Why Should we Care About ‘Black Lives Matter’?

Hi Biscuit Breakers,

As many of you will probably know, these last two weeks have been seriously influential in raising awareness of the daily oppression that specifically black people have been subject to for over 400 years.

Much of the media coverage will soon die down, and they’ll blame a potential ‘second wave’ of coronavirus on the protests that have happened across the country. Will they blame Dominic Cummings? Possibly. Will they blame the majority of white people who didn’t socially distance on the beaches? Maybe. But they’ll definitely show these protests, most of which were socially distant.

But isn’t this a form of racism? Why should this movement last only for a couple of weeks. Today is George Floyd’s funeral and I hope for the sake of his life that was lost, that we can prevent more lives being lost from the virus that is racism.

We need to care about Black Lives Matter in order to acknowledge the constant oppression that they have faced throughout their lives. Why should these young children grown up being told that people are going to dislike them because of the colour of their skin? No they shouldn’t.

In 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood up in front of the Washington Monument and delivered his famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. This was nearly 60 years ago. He preached that ‘I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character.’

I have this dream too. But in order for this to happen, we must break down some walls. We must channel our discomfort and our own mistakes and make them right. We must educate ourselves in the oppression faced. We must do something, whether it is big or small to help black voices be heard.

People have disagreed with the protests, saying that during a pandemic this is not the right thing to do. But was the brutal 9 minute murder of an innocent black man right? Statues of a slave owner was torn down from the streets of Brighton and thrown in the water. People said that they shouldn’t have done that. Why? So they are reminded each day of a man who supported slavery?

Hitler’s statues were destroyed, should we have kept his statues standing? Last year I went to France and went to a museum in Caen where there was a stone head of Hitler on the floor, on its side. I am glad it was there in an educational environment where people can see that his lasting legacy was death and destruction and that he shouldn’t be honoured by standing upright. These statues of slave owners should be put somewhere for educational purposes. For the pure and simple reason that we no longer need these stones towering over people every day, but we can look at them and see how far we’ve come.

I could go on with many statistics, one being that only 10 black people in 5 years have been published. It’s awful.

Please, please educate yourself on black lives. Don’t assume that everything you were taught in history at school makes your country seem ‘less racist’. All countries are to blame. The UK was just as guilty as America, we just decide to leave out all the racism in the national curriculum.

Remember, Black Lives Matter. Now more than ever. But remember respect, compassion and love.

– Henna