#windrush day

Unfortunately, most people forgot because the same day, Keir Starmer resigned as Prime Minister (even as he left office, he found one last way to fuck over a minority group.)

I'm not gonna let him get one over us though.

Windrush Day is a commemoration in the United Kingdom held on 22 June to honour the contributions of migrants to the post-war economy. It celebrates African-Caribbeans who began arriving on the HMT Empire Windrush in 1948.

It’s not really talked about sadly. I only know because I have a personal connection to the day for unrelated reasons and looked up what else it was known for.

Today (Jun 22nd) is Windrush Day in the UK, commemorating the ship Empire Windrush's arrival in Tilbury Docks, Essex on June 22nd 1948 - but more importantly, all the people who travelled aboard her.

Today we honour the courage, resilience and sacrifice of the Windrush Generation.

They crossed oceans. They built communities. They helped shape modern Britain.

Their legacy lives on through every generation that followed.

I feel like the Black British experience is constantly one of work and struggle. Our parents and grandparents lived through colonial and post colonial (using the term lightly) rule just to end up working and serving the imperial core, targeted by the same government that invited them here. A lot of the time its phrased as a choice but in reality what else could they have done? Ts and Cs apply bc for some West African Brits their parents were middle class back home but for me and others our families grew up in poverty in places still recovering from slavery and colonialism.

Britain whitewashes the history of Black immigrants, literally in the sense we're not taught our own history of Black people in Britain and metaphorically by applying British individualist myths; that as long as you work hard, don't complain about it and love Britain you can be British too. But it erases, ignores and distorts the truth that the British state used our community as nothing more than a labour force to rebuild after WWII and actively targeted Black British communities with police surveillance, brutality and systemic racism. All whilst denying it of course and turning their nose up at the very accusation. Very British.

Black British contributions, West African and West Indian to be more specific don't just apply in terms of work but in terms of shaping culture. 'Roadman' has become a meme and a caricature (including by some Americans on here ik u lot love 'chav') with barely any connection to its Black British roots, even when the term gets used as an insult to mainly Black working class men or used as a British version of 'thug'. The grime scene is undeniably a staple of Black Britain yet it is pathologised and judged, moral panics about Black people's violence and yet capitalised and profitted off of by non Black Brits as an aesthetic. Everybody wants the tracksuits, the tunes and the terminology innit. To be 'road' means to be Black British yet when its time to talk culture, nobody wants to credit it us. All of a sudden its 'London culture'.

But it isn't all doom and gloom. There's so much history and culture here in our spaces. I'd be lying if I said growing up where I did was easy. But it has shaped my outlook and made me and I'll carry that with me forever. Our grandparents and parents came here with so little and made so much out of nothing. And I'll always honour that. Justice for the Windrush generation.