Here’s the second archive piece from this summer. I wrote this one with my friend Seb Kingsberry for our school magazine in response to the BLM movement after the killing of George Floyd. Both of us are white, and pretty privileged ourselves, but we couldn’t just sit back without using our position for something; this piece is written from our perspective, about how the movement affects us and the people around us and what we can do to create change. Black Lives Matter, today and forever; don’t stop fighting until the people who aren’t recognising that are stamped out.
–AB
Many of us in the King’s community, pupils and adults alike, will look at the issues raised by the murder of George Floyd and think that they don’t apply to us. We go to a school in a Somerset town, where minorities and people of colour are few and far between, we are far removed from the tales of police brutality that we hear of in the cities of the UK and America. And besides, we’re not racist; incidents of abuse to people due to the colour of their skin are incredibly rare and, once they’re dealt with, they are quickly forgotten, and that’s enough, isn’t it?
More than anything, the past months have opened our eyes to the fact that it’s not.
As a community and as a country, most of us don’t understand how privileged we really are. We’re lucky to live in the world that we do, seemingly disconnected from the issues that encapsulate the protests that we are mere bystanders to. The truth is that those of us who are white benefit from that simple fact; the colour of our skin. Because we’re white, we don’t have to grapple with belonging to a community where everyone looks different to us. Because we’re white, we don’t have to worry that someone will judge us on our skin colour before they even meet us. Because we’re white, we don’t have to feel that intangible fear that so many feel every time they look at a police car; that they will be arrested, attacked, or even killed solely because of their appearance. Something that we must consider is that our lives have been made easier because we live in a world designed for people like us. And it’s not that our lives haven’t been hard, or that all lives don’t matter; nobody has ever claimed that. But the fact that people who are black or brown have to go through things that we don’t is an injustice that we have to fight; during this challenging time we need to use our privileged position to do something about it.
One person alone cannot stop police brutality, or undo the racist sins of history. But what we can do is take small steps, by ourselves, to start being anti-racist, and building a solution to the problem.
The first step is education. This issue is not going to fix itself until we learn more about it; we need to open ourselves up and listening to the voices of people of colour, whether that be through talking to our friends about the difficulties they face or reading articles and books that deal with historical and current issues of racism. Something many of us lack at King’s is exposure to, and awareness of, these struggles; nothing will change until we understand how our privilege has affected us and how others’ lives are made harder due to their ethnicities. It doesn’t take long to read one article a day, however an essential start to solving this is first understanding what we’re dealing with.
The next part is much harder, but is even more important; it involves challenging ourselves, and those around us. We live in a culture where talking about racism has become avoided and frowned upon, often for fear of somehow saying something wrong. In this culture, things will not change. Making mistakes, regretting something and atoning for it, is just how we grow as people, and it’s normal. If you find information about historic racism, or police brutality, or BAME education, that makes you change your mind, have the maturity to change it; stubbornness and close-mindedness get us nowhere. And if your friends, or even your family, make genuinely racist comments, have the courage to challenge them. Question why they believe what they believe; though it may be difficult in the moment, people won’t change if they don’t realise they’re wrong. Maybe they won’t back down, but in responding you’re showing them that their views aren’t accepted, around you or anyone else. But please don’t turn family dinner into a shouting match; approach it in a calm and measured way, and just have a discussion about it.
It is evident that we could benefit from greater open-mindedness and diversity at King’s; in our public-school world, it is all too easy to ignore these problems, but now is the time to step up and change that. In the past, we haven’t done enough to be anti-racist; but what matters now is that we try to change the future and build a community, and a world, where the colour of our skin does not decide who we are. Doing that won’t be easy or fast, and it was never going to be; but after some time and effort we will emerge as a more understanding, empathetic and united community.
–24/06/20
Alex Baxter 