Black Lives Matter

The past few weeks have been emotionally draining and full of ups and downs. The horrific murder of innocent black man George Floyd at the hands of the police has sparked a worldwide Black Lives Matter movement. While this apparent shift in thinking has been inspiring and empowering, it has also made me resent the fact that it has taken an 8 minute video of a black man literally begging for his life while slowly suffocating for people to finally recognise and acknowledge something that we have been speaking out about for years. For some reason, this case appeared to be the final straw and has made the world open their eyes to the reality of racism, police brutality and injustice. At this moment, feelings of intense pain, anger and confusion continue to be mixed with exciting moments filled with hope that change might finally be on the way. Continuous conversation, questions and exposure to news, social media posts and tweets on this topic has been exhausting and distracting and I feel the full weight of how significant this time is. It’s also brought a lot of my own personal issues and past experiences to the front of my mind; I don’t normally share my writing like this or post my views on social media, but this is therapeutic in a way and I want to share my views and experiences to help people understand the impact of this time.

The topic of racism is one that is always in the minds of the people it affects. So to the white people who have just opened their eyes to this – well done. Racism, discrimination and white privilege have been themes running parallel to my life from the start and it’s a frequent topic of conversation for me and my friends, most often as jokes about our experiences as a coping mechanism to the acceptance that this is always going to be a part of our lives. It’s something that’s there every day and it has invaded my family life, friendships, relationships, work life and social activities. It’s being called a “N*****” and being told to “go back to where you came from” by a work colleague, spending a whole year of your graduate scheme going through an investigation, being isolated, victimised and labelled a “trouble-maker” and then the entire case being dismissed and you having to carry on as if nothing ever happened. It’s having to call out and cut off members of my own family for thinking they can make racist and offensive comments in my own home. It’s having to sit in a football stadium where fans are chanting monkey noises at a black player and then having to explain my discomfort to the people around me who barely even noticed. It’s having to listen to my friends tell me that they feel intimidated by all the black people and are “experiencing reverse-racism” at my party, and then having to comfort “white tears” when I confront them about it. It’s being repeatedly overlooked for a promotion when you know you are qualified and experienced enough for the role. It’s wondering why I’ve been sent off the netball court when everyone else just gets a penalty. It’s going for after-work drinks and feeling so uncomfortable when they play “Golddigger” and everyone thinks its okay to sing along. It’s my friends having to change their names on their CV because they think they won’t get shortlisted for the job. It’s being confused with the only other mixed-race girl in my year at school. It’s never seeing yourself represented in positions of power or authority. It’s people labelling your friends as thugs. It’s people reaching out and grabbing your hair when they don’t even know you. It’s having to stand up in front of my year group aged 14 and give a speech on black history because we’ve never been taught anything about it in the classroom. It’s walking into a room, realising I’m the only non-white person and pre-empting the awkward conversations and uncomfortable dynamic that will probably exist because of that. It’s having to listen to people preach “all lives matter” and be more upset about injured horses and damaged buildings than the repeated loss of innocent black life – people who are more angry about what they’re doing rather than why they’re doing it. It’s the ongoing ‘debate’ we seem to be having about racism, as if both sides are equal and fair opinions and it’s not a matter of right and wrong. It’s still, in 2020, having to talk about the same things that black people have been for so damn long.  

Somehow people continue to think that racism isn’t a problem in the UK, perhaps because of the incredible subtlety and cleverness of how it presents in every day life. But just do a quick search of the amount of black people killed in police custody or due to police brutality in the UK, or the disproportionate number of black people in prison and you’ll soon find out that this problem is not unique to the US. If you took the time to listen to the lived experiences of black and Asian people in this country you’d soon realise how bad it actually is. The impact of daily microaggressions and stereotyping shouldn’t be underestimated. Labelling theory states that if society labels you or associates you with a certain characteristic or behaviour over time you’ll start to believe it - so imagine the impact of society constantly seeing black men as 'criminal' or black girls as 'ugly'. Imagine how draining it is to never feel like you can be your full self at work or in certain friendship circles – to spend so much of your time feeling misunderstood, judged, 'other'. Most people would say that they’re not racist – but it’s time for people to accept that just because they have black friends or they don’t see black people getting openly abused in the street (although this clearly still happens…), they are still benefitting from a society which is intrinsically racist and positions white people as more valued, worthy and ultimately more human than black people.

