It's been an eventful fortnight in the British press for all the Poles living in the UK. Polish is the second most popular language in England and Wales! And Ponglish is oh so funny.
So you would have thought it would be about the languages. But no, typically it was about (in the alphabetical order)
First of all I'm not going to deny that Poland in general has a problem with racism, antisemitism and very negative attitudes towards minorities. Second, I will not try to convince you that people from outside the UK don't speak with a funny accent (for the exception of French, of course, who speak with a cute accent).
Instead I would like to point out that according to general perception in the UK I, along with a bunch of my more or less close friends, do not exist. Because a) I don't use Ponglish b) I am embarrased by the Poles who are racist c) treat the UK as my home. And it's a common knowledge that such Poles do not exist.
I occasionally amuse (pronounced: bore) people with my favourite anecdote about chatting to strangers, which gave inspiration to the title of my blog. Usually after a few minutes of witty remarks, intelligent questions and interesting whatnot, a conversation with a smiling British person comes to an end like this:
- I really love your accent. Are you French?
- No, I'm Polish.
- Oh...
And according to my friends that's a very common experience among Poles who do not have a strong Eastern European accent and know their Simple Present from their Present Continuous. But this is not something that anyone expects, and this is not something that sells newspapers so I guess that's why it's such a shock for some British folk and the majority of British press. Lucky old French...
(A quick note to my fellow immigrants from France: I have nothing against you. I just envy you your much more appealing love-hate relationship with the British and I wish I could stop dreading the question "So where are you originally from?")
Well, I believe that the UK is my home. I intend to stay here because I like it here. I don't think it's perfect but it's a place where I want to be, and not only because work actually pays my bills and leaves a bit of money for some frivolity and I can attend to my work-life balance even if I'm not on a senior managerial level. I pay my taxes and I take interest in the life of this country. I've met many brilliant people here, many of whom have become my friends and who were not trying to promote me as an immigrant by implying I might be French. And I know quite a lot of Polish, some of them post 2004 immigrants who feel about the UK in a similar way. We're just not that visible on the streets.
But if you thought that this was surprising, wait for this.
My own mum can ask me about how it is to live in the UK any day she wants (and I'm home). She usually gets pretty good updates very frequently.
Yet she phoned me the other day very agitated because she heard that her friend's daughter works in a place where the relationship between Polish and British workers is very tense.
So her news was not "You know this Ania? She works in a really rough place and it's not good there." She phoned me up to say: "Poles are treated very badly in the UK because they can only do simple work and the Brits are not happy with them stealing their jobs and not speaking English."
So, as you can see, I'm invisible from whatever distance.
Do you already feel sorry for me? No? Ok, here you go.
Lithuanians, Latvians, Slovaks and Czechs are not Polish. And they will make a point of telling you they are not bloody Polish should you assume they were. They are not, but they too are invisible, this time thanks to me.
So perhaps I do not exist and it would be better for me to change my name and tell people I'm French? But before I do that I'll try to see if writing something about the invisible Poles will break the spell.
Yours
Agnieszka
PS A special mention for Giles Coren. I know you had a lot of grief from the Polish folk recently but I understand where you are coming from. Your family has had some bad experiences in Poland and you could hear them talking about it from the early age. You don't speak Polish as such and haven't spent a lot of time in Poland but you are somehow connected to that country.
As I say, I do understand. Although I was born and raised in Krakow my mother comes from a small village in the North East of Poland. I went there a few times for a couple of days when I was a child, mainly for family occasions like weddings and funerals. But I heard my mum talking on the phone to her sisters and I know their problems. Do you think I could become a specialist on Polish agriculture in The Times, please?
I thought I knew you well, I was wrong. Now I'm looking forward to getting to know you better
ReplyDelete"I know a Polish girl who introduces herself as Swiss. She says she does it to avoid being labelled. It’s all well and good for Poles to be considered “a good workforce” but she wants a chance to express her personality. “People lose interest in me before we even start speaking when I say I am Polish,” she says."
ReplyDeletehttp://conservativehome.blogs.com/platform/2013/03/from-marinakim_-called-a-hooker-labelled-a-spy-my-experience-of-britains-hidden-racism-against-easte.html
I changed my name so that my child is not recognised instantly as a Pole at school. We can learn a lot from the Jews.
Thanks for the link to Marina's article - it sums things up pretty neatly.
ReplyDeleteIt's a shame her friend feels the need to hide her true identity.
In a free society nobody should be put in a position where they have to lie about their identity just to be accepted.
I would never be able to do that simply because being Polish is a huge part of who I am - the books I've read, the history I've been taught, the customs of social life I've acquired. I think also, even though my feelings towards Poland are ambiguous at best, I feel proud to be Polish and don't feel I should be ashamed of my nationality.
Also I feel that we - whoever "we" is: the Poles, Eastern Europeans, the immigrants - are responsible for retelling our story. And through that gain confidence for ourselves and for other people.
Obviously we are not the only ones responsible for the attitudes towards us, but if we want a change, we need to help our luck.
Golfstorm, thank you for your uplifting input to the discussion. Sometimes I think there is something like fate in this whole atmosphere surrounding the Poles in Britain. It reminds of the times in history of the nation when Poles were risking their freedom and often lives to maintain their identity. We were born to a nation which N.A. Berdiaev, a Russian philosopher, described as one of an "indestructible spirit"; it seems as if we were being challenged by fate to prove true to that spirit, over and over again.
ReplyDeleteI do not see a reason why I should be ashamed of my heritage just because someone chooses to pick on my nationality. People get bullied for various reasons - from skin colour to hair colour; people get bullied for things like intelligence - should it make them pretend that they are stupid?
Anonymous, let me share my experience with you - I have never pretended that I am anybody else but a Pole, and whenever I am asked about my nationality, I answer with pride. Because I am proud of who I am and what I really say is "Look at me, this is what it means to be a Pole; now how it relates to the beliefs you had about the Poles". It is very sad that you feed your child with your own insecurities and fears. The British are not all that scary, really, and a whole lot of them are friendly, tolerant, intelligent, open minded people who have been very accepting towards me; I am sure they would accept you if only you accepted yourself ;)
Thank you, Lena. It's really great to hear that my view is relevant (and uplifting :) to people. Maybe it will help me overcome the energy crisis and I will finish 5 different posts I've already started!
ReplyDeleteThe whole point of this blog is to remind people that the picture of the immigration is not black and white, even though it's easy to paint it that way and it's easy to sell the picture when it's done that way.
So my self-proclaimed role in this is to add a splash of colour and build bridges. I will not answer the question what a sustainable level of immigration is, I will not tell people if they should speak Polish or English when they are out and about. But I would like people - both British and Polish - to approach the whole thing with more positivity.
Not understanding each other is annoying, finding out where the misunderstanding came from can be hilarious. In between there's a lot of space for a good conversation. And if there's one thing I admire about the British it's their amazing ability to make a good conversation :)