Black Lives Matter - Thinking and Talking about Race

I've been trying to write this newsletter for a while - I can't really contemplate writing about anything else at the moment but I've also been wondering whether the world needs my perspective on Black Lives Matter and anti-racism. However, whilst the momentum of the fury and outrage that rocked the world after the murder of George Floyd at the end of May might be ebbing slightly, the urgency and importance of the work of tackling racism hasn't gone away. As a white person with predominantly white family and friends, I feel like one of the ways I can be anti-racist is to talk about what I've learned and share some of the things that have helped me think more deeply about the role race and racism plays within my life and society in general.

I think they key thing that I've taken from the reading I've been doing over the past few months is the uncomfortable and unavoidable truth that I haven't ever really done enough to be actively anti-racist. I don't think I've ever written explicitly about my race, my whiteness, and the impact I know it has on my life. In particular, I know that I have huge privilege in being able to be outspoken - both in the workplace and in my personal life - without being censored or stereotyped in the way that a Black woman would be. Yet I'm often scared of using this power, ostensibly because I'm scared of getting it wrong, but because deep down I'm afraid of rocking the boat, of disrupting the status quo of whiteness - because somehow our society has come to see having hard conversations about race as being the equivalent of racism. I'm comfortable writing about feminism, about LGBTQ rights, about politics, about anything and everything other than my race.

White supremacy isn't (just) the KKK and the alt-right, the EDL or people shouting racist abuse - it's well-meaning and well-intentioned white people who tell black people not to be angry, not to be victims, not to tear down statues but instead to be patient and recognise that we mean well, that we want things to be better for them, but we don't want to be discomfited by it. I have been and am still one of those white people, however much I'd like to think otherwise. Because that's how our society works, by subtly discouraging even those of us who consider ourselves committed to equality from talking about race or from pushing for racial justice. I can pinpoint clearly the point in my life when I became a feminist - aged about 8 reading about the Women's Suffrage movement for the first time and being shocked that I might not be treated the same because I was a girl. But I have no similar memory of when I learned that I was white or that I should fight for racial equality too - instead, I primarily learned about racism as a series of things (slavery, segregation, apartheid and so on) that had happened in the past, been protested against, then been fixed. It took a while longer before I realised that the fight for women to be treated equally was not, in fact, over and longer still to realise that fighting for equality was not just about asking for white women to be treated in the same way as white men.

Anti-racism is not comfortable work for me as a white person, particularly one who has often been vocal and proud about being committed to equality. But that commitment means nothing if I've not actually done anything that would help dismantle white supremacy or that would have a positive impact on the lives of Black people or other people of colour. Recently I've been trying to focusing over and over again on the same question: what am I actually doing to be actively anti-racist? How am I using my privilege as a white person to create a more equal society? These are not easy questions to face up to and there is no quick fix for an entrenched system of white supremacy that denies the humanity of Black people in particular in a thousand different ways every single day. In particular, there is no quick fix for the peculiarly British refusal to accept that our society is, in fact, structurally racist - something which feels particularly obtuse as we live through a pandemic which has disproportionately affected non-white Britons.

But if I'm not willing to be uncomfortable, how can I ever change or change the world around me? I'm currently working my way through Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad which is a workbook for those with white privilege to help unpack what that means and challenge their own prejudices. I'm only about three-quarters of the way through the book and it's a challenging read because I'm having to look deeply at myself, my prejudices, and the ways in which I've been complicit in upholding a system of white supremacy. For a long time I've been afraid to confront these things but actually doing so has been both hard and surprisingly cathartic - I guess if you're actively avoiding looking at your mistakes and prejudices then it's impossible to change your thoughts or your behaviour. The interesting thing to me is that I've spent much of my adult life trying to become a person who takes responsibility for the mistakes I've made or the hurt I've caused by apologising and doing better in future. I don't always succeed but it's something I make a conscious effort to try and do, particularly as I've got older. So the fact that I'm uncovering a reluctance to model that behaviour in relation to race and racism has been a real demonstration to me of the insidiousness of white supremacy - that it's allowed me to excuse or ignore a behaviour that I've tried hard to cultivate in relation to my career and my personal relationships.