Ignorance is the basis of prejudice, and education has the power to dismantle this. In the UK, the real history of colonialism and slavery is purposely hidden from us and most of us go through our entire school lives without learning about any kind of 'black history' (really just British history but...) Slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1833, less than 200 years ago. Up until a few years ago UK taxpayers were still paying towards the compensation that slave owners received for their loss of 'property', while descendants of slaves battled with the ongoing social, psychological and economical impacts of 400 years of pure torture with no recompense. Earlier this week a statue of former slave trader Edward Coulson was torn down in Bristol – and for a reason which is absolutely beyond me, some people found a reason to be against this. Imagine being a descendent of slaves and having to explain to your child why you have to walk past a statue of a person who potentially enslaved your ancestors every single day. Imagine feeling that the country you live in values these people so much and clearly values your people so little. Britain is largely built from the slave trade; streets are named after former slave owners and buildings were built using profits from the slave trade. People have to live with the knowledge that their ancestors were ripped from their communities, piled on top of each other and shipped across the Atlantic Ocean, forced to unlearn their native language and culture, tortured, raped, beaten and treated as animals. We still have the last names of our ancestral slave owners. Statues themselves are not history and removing them does not take away from the history associated with them – that is something we can never get away from. Instead statues are there to commemorate and idolise historical figures and that is the part we want to change. I recently learned about ‘Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome’, the generational impact of trauma and adaptive behaviours of African-Americans and slave descendants - it’s interesting that there are very contrasting views between the clear, well-taught, understood and undeniable impacts of the Holocaust on the Jewish community yet the impact of slavery is somehow met with very different responses. Every year we acknowledge ‘Holocaust Memorial Day’ but only two days ago the UK government refused to fund a slavery memorial site. And let’s get back to basics, the whole concept of race was created to classify human beings with the purpose of giving power to white people and to justify the dominance of white people over non-white people, i.e. to justify slavery. This false concept of black inferiority has persisted and continues to infiltrate so many areas of society.  

In conversations about race, I often become frustrated with people drawing similarities between women’s rights and LGBT+ movements. I undoubtedly and wholeheartedly support these movements also and of course there are similarities, but inequality and discrimination on the basis of race is so much greater and remains a much more taboo subject, one which people only directly affected often engage in. Whenever I watch a documentary, read a book, see a film on something to do with race I feel the same – that it’s only the people who already know about it that will be exposed to it. The Windrush Scandal is a key example of this – those with a personal link to this story followed it but others saw it as something that didn’t concern them. You talk about these issues and people’s eyes glaze over as if it has nothing to do with them. A recent Black Lives Matter statement by the CEO of my NHS Trust appeared to also take this stance, i.e. ‘I’m not black so this doesn’t directly affect me, but we should support those who are affected’. Just because you are white doesn’t mean that this shouldn’t personally hurt or affect you; you don’t have to channel your pain through a black person you know. The mistreatment and murder of another human should hurt you as much as it hurts us.

Those that know me know that I’ve been heavily involved in the drive for diversity and inclusion in my workplace for the past year. The stories I have heard from staff through this role have been depressing and angering and made me realise that my experience wasn’t unique. The NHS, one of the biggest employers in the UK, has a clear problem surrounding race and this relates to both staff and patients. There is a prominent negative correlation between increasing staff band level and the number of black and Asian staff. You simply cannot say that you are representative and truly addressing the needs of ethnic minority patients if there is no diversity and therefore a lack of understanding of relevant issues amongst everyone who makes the decisions in that setting. This is the time to commit to real change and shift the NHS’ approach away from ‘tick-box’ Equality and Diversity training to a proactive and measurable change in the way we recruit, train, promote and handle employee relations. The disproportionate number of black and Asian people dying from COVID has made the unequal treatment of minorities in healthcare hard to ignore, and echoes evidence that black woman are three times more likely to die in childbirth in the UK. I have seen how different language and level of care/empathy can be applied to black and Asian patients and how people are so readily stereotyped. I have seen colleagues label a child as 'naughty' or 'difficult' because of their “ghetto name” or assume a certain level of intelligence or parenting skill due to race. To me, healthcare is another area where we expect a level of care and service adhering to the 'social contract' we have with society (similarly to policing), yet we are still treating people unequally and unfairly when they are in their most vulnerable state.

