Adewale Agbaje (Mr Eko) : My Racism Story

KNOWN for his roles in Lost and Oz, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje is now telling a far more important story — his own. The actor is making a film entitled, Farming about the practice followed by many Nigerian parents in 1960s and ‘70s’ Britain of having children informally fostered.
The film is simply the true story of a Nigerian boy’s search for love and his life in a brutal skinhead subculture.
Akinnuoye-Agbaje, 44, was raised in such a situation, making for a fascinating life story, which included the shocking revelation that he became a skinhead as a teenager in an attempt to fit in.
When he was six weeks old, his parents – a Nigerian couple studying in London – gave him to a white working-class couple in Essex, he says in an interview.
He lived in his foster home with more than 10 other African children, including his two sisters. The climate at the time was such that he grew up fearful of being physically attacked because of his skin colour. And although he was black, Akinnuoye-Agbaje thought of himself as white and developed a fear of his own race.   So much so that when he occasionally saw black sailors in his town, which had a naval dockyard, he would run away from them. “I just remember being petrified,” he said. “It was as if they were the bogey man to us. Fish and chips and corned beef, that’s what I knew.”
When he was eight, his biological parents arrived unexpectedly and took him and his sisters to Nigeria. He
couldn’t speak the language and had trouble fitting in, so his parents became frustrated and sent him back to England – without his siblings – a year later. Settling back into life with his foster family took its toll and he had what he called a cultural identity crisis. “I wanted to assimilate and go back to the abnormal normality I knew,” he said in the interview. “I wanted to wash off the experience of Africa but obviously I couldn’t because that’s who I was.”
As a teenager, Akinnuoye-Agbaje turned to violence to defend himself, but he also attacked others. “It was a time of standing up and standing your ground or running, and there wasn’t anywhere to run,” he said. “The local skinhead gang really ran the streets. They made my life – and anyone’s who was a shade darker than pale – a misery.”
So, he made a drastic decision – he became a skinhead. Not only did he take on the look of one, shaving his head and wearing the clothes, but he adopted the racist attitudes as well. And he fought alongside them as what he described as a brutalized animal that was unleashed in battle. “When a child wants to be accepted, he’ll do anything,” he explained. “And if it means you’re getting a certain amount of notoriety from a fight, that’s what you’ll do. If all you’ve known is racism, abuse and persecution, then all of a sudden you’re getting some recognition, that’s your new drug. That’s what you want. By the time I was 16, I was someone to reckon with. I was so eager to repudiate any connection with any immigrant race I would go above and beyond. I was desperate to belong to something. That was my drive as a teenager.”
Unable to control him and worried he would influence the other children in their home, Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s foster parents reached out to his real parents, who had him shipped off to boarding school in Surrey. Initially a difficult transition, he suffered from self-hatred and even attempted suicide, he gradually got on the right track. Becoming diligent with his studies, he later received a law degree. While in school he started modelling which brought him around the globe and to Hollywood, where he eventually was cast as Mr. Eko on ABC’s Lost and then Simon Adebisi in the HBO series, Oz.
In addition to making Farming, Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s next role is in the upcoming series, Hunted.
The show stars Melissa George as an espionage operative for a private intelligence agency and Akinnuoye-Agbaje plays her boss. It will premiere later this year.
Last month, Farming was among the recipients of the London-based Sundance Institute and WorldView awards for focusing on social justice issues in the developing world. There are four winners altogether including Farming.  Others are Street Girls by Katie Mark; Sally El Hosaini’s My Brother the Devil; and Valley of Saints by Musa Syeed. The presentation ceremony was part of the highlights of the inaugural Sundance London Film and Music Festival held last April 26.
As writer cum director, Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s resume as an actor boasts turns in GI Joe, The Bourne Identity, Lost and Oz.

News source: yahoonews