Emmanuel

I’ve had one experience, walking with a friend and we were having a conversation and this guy walks past us and he says, “Go back home, nigger.” We were just walking, my friend didn’t actually hear it. I heard it, but I ignored it. And my friend and I are both Nigerian kids, and this was pretty early on when I moved out here. Since then there’ve been little incidents of people using the word and that kind of thing. These people have not really been exposed to different cultures, and to other people and so when you ruminate in a space where someone tells you that this thing is bad, even if you’ve not experienced that for yourself, the moment you come face to face with that thing or that person, you kind of go with the perception that you’ve been taught that whole while. It made me upset in the moment, when it happened, but now I’m in a place where I realise people are coming from their own levels of ignorance. I’m not here to get mad about someone using a word against me, it’s more about making the education available and then seeing if that’s a conscious decision, if someone is consciously trying to be hateful. But we are just trying to spread the love out here, and the love grabs who it grabs, whoever can catch that vibe will catch that vibe, and whoever can’t, they will eventually. You can’t defeat love.