Black is a Burden
I caught the end of View to a Kill on ITV4 the other night. We must have had the tape at home when I was a kid. It's definitely my most watched Bond film and arguably the best theme tune. Possibly the best cast too: A young Christopher Walken accompanied by that most iconic of women Grace Jones. At the time she simultaneously frightened and inspired me. I didn't yet know the words statuesque, obsidian, predatory, vulgar, elegant, amazon. Playing Zula in Conan the Destroyer confirmed those sentiments. Playing Strangé in Boomerang, well that just confused me.
Spoiler alert – in the Bond film Grace Jones enables the villain and then the victor, Bond (naturally). By enables I mean she is the ultimate deciding factor in the success of either's plan. The villain, a caricature of neo-Nazi capitalism looks as Anglo/Aryan as you can imagine. She is his superior in physical strength despite his genetic engineering enhancements, and she ultimately outsmarts him after he betrays her. No happy ending for her but possibly redemption. This is not the review that I wrote as a pre-teen. In fact, I hadn't given it any thought until tonight when I watched half an hour of the film. I realised that I've changed.
Unsurprisingly, you might say, wisdom of age etc. But these themes would not have emerged for me 2 years ago. I would have taken a lot of persuading that these visual themes were in any way significant. So I've learnt more about film and more about image. And race. It didn't start with George Floyd. I have a brother who lives in America and his daily facebook feed (actually nightly given the time difference) was a reminder of how hard it is to be black in america. Every day, some new outrage, a killing; a battering, some new humiliation. Every single day. I watched the Daily Show, I knew the facts and figures. I had heard about the 1618 Project. America was trauma. I was scared for my brother. I still am.
But it was in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by Derek Chauvin and the Minnesota Police Department that a friend sent me a link to a podcast interview of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Nikole Hannah-Jones, discussing how America's ideological wars over it's history had laid the ground for that grotesque event. Dr Hannah Jones is the lead creator of the 1619 project – a long-form journalism endeavor which "aims to reframe the country's history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of the United States' national narrative." I'd describe Ta-Nehisi as an incredible artist, author, philosopher and black man who is one of the heroes of the new enlightenment. Said without irony because these people's work is about blackness, and black lives and black work and black history and bringing all of this to the fore is their mission and great succcess. On both sides of the pond you can see their theories, their faces, their literature. Trevor Noah's stewardship of the Daily Show turned him from a comedian to a pundit to a media custodian as the only black anchor of that class of show. The success is matched by the outrage that makes wokeness the piñata of the right.
The penny didn't drop for me so much as a key was turning and finally clicked. I didn't go on a degree course or a pilgrimage to reach a new level of understanding, it was suddenly easier to think and talk about race than it had been for a long time. I didn't then enjoy everything I learned about race or even accept it. I learned the term Anti-racist. I learned the term ally. I already knew that there was no such thing as 'race'. But then I learned that there was. I know this is probably as confusing as hearing somebody describe their dreams. It is confusing to me too as I have been black all of my life yet not really wrestled with these ideas and ideals. The resultant challenge to my brains elasticity has been severe. Traumatic even. I definitely see things in a different way, interpret signs differently, respond differently.
American history offers plenty of examples of how that nation idealised itself, simultaneously claiming moral superiority while systemically subjecting black people to the brutality of slavery and eliminating the rights of non-white ethnicities to exist as people. Their journey is recorded in history books, memoirs and most crucially, through the interpretation of it's constitution. Many will be familiar with the decision in 1954 Brown v Board of Education that outlawed racial segregation in schools. The US Supreme Court knocked out the doctrine of 'separate but equal' that had prevailed since that courts earlier decision in Plessy v Ferguson. In relation to education at least. A very short summary is that the court recognised that segregation was not ok because the outcome was that black people always lost out. They had poorer schools, educational outcomes, opportunities. A landmark case because it presented legal reason that was fundamental in rationalising the equality stipulations in the US constitution; useful for activists and campaigners for wider desegregation to advance.
Juxtapose that high point with the huge resistance to Brown in the US, particularly in the South. The decision, although unanimous was not popular. Political, judicial and social activism assaulted the decision and its logic for years after. Only a year later the outrage was crystalised with the horrific lynching murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi and the acquittal of some of his murderers. That year MLK helped to organise the Montgomery Bus Boycott so beginning his assault on the institutional segregation of America. For perspective Barack Obama was born in 1961. Also for perspective between 2015 and September 2022 the rate of fatal police shootings of black people in the US stood at 41 per million versus 16 per million for white americans. This says two things. Firstly, some things have been learned in America, although that is not a simple narrrative. And secondly. When Martin Luther King Jnr said 'the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice', he perhaps should have followed that up with: Discuss.
