Black Lives Matter.
I’ve seen loads of blog posts about this over the past few days, and I’ve been slow to join them because I haven’t know exactly what to say or how to say it.
I’m actually never going to be the best person to make statements about systemic racism, because I have absolutely benefited from it. Not intentionally, of course, but I’m a middle class white woman living in Britain in 2020. I benefit from systemic racism every day of my life, just by virtue of the fact I don’t have to worry about whether my skin colour or a perception about my race is working to make my life harder everywhere I turn.
By the way, that’s all privilege is. ‘White privilege’ as a concept doesn’t mean no white person has ever experienced hardship, it just means that race isn’t one of the things making their lives harder.
So, this isn’t a statement about Black Lives Matter as a movement, or about my support for the global BLM protests, or a dissection of the issues at play in Britain today that mean protests are equally as valid as they are in the US. Other people have done that far more eloquently than I have already, and there’s no value in adding my voice to that when I could amplify those voices - so there are links to just some resources here instead:
Listen to the Code Switch podcast from NPR, because it’s excellent - some episodes are uplifting, funny, joyful, and others are difficult, uncomfortable and heartbreaking. Then read this article also from NPR, which adds to the many, many lists of ‘necessary books’ that are doing to rounds, because it’s not helpful to draw from a narrow pool of sources when trying to enact huge change.
Because racism is not only an issue in America, no matter how much some British people want to believe it is, then I of course also recommend Renni Eddo-Lodge’s book Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race.
I’m also going to leave this Yes! article about micro-aggressions here, because it’s an important opportunity as white people to reflect on some of these examples and try to undo some of the racism that has been ingrained in us since childhood. By the way, it’s not good enough to smugly tell yourself ‘well I don’t do that’ - also consider, what do you do? Are you engaging in anti-racist thought work, actively putting that into practice? Because if not, what we’re doing isn’t good enough.
What I will say is this: one of the reasons I have a blog is because one day I might want to share the news that I have written a novel, and that novel will be published. If and when that day comes, I want anyone reading back through posts I’ve written to see this one. I want them to see it, because I want them to know that these are my beliefs.
This is not a political statement, because I do not accept that wanting to end racism is ‘political’. Human beings are not a debate, a talking point on the news, or political pawns to be appeased or ignored based on the whims of a government. Black lives matter because all lives matter, and if you are one of the people endlessly repeating that latter slogan but can’t accept that the former is therefore a foregone conclusion then I can’t help you, but I will stand up against you. Now and in the future.
I’m not perfect in this regard by any means, and that is an uncomfortable fact for me to sit with. I’m a people-pleaser, I spend my whole life worrying about how to make everyone around me more comfortable than they are, because I can’t conceive that I’ve ever done enough and yet in this instance, I really won’t ever have ‘done enough’. Making the world better for everyone is and will be a lifelong struggle - but it is everyone’s struggle, because we all fucking live in it.