BLACK LIVES MATTER

As a white British woman, I do not understand the constant fear and prejudice attitudes that are directed towards black people in today's society. I am not in a position where I worry about being tormented because of the colour of my skin. I am lucky enough to be able to go about my daily activities without fearing for my life. I do not understand the hardships of being black, but I want to support black people through these hardships and help in any way I can. 

Black people are viewed as black before anything else.

'The Jewish man can make a first impression before being Jewish'. 'The homosexual man can be a man before being a homosexual'.

In 1952 Franz Fanon wrote an essay that discusses how black people are viewed as the stereotypical black citizen before being viewed as a man. When meeting a person of colour, lots of people pre-judge purely based on the colour of their skin.

People of colour are being failed by a system run by white people. These people do not understand and do not try and understand the oppression of black people, yet we are made to believe the man of colour is the criminal.

As a white member of society, it is our job to stand forward and protest for changes against our government. This is not a problem caused by black people. It is a white problem. If white people do not fix it then it will never be solved.

A lot of the current protests arise from the murder of George Floyd in America. A man who was killed by police officers when they sat on his neck for over eight minutes whilst he cried out that he couldn't breathe. Before the protests, no one was help accountable for Floyd's murder. In March 2020, Breonna Taylor was asleep in her apartment when police officers raided her house and shot her eight times. The policemen allegedly shot Breonna before even searching the house. Nothing of interest was in her home. To this date, no one has been held accountable for her murder.

There are SO many more cases of unfair treatment of police and governments to people of colour around the world.

If we compare the treatment of black people to the treatment of white people, Brock Turner raped a girl behind a dustbin and because of his crime free record, high level of studies and rich family he was sentenced to just six months in prison and got out after three.

This is the image the media circulated of him.

On average black citizens are more than four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana charges than their white piers. Only 12.5% of all marijuana users are black yet black-Americans make up more than 30% of all arrests for marijuana related offences. In the federal system, the average black defendant convicted of a drug offence will serve nearly the same amount of time as a white defendant would for a violent crime.

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/criminal-justice/reports/2018/06/27/452819/ending-war-drugs-numbers/

Recently, I watched a series on Netflix called The Innocence files. The series discusses people wrongly imprisoned for crimes they did not commit. Most of the people wrongly convicted during the series were black. In the first two episodes, the series followed Levon Brooks and Kennedy Brewer, who were both serving life sentences for the violent rape and murder of two different 3-year old's in the state of Mississippi. Brewer was actually serving his sentence on death row. Even with no DNA evidence linking them to the crime and no eyewitnesses both were sentenced to life without possibility of parole. Brooks was arrested for the crime in 1992 and Brewer in 1995. Even with the obvious similarities between the cases no jury had even questioned that the two crimes could be in any way related or even committed by the same person. Over fifteen years later new evidence was provided that proved the innocence of both men and both were exonerated. The judges that sentenced the men were all white. Most of the cases followed throughout the series were about wrongly convicted black men, prosecuted by white men.

https://decider.com/2020/04/15/the-innocence-files-netflix-cases/

I recently learned from one of my friends that when slavery was abolished, the government paid money to the slave OWNERS as compensation for them losing their property. No compensation went to the actual slaves or their families that suffered for decades. A huge loan was taken out to pay these people their compensation and it was so large that we only finished paying it off in 2015. That means up until 2015 part of YOUR taxes went on paying back the people who felt hard done by for being robbed of their slaves.

I could go on for hours writing about disparity of race.

What can you do as a white supporter of the BLM movement?

• Sign as many petitions as you can. Any that you see online, any that come up on your news feed sign them and help with the petition for change.

https://www.change.org/p/mayor-jacob-frey-justice-for-georgefloyd?utm_source=brand_us&utm_medium=media&use_react=false

https://www.wecantbreathenational.org/

https://www.change.org/p/govia-thameslink-justice-for-belly-mujinga

https://www.standwithbre.com/

https://www.change.org/p/justice-for-tony-mcdade?use_react=false

https://www.change.org/p/minneapolis-district-attorney-raise-the-degree?recruiter=1070856200&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_abi&utm_term=psf_combo_share_initial&recruited_by_id=63b60440-766c-11ea-b692-d998ae9ea6dc

https://www.change.org/p/change-org-the-minneapolis-police-officers-to-be-charged-for-murder-after-killing-innocent-black-man?utm_content=cl_sharecopy_22409600_en-US%3Av3&recruited_by_id=c3d01330-a57d-11ea-9969-19ad4dd93413&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial&utm_term=psf_combo_share_initial

https://www.change.org/p/boris-johnson-the-uk-government-must-con

demn-trump-s-response-to-the-murder-of-george-floydutm_content=cl_sharecopy_22522561_en-GB%3Av3&recruited_by_id=d21766b0-a5a4-11ea-9a05-b3d780603ee9&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial&utm_term=4931b21bd4f04c7cbdd896d94658b364&pt=AVBldGl0aW9uAMGqVwEAAAAAXtew7gG9E6s5OWZkZjM3ZA%3D%3D

https://www.change.org/p/gavin-williamson-mp-teach-british-children-about-the-realities-of-british-imperialism-and-colonialism?recruiter=1100366940&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=share_petition&recruited_by_id=63f782c0-a35e-11ea-8907-8fc7af712ec3&use_react=false

• Donate. Donate to charities and go fund me pages for those suffering for being black

• Educate yourself. I wrote this blog a number of days after the BLM movement because I was not up to speed with what exactly was happening, and I still have so much to learn and would appreciate any extra information. I have recently ordered 'Me and White supremacy' Layla F Saad, to read and educate myself further.

Speak out.

"It is not enough to not be racist, you must actively be anti-racist" - Angela Davis