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Why I Don't Hate White People

Lemn Sissay: Why I Don't Hate White People
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March 18, 2010

Lemn Sissay opens the Q&A following the Manchester opening of his latest one-man piece of theatre with profuse apologies for the disjointed nature of his performance. Though, as he notes himself, you may not notice the difference as the narrative is by its nature disjointed, he nevertheless offered to pay for twenty tickets for people to come back the following night.

Sadly that can’t be the case for this review as copy deadlines dictate that it had to be written up before then, but though there was some evidence of Sissay forgetting his lines, it’s clear to see that the play is a intriguing and beguiling exploration of attitudes towards race.

Before you ask (as one journalist apparently did) the title of Sissay’s play isn’t intended to be inflammatory. Instead it allows for an exploration of racial difference and the ignorant attitudes people often come up with when faced with someone who looks different to them.

To fill you in on a little background, when Sissay’s mother asked social services to temporarily foster her baby while she completed her studies, the social worker instead changed Sissay’s name and handed him to a heavily religious foster family who subsequently then gave him up to an often brutal care system aged 11.

As the only black person in the small Lancashire town in which he grew up, he faced constant ignorant and racist attitudes whether it was the bullying of his peers to the well meaning but misguided old lady on the bus feeling compelled to ask him, ‘where are you from?’

Sissay’s performance is consistently evocative in its recreation of events but frequently uses humour to punctuate the gravity - one repeated sequence is of an uncanny, larger than life portrayal of the blokes in the pub and their ‘I’m not racist because’ mentality.

Ultimately what the hour realises is a celebration of diversity - not just across different cultures but also in what makes you the person you are and what is in evidence here is Sissay’s increasing maturity both as a writer and a person.

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