A voice: Black Lives Matter

Hey,

If you feel like talking about this topic is going to make you uncomfortable or it does not concern you; you’re in need of a self-reflection or possibly realised that the privileges that you have are in fact real.

Disclaimer: I will not be using the term People of Colour because it never sits well with me. I find that the term is just awkward. Point blank. If we are going to talk about it, then I may as refer to myself what I am. A black individual. I’m not ashamed of being black nor am I going to have someone refer me as something else. I guess it has something to do with resounding closeness to the old term, ‘coloured’.

At the start, I was quite hesitant on whether this post was appropriate to write about and how people would misinterpret my words whilst they read the post. However, my blog has always been a space where I dig deep on raw topics without any limits. Why? I can’t breathe Because I want to use my voice and my passion to educate, inform, as well as be transparent about life as a black person. It is not a new thing on this blog, and I feel like I need to speak louder for those at the back that are too comfortable in their own privileges.

For many years, black bodies have been segregated

Scrutinized

Colonised

Killed

By no means is it a new issue of conflict that has come about in 2020. The only difference between then and now is that we have had enough. Black people are tired of being tired. We are tired of being treated less of a human. We are tired of having to justify ourselves to people when the indifference is clear as daylight. I can’t breathe We are tired of people that are not black telling us how we should feel and act (this one here is what irks me the most). You cannot tell someone how to feel when you have not had to go through the experiences that they have. Your privileges allow you live a life of freedom. A life where you do not have to worry about doing the most basic daily task and fear that you might not make it back home.

Are we not all equal?

At the end of the day, we are all human, but we are far from equal. Others have something that we can never obtain or understand to ever have. White privilege. What I mean here is that your skin tone is something that does not make your life hard, the second you step out of your door. I can’t breathe You can have hardships in life, but your skin tone is one that you can always rely on to get your up the ladder. Perhaps it has been the most enduring aspect which has ran throughout history. For example, white privilege demonstrates that you can benefit from the oppression and mistreatment of black people. For a moment, imagine this. You and a colleague have been asked to work together on a task. The black person works twice as much just to make sure that the work is flawless and cannot be faulted by the boss. However, the other colleague does the work at a bare minimum since it is a paired task and only one person really must put in the effort right. The boss checks over everything and is satisfied with the results, but the white colleague gets all the credit and praise. I can’t breathe When is the credit given to the black person? Now, this is just a form of white privilege within a work practice. There are plenty of other forms where this is prominent.

It sounds very similar to a historical event does it not – slavery. Black individuals working to build and serve for the white individuals’ economical rise. Most things that you see around you has been at the benefit of oppressing and colonising black bodies. I can’t breathe  The ‘white gold’ that is called sugar is the reason why sugar slavery was fuelled due to the growing interest over it. Many black bodies were enslaved and sent to work on the New World plantations. Growing sugar was a hard labour to maintain, especially when you consider the way in which the black workers were treated.

But all lives matter, not just black lives, right?

Yes, all lives do matter but this time we’re only focusing on black lives. This is because, for many years, people will shout all lives matter, but they will continue to exclude black lives. If you cannot accept a group of black people does it really reflect all lives? It is all quite basic. The society cannot keep changing their minds on when a person matters and when they do not. I can’t breathe  I am seeing so much energy being given to statues of racist and colonizers, yet the same energy is not given to black individuals that are killed due to stereotypical views or false identification of weapons.

Someone on social media told me that so much of the riot is happening over some person who was killed over in America. Unfortunately, she did not see anything wrong with the way that she articulated her opinion. I for one was speechless. What did we ever do to be dehumanised at such level? What did the black body do that makes these individuals hate us so much? I can’t breathe  It was not ‘some person’, he was a father/husband/son/friend and he has a name, George Floyd. SAY HIS NAME. Like America, Britain is far from innocent when it comes to slavery and oppression over the black body.  You are just not taught about it in school (this is a topic that I will tackle on another post). George Floyd was not the first nor the last person to be killed by a white privileged person. The list is long and each of them matter as much as the next person. There needs to be justice for all of them and not a slap on the wrist.

Also, do not expect black people to educate you about the world around us. You can educate yourself by reading, googling and just staying informed about current events. We are not obliged to do the work for you. I can’t breathe.

Yours Truly,

Melanin Talks

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