When I was growing up in my wee Highland village in Scotland everybody was white. We didn’t think about it, but the fact was, nobody in the area was anything other than white.

We were taught that skin colour didn’t matter. I don’t know how exactly, whether it was at home, at school or at Sunday school, or a combination of them all, but we were. As a result, we had no reason to think about it: everybody was equal, whether they were standing in the playground with us or a dusty school yard in Mozambique.

Then I moved to Edinburgh. It was in the days when almost everybody in Edinburgh was white. There were some people from Pakistan, but again, neither I nor any of my friends thought anything about their skin colour. Why would we? It wasn’t an issue.

When Michael Jackson’s “Doesn’t Matter if You’re Black or White” song came out, I agreed with the title, but kind of couldn’t see the point. I mean, would you sing a song saying, “It doesn’t matter if you wear blue socks or purple”?

Lil Bro had a friend in his class who used to commute, aged about 12 from Glasgow to Edinburgh every day and back again (a 50 min train ride). Once a week this friend would stay the night in order to do some after school sports that my brother also did. After about a year of this, I asked Lil Bro why his friend didn’t go to school in Glasgow. “He’s been bullied there. A lot.” he replied. It seemed strange really, why not just go to another school in Glasgow? “He has,” said Lil Bro, “He keeps being bullied.”

Now, Lil Bro’s friend was a really nice chap. Friendly, charming and intelligent but not a geek, nevermind absolutely gorgeous (although I didn’t want to admit that to my bro, being Big Sis and all that..). I couldn’t figure out why he would have problems with bullies.
“Why is he bullied?” I said.

“Racism.” came the response. I did a double take. What on earth was he talking about? “He’s black, duh” Lil Bro said. It took me a few moments and then I realised that well, yes, he was.

Since then I’ve become somewhat more worldly, including experiencing a small bit of the other side of the coin (subject of minor level racism). I have to admit, however, that I have always worked on the assumption that racism in the West is over, because for me, both in my interactions with people and in what I learned, skin colour was such a non-issue, there was nothing to discuss.

It hasn’t been until this year that I have begun to understand fully that racism wasn’t dead, isn’t dead, in the West. The hoopla about the US having a black president, followed by a lot of what has been said about Michael Jackson’s life has really brought home to me that the world I lived in didn’t exist for many, many people.

And just how privileged I’ve been, because of something I considered pointless to think about.