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Woke & Navigating White Friendships & Interracial Relationships

I was eleven years old when my white, Irish primary school teacher told me to change my cornrows because it was not school uniform. The very same week we had been learning about Kenya, of which this particular teacher was extremely fond of.

We all had to draw pictures of the ‘tribes people’ for the wall. At eleven I did not know what irony was but I knew that the whole situation stank. My mum wrote a letter and the intricate cornrows stayed: small victories.