Month: July 2020

Our five week sessions, run by Turning The Tide  on “Whiteness and Racial Justice Learning For Quakers” is drawing to a close.  However, the work does not close.    I have seen these learning sessions as a journey through a dense forest with a winding path leading to who knows where.  The five sessions and the resources offered each week are a compass to keep me going in the right direction and on the right path.  O.K., that’s the end of that metaphor!

I am asking myself three questions. 

“What have I learnt?”  “How have I learnt?”  “Where do I go from here?”

I have learnt that my whiteness is an unearned privilege which has influenced every part of my life, past and present.    I also now know that this privilege has come at a cost for people of colour.  I have learnt that although I celebrate the US civil rights movement and its remarkable leaders, I need to look closer to home for stories of racial injustice in Britain and the corrupt colonial history behind it.  While not ignoring the American experience and the work done there by a variety of thinkers, I need to learn from the stories of people of colour in my own society and the writers and commentators of colour who will guide my learning.

I have also learnt that this work of interrupting racism is a lifelong work, now that I know I’m complicit.   It is work I need to do on a personal level and with others.

It seems to me that racism is like an addiction; it can only be cured if it is acknowledged and accepted as something which needs to be changed.  A thought I have had recently is that the 12 Steps could be a useful framework for looking at racism but this thought needs a lot of time and space to germinate. 

“ How have I learnt?”  To answer this I go back to ministry I heard on Facebook from a pastor at New Garden Friends’ Meeting in Greensboro, North Carolina.  She made some really practical suggestions as to what we as white people can do at this moment in time to interrupt racism.  One thing she suggested was to research, read, watch and listen in order to learn about the roots of racism and white supremacy.   I looked up books I could read and bought three or four as ebooks and audiobooks.  At the same time I signed up for the Quaker sessions we are just completing. 

While doing the learning tasks set by the Turning The Tide tutor, Lyndsay Burtonshaw , I carried on with my own reading of the books I had bought.  I believe I was led to read the books in the following order:

Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race – Reni Eddo- Lodge

Natives-Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire – Akala

White Fragility – Robin DiAngelo 

Black and British: A Forgotten History – David Olusoga

I have also used YouTube and BBC IPlayer extensively to watch presentations and interviews by these writers.  I’m not going to put any links here, mainly because I do not yet know how and because I think it is more fun to seek out for ousels what we need to know.

I find as I read I am led to other writers and themes and so I have discovered Bayard Rustin, Andre Lorde and Zetta Elliot.

I have just started to listen to a series of Audible podcasts called “We Need to Talk About the British Empire”. 

I learn by stories and storytellers and these podcasts look to be full of stories and personal experiences as well as historical analysis.  The most valuable resources in our five week sessions have been those telling stories, especially stories of people of colour in Britain.

Where will this learning lead me?  This is perhaps the most important question.

In my life I have lived in community with people from different countries, mainly people seeking asylum.  In Bradford I am still connected to women and men seeking asylum through my volunteer work as a Mckenzie Friend.  I resolve to redouble my efforts in this work and also to support organisations working on asylum and refugee issues, by donation and by writing letters and signing petitions.

I can keep alert so that if any opportunity arises where I can interrupt racism I’ll take it.  

Lockdown makes contact difficult at the moment but I can keep vigilant about my own beloved city and the issues affecting my sisters and brothers of colour.  I can work with friends on this and ask for help in finding out what I can do. 

With other Quakers in my local area I can work on these issues and on the thorny issue of why British Quakers are facing the challenge of being more inclusive.

This, that is everything I have written in this piece, is a work in progress… 

My home town, Bradford

I felt inspired this week to make a list of all the advantages I have enjoyed because of my unearned white privilege.  This list is not exhaustive and I need to be open to adding things to it.

Here it is so far.

I have never been afraid of being attacked, physically or verbally, for being white.

I was never bullied as a child for being white.

I have never had to think twice before going to certain areas of a city because of the colour of my skin.

