Cyprus-Forum.com

[tsukoui]

I recently had to fill in a couple of equal opportunities forms.

The first had two separate tick boxes under "White" for "Turkish Cypriot" and "Greek Cypriot", whilst "British" also under "White" made no distinction between "Scottish", "Welsh", "English", "Northern Irish", or even "Cornish" if you like, "Arab" was not listed.

The second had no tick box for any form of "Cypriot" but did list "Arab" as a separate ethnic group to "White", "Black", and "Asian".

I am sorry to harp on about this, but there are two objections that I have and I think we as a community should pursue.

The first is that we are empathically not "White", closer genetically to Arabs than even mainland Greeks apparently.

However the genetics is not the point, no one wants to suffer racism so why should we want to be classified as non-"White".

The reason is because by saying that we are "White" we are in affect agreeing that we have "White" privileges. As we are still under imperialist occupation, not only by Turkey, but by British "Whites" in the form of the colonial military bases, we are undermining are claim to sovereignty by claiming that we have "White" privileges which clearly we do not.

There are other reasons for resisting the "Whitening" of Cypriots, who only thirty years ago were referred to as "Pakis" in parts of Britain and "Wogs", but as I said I don't want to harp on about it, simply that it is not in our interests in resisting the Occupation to claim to be "White".

The second issue is more contentious and that is whether or not there should be separate boxes for "Turkish Cypriot" and "Greek Cypriot". To my mind this is divide and rule by whoever put together the form, especially since they don't distinguish between "Scottish" and "English" for example.

We must take ownership of our identity and not allow ourselves to be put in the "boxes" that "Whites" choose. Thank you.