‘We are behind. Black history and black teachers are visible and normal in parts of England’

Cherie Arlett, 39

THE kind of vile abuse Tia receives today from people online is what 39-year-old Cherie Arlett experienced in person throughout her childhood in the ’90s, which she admits was “very difficult”.

She remembers a “terrifying” incident when she was 13 in Caerau, the region of Cardiff where she grew up.

“I was just walking home from hanging out with my mates one time and three guys – distinctly skinheads, with a certain look to them – were trying to engage with me. I was like ‘no’, and walking and ignoring them. Then they started chasing me,” she says.

“I remember I was running around a car and they were chasing me, and then one of them stopped and said, ‘When I catch you, I’m going to kill you.’

“So that’s when I ran straight down the road and into a pub, and I was like, ‘Help me, help me, these guys are chasing me,’ and they got up straight away, ran out and chased them away.”

She says such incidents were “normal”, and also recalls an exchange on a bus when she was around 12 after an elderly passenger asked her “How did you get here?” and asked if she had come “on the boat”.

Like Tia, she could “count how many people of colour there were” when she attended Cantonian High School, and recalls she suffered racist name-calling “constantly” in school, including the N-word.

She also spent time in Bryn Hafren Comprehensive School in Barry in her childhood, and also moved away to Birmingham in 2013, before returning to Cardiff.

“A lot of people are like, ‘It’s so multicultural, there’s no racism in Cardiff.’ And I’m like, I’ve suffered the most racism in Cardiff than anywhere – even Barry.”

In fact, it was another incident in Caerau which spurred her decision to move away.

“My sons were three and five at the time, and a group of grown men in a car drove past and were hurling the N-word at them and loads of racist abuse,” she recalls.

“I was thinking of moving anyway, because I’ve never felt Welsh and I’ve never felt like this is my home and it’s sad because I was born here.

“And obviously I wanted my kids to be growing up in a multicultural society and it was the best thing I did do for them.”

When she returned to Cardiff, she saw a “noticeable difference” in attitudes to race after the murder of George Floyd, with a rise in protests and organisations to support the black community.

She adds that the newly erected Betty Campbell statue is “amazing” and that Wales is “doing brilliantly” by being the first UK nation to make teaching Black, Asian and minority ethnic histories mandatory at school.

But she insists we shouldn’t ignore the fact that racism is still a “big issue” in Cardiff and that Wales still has a “long way to go” compared to other parts of the UK.

“We are behind. Black history and black teachers – these are all visible and normal in parts of England,” she says.

“My partner’s 51 and he can’t even sit in his own house in Cardiff without hearing someone screaming ‘Get back to your own country’ outside his window, and this was the other month.”

Cherie believes the “next focus” needs to be getting more black people to senior roles, and making sure they are better “represented and seen”.

“Recently I won an award for best online retailer in Wales, but I was the only black women out of 15 categories to win an award. This is where things need to change,” she says.

“Why is it there were only three women of colour nominees in the whole of the award? There are way more people of colour in business in Wales, but it’s not reflected in any of our organisations and workplaces.”

Since coming back to Wales, Cherie has been fighting to connect the black community across Wales as a whole, not just the capital.

“A lot of the support and a lot of the organisations are based in Cardiff and are for the residents of Cardiff, but there are black people all over Wales and I worry about where their support is.

“People I’ve spoken to in the Valleys, they feel like they have to come to Cardiff if they want any support, if they want to be accepted.

“We’re a country. We can’t say Wales is doing this and doing that when it’s actually at Cardiff.”