What we can learn from Ian Wright
Brockley's finest export shows the struggle people of colour face when they're judged at a young age
I hate Match of the Day. It’s not because of the smug chat or the fact that its pundits are overpaid. I hate it because Ian Wright is forced into playing the joker. The one the others turn to for a bit of bantz, despite his wealth of knowledge and insight. (He’s also paid less than his co-presenters with a sliding scale of remuneration depending on the darkest skin similar to this study). In any case, I hope this week’s Episodes shows his other side and how he’s inspirational to so many people.
Last week I described the area of south-east London that I live in as full of Centrist Dads, which will be a bit shocking if you’ve seen the way it’s been described in Rocky & Wrighty: From Brockley To The Big Time. It has changed a lot since Arsenal’s Ian Wright and David Rocastle grew up in the 70s and 80s but parts of it have remained the same. The Honor Oak Estate they grew up in is still there and my daughter goes to the nursery school that’s right in the middle of it. The school that Ian Wright revisits still has the similar demographic as before but other Primaries have less diversity. (A neighbouring one in Nunhead has seen its demographic shift from majority black to majority white in a very short space of time.) It’s a London-wide issue accelerated by house prices and “gentrification” - I hate using that word and I’ll explain why later.
However, Brockley isn’t a place that is exclusively Centrist Dad and is full of extremes. I do know of one guy who bought an impressive five-bedroom property instead of a flat in Notting Hill and then moved a few doors down in the same road because “he liked the shape of the house”. But I also speak regularly with a dry cleaner who couldn’t afford to feed his children when Covid first struck (I interviewed Tahir here) and his experience is really what I imagine the area is like for many residents. For every million-plus-pound house there’s scores of families struggling using food banks and with kids seeking a way out like Ian Wright, David Rocastle and current Arsenal player Eddie Nketiah (who was also born in Lewisham).
And the documentary shows that Wright and Rocastle led inspirational lives. Nothing was handed to them on a plate and Ian, particularly, had to conquer knockback after knockback and a lot of racism. Rocky may have led a short life (he died aged 33 from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma) but I remember him everyday when I walk my daughter down “Rocky Road” to her school. This week’s episode isn’t about my love for Arsenal (which has taken a battering recently), nor is it about my love for the place I call home but it’s about what we can learn from two exceptional Black role models.
The playground Wright and Rocastle used as kids is now a symbol of modern London. Affectionately known as “the rec”, Honor Oak Park Recreation Ground is frequented by both affluent and poor parents and features a mixture of modern and decaying equipment. The roundabout only works if you’re He-Man (I’m not) but the climbing frames are like something from the Aztec zone in the Crystal maze.
Occasionally I feel depressed being there especially when I hear white parents speak disparagingly of the area without really integrating nor learning about its recent history (such as the Battle of Lewisham or the New Cross Fire). But most of the time I feel lucky to live near this facility and have kids that can enjoy it because it feels like being in the countryside.
“We’ve got a player here he could be Brazilian and he comes from Lewisham” - David Dein, former co-owner of Arsenal, on David Rocastle
It’s not just me that thinks this. Once a grandfather visiting from Scotland said to me “this is the best place in the UK, you know. It's a village field in London. The air’s fresh but the city is only twenty minutes away”. It’s why it’s so popular to live here (as house prices show) and it’s why I live a happy life. (Although I would like to live in an area with soft tap water near the sea that’s also racially diverse. Please message me if you know of such a utopia).
It’s also the G word. Gentrification. I hate the word and the way it’s used by most people. It’s become a lazy shorthand for so much from a bank turning into a pub to the sudden ubiquity of refill shops. It’s also used as a euphemism for whiteness and that’s why I take particular umbrage at the term because what then is the opposite phrase? Is pre-gentrification “black lawlessness”? What was un-genteel about Brockley before the transport links were improved?
