Judgments based on skin and heritage has nothing, and everything, to do with you

Sri Lanka-born novelist and lawyer Brannavan Gnanalingam. Photo / Alida Mercuri

When people make judgments based on your skin and heritage and it has nothing - and everything - to do with you, writes Brannavan Gnanalingam.

I've been asked, with the release of my new high-school novel, Sprigs, whether it's autobiographical. Well, no but one incident from high school stuck with me and was re-cast. It was a few weeks before my Year 13 Bursary exam. I had been practising and practising and the teachers thought it'd be a good idea to do a Saturday morning "mock" exam to replicate exam conditions. My exam would be marked by the other English teacher, one whom I hadn't had much to do with. My actual teacher was great, though I suppose this approach was to ensure there was no confirmation bias in the marking.

I was going into Bursary hoping for a scholarship in English, aiming for a mark around 85 per cent. I was a confident, academically cocky kid. When I got the practice exam mark back though, I had failed. Even a B would have been devastating, given where I was tracking but instead, it was below 45 per cent. I was dumbstruck, this was a mark I had never come close to in my schooling, no matter how lazy I'd been.

I gathered the courage to ask why I failed. Conflict and confrontation doesn't come easily to me. I hadn't really engaged with that teacher before but I was hoping for some feedback that'd help. The response, to my face, was, "I don't like your style." That was it.

I fully acknowledge my exam may not have been my best work. I have no idea. It may even have been fail-worthy. But then, it may not have been. English was my second language but when you immigrate somewhere young, you often end up becoming hypersensitive to nuances in the dominant language because you're comparing it to what you hear back at home. And at the time, it felt like it teamed up with other comments from the past, like,"Go back to your own country", "Where are you from?", "You speak English funny", "Speak English properly", etc.
You can never really know what a person is thinking when they say what they say. Most people are not actually going to tell you. When someone says something directly based on your skin colour, it's easy to contextualise that person. When it's subtly off, like your dinner after a fly has landed on it, it becomes hard to decipher. Was the person's response to you based on a genuine opinion of your merit? Or was it something lazier?

The other day, when I was leaving creche, holding hands with my daughter, a parent walked up to my daughter and asked where her mother was. My daughter innocently said, "She's at work" and the parent was about to notify the creche, until I said that I was her dad. She left, without apologising, saying, "Well someone had to check." What – exactly – had she intended to "check"?

Similarly, those sorts of comments get coloured by other events – I've had people yell at me, "She's not your daughter" and then laugh it off. A joke, a joke. "Bantz." As if the world of language and history can be ignored because it's just a laugh.

The thing is, it's just words to the joker but the words are at my expense. When it's my skin colour, it's also my parents' expense and my ancestors' expense. It's not like washing soap off your skin, it actually penetrates. It's disorienting and humiliating because there's no guidebook in terms of how to respond. We end up living bewildered lives, hoping that thing isn't passed down to our own kids.

There'll be people who say you need to build resilience. To stop being over-sensitive. But it makes you second-guess yourself, puts you constantly on alert. You realise that no matter where you might be, someone who doesn't know you will make a judgment about you based on your skin or your heritage and that it has nothing actually to do with you. Except it has everything to do with you.

I was lucky with Year 13 English. My main teacher took me aside and told me not to worry. That' I'd be fine. And he was right. I got 91 per cent in Bursary and a scholarship. The fact I have published six novels means at least someone likes my style.

But most people aren't as lucky as me. These comments slash at you like paper cuts and layer scars upon scars. They build on each other because they have the exact same root. The same message from different sources. It's not like having a laugh at something stupid you did or said. The jokes and comments attack your body itself and, in the process, your dignity and self-worth.

A couple of years ago, I was fortunate enough to participate in a creative writing workshop in prison as an "established" writer. I listened to prisoners – people discounted by society – read out some of the most amazing, heartfelt poetry. I recounted my teacher story to them, as part of a general discussion about how we did – or didn't – get encouraged at school. One prisoner came up to me afterwards and talked about how his whole life, teachers told him he couldn't write. They didn't like his style. No one had told him that he could achieve. How this led to him discounting himself.

These narratives become hard to dismantle. And when these are tied to access to spaces, to power, to representation, the task of dismantling becomes even more daunting. Sticks and stones may break my bones, etc is a myth we tell our kids. Words do cause scars. These scars just become hidden over time. There's power in writing though, in the way words can re-craft narratives. To ensure things don't get buried. I guess it's why I write. Style be damned - failing or passing exams feel like child's play in response.

Sprigs, by Brannavan Gnanalingam (Lawrence and Gibson, $35) is out now.