The Night the UK Took a Huge #Brexsh*t on My Heart.

Tonight, while I watched the numbers move, the UK as I knew it moves slowly and steadily towards the right. The "Conservative" right. The xenophobic right. The place where people silently gathered together with their torches and set fire to the thin veil between tolerance and hate.

I'm not in London, or in the UK right now and I'm so glad – for me. I'm not glad for my sister or my mother or my nephew or his unborn little brother who are going to have to live in a country where their rights to be there will be called into question more than they are already. If I was given a pound (no, actually, not a pound because that's worth NOTHING right now,) every time I'd been asked “No, but where are you really from” I'd be a millionaire. The colour of my skin renders the answer "London" unsatisfactory to most. But there, the beautiful multi coloured bubble I grew up in, that question was more of an annoyance than a threatening challenge to my authenticity, chipping away at my right to be there. Well, that's what I thought anyway.

OK so 51.9% voted Leave. What now? What happens next? Does the UK continue as normal, just bothering its inhabitants with a bit more paperwork than usual when they want to pop across the Channel? Does this mean that all the British ex-pats living in Spain and France and Germany etc need to return home and put their lives on hold while they wait for the paperwork to legitimise the work they'd already successfully been doing for years?

Why am I so upset? Mostly because I feel like the rug has been pulled out from underneath me. 

Like SURPRISE! WE HATED NON-WHITE NON-BRITS THIS WHOLE TIME!! 

...Although now I recognise that the rug was there extremely precariously in the first place. But now it's clearer. Slowly but surely, they are coming for us. The different looking, different sounding ones. Only now the light is on so they can't creep around us in the dark anymore.

We see you.

Being Black in Britain, Jamaican no less, is a strange and interesting fruit. Sometimes feeling completely accepted – your food and music adored by your peers - and sometimes feeling completely isolated – your hair consistently questioned and tugged and your culture...viciously misunderstood. Running in circles where you are one of a minority constantly called in to answer questions for your people – although, these people who people assume are your people, actually cover a huge diaspora covering continents and mother tongues. I can't answer for them.

But now here I am speaking for them. Because although ostensibly, this vote isn't about my people, whoever they might be. It's not about race, it's about saving the economy, right? It is about protecting Britain from the immigrant strain, right? It's about putting British people first according to Britain First. It's not racist because the people we're hating now are sometimes white. Sometimes Bulgarian. Sometimes Polish. Sometimes Turkish. Sometimes Syrian or Afghan but they're terrorists anyway so it's ok.

Guess what? It's not ok.

I'm taking deep breaths. I'm inhaling through my nose and exhaling through my mouth but the pit of my stomach still feels weighed down by lead and hate and fear and questions. Was the United Kingdom ever really United? Am I mourning the death of a false nation built on false memories of acceptance and mutual cultural appreciation? Nigerian men buying their food in Polish shops. Indian teenagers talking with Jamaican inflected accents. Of course, this mental pictures were all taken in London and of course, London voted to Remain In. For that I can only say how proud I am of my city and what it represents. The city who voted for Saddiq Khan (whose move to get rid of those idiot “bikini body” tube ads was a terrific first move. We learned our lesson after Boris-gate). 

The city that didn't let us down.

For now, what's done is done. Maybe David Cameron will resign (wishful and unlikely thinking). Maybe the backlash of the falling pound will rally the Labour party and the sleeping Brits who assumed the others would take care of their vote, will wake up and show up. 

We can only cross our fingers, hope for no violence, and wait.