White folx, when you talk about intention, you prop up white supremacy in all its incarnations. When activists discuss education and holding space for those who wright damage on our melanated kin, we support those same structures.

We have come to embrace a kindness revolution in response to a violent act.

“So I don’t believe in violence – that’s why I want to stop it.
And you can’t stop it with love.”

Malcolm

Advocates of kindness, and let’s be honest, those who have not read any Martin Luther King, are always quick to condemn ‘divisive’ acts in direct reply.

The hegemony around the word divisive is not just clever but a great example of malicious duplicity. White folx, you are always quick to see and decry the falling of a statue.

“This isn’t the way it should be done”

Plenty of well-meaning white folx

This is perfidy of the highest order. Where was this vim when young black men are killed at the hands of the police? Pupils are colour discriminated against in their schools? And … I could go on.

But. Seriously, what is the point? You don’t see those acts, by the state, I add, as causing divides because our pain doesn’t count…

“If a man speaks the language of brute force, you can’t come to him with peace. Why, good night! He’ll break you in two, as he has been doing all along. If a man speaks French, you can’t speak to him in German. If he speaks Swahili, you can’t communicate with him in Chinese. You have to find out what this man speaks. And once you know his language, learn how to speak his language, and he’ll get the point. There’ll be some dialogue.”

This piece of writing may cause a storm in your mind. Still, I question: Are white people unaware of the white supremacy in our institutions? In this country? And yes, is the UK racist? 100%.

I don’t buy it; if you see the blatant acts, it’s because you are choosing to avert your gaze. I don’t believe that those who benefit from our subjugation are unaware and should be educated. This subjection is a choice to ignore the plight of the colonised through adhering to the covert system of power, or more accurately, falling into line with the habitus of whiteness (Bourdieu, Lentin).

Theorists have long described this epistemic complicit duplicity for decades as epistemologies of ignorance, Studied ignorance and agnotology. (C W Mills 1997, Proctor and Schiebinger 2008, I could go on).

I could cite scholars from over a century ago. It means very little because everyone knows, and if you’re claiming not to, be honest and stop lying to yourself.

Violence in response to violence is not violence; it is an act of survival. The majority of people in the United Kingdom today seek solely to make criminals of those brave souls who openly fight the systems of white supremacy. At the same time, the masses watch in their safe, warm homesteads.

This resistance to activists and their work towards justice is formed because of the fear that white folx will feel and live lives more like we do now to be stayed by the same oppressive hand. Melanated folx (in the main, and this one certainly) seek no retribution for the harm caused. I want to see just respite and then a world where we are treated as human beings of the same calibre as those who have that melanin deficit in their epithelial.

Martyrdom and sacrifice is required to be called an anti-racist and decent human being, or else I don’t care about the books you’ve read, the friends you keep or the bed you share. I don’t care about your families, your livelihood and even your safety in doing so.

Do you think I am being overly harsh?

When did you care about our families, our livelihoods and most of all, our safety? When did you look up and notice? Apart from the 8 minutes when the world watched a man die.

Call yourself what. That’s your choice.

Fairness is not for the soft of heart. I demand white folx be better or recognise that their decency is false.

I leave you with the words of Frederick Douglass:

“This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.“