Growing up on our estate, we were all different colours, but we were all really poor. I never really realised that black was a problem for some people.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the innocence of childhood regarding race and poverty.
Michaela Coel's quote captures the essence of childhood naivety, where differences in skin color are often overshadowed by shared experiences of hardship. Growing up in a diverse yet impoverished environment, she suggests that social constructs of race did not affect her perception of others until later in life, highlighting how societal issues can taint our understanding of unity and diversity.
In practice
During a panel on race relations, this quote can be used to illustrate how childhood innocence can lead to a more unified perspective.
In Britain, we need to start presenting the option of being a writer in front of black women. We need to present the idea of being a writer into poorer communities because the majority of black people in this country are working class. We need to let working-class people know that their voices are important.
I don't believe in comedy as a TV genre - I think there's drama that is funny. Because beyond the laughs, there has to be cost, and there has to be heart.
I wanted to write a show about an estate that wasn't sad or morbid, like a lot of shows portray working class life to be.
When you've got African parents, you go to uni, do finance, and go into accounting. But I'm not good with systems. I dropped out in my final year of college to become a Christian poet. Then went back to do my A-levels and went to uni in Birmingham to do political science and theology. I lasted 12 weeks.
We live in a world where if you're white, an upper-class male of extreme privilege, and able-bodied, and you're nothing that takes you away from that norm, then you're going to have - then the world will not assign you problems because of what you are. That is actually the world we live in.
Where I grew up, in Aldgate, east London, one of the poorest boroughs in the country, I saw lots that was real - the bankers with their briefcases, the man next door with five wives, the illegal immigrants in Flat 5. I'm from a world you rarely see on screen, and I want to show it off.
Here is a man whose life and actions the world has already condemned - yet whose enormous fortune...has already brought him acquittal!
Not all that is presented to us as history has really happened; and what really happened did not actually happen the way it is presented to us; moreover, what really happened is only a small part of all that happened. Everything in history remains uncertain, the largest events as well as the smallest occurrence.
All women, and men of color - we were owned like tables and chairs. We spent a hundred years getting a legal identity as human beings. That's a big thing.
profanity and obscenity entitle people who don't want unpleasant information to close their ears and eyes to you.
I liked looking on at other people in crucial situations. If there was a road accident or a street fight or a baby pickled in a laboratory jar for me to look at, I'd stop and look so hard I never forgot it.
I will never understand people who think that the way to show their righteous opposition to sexual freedom is to write letters full of filthy words.
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