Minority Report: salute on suffering racial abuse

The best and simultaneously worst thing about growing up is that you start to realise things you hadn’t ever thought of before.

I said this to my little brother a while ago - an intelligent young man who is growing up way quicker than I thought he would. One of my worst fears is that he will grow up too quickly; something that somewhere along the lines of my teenage years became awfully clear to me. Bizarre of me to open this piece like this, I know - but it’s true. Kids grow up too quickly when they are exposed to situations they really should not be in in the first place.

My situation specifically is one I’ve started sharing a lot more recently than I thought I ever would, in the name of helping people understand what it is people like myself go through. Makes sense, right?

I’ll explain: I was born and raised in the gorgeous city of Vienna, one of the most liveable places in the world. The tap water tastes incredible and the streets are immaculate, rent and public transport are cheap and education is as affordable as it gets. It is important that I mention all of this because Austria (Vienna in particular) is a lovely place. It undoubtedly is. That said, there are times where I have felt like I did not belong there at all. Considering I am Austrian by nationality and spent 18 of my 20 years on this planet living there, the fact that this was ever the case is completely crazy to me.

I was knifed in a violent, racially motivated attack when I was 14, and that is where my world was flipped upside down. It had never occurred to me that there were people who would actually go as far as traumatising a little boy just to prove a point, but in the aftermath it became clear as mud. It is this experience that acted as a sort of negative catalyst for my growth as a person; it was as if my teenage years faded and I suddenly saw the world through a completely different set of eyes - I abhorred it.

During the attack, which was carried out by 2 young adults, I was told that I was worthless and that I should go the hell back to wherever it was I came from. I know for certain that I’m far from worthless - also, both the 2 guys and I came from the same town. That messed with my head.

I’ll say this now: being a black person in Austria was never easy. In fact, it was incredibly tiring. The amount of racial abuse hurled at me on a weekly, almost daily basis was unbearable at times. Every cloud has a silver-lining though; I started writing music as a way of releasing negative energy and doing something productive with my time.

As a musician, I’ve never shied away from making political statements - take the "Storm" video for example, or my social media rants. I’ve had people ask me whether I’d ever consider toning down the aggression ever so slightly, often in a very hush-hush sort of way: aside from the question being insanely insulting, it is a testament of what is happening in Europe at the moment, specifically back home.

Post-WW2 times saw Austria hurl its political mindset to the left side of the spectrum, after realising fascism wasn’t exactly the way forward.. to put it lightly. In recent times though, the far-right have gained a lot of power, mostly through means of fear mongering and spreading what I can only describe as complete drivel. Positively, I’m incredibly proud of my - and it is important that I say this - white Austrian sisters and brothers who aren’t taking any of it lightly and are saying no to xenophobia and racism.

We narrowly avoided voting a far-right president into office a little while ago, and even though the election is being repeated I remain optimistic that Austria will make the right decision again. There is absolutely no excuse for racism - I have had arguments and fallen out with people back home who do not understand this - but we are better than that. I stopped feeling absolutely comfortable and at home in Vienna a while ago; I do believe things will change for the better though.

It is fully up to us to make it happen.