Quite a few thoughts

I am not sure if I will be publishing this blog post. Obviously, if you’re reading this then I decided to post it! Anyway, my intention is to write a post in order to try and collect and articulate my thoughts on what is going on in the UK and US, and indeed the globe.

As a species, we appear to be arguing about whether Black lives matter or not. Or to what degree they do or don’t matter. How absurd. The catalyst for this argument was the murder of George Floyd at the knee and body weight of a police officer in Minneapolis. The four officers, of which two were white, one was Asian American and the other black, were all charged with various offences pertaining to the death of George Floyd. The ensuing outrage over the murder led to violent clashes between what was now the far more well-known #BlackLivesMatter movement and the police – across numerous cities in the US.

At the command of the President of the USA, the response of the police was to be one of “domination” over protesters. The President later condoned the use of firearms: “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Many occurrences of police brutality towards protesters and also news of riots and looting circulated, to a completely divided social response. #BlackLivesMatter was now being countered by #AllLivesMatter. Groups of predominantly white, right wing people began pushing back against the BLM movement.

However, those who adopted the #AllLivesMatter paradigm did so in quite starkly different ways. For some, it was a very vocal “fuck you” to BLM. Mainly overt racists who are aware of their dislike of black people. For others, they saw Black Lives Matter to mean Black Lives Matter More and were offended by that notion; for them there are many other people on the planet who are far more oppressed than western black people. “So why are we getting so obsessed with black lives, when there are other lives in even more danger?”

This is all proceeding and during a global pandemic due to a potentially fatal virus that, of course, no one could agree about. The world brought to its knees and quarantined for months. Panic buying, NHS clapping, Cummings, Goings and everything that happened with that particular political H-bomb. Protests all over the US and now the UK, where social distancing is sometimes ignored, maybe even often ignored. More violence between UK protesters and police – a statue is pulled down in Bristol and thrown into the river. It is a statue of Edward Colston; a local philanthropist. Oh, and he was a slave trader who did some really horrible things to black people.

Now we have divided opinion on whether this statue thing has gone too far. Some see it as a piss in the face of Britain’s history whereas others believe that it is exactly these monuments to the systemic racism of the country that need to be taken down. This leads to further vandalism of some statues and some “counter-protests” where nationalist groups clash with police to try and protect statues (specifically of Winston Churchill) from being vandalised.

There is SO. MUCH. THERE. So many avenues for some incredible discussion and to build bridges that ought to have been built decades ago to deal with systemic racism. But everyone just insults each other instead. The reasoned voices of wisdom are drowned out by sharp vitriol, shredding away at the society that spews it out.

That is where we are now.

Everyone is so loud. Everyone seems to be shouting. It’s only words on a screen, but somehow it is being shouted. A useless mix of echo chambers and fighting rings. Hardly anyone seems to be listening. That’s what civilised people should do. I wrote on Facebook the other day that I was concerned that white people were hijacking the BLM movement. Speaking for black people instead of amplifying their voices. If you’re doing this, please stop. Can we stop talking and just ask the black community what they need from us? That might mean some fairly difficult actions for the white community, but we have to start listening. I have to confess that the majority of BLM influence on me has been from white friends. I wish I could hear what my black friends need – but asking feels patronising.

With regard to statue toppling, I think there is a very important issue brought to light as a result of this. I’ve read a lot of people showing disgust at the pulling down of statues because it is disrespecting the history of Great Britain. The logic continues to state that if we’re tearing down anything with a link to racism in its past, then we might as well blow the whole country up because it was all linked to racism at some point. The very technology that people are using to argue this on, is quite possibly the product of an oppressed foreign worker being exploited by the big tech companies. The pyramids? Well, they can get fucked. Built by slaves, BRING ‘EM DOWN!

But we cannot change anyone else’s culture. Especially those in the past. It’s literally impossible. No one is rewriting history. Those statues were erected by a culture that supported slavery. But the statue remains and exists in our culture. We don’t have legal slavery in this country any more because we agreed it was abhorrent, so why would we keep a statue erected (giggety) that was the celebration of a different national culture? Should it have gone into a museum rather than the river? I don’t think so. It’s nothing personal to Edward Colston, but that act became a statement far bigger than Bristol’s patience over its removal finally expiring. It was a chance for modern British culture to finally say, “This is not our culture any more”.

It didn’t. Some people have taken it personally and feel their culture is being attacked and removed.

Which I understand. I completely understand that people don’t want their national past erased. This is where the discussion breaks down. It is at this point they will be deemed racist and roundly ridiculed. As a result, they dig their heels in further and trade some insults about intelligence with others and the two tribes continue on as normal, both exasperated and with a deeper root into their respective tribe.

No one should be held accountable for supporting 16th-century slavery unless they explicitly do so. I also think anyone who does accuse someone of the above is in the wrong. No-one’s actions can change what happened. It is a horrid blight on our history and the people responsible for it were wrong. No one is trying to rewrite that history, but there are elements from throughout the history of Great Britain that have persisted and still exist in our culture. This is what we have to change. There is systemic racism in our culture, probably because it has carried over the mistakes of previous generations – I think we are in a position to really address these things. This is our culture. We are responsible for it, and responsible for what we allow it to be influenced by.

There are some people suffering horrendous persecution across the globe, who have to get lucky each day in order to survive. We should certainly get involved with these issues to support peace, for sure. #BlackLivesMatter is not about focussing on helping “these” black people suffering instead of “those” other people suffering. I worry that is the mindset of a lot of people. It would fit the arguments I see. Black Lives Matter is about dealing with the systemic racism present in our own culture – it’s not about helping “them”, it’s about changing our system so it doesn’t discriminate against fellow citizens because of their melanin content. There is no “them”, we are all British.

You don’t have to be left-wing, right-wing, Antifa, liberal or conservative to support that, surely? If you are born with a lot of melanin in your skin, currently in the UK you are at a disadvantage. And that cannot continue. Imagine your own culture discriminating against you before you were even born, due to something over which you have no control and indeed something you should be proud of. That is the culture British black people are born into, because that is British culture. All of the shouting, all of the protesting and all of the violence is exposing just how much of our culture is affected, and it has to change.