100 Voices #AllAgainstRacism: Jade Jordan – "We cannot afford to remain silent about racism any longer"

Jade Jordan,
actor & author

What’s the saying? “If we were all the same, it’d be a really boring world.” I don’t believe personally that racism will ever go away fully. Not everybody is going to accept change. But we can improve, starting in our schools.

I had two women message me the other day on social media, one of them living in Cork, the other in Drogheda. Both had lived in London and came back home with their children, who are all young. But they have started having little comments made at them in school. So my book helped them to explain to their children that people are different – different colours of skin, different hair types, different backgrounds, different cultures – but we’re all the same. We’re all human.

Maybe we need people of colour to go into schools, and talk about their experiences to the children, the teachers, the principal. I think that’s something we should have on our curriculum – speaking about it, but not in a preaching way. I never think anything should be done in the preaching way. In my opinion, a kid is like a sponge: they learn off their surroundings. So kids don’t see colour. That behavior is picked up, and it’s not necessarily always parents. It could be an older sibling, an older cousin, an aunt, or an uncle, it could be a teacher, you know?

Schooling wasn’t the easiest for my mom. Now, I know we’ve come on a lot. But I bet the discrimination is still going on in places. It’s just one of those things that needs to be called out. And if the schools are not ready to do that or don’t feel they can do that, because there’s that thing where – I hate saying this: white people feel like they can’t really speak about it because it’s not their first-hand experience – well, get somebody in that has the experience. There’s enough of us to go out there and speak and are confident enough to do so. I’m still learning. @Black_andIrish on Instagram, for example, has helped me so much. And Black History Month. But I’m ready for the questions and can speak from experience. It’s about starting a conversation. We cannot afford to remain silent about racism any longer.

• Nanny, Ma And Me by Jade Jordan is out now (Hachette Ireland)

Read Part 1 of 100 Voices: #AllAgainstRacism, in the current issue of Hot Press. Available to pick up in shops now, or to order online below:

Special thanks to the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission for their support in this project.