The only way is Up! Black Lives Matter
It begins in childhood. Outright lies or more subtle, unspoken messages about Black people, people of colour – which are used to justify prejudice, discrimination, apartheid, genocide. Growing up they didn’t make sense: how could the colour of someone’s skin make them a bad or lesser person? It seemed to me I had things in common with other children who were ‘different’, in my mainly English and white school, since I myself was a foreigner. But I was very young and had little way of making sense of the world and I wanted to believe the adults.
In the (then more recent) past, there was World War 2, the Holocaust, which had been so much about racial hatred, against Jews, Romani people, Slavs as well as about hatred for LGBT people, trade unionists, dissidents. How could people not make the links? I grew up in a white immigrant community in London, where mostly – sadly – people struggling with prejudice themselves felt better by looking down on other immigrants, especially people of colour. Luckily I met other people figuring this out, understanding what we’d been fed as children, working out how it all links up to divide everyone by race and gender and class.
At times it feels like it’s getting worse, plus we’re still mid-pandemic – but the recent protests world-wide after the death of George Floyd, yet another Black person murdered by the police bring some hope. I remember years back how moved I was seeing a group of police for the first time in the Pride parade in Brighton after years of seeing them at their worst (Grunwicks, Lewisham etc for those of my generation). There have been moments like that recently with police in the USA taking a knee and joining protesters, with a slave trader’s statue being toppled in the the U.K, vigils and protests, signs in windows, messages of support.
The worst thing about being bullied is when people around you either don’t see it happening in the first place or turn away when they do, perhaps feeling too scared to stand up for you. But it makes SO much difference when we stand up for one another! If you are a person of colour reading this I simply want to say Black Lives Matter. If you are a white person, it’s not up to me to tell you what you should do – I just want to encourage you to do something, however small, however clumsy or embarassed you feel, because it’s up to us to end racism. And if you are Polish: nie dajmy sie nienawiści i głupocie! Solidarność jest cenna!