Mel B speaks out about her experiences with racism
The Spice Girl speaks out about her experiences with racism
‘I’d get really emotional letters from girls’
Mel B has spoken out about the racism she’s encountered throughout her life and during her days as a Spice Girl. In support of the Black Lives Matter protestors, the 45 year old explained that she felt “so much of the racism you feel as a person of colour growing up in a largely white culture is not spoken aloud”.
Shockingly for Spice Girls fans, Mel detailed experiences she had while the band was at the height of its success. Back in 1997, when the girls were set to perform at a charity event in South Africa in front of Prince Charles and Nelson Mandela, a then 22-yearold Mel was asked to leave a designer shop while with the rest of the girl group. She explained last week, “Of course, all the girls had a go at the assistant, because they were so shocked. It’s pretty awful to think I wasn’t actually shocked, because if you are brown then there’s always a part of you that expects some confrontation.”
Mel also came up against racist behaviour from the band’s own styling team. “I remember when we first did the video for Wannabe, we had a big styling team, and one of the first things they said to me was, ‘OK, so we need to straighten your hair,’” she shared last week. “I refused point-blank because my hair was my identity, and yes, it was different to all the other girls, but that was what the Spice Girls were about – celebrating our differences.”
She added, “I’d get really emotional letters from girls and their mums saying how incredible it was that they had someone to ‘be’ when they did dances in the playground at school and they were actually daring to wear their hair out and proud, rather than scraped back or straightened. That was a big deal to me.”
The mum of three has previously spoken about her experiences with racism, particularly growing up in Leeds with a white mother and black father. Last year she said in an interview, “It wasn’t easy for my mum and dad. My mum would hand me to my father when they took the bus to possibly stop him from being beaten up by racists.”
And in her interview last week, Mel B encouraged fans to educate themselves. “My dad came to this country from Nevis [in the Caribbean] because he wanted a better life,” she said. “I think we have to keep on educating ourselves, keep on changing, keep fighting for justice and equality until we live in a better world.” ■