America helpfully advertises its shortcomings in terms of racial injustice. But there is no shortage of outrages in the UK. 23 years after the MacPherson report labelled the Metropolitan Police institutionally racist they have managed to retain the label. The adultification bias applied to black children by authorities is only now being discussed in the mainstream press because of the horrendous humiliating police strip-search of a black teenage girl mid-period. It is not some new police fad - it is a truth as old as the construction of race that accompanied the justification of slavery. Add that to the perception that black people are more dangerous and merit a more severe police response for the same offences. Comparing black and white people, in 2020 black people in England and Wales were five times more likely to have force used upon them; seven times more likely to have a Taser applied; nine times more likely to have it drawn on them. Eight times more likely to be restraint hand-cuffed. Three times more likely to have spit and bite guard applied. And that legendary eight times stop and search figure more than doubles when it comes to section 60 searches – the one where no reasonable grounds are required. Ironically, fewer searches of black people for drugs result in drugs being found. This is not intelligence-led policing. In 2021 serving police officer Benjamin Monk was convicted of manslaughter for killing Dalian Atkinson, a black man experiencing poor mental health, with a vicious kick to the head while he was on the ground having been tasered twice. One of my most haunting memories is hearing Leslie Thomas QC describing the inquest of Christopher Alder who died in custody in Hull in 1999 saying "This was the first case that I had done where upon seeing the CCTV, the jury cried at the inhumanity of man towards man." His family fought for 13 years to get a court-door admission from the state that they had breached his right to life and failed to conduct a proper enquiry into his death. From 2012-2021 eight percent of those who died in custody were black despite being three percent of the population. These figures are all taken from official sources.
There has consistently been no explanation for these disparities on a trend that has existed, and in most cases worsened since records began.
And they exist on every institutional metric. Health, wealth, education all exhibit worse outcomes for black people. Even where black people overachieve in education they are reduced by underemployment. The biases go beyond the personal. Even when Covid levelled the population, it somehow managed to level some more than others. I speak for myself in reporting seeing countless lone black boys being surrounded by several gloved police officers for stop and search in the busiest streets in south east London where I used to live. And where they live; repeatedly humiliated in their communities. Take a moment to imagine your son or daughter standing with their back to a railing while one officer empties their pockets and seven others stand around them in formation. Imagine them coming home that day and you asking them how their school day was. Scratch that. You already know because your neighbour told you. And the lady in the bookstore told you. And they are home at 3pm when they should be at dance class or photography or some other class but they couldn't go because they are still shaking. They just want to be left alone.
But you might not imagine it, along with so many other people who will not relate their circumstances to those of the black people next to them. Sadly, this leaves swathes of our socio-cultural landscape silent; inconceivable in a nation that was so involved in both the Atlantic slave trade and 20th century colonialism. I've heard arguments from 'it's ok now, long as we all muck in and get along' to 'I just can't get my head around it all' to 'what good would it do, it would just be divisive'. It's difficult to argue with people who are looking for reasons to remain inactive. Exhausting.
It is pointless to try to look for the same visually outrageous examples of racial injustice in Scotland as we see in America. The population proportions make it less likely, though unfortunately not impossible. We may not have hundreds of police shooting incidents and insurrectionists at our parliament but deep race-based inequality persists in Scotland. The employment gap with white people sits at over 16 per cent; almost two-thirds of race hate crimes – around 4,000 are reported a year – counted victims from a non-white ethnic group, despite making up only four percent of the population. But far more remarkable is what I call the longitudinal picture.
