foreign everything changed for me today died that was it that changed everything [Music] i remember the day vividly i came off the bus and literally as soon as i got off the bus you could see a blue flashing light and then obviously as i got closer it became more brighter and they locked off this whole road and um the police officer just told me you can't come here a kid just died so i got home now and then just opened the door now my mom was like was shout out my nigerian name which i'm not
gonna say and she's just looking at the tv and she's just she was just crying like just eyes watering and then damn laura taylor's mom started talking and then she just she just started crying for no reason like just literally crying on her knees and she probably i think she grabbed my little brother and hugged him and she just said i could have been one of you guys police are hunting for the killers of a ten-year-old boy who was stabbed to death on his way home from school earlier today nigerian-born damilona taylor crawled up these
steps on a housing estate in peckham south london in a desperate attempt to escape his attackers he was still wearing his school uniform when he died damilola taylor a 10 year old boy from the same country my parents are from died that could have been me and that's what scared my mom the most it could have been any one of us two months later i moved us out of london i remember the day we moved and like it's like one of those happy memories because um i remember my dad he's a very silent person so
when he was kind of telling people where to go and what to do i was just like yeah that's my dad i remember sitting in a back seat i'm seeing the whole of peckham just flash by right behind my eyes so like you see the moss the big beckham library the churches it was my london my multicultural london so keep going i'll keep going and all i see is um horses see cows like what where are we going and then um you know when you're driving then you get on the speed limits and the three
bars and it goes to the one and so i'm just like looking at that i'm looking at that yeah yeah yeah i see pitch black i'm asleep wake up now see this house i'm like that's my house when my dad describes me just like you better behave yourself the first week i was there i just stayed inside my house i didn't really go out i didn't want to do much and then one day my mom just asked me to go to the shops for her i remember walking out my house and walking down this long
path and all i saw was white people like literally just different shades of white so i go to the shop but when i enter the shop everyone keeps looking at me like staring at me and then cashier just gave me this kind of like like what are you i'm just like okay cool so next thing you know i finished buying what i need to buy from the shop and then i walked down the road and all i hear is oy look up i see a little boy calling me a and then he looks at me
just stares at me and starts making monkey sounds i basically got home i just i just kept it to myself like how could i tell my mom hey the area you moved us to that kind of races um is that where you can like get a return on the house that you just paid for and just you know send us back and i can't go to my dad telling him someone called me and they got because he's gonna think i'm weak and if i cry in front of my dad he's gonna think i'm even weaker
at that age i was i was trying to look up to my dad i was trying to be a man i was trying to get my dad's love for my dad's affection and i just really wanted my dad to love me i didn't feel like he didn't love me he just had a very hard way of showing it and at that age i didn't want to show him any kind of weakness remember when i was young like whenever we um you know got my dad angry he would like he would be his chest as loud
as he possibly could and say i am a liar do you know what a lion is he's a king or the jungle it means you can't mess with the lion and i just got dying my sister if he's a lion and i must be the son of a lion and i can't show weakness so i just went into my room i closed the door i just screamed as loud as i possibly could but with nothing coming out my mouth i soon realized that the era that we lived in was run by these two families these
people just looked i know it sounds really weird to say but when you is it possible to say that you can see bad in someone by just looking at them the guy who was in charge at the time i wish i could say his name i thought i'm not going to he he just does this and does that i just thought oh crap no it doesn't get better does it first fight i got into was with a kid at school um a white kid but the way they fight compared to london is completely different so
in london if you want to fight someone you grab them you just instant as in instant punch you make someone angry boom in essex they're like um meet me around the alleyway around the back and me you're gonna go at it okay yeah i'll do that so basically we organized the fight it was on a large field and i just see like a crowd of white people in a circle and as soon as i entered they kind of opened the thing it's like is this him is this him get away up you over here next
thing you know the kid just comes up to me i dropped to the floor everything went blank this little kid just goes boom boom boom on my face and i swear to didn't feel a single thing [Music] harder harder they're enjoying me getting hit [Music] i froze so i just let him carry on hitting me kyra hitting him until he was finished [Music] i remember just them making the same way they parted for me to enter the same way they parted for me to leave but like they were following me and they were like oh
