Friday, July 15, 2016
My first hero: The knight on a bike
My first experience of racial violence that I can remember was also accompanied by my first experience of justice and heroism. I want to tell you that story.
Just to give you some background, I grew up in a multinational bubble. I've moved around the world from pretty much day one of my life. My first kindergarten was international, even though we lived in Finland at that time. After that, I went to first grade at an international school in Ethiopia, and then one in Zambia, and so on and so forth.
At some stage - I was between 7 - 9 years old at the time - my family came to spend a few months in Finland. My dad stuck me in a local school for a while. We either lived in Zambia at the time, or were about to move there, and my skin was nut brown from the sun. When I am darker, people can't see the European half in me.
I was bullied a lot. But that's not the main focus here.
At some stage when the school closed for the summer, or maybe just the weekend, a few boys from my class came to ask me to go biking with them. When we got to the school yard, they pushed me off my bike, to the ground, and pulled out water guns and shot water at me, taunting me and calling me a refugee (as if that were an insult!).
And that's when something happened, something that has really shaped who I am. A bigger boy swooped in, told them off, helped me to my feet, and lifted my bike off the ground. He asked if I was OK.
The incident taught me something important. It doesn't matter if it's not 'your battle'. That's not an excuse. I wasn't a refugee, so it wasn't technically my battle. But it still affected me, and thus turned it into my fight, whether I wanted it or not. It wasn't my hero's battle either. He had the position of privilege that comes from belonging to the powerful majority. He could have ignored it. He had a choice, and he chose to make it his battle. That's what made him a hero.
And that's the kind of society we should be building. One where people like that little boy step in and stop bullies, because what we are fighting for isn't about us or them: it is about human dignity.
After all these years, I want to find him, and I want to thank him. He was last seen between 1991-93 on the yard of Kirstin Koulu, Suvela, in Espoon Keskus. I guess he was around 10 - 13, so he would be around 34 - 37 now. So please, share this, and help me find my knight on a bike!
Labels: bullying, Finland, hero, justice, rasicm, reward, TCK, thanks
fon @ 5:41 PM link to post * *