'You just don’t notice good things you were born with.' Photo: by Faith Eselé on Unsplash.
Never in doubt: white people need to make the case that black lives matter says Gillian Metheringham
‘Racism exists, and we all take part just by living in this culture.’
As I was queuing for the supermarket checkout the other day I overheard the cashier and the customer before me in conversation. ‘It’s not black lives matter,’ one of them said firmly, ‘it’s all lives matter.’ The other was in such agreement that she anticipated the final three words and chimed in, producing a sort of chorus. They were still nodding to each other in solidarity as I approached the conveyor belt.
Oh no! I had just been on a five-session course offered by Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW) on the subject of Black Lives Matter, at which it was made clear to us that we must spread the word about what we had learned. I wondered if it was too late to switch to another queue, but my conscience was having none of it. I had to say something!
So after apologising for earwigging, I suggested to the cashier that the slogan ‘black lives matter’ is important because black lives just don’t seem to matter in so many situations. The ensuing conversation went surprisingly well, and she seemed interested in an alternative view.
The sticking point was not whether black lives matter (she was quite happy that they did), but whether racism really exists in the way that people from the global majority say it does. I realised that most people don’t need to be told that equality between the races is a laudable objective, but they do need convincing that equality doesn’t exist already.
Following the QPSW course several of us in Stroud Meeting started a Black Lives Matter group to think about what we, as white people, could do on a practical level to aid the BLM movement. Our membership has now grown to include representatives from other Meetings and we hope to expand within Gloucestershire Area Meeting.
This set me thinking about the factors that make the claims of racism difficult to accept. When my fellow white people take issue with the Black Lives Matter movement, what is it they are usually pushing against? If we can recognise and take hold of the key points of disagreement upon which the argument turns, then perhaps we have a better chance of changing people’s minds.
What follows are my own thoughts on what those factors are. There are three that stand out for me.
The first is that unconscious and structural racism exist and we all take part just by living in this culture. This is very hard for many people to accept. We have become familiar, over decades, with images of racism in the form of slavery and the treatment of black people in the US during the civil rights era, and this has become what racism is for many people. But it feels ‘other’ compared to our current, ordinary lives. Even the reports we get from the US seem to belong to a different world. Surely that sort of thing doesn’t happen here?
We need to get across the message that yes it does, here, all the time, in our shops, on our streets, in our places of work, in our Quaker Meetings. The evidence is clear, from appalling rates of police stop-and-search incidents upon people of colour to studies showing repeatedly how we discriminate against ethnic names when we have a CV in front of us. We think it doesn’t happen because the affronts are not aimed at us and we don’t notice them.
The second is that white people experience the benefits of white privilege all our lives. This isn’t the same thing as saying that we’re all privileged in an overall way. Of course we’re not – many white people live in poverty or face other great hardships. But there is a set of privileges that we will always have just because we’re white and we live in a society comprising a majority of white people. For instance, we don’t have to think about how clearly we stand out in a crowd. We don’t worry that we might be picked up by the security guard on the way out of the shop just because we’re black. We never wonder if we didn’t get the job we just interviewed for because of our skin colour.
The fact of this privilege would not occur to most white people (including me) without explanation and usually persuasion. You just don’t notice good things you were born with.
The third factor is that being given the benefit of the doubt is a valuable thing and is frequently withheld from people of colour. Never underestimate the potency of this gift. If proffered, it means that you have the chance to make mistakes, that you can do something silly or wrong and not be eternally judged for it. If denied, it means you must watch each step because you are expected to fail from the outset. Your first mishap will stick to you like chewing gum regardless of how many things you subsequently do right.
Benefit of the doubt can seem such a small thing that you hardly notice its presence. It floats around like dust in the air, all but invisible, alighting on some people and not on others. But if it misses you out, you must ‘Prove Yourself First’ over and over again. At best, this is wearying. At worst, it means closed doors, injustice, and even death.
Our little group will be considering how to proceed over the coming weeks and months. But, new as I am to some of these thoughts, I am sure of one thing. As white people it is our responsibility to help make all these ideas clear to other white people, and to normalise them so that they become part of what we all know to be obvious.
People from the global majority are sharing their experiences through books, videos, blogs, films, and documentaries – Bonnie Gibberd gave such a list in her article in the Friend (26 June). We should use these resources to educate ourselves and those close to us. We need to become saturated with the truths that are coming out of the work created by people of colour so that we drip with them. When they inform everything we do, we will start to change the large and small things in our lives in ways that we could never have before imagined.
