Black Lives Matter ( This is a long one )

All Lives Matter  :   

All sane and decent people think that.   The problem has been that in some parts of our common life that has not been true.   The lives of sex workers in Bradford didn’t matter until Peter Sutcliffe started to attack other women.  The wellbeing of girls in care in Rochdale didn’t matter because they were asking for it.  The life of a young man killed at a bus stop because he was black didn’t matter because he was just a black kid.  All the victims of Saville didn’t matter because he was a star.  It didn’t matter that men like Weinstein exploited their position to sexually abuse women.

So not all lives mattered to us, not all lives matter now.  BUT every life matters to God. 

You may argue that this is the past  and we are better now – No :  not with Stephen Yaxley-Lennon  ( hiding under the name Tommy Robinson) leading his hate filled cadre onto our streets; not with people shouting abuse at people of colour in the streets today; not when we still celebrate the philanthropy of slave traders and owners with statues in our streets.   Not when all our school history lessons are the Tudors and the second world war and nothing about a national heritage shared by all of us.

When you learned about the Romans did you learn about the African settlement near Hadrians wall, did you learn about the slave trade?  Have you learnt about the great African monuments outside Egypt – about great stone buildings made when Edward the 1^st was building his castles to subjugate the welsh.  When you learnt about Florence Nightingale do you also learn about Mary Seacole?

Oh we have a long way to go till All Lives Matter.   

Black Lives Matter because all lives matter, but my life is not at risk because I am white, because I live in my own house, because I have a job, because I am a man.     So now as we have begun to face the demons of Saville, Weinstein  and their ilk, we know turn to a greater challenge :   to face the demon of fear because of the different people,  a demon that sometimes lives in our own hearts.

The sad thing about the demon of racism is that we have made it ourselves.  It is not innate in us, it is not in our children, it is a learnt behaviour from us adults.    And whilst the romans were quite ready to enslave anyone and kill each other for fun and entertainment - they did not discriminate because of colour.  

So where does it come from?  I believe it was taught us and then we managed to keep teaching ourselves   As one looks through history of the white peoples particularly the northern Europeans ,  we see  a slow but inevitable  movement  away from tolerance to fear and subjugation of people of colour.    A possible explanation is in appendix 1.

When I grew up in Zimbabwe, I was told that Great Zimbabwe and the other great stone monuments were built by the Phoenicians.  The idea that these great building had been constructed by the shona kingdoms between 1250-1700 was not one they could cope with.   It ran totally counter to the colonial narrative of a savage ignorant childlike people that we had duty to overthrow.   

The height of the British learning racism was during the Victorian colonial expansions where this salvation narrative was the prevalent one and is still present in many white people living in Africa today. 

The American racism was different I think -  there it came from fear  - there were so many (ex) slaves around  and “if they got proper rights then we would be overthrown – so we got to keep them down”   and they created a whole narrative of fear and mistrust punctuated with random lynchings and violence, a separation of cultures and even dividing the Christian communities into black and white in a way that taught the Boers in South Africa how to do it.

As American culture seeped into ours so did the white fear of blacks enter with it. And we taught our children to fear too.

My upbringing was different, as I have already mentioned I grew up in Zimbabwe (when it was Rhodesia) when Ian smith was attempting his own Apartheid.  I did not grow up in a white township but on a black mission school,  I had black and white friends,  and there were black and white teachers at the school,  I grew up respecting the black minister as much as the white minister.    I failed to learn fear of black people, but I failed to grow up colour blind.  Returning to this country  living amongst the white liberals  - I felt that to be a failing but now I know to be colour blind  is actually to be callous, because if I have a colleague who is black, to ignore his black identity is to attempt to wipe it out,  to ignore his story of challenge, it is in effect  racist to deny black people their identity, unconscious racism even amongst the anti racist.

So it is down to us to change ourselves, to resist the stupid fear of black people,  to reject the stereotypes not for our sakes only but for our children and grandchildren  -  which why today we must support black lives matter (BLM)

BLM is about acknowledging that racism exists - to acknowledge the prejudice in the police force exists and all too often that is racist prejudice.  When Sentamu (lately Archbishop of York) was Bishop of Stepney he was stopped and searched – no white bishop would ever have had that experience.

BLM is about acknowledging just how much of our wealth as a nation derives from slavery, the Lascelles of Harewood House are beginning to do that, beginning to reflect on the sources that built their wonderful house. BLM is about not saying on a tearoom menu saying have sweet – the family here at Penrhyn had sugar plantations so its ok to have a cake (I actually saw this on a national trust menu 10 years ago). 

