Black History Month: A Tribute

When I see this photograph, it conjures up so many emotions. Anger, pride, admiration,  fear, shock, awe.

 Anger at the injustice, the suggestion that as a black woman, I am inferior - not good enough to arrive at the same places white women are, to walk in their entrances. 

 Pride - at the ability of my fore-mothers to carry themselves with dignity and kindness in the face of injustice.

Pride that they took the  candle of God-like love passed down from their grandmothers, and great grandmothers in their hearts, and dressed and carried themselves like women worthy of honour despite the dishonour thrown at them by others.

 Admiration - at their strength, unwavering courage. 

Fear - fear that we as a generation have forgotten, cocooned by an amnesia of our recent history and altogether often lacking in the resilience and faith of those who came before us.

 Shock - shock that someone could dare to trample on one of God's creature in the manner that they did, especially the beautiful and self-forgetting creatures that black women have been forced to be throughout history. Shock that this evil is a part of every human being and that we all have the capacity to become this. 

Awe - awe at how much has changed, at how much we have survived, at how free I am to sit and type this,at home while one of these beautiful black women I admire, my mother, is at work, talking, eating, managing - sharing the same entrances as the people who this women in the picture was unable to even sit with. We have come a long way. There is still a long way to go.

Peace, Love, and Happy Black History Month. xx

The psychology of supremacy

 I've had a myriad of interesting conversations over the past week, on topics of inequality, classism, race and racism, monarchism (is that a word?), republicanism etc.
There was a recurring theme in these conversations that I found very interesting. The recurring theme was this.  A sizeable number of people who were in a position where they weren't the minority/ 'down-trodden'/ mistreated/ discriminated against group,  for the most part, just didn't get it. They simply just. didn't .get .it.

My university is one of the so - called 'redbrick' unis, where a large proportion of attendees have gone to the best prep schools, secondary schools, and then go on to attend one of the best universities in the country. Many of them have had no real reason or opportunity to mingle with people who are considerably less well off than them, or come from a different racial or cultural background.

Their window into the world of 'other' is mildly biased BBC coverage, or perhaps a well chosen Daily Mail piece. (Yes, unbelievably, there are people who exist who read the Daily Mail for more than cheap laughs). What results from this lack of interaction is a very distorted and often unsympathetic view into the causes, mechanisms and solutions to poverty, racial prejudice, classism, and all the other woes that they generally will never experience.

Take for example, the argument that those who go to private schools are at a distinct advantage in the university admissions process in comparison to those who attend state schools, (I am aware that there are some very good state schools, some quite bad private schools etc etc - I'm making a generalisation). Trying to explain this concept to one of my colleagues last week, was pretty much like banging my head against a brick wall. Painful, with no real sense of achievement at the end.

Their adamant opinion was that A level grades were down to the work ethic of the applicant, and only marginally affected by the school they went to. Now whilst I don't deny that work ethic plays an important role, surely parents don't spend often over £10,000 a year simply to instil work ethic? Surely there must be some other factors at play?

The same flippant attitude towards disadvantage is often shown towards racial prejudice. Richard Dawkins, eminent scientist and apparently one of the most intelligent people on the planet commented in a documentary that ' In the 60's most people were bigoted, nowadays, barely anyone is racist..', apparently as evidence of humanity's ability to evolve. Any black person living in England for approximately 5 minutes would tell you that  that statement, is, unfortunately, incorrect.

What I'm trying to get at is that from my experience, supremacy - be that the supremacy that comes from being white, rich, male or any other 'power' group, often brings with it an unfortunate inability to understand your own supremacy. It's very difficult to bring someone to believe that yes, THEY are, in fact, THE problem. That is, if they aren't actively addressing and combatting the effects of their own supremacy, they are enabling it.

I'm not usually one for these ridiculous reality TV shows where they send 5 silver spooned private school offspring into the ghastly depths of the West Midlands (:-)) to work at a pie n' mash shop, but by jove (yup, I said by jove), I'd love to shop a couple of the people I encounter on a daily basis to Hackney. To live. In a council estate. For 5 months. And go to  the worst school in the borough, have no interview practice, start A level Physics from scratch, and see if it's just as easy to get an A* and a place at Warwick University.

This isn't a hopeless post - there are some people who do 'get it'. Who are trying to 'get it'. I have the privilege of encountering them as well. It's just not enough people though, and that needs to change somehow.

Peace folks  (if you're willing to fight for it). x

On petition signing, or, why black people ask for the wrong things.

David Starkey, esteemed intellectual, nationally recognised historian and star (if one can really use the word) of Jamie Oliver's Dream School, appears on national broadcast 'Newsnight' and makes inflammatory comments of a racial nature. Cue uproar in various quarters of society - ,  the 'Guardian reading trendy white liberal' quarter (Ed Milliband et al) (not that being one of these is a bad thing :-)), the 'ordinary not particularly liberal white person whose best friend is black ' quarter, and even the 'Daily Telegraph reading (closet Daily Mail reading) yet still trendy conservative' quarter (David Cameron et al). (That was a long one, I'll admit, a bit unnecessary). And of course, my people. The coloured folk.

So black people love signing on-line petitions. In fact, scratch that, people in general love signing on-line petitions. Unfortunately, I've noticed that black people in particular make demands for things that are, well, frankly.... a bit pointless.

I'll explain. Let's look at what happens if David Starkey (or the BBC) makes no apology. He gets maligned as a racist, he might have committed what Piers Morgan called 'career suicide', and people remain shocked and aghast for a few months, a year at most. He probably becomes the poster boy for conservative Enoch Powell sympathisers,  the upholders of good, old fashioned British values. After a year, he crawls out his hole and tries to do some sort of history type program, but might well just be remembered as that guy who made those racist remarks, and all five T.V channels are a bit wary to take him on. 

If the BBC makes an apology, what happens? Evidence that white people are being 'marginalised in their own country', that 'blacks are taking over', that 'freedom of speech is being eradicated'. He ends up being a martyr, beaten and bludgeoned into a politically correct corner by the blacks and their whiny friends, the white neo-liberal intellectuals.

If David Starkey himself makes an apology, then again, he gets sympathy for having to cave in to the 'system', this evil Big Brother that monitors and regulates white males and keeps them under the firm thumb of feminists,  blacks, PC-er's, Muslims, homosexuals, and just about every minority group you can think of.

What do black people gain from this? I'm not sure. An emotional back rub? The reassurance that closet racists will remain in their closet? Or a misguided idea that the BBC represents them and is concerned about their feelings and how the rest of the population views them?

Let's start petitioning for things that will actually make a difference in our communities, and show our outrage by our actions. Let's start boycotting things that are actually really hurting us. Like misogynistic lyrics. Like MacDonald's and KFC (yeh, I said it, fried chicken kills black people.) 

Maybe then we'll see real results, instead of just seeing rich white historians have to hide in their country manor for a couple of weeks.

Peace, folks (if you're willing to fight for it). x