Black Lives Matter

I was sitting doing my research for my Black History article and although I know a great deal of black history and indeed have lived some of it myself, I began to feel very depressed. I had to give myself a break and realised that I had to write this one first.

It is a great tragedy to realise that even today when we, white people, would never admit to being racist that the words of the great black American writer, James Baldwin, still reverberate.

He was being interviewed about racism and he said that he preferred to deal with racists because he knew where he stood. He knew they hated him! The white liberals were difficult for him because although they would be shocked about racism, he did not know what they really thought of him.

He did not know what was behind their eyes. It is a hard thing to accept but I know he is right.

When people write White Lives Matter or All Lives Matter, some of them are just ignorant, but some are racist people who would never dream of admitting it. At no time have black activists said that White Lives don’t matter or that All Lives don’t matter.

White people have got to understand that all we are saying is that the history of black people in Britain is so appalling that they are treated as aliens in their own country.

A black friend of mine was regularly asked “Where are you from?” He would answer “Torquay”. He would be then asked “Yes, but where are you from originally?”, and he would tiredly answer “Torquay” until the white people would walk away confused. How could he be from Torquay, he’s black. In the end he would shout, ”I am from Devon! I’m not an alien!”

We live in a ‘Hostile Environment’ for black people. All the fuss made about the Colston statue is laughable. The young people were making a serious and valid point by taking it down. Bristol City Council knew they should have taken it down years ago.

Boris Johnson is showing huge sympathy for the people of Hong Kong. He is offering them UK citizenship if they want it. It’s easy because they are not black, but Clayton Barnes, a black man who has lived and worked here for 51 years, was refused re-entry into what he thought was his home.

It’s like living with the torture called death by a thousand cuts, as a black person has to face discrimination constantly.

Harry Belafonte said, “You have to be black to understand the nuances of living as a black man in a white world.”

Don’t believe people who are trying to divide us when we should be trying to come together as a nation. After the Brexit vote won, in Essex, laminated postcards were put through Polish peoples’ letterboxes saying, “Go back where you came from, you vermin.”

They were seen as taking ‘British’ jobs, even though many British workers are not qualified to do these jobs.

Baroness Valerie Amos, a Labour peer and Director of the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University wrote, “We have had report after report which shows the racism in Britain. We have a massive education attainment gap, significant underachievement in schools, a lack of employment opportunities and a disproportionate number of Black men in British jails. Only 0.6% of university professors are black. Really, how much more evidence do we need that racism in the UK is real?”

The British Empire has had a disgraceful influence on the world. People forget that America was one of our colonies and the attitudes there today can be traced back to the British slave trade and their racist attitudes.

In some respects, however, the Americans are ahead of us. As I explained in another article with regards to the military. We could never have a black Prime Minister in this present hostile environment, and yet Obama was President of the United States.

We supposedly celebrate Black History Month by enjoying the food, the different brightly coloured clothing and the music. This is the soft option to make it more presentable to white people.

It’s like the way that some people have turned International Women’s Day into a soft option, like another Mother’s Day. God Forbid nasty feminists should spoil it for us by telling the truth about how women are treated.

The amazing Linda Bellos, who set up Black History Month, never expected it to be softened down like this. She meant it as a way of educating people to understand racism and to stop people from behaving in this awful way, of informing people about the history of black people in this country and to learn the truth.

How do we learn about what it is like to live as a black person? Well, we don’t. So, Jane Elliott, a white American school teacher, had a problem. Her class had pictures of American heroes on her classroom walls, one of whom was Martin Luther King.

Then he was assassinated. She was at home , planning how she could explain this to her children. She remembered how the Native Americans said that if you wanted to understand them you had to walk in their moccasins. She decided that her pupils should do just that.

The next day she divided the children into two groups, one group being called the Blue Eyes and one the Brown Eyes. The Brown Eyes became the second class citizens, living as a black person would. The Blue Eyes were in control.

The next day, she changed the teams over so the Blue Eyes were the children from the Brown Eyes and the Brown Eyes contained the children from the Blue Eyes. Because they had been so badly treated the day before they took out their revenge on their classmates.

So when we see people in demonstrations getting violent even though they might not have started it, think back to the suffragettes. Their violent behaviour is seen as heroism now, but not then.

Jane Elliott kept swapping the groups over and eventually the children calmed down and came to understand racism a little more. They had walked in someone else’s moccasins.

If that experiment had been tried today, I am sure that parents would have been up in arms about the way their children had been treated. As young adults, the first group who had lived through this experiment, were interviewed on television.

They talked about how much they had learned through those hard days and they never thought about being racist ever again. They said they owed it to their teacher and that they were happy to teach their own children in the future about the terrible poison of racism.

The second white person to stand up and be counted was an Australian athlete called Peter Norman, who won the silver medal at the 1968 Olympics when John Carlos (gold medal) and Tommie Smith (bronze medal) stood in bare feet and made the Blank Panther salute.

They only had one pair of black gloves so Peter could not wear one, but he wore a special anti-racist badge in support and stood with them. Australia had an apartheid system at that time, so when he returned to his home country, he lost his job as an athlete and was shunned by the authorities. He never had a decent job again.

When he died, John Carlos and Tommie Smith attended his funeral. It was only years after his death that Australia officially apologised to him.

The third white person of interest is Billie Jean King (or Moffat as she was then), an extremely talented tennis player. She talked about how, as a little girl, she was being trained, and there she was in her little white dress, white plimsolls, playing with white people and she asked where the black children were being trained. From then on she was an activist helping black girls and women in general on the tennis circuit.

The problem is that governments do not work for the people. It is only when there is a huge amount of publicity or a successful demonstration or a petition, or someone dies that they have to react to situations.

An example of this is the book ‘Hidden Figures’ which was also made into a film. This is the true story of 4 black women who were mathematical geniuses. They were employed by NASA and their story begins in the 1930s and carries on into the 1960s. Their work was not recognised publicly until the book came out in 2016. By then, they were all elderly.

Then Mrs Johnson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Obama, and Ms Darden, Mrs Vaughn (posthumously) and Mrs Jackson were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2019.

Racists have power and privilege so why should they give it up? They are usually mediocre people using their class, race and privilege to keep their positions of power. If you look at our white politicians, how many of them are people you can respect?

Finally, I want to share this poem, “We wear the mask”, by a black poet, Paul Dunbar, to give you some idea on what it is like to be black:

“We wear the mask that grins and lies,

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,

This debt we pay to human guile;

With torn and bleeding hearts we smile

And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,

In counting all our tears and sighs?

Nay, let them only see us, while

We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries

To thee from tortured souls arise.

We sing, but oh the clay is vile

Beneath our feet, and long the mile;

But let the world dream otherwise,

We wear the mask!”

N.B. There is a Stand Up to Racism Rally every Wednesday in Llanelli at Spring Gardens at 5.30 pm. Come and support us and stand beside us.