go on go away then go on get out of our country come on leave us aloud leave us no see i told you having i told you you're having nice and a black gets larry [Music] i was just scared i'm just scared remember like my eyes just um remember them being puffy like to like up to here but um i remember just um going into the sink and i'm just trying to i don't know why i thought i could wash it away i just started crying i never cried like that before you know you know
those those it was those deep inhale cries remember i remember hearing my mom footsteps slowly coming up the stairs she saw me got eyes when i die and she just started speaking in her native tongue and started saying my life my life my life what have i done who's done this to my son she blamed my dad because she felt like if he was at home then he would have known where i was going or he would have heard it and he could have stopped it but because he wasn't there you know she she blamed
him for that in a way he felt like she was right because because he should have been superman right like that's what that's meant to be and like he wasn't able to do that and i think that added to more of their problems which added to more of my problems he basically quit his job at london after that and he started looking for work around the area but it didn't really work out and that put a strain on the family my dad became a very angry person did he hurt you yeah body is cool [Music]
after i lost that fight i just said to myself the only way i'm gonna survive is if i fit in if i become like them so i did whatever i needed to do to fit in to a group of people who hated the color of my skin if i started with my clothing i would literally save all my dinner money up starve myself literally i turned into a little twig just so i can buy all the latest clothing like lila scott mckenzie hoodie track suits and anything elsie all the big top guys wear that's what
i wanted to wear and then next you know it went to the hair and you know at the time they had the little spiky the spiky hair was the thing back in the day so i literally would buy this thing called it's a texturizing cream that was straight in your hair and then i just got the accent and just like start putting a bit of swing on it like you're right and they're like what is that yeah it's me how are you doing you're all right you want to go for a point so just talking
like them it was like yeah i wouldn't be like you after that i remember thinking to myself the perfect white one has blue eyes so i said effort i want blue iced tea so i went to the local shop when i bought the brightest blue continents and the final thing i did was i bleached my skin i remember the first time i did it i remember putting a load on my hand going like that look in the skin like mirror am i like and i'm not like let's put some more next when i wake up
in the morning and my skin is like a tad bit wow i had enough i wanted to be it's not even like i've wanted to be white i just wanted to fit in and if it meant being like white people then let's do it we're doing coming over these hands over time i started become friends with i guess the racists or the families and i guess all the people that didn't like black people in the area i became friends with them i wasn't afraid anymore i was just a black kid who wanted to be like
them to fit in i felt like i had to i had to keep silent i had to not talk on some things i thought were important things and certain situations and certain predicaments i would just find a way to side the white people we had a situation one time whereby um we're walking down we're about to go to a little party with our mates what are you saying here and um the white the white and black guys got into a little you know altercation oh he's a he's a black gun that's like not you cornelius
i'm not talking about you i'm talking about your friend and in that moment i just like i'm not proud of it i just said yeah cool like i get it well these are my friends what am i meant to say what did you say i didn't say anything there wasn't anything for me to say we started smashing houses we started smashing cars it got very violent i enjoyed it let me get rid of all the pain all the anger i was feeling for my dad so i liked it do you want to know like the
weirdest thing the only thing i wish as a like 10 year old kid back then was just wanting my dad to love me you know but i feel like he was hurt a lot and so he he hurt us a lot so i hurt a lot [Music] i just kind of like feel like like why you know like why do you why would you do that no like why i just pisses me off because like i just don't feel like you should treat people like that it really bothers me because it's just like like it
really messed me up we went out on a rampage one night and there was this guy with a bike oh and i don't know what came over me but i just punched him for no reason he didn't say anything just punched him and then he dropped and then i remember seeing him on the floor and then i just kicked his head but when i kicked his head he screamed on top of his lungs and i just remember seeing his face and he just caving he was like [Music] you feel guilty yeah yeah i feel guilty
i feel guilty but i felt like i felt like i was accepted but you showed it like that you don't want to butt it off because then it's bare wet and you get up here spit your maps horrible yeah that's it yeah that's it you're talking about a black kid being accepted by racists and they were cool with me like me of all people and i thought it felt good felt good [Music] i wanted love i wanted to feel love so yeah just made friends and monsters shhh you
