I might not recognise McAvoy’s experience of racism in Glasgow but it does exist and the answer lies in ALL o

IHAVE been visiting Glasgow for a long time, first as a student in 1964, and two of my children were educated there. So, I was quite surprised, and extremely upset, to learn that actor James McAvoy had brought a production of Cyrano de Bergerac to the city, only for female performers to be racially abused.

My family have lived, studied and worked in Glasgow and not conveyed to me this type of negative experience, hence my surprise, but I do not doubt for one moment James’s account.

The city, as we know, had a long history of slavery connections via its merchants, retaining its Merchant City area to this day. This history has been studied in great detail and I am sure many in Glasgow are aware of it, probably more so than in a lot of other places in the UK.

However, what we seem to have here is a group of people who this education has not reached. It tells us that all the work we have been doing has not really permeated to certain sectors of our community. It’s as much our problem, in that we have not managed to fully get across the message of racism and the horror associated with it.

I took part in an Antiques Roadshow, at Culzean Castle in Ayrshire, last year, and took along silver items including sugar bowls. I could have emphasised that they were items which were very ornate and worth a lot of money.

However, when I was asked about them, I said these beautiful pieces were made to hold sugar made by British slavery in the Caribbean, and that the people who made it had a life expectancy of less than ten years. There was a silence, and the expert said the reason for the silence was that he had never heard such items described in this context before.

Many people said afterwards they had never heard slavery put like that and that it was the first time they really understood it.

Therefore, when educating about racism we have to use meaningful examples. I have been involved with the University of Glasgow’s work on education around slavery and they have been ahead of the curve. They have engaged with the University of the West Indies on a form of educational reparation.

The city council has been involved too, but the question now is how much of all this has permeated down to the parts of the community who abused these actors of colour, to the extent that James said he wanted to leave his own city.

Evidently, we have not succeeded in attempts to fully educate. We have got the message across to a sector of the community, but we still have a lot of work to do.

One area would be to get this history into the curriculum. What happened tells me that this is critical and should not be delayed.

Also, we have to get it into our institutions, be it football or music or whatever, which would help get the message across that people are in fact one humanity. We are different, but the same.

The media has been good at getting the message across and has become aware of the need to educate. Everyone can help.

I was reading a diary kept by a notorious slave owner, who wrote down everything he did. In it, there was one passage I read which I have never forgotten. There was one little black boy who he was always chastising and one day after he had flogged him, he heard the little boy saying: ‘If this is living, I would rather be dead’. That is slavery and that is our history.

That is what people don’t understand when they engage in racist behaviour today. That European people went to Africa, told them they were inferior and enslaved them. And no one bothered that they then had a lifespan of less than ten years. We have had to work hard to get this message through to people and they are now responding. I speak to schools, universities, clubs and companies.

However, this experience which James has had tells us we have missed out a sector of our community. It shows us the attitude prevails that certain people are inferior to others and, therefore, those who engage in this behaviour don’t believe they are doing anything wrong. We have got to get the message to these people.

It’s similar to the highly intelligent people in the past who didn’t think they were doing anything wrong, because they thought people with a non-white skin were inferior.

I am extremely upset that this has happened to people in Glasgow and it shows we have not paid enough attention to all sectors of our community. We need to use our shared experience approach of telling the story to people so they can understand it.

When I have given lectures all over Scotland on racism, the consistent response has been: ‘Why has no one told us this before?’

Therefore, it is incumbent on we who are the storytellers, we who are supposed to be educated, to teach people across all parts of our community this history to which I refer. If they are not taught, how can they understand?

I have a few Scottish genes thanks to my ancestry, and so, just like James, I feel that the truth matters. It tends to work, and it feels here that we have failed a sector of our community despite all the teaching we have seen.

I believe James was correct to speak out. People have said to me before that Scotland seems to be ahead of many other places in terms of the ‘calling out’ of racism and I have been asked why this might be the case.

Having lived here, I have learned that, once you tell Scottish people the truth, you can’t go back and tell them a lie. Therefore, James knows the truth, and you can’t expect him to tell a lie. In ignorance, people

The attitude prevails that certain people are inferior to others

Once you tell Scots the truth, you cannot go back and tell them a lie

didn’t do anything but with education things can change.

We have to think of the black actors who were abused here. We don’t want them to go away thinking this is a city, or a country, which condones this type of behaviour, and I think that is critical. If no one had said anything, they would go away believing that, and we do not want that.

It would be interesting to find some of the people who were involved and, without any recriminations against them, ask why they engaged in this racist behaviour. That could tell us the defects of the education we have conducted so far.

A lot of bad behaviour is based on ignorance and people have asked me how they can be expected to behave any better if they don’t know any better.

I was in a taxi in Glasgow and, mentioning that I was born in Jamaica, the driver said I must be proud to come from the same place as Bob Marley and the Wailers. I explained that Marley was halfwhite and one of the band, Tosh, has a name which is Scottish in origin. He expressed great surprise.

Driving on Jamaica Street, I asked him how old he thought it was and he said 50 years or so. When I told him it had been there since 1763 he was astonished.

The point is that education is everything and that, ultimately, we are all the same.