BLM

Written By Katherine Cakebread

This one comes from Kat and it is brilliant. At the end of the post Kat has included a list of resources, which I recommend having a look through.

Thank you Kat for sending this over.

KAT HACKER

Do you care about a more equal society? Does standing for justice and doing the right thing mean something to you? Why do you read the Guardian or vote anything other than Tory? Have you been shocked by the recent race protests? If you truly believe in making things better for the next generation, for a fairer society, then you need to care about black lives. All lives will only matter once black lives do.

The past few weeks since the death of George Floyd in the US, the subsequent race protests, and the notable change in discourse about racism, in the US and here in the UK, has left me feeling, well grossly uncomfortable and nervous just to write this piece. Why? Because as someone who is mixed race and identifies as a Person of Colour (POC), I have been forced to acknowledge my own privilege and complicity in the systems that govern our everyday lives and put aside my own experiences of racism in order to confront my internalised racism 

I may not be your “typical racist” (images of KKK and neo-fascists come to mind), but what have I actively done to be anti-racist? The racism that occurs in this country, and in most first world coloniser countries around the globe, rich off the backs of black women, men and children, is not necessarily explicit. It’s worse than that, it’s insidious in nature, and it’s in our unconscious bias. It’s seeing a group of white school children hanging out, but regarding them as a gang if they were black. This is part of the problem that we face today: the world we live, the systems and institutions we adhere to and hold in high regard, are not only racist, they are anti-black. 

It’s difficult to even know how to unpack racism its origins and what it means today. The fact that race is a social construct and that a white person in Europe has more in common with our African ancestors than the white European family next door (see geneticist Dr Adam Rutherford’s work). To accept, that many of our white ancestors will have, and still do, benefit from the utter domination of black people. If not from the riches, handed down through the generations, then by virtue of the fact that white people do not suffer discrimination due to the hue of their skin. 

The interplay of “white saviour complex”, in the form of missionary work. To help “poor black people” with their lot. Much has been said about how the “othering” of black people assisted in perpetuating the call to “save” black people. In othering black people, this was seen as a way to cast them as sub-human, worth less than the life of a white person, ultimately paving the way to their exploitation. This is just one facet of the many that led to the perpetuation of slavery, that and the vast riches rewarded to those who transported, owned and exploited black people. You cannot colonise two-thirds of the world and not expect there to be an aftermath of subsequent issues once you’ve pillaged those countries of resources, riches and people. An issue particularly pertinent to the UK is that we have not dealt with our colonial history and this has had a significant effect on the way in which racism manifests in the UK. 

In particular this current movement has highlighted my lack of education about slavery; its long-lasting implications (including ancestral trauma and intergenerational poverty) and how widespread racism is within the UK. In the NHS, the police, the court process, the education system and the Home Office, to name but a few. But what about publishing, the arts, TV production, CEOs of FTSE100 companies (there is currently only one black male CEO) and where I spend my money. I invest in very few black businesses if at all. I’ve come to realise that much of my world is white-centric, my social media feeds, my reading lists, my podcasts and the art that I admire in the sugar sponsored Tate Gallery. 

Why do we have black history month? Isn’t black history intertwined and enmeshed in white history, from slavery, to the industrial revolution, to the people who came on Windrush to help rebuild our country after also fighting for us in two devastating world wars?  Solidarity must be shown to black and other ethnic minority communities, in the protests we attend, the petitions we sign, in the amplification of black voices – because the power dynamic has to change. Racism is prejudice plus power.

Recently I had a conversation with my parents about my upbringing, explaining that I identified as a POC. This seemed to shock them somewhat as they had essentially raised me in a colour-blind environment. I wonder if being told to “fuck off and go home” at the age of 12 whilst at school was sufficient to subconsciously cement the position that in order to be “accepted” or to fit in I would need to assimilate into British (white) culture, to be “colourless”. To be raised in a colour-blind environment is to ignore the privilege that is inherent in certain skin tones. This is a real issue, because we are led to believe from a young age that everyone is born equal. But as we’ve seen recently, black peoples’ lives are not worth the same as either white peoples’ or POCs.