A lot of this article clearly draws on my own personal experiences, relating to my life in the UK and also my position in society as a mixed-race woman. I recognise and acknowledge that I have a certain level of privilege as a light-skinned woman and also know that my experiences are likely to be different from others. Moreover, being a mixed-race person presents its own unique challenges, which are often hard to communicate. It often brings these issues ‘closer to home’ and I’ve had to deal with my own white family being unaccepting of my own being or presenting their ignorant or discriminatory views to me from a young age. I remember being 10 years old and my older white cousin saying he didn’t want the black waitress to serve us. I remember being slightly older and my white aunt and uncle discussing a case on the news, saying it was 'most probably a black man that committed the crime as it usually was'. I am forever grateful that my Mum has understood the importance of educating me, ensuring I know my identity, always reassuring me that I am valued and understood and most importantly, being unafraid to cut anyone off that threatens to challenge that – family or not. In one way or another, I’ve always had a sense of feeling ‘other’ in pretty much every situation I am in and this is something I have always struggled with. My friend and I have recently been discussing our experiences as two of the few non-white students at our school; she recalled how in Year 4 another student told the teacher that she didn’t want to sit next to two brown people and was moved to another seat at her request, with nothing more said. We’ve been facing these issues long before we even fully understood them. Funnily enough, I’m currently living in the Caribbean and for the first time in my life I’ve been described as "a white woman". It’s strange to think how different my life in the UK might have been if I was seen that way there…

One of the statements that has really stayed with me throughout this movement is “you cannot enjoy the rhythm and ignore the blues”. If you’ve stayed silent at this time but you enjoy black culture, listen to black music, use slang derived from Caribbean dialect, date black men – you are part of the problem. Don’t be here to celebrate our highs but neglect us in our lows. Please don’t use Notting Hill Carnival as an excuse to party and drink in the street, without taking the time to understand that the event was actually founded as a response to widespread violent racial attacks across the UK and the Notting Hill race riots 1958, during which a mob of 400 white working class men attacked West Indian residents in the area. There is so much celebration and appropriation of black culture, without any real education or understanding of the foundations or significance of these events to the black community.

So, it’s about what you do now. As your friend, colleague, family member or just 'the only black person you know', it is not my job to teach you. Think about how emotionally draining it is for people to have to relive their personal trauma for your education and how impacting it is on their own mental health to continually have to have these conversations and convince people to care about issues which affect them so much. Think about how damaging it is to see photos and videos of people who look like them, their family and their friends being murdered, over and over. Saying "Black Lives Matter" and posting a picture of a black square is easy to do but it’s not enough. Showing that you truly value black life is much harder. If you’ve previously stayed silent in situations where you should’ve stood up and spoken out – it’s time to change. It’s time to challenge society and do your bit to break down systemic racism and overcome these constructs which are so engrained in our world. Educate yourself and others around you, start having open conversations about race and privilege and question the way things are. Phrases like “I don’t see colour” or saying that you personally don’t treat people different because of their colour don’t mean anything and only highlight your privilege that you can live your life ignoring these issues. The world has shown you that it not only sees colour but treats people as less than human because of it. It is no longer acceptable to be blind to this and live your life as if it doesn’t affect you - it affects everyone. The fact that people now have to make the decision and conscious effort to be 'anti-racist' completely baffles me – but highlights the scale of the issue and underlines that fact that society is built in a way that some people naturally benefit and others lose.

And to those of you who don’t agree with or support what I’m saying, please don’t pretend you do. I’d rather we all know where we stand. And if I lose friends during this movement then so be it, we clearly weren’t really friends in the first place.   

I just want to end with a phrase that has stuck in my head since watching the powerful and heartbreaking video from African-American author Kimberly Jones:

“They’re lucky black people only want equality and not revenge.”

By Danielle Johnson