Thoughts on "Fences: A Brexit Diary" by Zadie Smith

         Hello reader! In today's entry I will discuss my opinions on Zadie Smith's article "Fences: A Brexit Diary".  This article is about the recent split of England from the European Union, also known as Brexit. The article starts off with Smith describing a school that her childhood friends attended. She describes the school in a positive light for how welcoming it is to diversity. She states that the organization Ofsted gave the school the lowest grade possible because of the area it was in and the demographics of the student body. Smith then goes on to say a year later the school was granted with a ranking of "good", which leads her to generate a scenario of gentrification where white middle-class families move into the neighborhood for the school resulting in a predominantly white student body causing the school to earn the highest score possible from Ofsted. I agree with Smith that this scenario is plausible because it happens quite often. I think that Smith uses this example of the school and the fence being built around it to draw an analogy to Brexit. England has had an influx of immigrants these past few years and they saw leaving the European Union as a chance to shut their doors and isolate themselves from people they did not want in the country. Smith asks quite a few questions in hopes of figuring out why majority of England voted for the split. She wants to know why people voted for it and what that meant. She wants to know if the vote was really about immigration or inequality, and based off of the way Smith describes the situation and the aftermath of the decision I believe the vote for the people who voted for Brexit did so for those very two reasons. Towards the middle of the article Smith mentions two incidents where it was clear that the individuals were voting for Brexit simply to get rid of people who did not "belong"(people from other countries). The first incident involves her mother being yelled at by a skinhead. The second incident involves a woman passing a group of people who clearly do not look like her and saying you will have to go home now. This proves that British citizens went into the voting booths with this mentality. A mentality that they can finally keep "them", as Smith says, out. This idea that leaving the European Union would finally separate the classes to get the "real Britain" back again was absurd and horrible. However, the fact the very same people who were so for leaving the European Union Googled "What is the European Union" only hours after the vote took place is even worse. The citizens of a country are supposed to take the responsibility and right to vote very seriously. These citizens made a life changing decision about something they knew absolutely nothing about, and that is beyond ignorant and irresponsible. It is such a shame that people have extremely strong opinions about things they do not truly know and understand. All in all I believe that is what Smith is getting at. There is no way you can possibly know what is going on until you have all the information or at least most of it. Making important decisions based on prejudice and preconceived notions is irresponsible and ignorant, and those are two things no one wants to be.  



-Aliyah Martin