An unintended positive consequence of Floyd's murder is the massive drive to show consideration of racism, an effect of which is the teaching of the history of Scotland in schools with new materials that describe our involvement in the enslavement of African people and the colonisation and exploitation of their countries, resources and people. Scotland's legendary history has commonly ignored some surprising narratives enfolding its dark past. For instance, the purchase of Benbecula, South Uist and Barra by John Gordon of Cluny using the compensation given to him for the loss of his enslaved 'property'. The impact of slavery on the ownership of Scottish Highlands goes far further; some £100 million of compensation money buying up one third of the West Highlands and Islands. Not to mention the countless kirks, bridges, mansions and halls in the rest of the country derived from the same corrupt enterprise. Edinburgh's new town, GOMA, Pollock House. Slave-made Sugar, tobacco, cotton, traded and shipped by Scots, the profits ploughed into the earth at home. Baked into the length, breadth and depth of this country is the zealous participation of Scottish people in the enslavement of Africans. Disproportionately so, in that Scots managed to claim 15-16% of compensation for the dispossession of slaves despite only accounting for 10% of the UK population. The plaque on Henry Dundas's statue credits him with destroying the lives of a cool half million Africans (a figure that did not need adjusting for inflation). His trade was not a secret when the statue was erected. Dundee University is now publicly reckoning with its own historical links to slavery as Glasgow University has done in recent years, owning up to receiving approximately £200m from donors involved in the slave trade. It is in such pockets as these that institutional consciousness is tilting towards the light. At least some understand that there is no substitute for honest, painful exploration to include the people from various ethnicities, origins, narratives in our nation's history. When looking through this lens, the presence of black people in Scotland is richly evident.
Black History Month has many purposes. One of those is to take stock of what has changed in the past year. A double-edged sword as the result is almost always - depressingly little. Inspiration is where you find it, and I have found it not least amongst my friends and colleagues who have made an effort to enlighten themselves and behave in an inclusive manner. I know it is not easy. There is a lot to bend your mind around, come to terms with and decide on. Choosing a side in an argument is a lot easier when you have a stake in it. I'm glad that so many people have chosen to recognise racial justice as their own responsibility; the responsibility as their own struggle and the struggle as their own lives. I'm well aware that that arc will not bend sufficiently in my lifetime but it would take longer if I sit this one out. The past few years for me, and for many others have been like an ideological birth squeeze; fundamentally and existentially painful. America as a nation went through it in the 60's and is going through it again now. It is happening in pockets all over the globe. Doing so because more people recognised that it was worse to do nothing, especially when they saw a black man having the life publicly squeezed out of him by a police squad for possibly, maybe, potentially, perhaps having used a counterfeit bill. Thank God it is happening, otherwise where would we be now? Imagine if MLK had decided to sit it out, Obama had decided not to run, Mrs. Henry decided not to teach.
Mrs. Henry was a teacher from Boston who got a job at William Franz Elementary School in New Orleans when her husband transferred to a base there. She didn't know when she applied for a job there that she would wind up being a civil rights activist. Because on November 14 1960, six-year-old Ruby Bridges attended that school accompanied by Federal Marshalls as the first black student to integrate the elementary school system in the USA. You may have seen the photo of Ruby, a beacon of innocent courage walking between the Marshalls, immaculately dressed. Bag in hand. But that photo doesn't show every parent of every child in that school going into that school and pulling their children out, never to return. It doesn't show her eating her lunch at her desk alone for fear of being poisoned in the cafeteria. They don't show the protesters marching around the school all day carrying a baby's coffin with a black doll inside. They don't show the white teachers who either left the school or refused to teach her except for Mrs. Henry who taught her alone for a whole year. They don't show the destruction of Ruby's family's lives and livelihoods.
The picture doesn't show the new white parents who chose the school for their children under protest the following day and days; the communities of blacks and whites who supported Ruby's family. This narrative is inspiring. And tragic, and informative. And unnecessary. As is every act of activism for racial justice. As is every anti-racist attitude and choice. The good in these histories is far outweighed by the bad. And you don't have to go as far as New Orleans in 1960. In 2022 Britain got our first black Chancellor of the Exchequer. Barely a fortnight later the Mirror tried to pass off a picture of Mr. Bernard Mensah, President of International for Bank of America as him. There's a whole host of racial injustice that precedes and accompanies state sponsored lynching.
Dr. King was wrong. Not wrong to dream, not wrong to march, not wrong to act. But wrong to believe in the inevitability of justice. Racial harmony is no more inevetable than the artificial genocidal construction of race that was created to support the ambitions of slave traders and colonialists was necessary. The combined evil that asserted itself to ideologically underpin the enslavement of Africans and colonialism withstood Scotland's enlightenment, the French revolution, and plenty of other philosophical renaissances. I am thankful for the work of the scholars and activists I have mentioned and so many others. But it will be for nothing if people refuse to be activated, if they remain inert and maintain 'objectivity'. Accepting our history should not have to be a revolutionary act. Unfortunately, there will have to be more revolutions, more pioneers, more firsts. There shouldn't have to be. At the same time that we applaud Scotland's impressive effort in the abolition of the trade of Africans as slaves we have to reckon with its place in that legacy with courage and humility. To quote Dr. Hannah-Jones "If we are truly a great nation, the truth cannot destroy us".
