Cosmopolitan - November 2016 UK

‘N
ot tonight, girls,
yeah? Do you mind
stepping aside?”
I’m standing on the
wrong side of a velvet
rope, in stiletto heels
that were not designed
for the 45 minutes I’ve
just spent in line. My
two friends flank me on either side.
We have spent hours getting ready,
pouring ourselves into body-con
dresses and meticulously applying the
make-up required for a club such as
this one. We are sober, polite, have
money in our purses and, up until
a few minutes ago, were ready to party.
But before we’ve even had time to
argue our case, we’re quickly ushered
away by a slim brunette woman,
possibly only a few years older than
my friends and I. She wields a
clipboard on which, had she checked,
she would have found our names.
Behind us, a group of Caucasian
women slip silently inside the club.
“Hey, why don’t you split your group
up?” It is the bouncer, who leans over
sympathetically.“Come back in a bit,
separately. Then you might get in.”
We understand the implication.
It is, sadly, a phrase that myself and
many young black men and women
across the country know all too well.
When you are black, as we are, you
get to know certain things, such as
that interspersing your group with
white or mixed-race partygoers gives
you a much better chance of getting
inside a club. Some of us regularly
adopt tactics like these, the lure of
a good night out being too great to
worry about door policies. Others, like
me, avoid them completely. Standing
here, humiliated at 11:20pm on a
Saturday night, I am reminded why.
It’s more than 50 years since the
Race Relations Act was passed in the
UK, outlawing racial discrimination
against any minority. That means the
racism that my parents’ generation
faced should, in theory, not be felt
by me and my peers. And yet…
Saschan, Ade and
Feyisola know they
are being judged
on more than just
their outfits
I work in the newsroom of The
Voice, the nation’s oldest weekly paper
for the black community. Each week
we are inundated with people
claiming they’ve been the victims of
some of the worst displays of racism,
and high up on the list are Britain’s
nightclubs. A recent
survey of The Voice’s
readers found nearly
40% have been denied
entry into a UK nightclub,
with many believing it
was because of their race.
Of course, assumptions
like this are easy to make
and difficult to prove; it’s
a ‘feeling’ that the colour
of your skin doesn’t fit.
“It’s a ‘feeling’
that the colour
of your skin
doesn’t fit”
It’s hard to make that stick, yet the
claims continue to be made.
In December 2014, blogger Fisayo
Longe wrote about being turned away
from Libertine, a club beloved of
Premiership footballers in central
London, saying she was told it was
“maybe because you’re
black…” Libertine deny
this incident took place.
Ten months later, Jess
Gregory and 10 friends
were turned away from
Bambu in Birmingham,
despite making a
booking, claiming they
were told by a member
of staff it was because
“groups of black people
118 · COSMOPOLITAN