black lives matter

The Cambridge academic Robin Bunce said: “There is a fundamental danger of erasing the very notion of a struggle at all. I’ve been researching this for four and a half years and there have been so many occasions when people have said to me: ‘There was no black struggle in Britain. You’re thinking of South Africa or America.’“

The narrative that feeds it is the one that Britain is the utopia of fair play. We have such a commitment to individual rights, we have such a commitment to common sense and decency that there is no systematic racism in Britain.”…

every single non-black person who has posted #blacklivesmatter this week needs to take a step back and analyze whether or not their actions (not just their words) have shown that they truly believe that statement. it’s a clear and obvious choice to speak out against the brutal murder of an innocent man. however, if you are not making the obvious choice every day to speak up for us when your friends/relatives make racist jokes, if you are not listening to and respecting the black people you know in real life, if you have not sat down to analyze the ways you actively benefit from this system, if you have not worked to start unlearning the biases you were raised with, or if you thought “black lives matter” was a controversial statement until this week, do not pretend to care just because everyone is talking about it right now.

take a moment to contemplate, as an individual and as a collective, on the way you have treated her in the last three years. the way you have talked about her: the way she talks, walks, waves, smiles. the way you discuss her hair, her baby, her mother, her choices, her relationship with her family, her marriage.

go back to the articles written about her and the tv show segments. study them, analyse the language: why words like uppity, manipulative, interloper, opportunist, selfish, narcissistic are used time and time again. how her white sister in law is portrayed as the tearful, can do no wrong damsel in distress and she, the big bad black wolf out to destroy everything and everyone. the body language ‘experts’, the psychologists, who are invited on television to tell people they should be wary of her. her white father being trotted out like the leading act in a circus to emotionally abuse his child in front of the whole world, using historically racist language against her and her mother. even in her vulnerable state as a first time pregnant woman, the refusal to recognise her humanity intensified.

really think about how the rest of the british royal family, made up of white people, greatly benefit from this public persecution of their biracial family member. research the term white privilege, think about just how it operates.

take a moment to step out of your life and try to look at the world through meghan’s eyes. her white husband prince harry has. remember what he said in october?

“I have been a silent witness to her private suffering for too long”

 lol he has been with her for 4 years, meghan has been alive for 39. 4 years and he couldn’t stand it.

it is time for everyone to come to terms with the uncomfortable truth: that most positions in this society are not made for people like her - in fact because the ever-present, centuries old, immoral structure called racism, it is strategically built to keep her out. remember what rebecca english, the daily mail royal reporter called her - an interloper - a person who becomes involved in a place or situation where they are not wanted or are considered not to belong.