All the things I want to be

So I was talking about the England v Bulgaria game with my tutor group today and one of the girls said she’d been told by kids in school to ‘go back to her own country’.

Then we mentioned how the Bulgaria manager said he hadn’t heard anything, and I was getting the point across that if you don’t say anything when you see or hear it happen it gives the impression that it is okay to do. You have to say something or tell someone who can do something about it.

The same girl’s response to that was ’Miss, but then people call you a snitch’ and that broke my heart.

Having to convince a 13 year old girl that reporting somebody being racist towards you is not you being a snitch, it’s you telling someone else that there is a person who is saying that you are worth less because of the way you look, was just so saddening. Imagine being so immune to it at such a young age that you just don’t think it’s worth doing anything about it.

So please, please remind yourselves and anybody else, especially with everything that’s happening, that if you are silent in the face of racism or homophobia or sexism or anything else, you are enabling it. You cannot be selectively against racism.

I’m a 90s kid but honestly having to grow up and be a teenager now going through high school would terrify me.