We first saw the Black Lives Matter Campaign posters when we were in Boston in 2016. At the time everyone we spoke to in coffee shops was talking about the possibility that Trump would be elected. When we were there our country had just voted for Brexit. Everyone we spoke to couldn’t understand why. We explained how racism works in the UK and they suddenly feared the election of Trump. We, however, were confused about the BLM campaign.
“Surely, all lives matter?” said the Long Suffering Husband.
We talked around it for a while and concluded that racism had to be so much worse in America for that poster to be necessary in every church.
We came home feeling smug and whistling the tune to ‘Everyone’s a little bit racist’ from Avenue Q.
I feel differently about it now. This campaign has made me realise that while all lives matter, Black lives are under serious threat. This is particularly true at the moment in the UK, as well as the USA.
“The virus doesn’t discriminate,” was a favourite phrase of the politicians until they discovered that it did. Now, instead of accepting that and doing everything they can to protect the people it discriminates against they justify with a ‘yes but these people are poor, live together too closely, work in jobs we don’t want to do.’ I think if you say ‘yes but’ then you’ve stopped listening and started justifying. It can be hard to accept that you were wrong.
Only a few weeks ago our government were talking about trialling our Coronavirus vaccine and other not fully tested treatments in African countries. This is typical of our country. We hide this problem. We, too believe that black lives are less important but with our history of Empire and colonisation we just used black people in their own countries.
The LSH has been furious about every large gathering he’s seen. He is acutely aware that it will cause a spike in virus cases. When he watched the London BLM demonstration he was equally furious. We warned him to be careful about expressing that anger because it made him sound racist. He got angry and ended up sounding racist. “I can’t say anything,” he shouted as he stormed off up the stairs.
When he calmed down, my children explained that it was different. Going to Southend to sit on a beach, or to Durdle Door to throw yourself off a cliff, or to Clacton to see a dead whale, or Parliament to vote were not valid excuses for not socially distancing, however society seems to be much more forgiving. Protesting that if your skin is dark you are much more likely to die prematurely and possibly violently, probably is important.
Yesterday, my daughter had a call from her editor. “I’m sorry but I’ve got a horrible job for you,” he said.
They had written about the Black Lives Matters protest event that is due to take place locally this weekend. It was a factual piece, explaining the event, similar to the story about McDonalds reopening. They had shared it on their Facebook page. Facebook do not have the facility to turn comments off on pages (they do for groups) and so her job was to monitor the comments and remove any that were abusive or threatening. There were 19 comments under the McDonalds piece, when they posted it to Facebook, mostly tagging burger loving friends. There were hundreds of comments springing up on the story about the protest. She spent all day monitoring the most abusive, filthy language I’ve ever seen. She had to delete the story in the end because she couldn’t keep up with it. Determined not to allow the racists to win she wrote a native piece (don’t ask me what that is - it’s one of those words like furniture that journalists use that make no sense) to explain that they have had to remove it and that they will not tolerate abuse on their page. This piece then had thousands of awful comments, which she monitored until 9pm, when she finally took it off Facebook and stopped work.
She was totally exhausted.
“Imagine if this was your life?” she said.
I can’t stop thinking about that.
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