Because I am part of the dominant culture in Britain I can always get the food I like and I can always be understood when speaking English.

Because I am British and white I’ve had a passsport since 1971 with no problems of renewal.

Because I am British and white I’ve never been refused a visa and have travelled to Cameroon, Madagascar, Afghanistan, the USA and Russia with no problem.

I’ve been given preferential treatment in all the countries I have visited because of my white skinI’ve never felt fear of attack when in an all black area, for example in Washington DC and LA, because of the colour of my skin.

I never questioned the whiteness of my culture, e.g. in  literature, music, art.  God forgive me but I still have to make myself leave my European centric cultural taste and branch out.I have never been afraid of the police and always felt safe around them because I am white.Even when arrested I have never feared harm at the hands of the police because I am white.

In prison I was treated with care by the other prisoners because i am white – and old and disabled too, possibly.

 In Cameroon, Madagascar and Afghanistan, because I was white  I was protected by physical boundaries, the walls of the compounds, secure doors and windows and by local people who  watched over us and guarded us through the night.

In Afghanistan the Afghan Peace Volunteers were in heightened danger because of our presence, because we wee white.

Even though I was born and brought up in what has been a city on the decline for most of my life, I still enjoy more privilege than many of my fellow citizens whose origins are in the former empire.

We have been given an extensive and varied task list for our second session on “Whiteness and Racial Justice Learning For Quakers”

As usual – it is a Quaker course after all – there is a lot of reading of text. Sometimes, when I have gone to the trouble of reformatting texts so that I can read them, I don’t always find them helpful.  I am not interested in theory but in stories and practicalities.

However, for this piece I’m going to focus on three videos and the three Required Reflective  Tasks we were offered.

The short videos included a song, a story and solidarity.  The song, from Facebook, is from the Douglas family and I think it is called “Stand Up”.  Shots of brutality against black people illustrate the song and it is a good opening to the two videos which follow.

The first news story videos tells the story of a young black boy, Gerard, caught up in racial violence and cruelly attacked by right wing extremists on his first BLM protest in London.  He found little help from the police at first and one overwhelming feeling which comes from his story is his total isolation in this frightening incident.  He is still physically and mentally scarred by the experience and his mother spoke from her heart when she said, “George Floyd is right here in Britain.”  She also wondered if Gerard would have got the help he needed had he been white.

The other news story video was about a BLM protest in Yeovil.  It was a short film but powerful as it focused on two girls from mixed race families who spoke in public about their lives.  One girl said; “Be mindful, be kind; you do not know the history which lies behind the eyes of my black dad.”

Our required reflection tasks demanded time and commitment.  Fortunately I have lots of time at the moment so I used it well.

First, we were asked to research the life of Bayard Rustin.  I watched a Youtube clip but what really helped was a 45 minute talk which i bought from Audible called “We Are One”.  Through this I got a vivid picture of Rustin’s life, work and dynamic character, as well as the homophobia which attempted to marginalise him.  This is a work in progress for me as I have a couple of other books about and by Bayard Rustin

Secondly, we were asked to research Grenfell Tower.  I found two documentaries on Youtube, one Sky news and the other BBC Newsnight.  Both films had a lot of personal stories of survivors and relatives of victims and a great deal about the scandal of the dangerously inadequate construction of the building.  Not only that, the films stressed that the residents had persistently complained about the inadequate fire prevention provision, among other concerns, and had been persistently ignored by the local authority.

What also stuck me was that the Tower was a real community where people were genuine neighbours.  Many residents were poor and black but there was a real international feel to the community as well.

Our final but for me the most moving task was called “Say Their Names”.  We were given fourteen names of people who had died as a result of structural racism.  We were asked to learn their stories and in a worshipful way call them to mind and hold them in the Light.

I created a document on my iPad with names and places and dates of death.  I use this for prayer, a bit like an icon.

Sadly, after the session yesterday, I have added three more names of women whose deaths were shrouded in structural racism; Shukri Abdi, Nicola Smallman and Bibae Henry.  

So far, nothing changes but…!