I stepped out onto the taxi rank at Heathrow terminal 5, my skin and senses prickly from the damp chill in the air. I had five suitcases on a trolley. Behind me a family of four strolled out accompanied by men pushing trolleys with what appeared to be fifteen Louis Vuitton leather suitcases and trunks toward waiting chauffeured cars. Outside, I saw men in tailored suits with Rimowa suitcases, women in burkas with barefaced babies, teenagers in UGGs and tracksuits, children in Crocs and pajamas. The world seemed big.
As I took my first taxi ride from Heathrow Airport, three things struck me: how unbothered the driver was about getting to our destination in a timely manner; the incredible amount of small talk he was able to fill the incredibly long ride from Heathrow to Southeast London with; and the exhaustive detail with which he questioned me about American culture and politics.
“What brought you here? Where’d you grow up? Where did you go to school? Where are you going on holiday? Do all Americans take as much vacation as George Bush seems to take? What’s with that bloke? Did he steal that election from Al Gore? Why do you even still have an electoral college anyway? Mind, we have Boris Johnson. Bonking Boris Johnson, they call him, he’s had so many women. It’s not right for a married man to carry on like that. But at least he’s just the mayor and not the prime minister. Aren’t you glad to see the backside of Bush? What about Barack Obama, eh? A smart guy, eh? And Michelle Obama! Impressive lady. Have you ever met her before? You must be excited about the inauguration with him being the first Black president and all. At least we’ll no longer have to hear from Sarah Palin and all those Tea Party types. What a daft woman. Claiming to see Russia from Alaska. No such thing. I’ve been to Alaska, you know. I saw lots of wildlife, but no Russia, I’ll tell you that. Barack, the best man, won. I bet this election must mean a lot to you. I heard he’s received a lot of threats. He’s got his work cut out for him, that man. But after Bush, the only way from here is up.”
By the time we pulled up to my temporary housing—following a slow, circuitous trip through morning rush hour traffic—I felt like I knew everything about the taxi driver’s worldview, and he knew everything that I was willing to reveal about my backstory. Little did I know, this experience would not be an anomaly.
In the London Black taxi, I know exactly where I stand, even if I am a paying customer. There were the drivers I met during my first early years as a London resident who all assumed I worked in IT when I’d mention that I was en route to a work meeting. When their grilling revealed that I in fact worked as a global fashion director, they often seemed to have trouble comprehending the scenario, a fact that still puzzles me to this day. When I asked a former Black colleague about this, she explained that IT has historically been a popular career path for Black and Indian professionals in London (I never found any statistics to prove whether or not this is true), a city in which the Black middle class is still a relatively new demographic compared to America.
When I was a child, my parents taught me the very American lesson of not discussing religion or politics with anyone unless I was fairly certain the other person believed the same ideas as me.
And living in New York, I learned the very antisocial and yet incredibly common habit of not speaking to one’s taxi driver because the driver probably wasn’t very interested in speaking to you.
But in London, I discovered those rules don’t necessarily apply. I won’t complain about this. I enjoy the little conservational surprises that occur beyond my echo chamber. And I’m a writer, someone who can appreciate a good grilling. In a Black taxi, the driver, who must spend years committing the city’s entire layout to memory (a brain-swelling experience known locally as The Knowledge), is likely to ask you as many questions as a blind date might during a friendly interrogation.
I’ve spent most of my taxi rides as an expat in the UK defending America to one driver after another—from inquisitive London Black taxi drivers in the aftermath of the George W. Bush years to the many outraged Uber pundits I now encounter, weighing in on the latest twists and turns in the tragi-saga that the White House under Donald Trump has become. What I value most about these experiences is that they give me a sense of realities beyond my like-minded network. And as I write through an unusually polarized election season on both sides of the Atlantic, these kinds of encounters feel increasingly rare and vital. Because how often do we really engage outside of our bubbles of chosen friends and content?
During these fleeting fifteen- to sixty-minute car rides, the questions the drivers ask me are telling. In their eyes, I’m not Kenya Hunt but rather a representative of one group or another.
To one driver, I represent Americans: “What’s with all the guns?”
During another ride, I’m asked to speak on behalf of all American women: “Not a lot of maternity leave over there, eh? Sounds like a terrible place to have kids.”
Or all Black people in America: “Pardon, no offense, but it looks like Donald Trump really hates people who look like you.”
Or other Black American women: “You look like Serena Williams. Have you ever met her?”
Or Black American women in the UK: “What about Meghan Markle? Have you ever met her? Why does she have to get all this special attention just for being Black?”
At this point, the driver is no longer James from Birmingham, England, but rather a representative of something much larger. These rides reveal not just what much of the UK thinks about America but also assumptions about people who look like me. This isn’t the case with all of my interactions with strangers in the UK, mainly because I don’t often find myself engaged in brutally honest conversations with strangers about culture, politics, and world events. That isn’t to say the subject doesn’t come up at, say, a dinner party. But I find people aren’t generally as forthright about what they really think as I’ve encountered in the taxi or Uber ride, where a unique and subtle alchemy of conversation occurs between strangers unlikely to ever cross paths again.
There is something in the experience of conversing, for better (enlightening and being enlightened) or worse (correcting conspiracy theories, calling out misconceptions, and countering erroneous mansplaining) that makes me even more confident in speaking out.
Recently while discussing Donald Trump’s history on race, following some especially controversial comments he made about lynching, a driver pointed out to me that London isn’t like America and that race isn’t the issue here that it is there.
“It’s because of slavery,” one driver explained. “We didn’t have it here the way America did.”
In fact, I countered, England did. It’s just that the vast majority of it existed miles and miles away across the Atlantic, unlike America’s sprawling cotton plantations, which predominantly operated on home soil. Both England and America were completely dependent on a slave-owning economy. But the legacy of transatlantic slavery isn’t as visible a low-hanging cloud in England as it is in America. It doesn’t resurface as plainly and regularly in the school classroom or over conversation at the dinner table or on film and television screens as the topic of slavery does in America. But that doesn’t mean the problem doesn’t exist or that its legacy doesn’t thread its way through the fabric of the day-to-day lives of most Black Brits the way it does most Black Americans. Empire, Jim Crow, whatever you want to call it, the root—racism—was the same.