It’s taken me a while to find the right words to say about
the events of the past week or so. But the fact is that for me, it’s not about
the past few days, it’s about the past 25 years. 25 years of learning to love the skin I was
born with, of accepting that I won’t and will never conform to the global ideal
of ‘beauty’ and that I’m actually okay with that. I bloody love being a black
woman, and it makes me sad that it took me into my late teens to realise this.
Over the past few days, there has been a lot of information
coming from all sorts of source about racism, focused mainly on America, and
rightly so given the, what seems like constant stream of black people dying at
the hands of those who are supposed to be there to protect them. But this has
brought out what I can only describe as a ‘holier than thou’ attitude from
other countries around the world.
There is very much still racism present within the UK. The ‘angry
black woman’ trope is an example of this. Why is it that when a black woman
tries to get her point across, whether that’s in a social setting or a work
setting, she is told she is being too aggressive, or is being rude, whereas
someone else says exactly the same thing, in exactly the same way, and is being
assertive? I’ve been there. And the more you’re told you’re being aggressive,
is the more you get angry because you’re not actually being aggressive at all,
just trying to get your point across.
The fact that my mum and dad gave me and my brother the
names we have to ensure that on paper, no one could tell what race we were, so
we wouldn’t automatically be cut from a job application process. Or that from a
young age, my parents drilled it into me that we had to work twice as hard as
our counterparts to get half the recognition.
The glossing over of British Colonial history. We learn
about all the Kings and Queens, about all the wars the British won and how they
‘ended the slave trade’. Then we look to America and learn about their Civil Rights
movement and their slave trade, but what about in our own back yard? The
British spent centuries looting the world, only to place everything of value
into museums and then having the audacity to say they were gifts from the
Commonwealth.
Or the fact that I’ve had friends and family stopped by the
police purely because ‘surely a black man cannot afford to be driving a brand
new, relatively expensive car’. Or that between April 2018 and March 2019 you
were 9.5 times more likely to be stopped and searched if you were black vs if
you were white [1]
, and police are four times more likely to use force when arresting a black
person vs a white person [2].
Or that a younger me was sat in the back
of the car while a white policeman used derogatory language towards my mum in the
hope that she would get angry and give him a reason to arrest her (his reason
for stopping her in the first place? Apparently she had not given way to him at
a mini roundabout – a roundabout he was a good 80-100 metres away from when my
mum went round it).
Racism is almost as ingrained into British society as it is
into America but has shifted to become so subtle in its micro aggressions, that
sometimes we find ourselves asking whether that was actually racist or if we
were just imagining things.
So now we come to the past few days, and the flooding of
social media with black tiles of ‘muted but listening’.
Okay, so you’ve
posted your black squares. Now what?
Are you going to return to doing exactly what you were doing
before this social media ‘protest’? Will you continue to sit back and watch
colleagues and friends be subjected to racism and micro aggressions in the
workplace? Or allow family and friends to use racist terminology, in public or
in private? Or will you use what has happened over the past few weeks as a
turning point to educate yourself, and others on what we can all do to make a
change.
The phrases that have been flying around have been ‘I don’t know where to start’ and ‘how best can I help when I have a tiny
platform’. This isn’t about having a million followers, lying down in the
streets in front of riot police or standing on the rooftop screaming your lungs
out. You are in a position to educate yourself, and those around you every day.
If you can influence just one person, you are making a difference.
So, how can you educate yourself?
Books
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Michelle Alexander
White Fragility: Why it’s so Hard for White People to Talk
about Racism
Robin DiAngelo, PHD
So You Want to Talk About Race
Ueoma Oluo
Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race
Reni Eddo-Lodge
Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging
Afua Hirsch
Me and White Supremacy
Layla F Saad
I Am Not Your Baby Mother
Candice Brathwaite
Films and
Documentaries
13th – Netflix, Ava DuVernay
When They See Us – Netflix, Ava DuVernay
Selma – Ava DuVernay
I Am Not Your Negro – James
Baldwin
Dear White People – Netflix, Justin Simien
Podcasts
About Race
Code Switch
The Diversity Gap
Pod for the Cause
Causes you can
donate to
And that’s just the start. Use these as a guide to seeking
more knowledge. Pro-actively search for charities doing great things for black
people in your local area, seek out black owned business and buy some of their
product (I will continue to share Black owned businesses across social media)
and most importantly, call out racism you see in your everyday life, whether
that be from family, friends, colleagues or Joe Bloggs walking down the street.
It may only take 5 minutes of your time, but you showing that that mind-set is
no longer tolerated is making a difference. We are not asking you to die for
us, just to stand with us as we fight for what should be a birth right –
equality.
We owe it to them. To those who spent months chained
together in the bottom of ships, being stripped of everything they’ve ever
known, to be sold into a life of pain and suffering.
To those who chose to
jump from ships, believing that death was better than a life in bondage.
To those who staged
sit-ins, marches, peaceful protests, only to be met with violence.
To those who were dragged out of their beds in the middle of
the night and hung from trees, surrounded by a baying mob – their only crime
being the colour of their skin.
To George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Belly Mujinga, Stephon
Clark, Tamir Rice, Jordan Edwards, Freddie Carlos Gray Jr, Korryn Gaines,
Sandra Bland and the countless others whose names haven’t become a hashtag and
who’s families have had to grieve in silence.
And to future generations, so that growing up knowing that
they are valued just as much as anyone else in society is normal for them, not
something that they have to fight for.
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