One of the most liberating things about this past week for me has been the permission to just start. The permission to speak up, in full knowledge and acceptance that I am going to fuck up along the way, but that it’s infinitely preferable to sitting quietly waiting to be perfect. Done is better than perfect.
I am a step or two ahead of some of the people I know and love, but it’s not that long ago that I was right where they have found themselves this week, in the well meaning “I don’t see colour” and “all lives matter” camps. I didn’t get it until I started seeking to understand how, in this specific arena, to be a better version of myself.
I started my educational journey just over a year ago, and wanted to write about it but I felt I needed to digest and then I got trapped in that loop of not wanting to say the wrong thing. Not wanting to offend any of the people I was trying to help by using the wrong words.
Back at university, my dissertation was on the International Politics of Species Extinction focusing on the Bengal Tiger. There was a tragic true story of how international conservation efforts ground to a halt in the 1970s because of where a line was drawn on a map. Disputed territory was such a sensitive issue that for international delegates to be brought to map where the line was in the “wrong place” made looking at the broader issue impossible.
I was frightened to start speaking up in case I offended the people I was trying to help by referring to them by using the wrong words – “black”, or “brown” or “people of colour”. I have worked with people who rejected being called black, because their skin was brown. I know there are people who reject being referred to as brown, because they identify as black. I am never sure whether “people of colour” is too generalising. I am also unsure sometimes whether black people want to be segregated from the wider everybody-who-isn’t-white “people of colour” community. Then there is the whole question of lumping all black people together, when the cultural heritage of an Afro-Caribbean person is not necessarily going to be the same as an African-American person or a Nigerian, South African or Moroccan person. I asked about this in a facebook group dominated by British black people, and had responses saying that all black people are black and have the same experiences, and others saying the opposite. We can be strangled by the semantics because the words and labels aren’t as straightforward as we might like them to be.
None of this is convenient.
That’s apt though, because from what I’m hearing and reading, there is nothing convenient about being a black person in a white dominated world.
Last weekend I was inspired to stop waiting. I am doing the Tribe course with Stu McLaren and I saw him post that he was going to be going live to talk about #BlackLivesMatter and it triggered a number of black members of the community to post, and for lots of us to comment and interact. Finally I had the catalyst I needed.
As a white person trying to do the work of being anti racist, if it’s not uncomfortable, you’re probably not doing it right. At least, that’s the impression I get from the impassioned video Rachel Rodgers posted to Facebook about Marie Forleo’s response to the George Floyd murder and upsurge in consciousness about racism. Hopefully this link will work direct to Facebook even if you don’t have an account.
It has been fascinating this week watching the sudden upsurge in consciousness and attention to the issue of racism on Facebook. I have seen Carrie Green both lauded and torn to shreds in her own community for her very honest admission that she was late to the party and knew that she needed to do better. Her heartfelt admission of ignorance and determination to educate herself was greeted with compassion by most, but “it’s not good enough” by others. I could see, watching what was unfolding, why some people throw their arms up in the air and say “we can’t win! No matter what we say, we’re wrong” in response to critique of their chosen words.
Sadly, as in my comment above about convenience, I think this is something that marginalised people face every day of their lives. That we are finally getting a taste of what it is like and not enjoying it must be heartening to some of the people watching from those marginalised communities. Maybe, just maybe, if white people can feel enough pain in their current state of being, they will instigate and be the change?
We’re seeing it on the streets around the world. Every protest photo and video I have seen has featured white people protesting alongside black and brown people. In different cities and countries they have taken different approaches – from hundreds of people lying on the ground in the pose of George Floyd’s dying body to marching, from silent vigil to chanting, and from passive protest to direct symbolic actions. One of these was the removal of a statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol, removed from his plinth, rolled down the street and dropped into the harbour. I tend to agree with the people who say it should have been removed a long time ago. Creating wealth through slave trading is nothing to be proud of, no matter how generously his wealth was distributed after his death. There are a lot of white people choosing to take to the streets to show their support.
Yes, there is an added risk of Covid 19 transmission when people gather, and doubtless our government and several others will chose to blame the next spike in cases on the protests. I tend to think it’ll be far more closely related to Dominic Cummings’s flouting of the rules and the government’s defence of him, but that’s another story.
I think I have been very lucky that the posts I have placed in a couple of the groups I am in have been greeted with pure positivity. This is what I posted on Blackout Tuesday:
Blackout Tuesday
I hope nobody minds me asking here, but one of the things I keep seeing for us to do in antiracism work is promote black businesses.
Living in semi-rural Devon, there’s not a great deal of local diversity for me to promote… so I wondered if any of the black members of our freelance community would be happy to drop links to their websites below so that I can promote them?
And sorry if I’ve worded this wrongly, but I as I understand it, it’s better to say something and try than sit quietly hoping you’ll get it perfect before you speak up.
Thank you
In one group my post had 150 likes, loves and care reactions and 73 comments. There was even a typo in the post because I was nervous about putting it out there, in a group of nearly 1,000 people where no one had yet mentioned Black Lives Matter.
One lady, Cydelle Stewart, responded by thanking me for “addressing the elephant in the room” and assured me that no apologies were necessary.
She went on, with great elegance and compassion to say “Promoting Black owned businesses is definitely a progressive step and one that I’m sure many will appreciate.
Other things that non-Black people and business owners can do are to take the time to consider biases they may have when making buying and working decisions – I see a lot of discrimination when people are seeking sub-contractors. Often, people have pre-conceived ideas around the value of business conducted by obvious-sounding African, Caribbean (as well as Brown) business owners, and an unwillingness to pay asking rates based on ignorance…
The key thing for people to remember is not that anyone is asking for any type of ‘special’ treatment; it’s simply for Black (African, Caribbean, African-American) people to be treated with equal humility as non-Black people are and where observations are made that this is not the case, they are called out accordingly…
Every journey starts with one step and some of those steps will falter, some will be misplaced, some will take the wrong path but some will lead to dismantling of systems and hopefully, healing.
As in business, where mistakes lead to learning, triumphs and success, so can open, honest, safe discussions.”
I’ll keep making mistakes, keep learning, and hopefully we will see the change we need take shape.
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