With the current state of protests and anger permeating through the online communities at the moment, I didn’t want to post something as superficial as my original idea for the week. Who needs to know my thoughts on certain lip products when there are much bigger issues at hand? I’ve also struggled with thinking of something that I can post which won’t drown out the voices of the people who have more experience. But I wanted to do something. Anything that would help to keep up this motivation. Then it hit me. I’ve been sharing a multitude of resources on my instagram stories and twitter, but what if I could help people become anti-racist by dumping everything I’ve seen in one post?
It may be a little text and link heavy, so please bare with this. The only way that we can help to resolve the issues being face in the US, and the rest of the world is to look at our own inherent racism. I’ve always thought that not being racist was enough, but it’s not. It’s really, really not. Unless we start to challenge the racism and oppression that we see then we are complicit. It’s not enough to not be a racist, we have to be anti-racist.
How can we start to become anti-racist?
The main way that we can do this is to challenge the comments that we read online, that we hear in our workplaces, and that we hear from our families and friends. It might feel awkward and difficult to do, but if we let the comments slide then we become a part of the problem. If we don’t challenge people’s thoughts and beliefs then what does it matter if we don’t agree with what’s being said?
We need to educate ourselves on the problems that are being faced. Until 3rd June 2020, I didn’t realise that there was Black History Month in the UK. And I learnt that by chance through Twitter! I’d never even heard of Black History Month until the rise of social media and had always thought it was an American thing. I’m actually ashamed that my LEA (school district) didn’t think it was important to celebrate Black History Month because we are in a predominately white area and neighbourhood. I’d say an area like mine would have needed it more to help fight against the ignorant thoughts that can swarm through these type of areas.
If you’re in the UK, and never celebrated Black History Month I urge you to contact your local councils and MPs to get this included in all school curriculum. The chance of having an accepting and equal society can’t be achieved if we refuse to acknowledge important parts of history. This also goes for romanticising Britain’s past. How many people can honestly say they know the impact of Britain’s colonising over the world? We were all told with pride how we “owned” nearly 25% of the landmass of the world, but not how it affected those cultures or the people there.
Someone on Twitter has recently conducted a survey and set up a website for the results of these. You can see all of the information for this here. There are also links to letter templates to try and increase the visibility of slavery and our impact on it in schools.
Important Resources
One of the best ways to become anti-racist is to educate ourselves. This can be through reading, watching TV shows, watching documentaries, or finding the voices of people who should be heard. Ideally, this educating should be something we do ourselves. To that end, I’m going to share some resources to get started on that.
Although I have tweeted a lot of book recommendations, I can’t remember all of them. Luckily for me, I did tweet a link to a google doc with a full list of books to read. The books are hyperlinked, but this is for US stores. I have bought a couple of these already and googled them. The list is available here. If you want an independent, black-owned bookshop in the UK a friend shared New Beacon Books based in London.
From what I’ve seen online, some of these books are more important than others. The ones that have been spoken about most are: How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X Kendi; Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad and Robin Diangelo; Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race by Renni Eddo-Lodge; and White Fragility: Why It’s so Hard for White People to Talk about Racism by Robin Diangelo. To be honest, I am going to be looking at reading all of these books at some point.
Again, I’ve shared a lot of things about what you can watch to help educate but I can’t remember all of the names. So I’m going to link an article that I came across from Digital Spy. Some of these can only be accessed from the UK, unfortunately. But I would recommend starting with 13th if you have a Netflix account. I watched this and couldn’t believe the information that was given in it. How the language was changed so that the US population, and maybe even others, began to associate the word criminal for black.
I think it can be easy to be blind to your own privilege. You can think that it doesn’t exist because you don’t own your own house, or you live in poverty. But I know that I don’t have to worry about calling the police if I need. I don’t have to worry about being turned down for a job because my name doesn’t sound “professional” enough.
This isn’t something that will go away over night. We need to do what we can to be anti-racist and to call out the discrimination and oppression we see. It might be difficult. It might make us question our behaviour. But if we don’t try and make the change, who will?
It doesn’t end here. I will be using the rest of this month to educate myself and fight for the rights of others. Even though I don’t believe it will help much, I will be emailing my local MP to push for changes. We need to be the change that we want to see in the world.
My social media will have links to petitions and resources that may not appear in this list. This could be a lot more documentaries to watch! We need to take on the responsibility of educating ourselves to do better. If you want a list of full petitions that are needing signatures, head to this twitter thread.
Hasta la fuego