“There is a better way to talk about what’s happening in cities, and what’s happening in New York in particular. The first thing that comes to mind is what Steven Chu, the architect, said at the end of his chapter, where he commented that language evolves and land evolves as well. Of course it does. And words get really tired. They get well-tread, and ubiquitous, and diffuse, and they lose their original point of origin. So I think that we can stop leaning on that one word and try to talk about all the aspects that affect our lives when a lot of money comes to town and people are displaced, and the character of the neighbourhood changes. I think it’s better to be more precise with which of those discussions we’re having.” - DW Gibson
Quite a bit actually. I’ve lived here and in neighbouring New Cross for more than 16 years and it’s easy to forget the bad experiences of the past. When I first lived here there was only one cash machine that charged per withdrawal, trains were really unreliable and street harassment was a big issue. I once got robbed at knifepoint (a Stanley knife) and friends would never visit.
Wright talks about how street crime would just find you and he’s not wrong about that. He also was lucky to have a teacher that believed in him which may not be the case for most Black youngsters who go to school in London, as the expulsion rates show. Wright’s success wasn’t just in spite of Brockley though, it was also in spite of a terrible home environment and an early life of constant rejection. It’s also far too simplistic to attribute Wright’s success to one teacher.
Most people of colour who I interview are successful and could be deemed “resilient”. (This is another term I’m starting to loathe and journalist Alicia Kennedy nails it here) This usually means they’ve benefited from encouraging parents and a stable home life which is something Wright definitely didn’t have. We can learn so much from Wright. Mainly that you have to keep trying and not be put off by people judging you.
My favourite Brockley person fixes things for people. He’s called Mo and as well as working as a caretaker at my daughter’s school he mends household items, such as TVs, on a voluntary basis. He worked in Sierra Leone for various diplomats and they helped him escape when civil war erupted so that he could live a life of helping others here.
He’s the most optimistic, charming man you can meet and he loves my daughter and the spirit that burns inside her. He also supports Arsenal and it’s an important part of our identity. We’re both angry at the current ownership who don’t give a f**k about us.
Mo supports Arsenal because when he saw a slew of African players in an Arsenal shirt he identified with them. For people like me and him to turn our backs on the side is impossible because Arsenal is a safe place for people of colour.
I’ve been to other grounds and they’re full of white supporters. Also it’s our team not the American owners’ possession: they bought the club with debt and want to use it to boost their other sporting interests. (If you feel the same please join the Football Supporters’ Association and your team’s fans’ trust).
“He was the greatest man in the world,” says Wright about his teacher, Mr Pidgen during Desert Island Discs but he could have equally said it about his friend Rocastle who was a born leader and avuncular figure at a young age. To me, though, Wright is the greatest man in the world. When he was 22 he was written off as a footballer - at that age if you haven’t signed to a club managers think you must have a flaw. (He went on to score 185 goals for Arsenal and play 33 times for England).
Like many Black youngsters, Wright had been judged not to be adequate because of a supposed flaw - his height. The stereotype for Black athletes was they should be incredibly muscular - like Rocastle - and taller than his 5ft 9in especially when playing as a striker. The rejection from clubs was brutal as this report about his six-week trial at lowly Brighton shows and reeks of institutionalised racism.
When he finally got a chance to play for Crystal Palace (his first professional club) just before his 22nd birthday it was an event that was marred by nerves and jumping on wrong buses. I find the fact that he got on the 122 bus to go to Crystal Palace and ended up in the park rather than the stadium particularly moving. He assumed that Crystal Palace was where the ground was when the 122 stops near where the exhibition building once stood. Crystal Palace’s ground is in actual fact in Selhurst which is relatively near to Brockley which shows that Wright didn’t move out of the area much and had no support from his parents. He really was alone.
Ultimately his determination paid off and he’s now heralded as one of the greatest Arsenal players ever. His struggle, though, shows how people of colour have to do everything 100 times better than white people to break through. The path for Black youngsters is now well established but racial profiling hasn’t ended as the embarrassingly low numbers of Black managers demonstrate. Also, Asian youngsters incur similar levels of racism today with gatekeepers deeming them too weak. It’s something that players like Swansea’s Yan Dhanda and Leicester’s Hamza Choudhury have battled against all their playing careers.
But in Wright’s case losing a best friend at such a young age shows what a character he is. And it’s a character that should be celebrated. You can see how the kids take to him when he revisits his school and he really is the finest thing to come out of Brockley as this fitting tribute to him shows.
Next week I’ll be looking at the other side of Brockley, the arty Goldsmiths-y side. To do this I’ll be talking about Alan Partridge and Kate Bush. Stay safe.