There is vast amounts of evidence to support this assertion. The MBRRACE-UK2018 (part of a multi-disciplinary research unit at Oxford University) has found that black women are five times more likely to die in childbirth than their white counterparts. Black men are 43 times (not a typo) more likely to be stopped using Section 60, which allows police to stop people without suspicion that a crime is actually taking place. They are also twice as likely to die on arrest, or after apprehension in custody. Look at injustice of the Windrush generation or the recent report on Covid-19 deaths, which found that BAME individuals are four times more likely to die. The unpublished part of the report’s conclusion found that racism and discrimination contributed to their deaths, likely as a result of the disproportionate effect of their socio-economic circumstances. Circumstances which are perpetuated by the racist housing laws offering BAME poor quality housing in tower blocks (think Grenfell), and that see black people as the cleaners in our offices, unable to get a foot through the door of a desk job because the recruitment process harbours inherent racism. It’s why a Ghanaian friend of mine was mistaken as the tea lady at her city law firm, rather than the lawyer taking the meeting. One of my closest friend’s a talented mixed race Sudanese Brit, now a teacher, dropped her foreign sounding surname in order to secure a job in the profession. Who knows if this action actually helped; what it certainly didn’t do was hinder her.  

Clearly it is not enough to survive on the vacuous air that “we are all born equal and have access to equal opportunity”. We are not and we do not. To acknowledge this, is to acknowledge the privilege within the systems that rule us from dawn to dusk, that those who have (white) privilege benefit from. To acknowledge your privilege does not mean that life hasn’t been hard for you, it means that your skin colour has not been a determiner. As a POC, who has a white father, I am still understanding my role as someone who is lighter skinned and therefore benefits from “colourism” - the preferential treatment of lighter skinned people compared to their darker skinned counterparts, i.e. I look tanned rather than obviously foreign or other.  

In the famous words of Angela Davis, 

“in a racist world, it is not enough to not be racist, we must be anti-racist”
— Angela Davis

I am not hesitant in saying that I did not know that one could be anti-racist. I had naively assumed that not being racist was sufficient. But then what I had done to actively elevate and support black people? Sure I called out blatant and explicit racism where it was obvious to me but what about in my work place, were our policies suitably anti-racist. Within my friendship groups, I felt scared to talk about racism because I didn’t want to upset my white friends and make them feel guilty for the colour of their skin. No one likes someone playing the “race card”. Silence is complicity and I had, and have been complicit. 

To be anti-racist is to commit to a seismic upheaval in our status quo. In practice, this means educating yourself and those who you interact with, to learn and listen from black and other’s experiences of racism and to challenge your unconscious bias by understanding how this affects your everyday decisions. This does not mean burdening black people and people of colour with questions and requests for education. It is about being accountable for your learning and development, there is a glut of resources available and I would implore you to avail yourself to them. 

We must be humble in our learning (and unlearning) and radical in our thinking. The systems we currently have do not work, we kid ourselves to think otherwise. It’s not enough to have inquiries and reviews into racism, there have been countless reviews with hundreds of recommendation to improve and address the systemic racism that exists in our country. None have been implemented. 

I have committed to being anti-racist, and below is a non-exhaustive list of the resources I have worked my way through. I would encourage you to have a look, but first you will need to sit through discomfort before being able to understand how the comfort of your life experiences have most likely been as a direct result of black peoples’ exploitation and discrimination. Until truly black lives matter the work of an anti-racist will not be complete. We will all slip up, but we should be continually learning and reflecting. It can seem absolutely overwhelming, and the last few weeks for me have been just that. But if each of us take daily conscious steps to be anti-racist, to support the black community, this momentum can be built on so that ultimately the entrenched racism and systems that exists within our society are dismantled and rebuilt with equal opportunities realised. Everyone will approach this task differently, and perhaps some won’t approach it at all – choosing instead to believe that this is not their battle to fight. It will be their loss; they’ll be left behind in this movement. 

Katherine Cakebread
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