Their Racism Is In Pole(ish) Position

I have an Eastern European first name, for no other reason than that my parents liked the sound of it.

I’m working for a temp agency and I get a call to come down to the centre for a day-long job out in the surrounding countryside. A couple of other temps have volunteered their cars to take the rest of us out to where we meet the client and follow him out to the field we were working in. We do the work, get paid for a full eight hours after working for six, and everyone piles back into the cars and goes home happy.

On the way back, the driver catches my eye in the rearview mirror and tells me that she wasn’t initially sure about having me in her car. When I ask her why not, she replies that when she saw my name on the list she thought I was Polish and that, “you wouldn’t talk to any of us.” All I could think of to say was that I had been born in [Midlands Town] and had lived in England all my life.

It made me so angry, partly because this was the first time someone had discriminated against me in a direct way, although by mistake, partly because I find any kind of racism or discrimination baffling — I’ve realised that it isn’t so much that I love everyone equally but that I’m indifferent to everyone equally — and partly because by admitting to it she seemed to expect that I would agree with her sentiments or find her expressing them like that to be acceptable.

I kind of wish I’d made a fuss but we were still several miles out with no other way for me to get back, and I didn’t fancy getting kicked out of the car for having a go at someone I wasn’t likely to ever see again.