BLM is about acknowledging the wrong done  to our brothers and sisters of the windrush generation and getting angry how slow the Home office is moving to compensate those people they illegally stopped from working or deprived of health care or  even deported!

BLM is about expecting the same justice I expect for my black colleague or friend.

BLM is about the same opportunity in life for my mixed-race great nieces as for my white great nieces

BLM is about justice for all of us, opportunity for all of us, a fair and peaceful society for all of us.  As we unpack the injustices done to black and other ethnic minorities, we will discover the injustices to others – to women, to the poor, to the powerless in society.   It will even reveal the injustices done to the thugs who support the EDF and how they have been told to blame anyone but their masters.

BLM is about freedom for all of us – free from fear, free from injustice, free from poverty – free to love, free to be who you are, free to build a better world

* * * * * * * * * * *

Appendix 1

People of colour are less seen after the roman period, so they become objects of mystery and curiosity when they do appear, but they are not considered as less worthy.  Then comes the Islamic Christian conflict in the Levant and  Spain  but it is the “moor”’s religion and  not colour that is the  challenge and even then there can be respect and trust between people of different colour and religion,  even as late as Shakespeare we can see a “moor” as a great lord undone by the petty minded scheming of a jealous  servant in Othello. 

As the Europeans expanded out of the continent in search of wealth, we begin to see the “just reason” rather than riches appear – we are civilising these foreign lands ,  bringing them to Christ.  This idea hardens over time. For instance, in India where East India company was trading many of their agents and bosses adopted Indian culture and respected the customs of the people.  Over time these nabobs were looked down on by the company bosses and  slowly the companies agents and residents were chosen because they were resistant to or even dismissive of the Indian culture. 

The real change starts when the process of making wealth is not just taking the resources from the land but also making wealth by the labour of these people.

Slavery was a common institution in saxon times in this country and Europe, it was common in the Islamic world too so there already was a trade in slaves about in the world  and  the British soon realised there was a good market for the labour of slaves  in the Americas and the Caribbean.  

So began the infamous triangular trade, where on the middle passage thousands of Africans were transported from their homelands to work as slave on the sugar, cotton and tobacco plantations.   Cargo losses on this middle passage were significant, rarely less than 10%  ( ie 10% of the humans enslaved died and were thrown overboard without ceremony into the cold Atlantic  - sometimes many more).     The enslavement was not just of men but women and children too and the women were often raped.    This became easier to do and justify when you started to explain that these people weren’t really human like you - they were just objects. 

Then when  you realised that you and the staff may well be outnumbered  4,5,10,20  to one by the slaves  on a plantation you could get afraid  and violence  to “contain” the  threat became normal.   This was especially true in the American colonies.  The attitude began to spread  until it became endemic.   

What killed slavery in that form was the rejection of this dehumanising attitude,  the famous  Wedgewood medal that was made depicting a black slave with the words “Am I not a man and a brother?” had its effect .  Whilst the British slave trade ended in 1807 and slavery abolished in the 1830s,  t continued in the US  till the civil war and for couple years later  I think 1847  on June 19^th (Juneteenth)  was when the last slaves were freed.

Then came the period of colonisation, the times of Rhodes and Raffles making immense wealth out of exploiting the resources of other people’s land and this was explained as civilising Africa  or Singapore or  wherever  - stealing the very excuse  that the king of Spain used in his conquest of the Americas back in the 1500s.    It was not just the British but most of Europe squabbling over the wealth of Africa, the Chinese  are still doing it ( more subtly but doing it they are).   

The quaint Belgians turned out to be perhaps the worst of bad bunch of colonial powers in the Congo,  we like to think we were the best.  As we invented  Concentration camps during the Boer war  and used them in Kenya  in 1948 and beyond,   it was a very bad bunch indeed.

One fruit of that colonial experience was apartheid South Africa - legislated Racism!   Odd how we didn’t want to stop the sports tours  from there – we weren’t racist but happy to prop up  the most clearly codified racist state in the world?    

Where were the churches  in this? Sadly, they are found culpable with a few exceptions.   The mealy-mouthed acceptance even embracing of  slavery by the clergy is awful.  When Granvile Sharp died after a life of care and compassion for his fellow humans - his support of Christian outreach the vicar of his parish refused a funeral sermon because Sharp had supported a non-conformist British and Foreign Bible society.  
BUT there were people like Sharp, like Wilberforce , like John Newton  (an ex slaver turned Christian minister and abolitionist and writer of amazing grace).  

It was said that the the leaders of the RAJ in India wanted the Magnificat dropped or altered in evening prayer  - they didn’t like the line  “He hath put down the mighty from their seat: and hath exalted the humble and meek” far too Radical!