I was in a business meeting last week in the City of London discussing social media with colleagues and clients. As the meeting wound down, we chatted about personal matters, sitting back in our chairs and packing away our papers.

As we looked round the table, we realised that none of us was a native Englander. There was a Sudanese, a German, an Italian, a South African and a Malaysian-born Chinese. We laughed at how we were all speaking English and how we were so comfortable with each other.

The Sudanese marvelled at how in his father’s day in Sudan, the local people could not own businesses and were truly second-class citizens under the British Empire. And here he was running a thriving business in the City, with clients from all over the world, including the British who had once ruled his home country.

I shared the story that my father and his brothers had told us - of how they were not allowed to enter the gentleman’s club in Kuala Lumpur during colonial rule because they were not white. There have been other stories across the Empire of how even sultans and kings had not been allowed entry to such places because they were natives. And just earlier this year, I had walked into a gentleman’s club - a woman and a non-white - on Pall Mall and I had been treated with respect and even deference by the English staff.

The South African had an ancestor who was closely associated with the creation of apartheid, to her shame and embarrassment, and yet she herself had marched against apartheid in her youth and makes friends based on a person’s character, not their colour.

For many of our generation living in today’s Western, cosmopolitan cultures, it’s pretty much a given that we take each person for who they are and it’s not about colour or gender or orientation or whatever. It’s difficult to imagine what it must have been like for our parents and grandparents - to have experienced blanket unquestioned prejudice, or to hold such prejudices as if they were the unswerving truth. There are still people and places where racism, sexism and all kinds of other “isms” still rule the day, unfortunately - so I’m not saying we live in a perfect world. There is still much to be done to remove inequality. It was just that on that particular afternoon last week, we looked at each other and delighted in our differences and the freedom we had to enjoy those differences here in London.

Photo: from freestockphotos.com