I don't have any answers here or any particular insights. I'm not a good example here nor would I wish to be - I'm merely taking some first steps on what feels like a necessary and urgent journey that will enable me to do less harm and hopefully to be a small part of a long overdue shift away from being a society that oppresses people due to the colour of their skin. I want to have more conversations about race, however awkward and difficult that may feel. I want to be fighting for a better world every single day in whatever way I can. I want to use my (admittedly very tiny) platform to explicitly lift up the voices of the people I learn from, particularly the many Black people (and Black women in particular) who have inspired and educated me through their work- and I'm planning to use the "Things I've Been..." section of this newsletter to do that. I'm really open to questions, comments, recommendations of things I should watch/read/listen to - or indeed to being called out if I've said something ignorant. Please get in touch!

Things I've Been...

Reading
This isn't an anti-racism book list as there are lots of those current circulating around the internet - this is a great place to start if you're looking for a list of anti-racism resources. However I challenged myself to read only books by Black authors in June (and then carried it on in July and August) so this is just a snapshot of some recent highlights:
Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams: Queenie is a Black woman in her mid-twenties, her white boyfriend has just left her, and her life and mental health are falling apart. So far so normal for a woman's contemporary fiction story. Except Queenie is Black and as a result the racism she is subject to as a result is present at every turn - from the overt racism of her ex-boyfriend's family to the well-meaning platitudes of her therapist. Queenie's battle with her mental health is incredibly well written as is her journey towards recovery. One of the best books I've read in ages!
I Am Not Your Baby Mother by Candice Braithwaite: Candice has been someone I've followed on Instagram for a while and so, even though I am not a mother and have no plans to be, I was really excited to read her first book - and I wasn't disappointed. Candice writes with beauty, honesty, eloquence and grace about her experience of Black motherhood. About the myriad ways in which she contends with what it means to be a Black woman raising Black children in the UK today - the racism and the risk faced at every turn but also the joy of building a life for herself and her family.
A Blade So Black and A Dream So Dark by L.L. McKinney: I've seen this book described as Buffy meets Alice in Wonderland which is accurate! I'm not a huge fan of Alice in Wonderland but this is a clever and compelling take on the story - where Alice is a Black bisexual high school student from Atlanta, juggling school work by day and fighting monsters by night. I'm really excited to read the next book in the trilogy!
Black and British: A Forgotten History by David Olusoga: I read this a few years ago but wanted to revisit it in the light of recent events. David Olusoga writes really compelling, readable history and in this book traces the history of the UK's Black population from the Romans to modern times. I found his deep dive into the British involvement in the Atlantic slave trade, the rise of the abolition movement, and the subsequent intertwined rise of scientific racism and the British colonisation of Africa particularly important in understanding how the UK as a country got to where it is today in terms of race relations.

Watching:
Dear White People (Netflix)
Set on a fictional Ivy League campus, this show follows the lives, love affairs, and challenges of a group of Black students. The initial lead protagonist is Sam, a film student and host of a campus radio show about race (also entitled Dear White People) but increasingly the show brings in the perspectives and stories of other students. It's a clever, funny, emotionally engaging, and occasionally devastating show which creates a complex and nuanced picture of the African-American student experience.

A House Through Time (BBC)
Another David Olusoga recommendation! This time for his most recent series of A House Through Time - where the show traces the history of a single house and it's occupants. This series was based around a house in the centre of Bristol and Olusoga traces it's history from being built with profits from the Atlantic slave trade, through the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries to the present day. The stories told are often those that aren't part of "mainstream" history, instead digging into the lives and forgotten stories of ordinary people and those who don't often show up in the historical record including a runaway slave, a foundling child, and a woman killed by domestic violence.

Listening to:
N.K. Jemisin's world-building masterclass on the Ezra Klein show
N.K. Jemisin is one of my favourite fantasy/sci-fi authors and in this podcast she talks the podcast host through what is essentially a live world-building workshop on how to create an alternative reality. As a SF/F nerd, I was really inspired by the world-building process and it made me think deeply about the mechanics of writing the sort of things I love to read. However it's a fascinating listen even if SF/F isn't really your thing.

The 1619 Project Podcast
A short New York Times podcast series which explores African-American history during the 400 years since the first ship carrying enslaved Africans arrived in the British American colonies. The series is well-researched and combines deeply personal histories and accounts with a broad sweep of narrative history. Episode 2, on the economics of chattel slavery, is an episode that actually made me stop in the middle of a run as I was so stunned by the things I was learning. The journalist behind the 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones, is now adapting the project for film and tv which is really exciting.

It's taken me an absolute age to write this and an almost equally long time to press send. So, let me know what you think... Cx