The Invisible Man.

Unconscious Bias and the Ghosting of Black Bodies.

I introduce myself to you again! For the umpteenth time, you ask what my name is as if we’ve only just met. This, before you proceed to mispronounce my name with no apparent attempt or care to ask how it’s pronounced. “Funny name,” you might say, as if the world revolves around George, Edward, Lizzy, and Charles.

Your smirk of a smile is a learned politeness that concerns itself more with its appearance than its intention. I’ve learnt you, like I’ve learnt your language. You are the fool if you think me any less of you. I know you, your ways—even the devil in you—but you do not know me!

Until I moved to the UK, I was everything that I am before I ever needed to mention my blackness. I answered to my name(s). I answered to the functions of various roles that I assume based on the relationships I steward—son, brother, partner, friend, and so on. But here we are again as you reduce my features, and all the unique things that identify my being, to just the colour of my skin.

Today I refuse to cover your awkwardness with conversation. You avoid the silence by blurting out your stupidity, asking me how long I’ve been here only because you’re fascinated by my manner of speech. I travelled the world with only a pair of reading eyes and a curious mind. You are either poorly travelled or illiterate, because you deduce my accent to “American.” How ironic that you’re a national of the coloniser of the world, yet you know nothing outside of the blandness of yourself.

You ask where I’m from, and you say “Rhodesia” when I say “Zimbabwe.” You try to fake camaraderie and say, “We’re all one people,” but you don’t believe that. You say “Africa,” but it’s 54 states. I’m specific! How could you be my brother when, after all that history, you think it’s appropriate to share your opinion on Robert Mugabe?! You condemn the dead to appease your apathy toward the living. Pseudo-woke rhetoric on geopolitics, courtesy of some “social media” reels. What I’ve lived is real.

But this conversation never happened, only existing in my head, because you do not see me. You do not know me!

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