This week has been one which I don’t think I’ll ever forget. There are certain times, conversations, moments in life that become markers for us all - whether of joy or sorrow - that cause us to move forward forever changed. Tuesday May 26th, 2020 was one of those days for me. It was 11pm and I was in our kitchen washing up my son’s milk bottles when I heard an eruption from upstairs. Grief and turmoil has a sound that transmits at a frequency different from any other. This was the second time in my life that I had become marked by its utterance and this time its source was my husband. I dropped the bottles into the sink and raced upstairs to find Phillip in our bed, hands over his face, as the sound of pain and rage was released from his lips. On the covers in front of him lay his phone with the video of the inhumane death of George Floyd continuing to play. I climbed up next to him and wrapped my arms around his shaking frame as my own tears fell.
Grief has a name. This week it's George Floyd. Two weeks ago it was Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. Tomorrow the name might be different but the cries are the same.
Last month I wrote a blog about grief in response to the upheaval and loss created by Covid19 and felt by everyone. I spoke about the stages of grief and the ways that it can manifest in each one of us. Little did I know just how much this would intensify as a reality, both in me personally but across this nation, in just a few, short, quarantined weeks.
We didn’t know who George Floyd was a week ago, but it matters how we respond to his name, his life and death, now. I didn’t know him, I don’t know anyone who did, but his passing feels personal.
I first moved to the States as a white, British woman in 2011 to live with my now husband’s brown family. My whole experience of America has been that of an outsider adopted into family by people who look and sound different to me. But what was once a foreign culture has now become a part of my own.
“The spirit and posture of adoption has the power to turn foreigners into family.
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As America has gone from the country where I now live, to the place that I call home, and my family has gone from simply white and English, to mixed and multi-cultural, I have learnt how to embrace my historical identity in order to be cognisant of my present reality. I was born in Bristol, England and raised majoritively in Liverpool - historically two of the biggest slave ports in the United Kingdom. In the 1730’s, Liverpool rose to become Britain’s foremost slaving port. From 1791-1800, British slave traders surpassed all previous records, purchasing or kidnapping no fewer than 400,000 Africans and transporting them to the Americas. 1798 alone saw 150 ships leave the port of Liverpool bound for Africa, the highest number ever recorded. I guess it’s therefore not really a surprise that when William Wilberforce, the great abolitionist, was campaigning for an end to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, the city of Liverpool was one of his biggest opposers.
Why am I giving you a mini history lesson about my hometown? Because where you come from and the hue of your skin matters. Should you be treated differently because of them? No. But if we don’t understand the origins of our physical and historical make up, we will deny ourselves the ability to move into our future with freedom.
I was raised with a deep understanding of both my country’s and city’s history, not to shame me with the past, but to help ensure that it would never be repeated. This developed in me a grid and value for justice and reconciliation, as well as recognition of the part that I can play in the ever-evolving history books of life. If I chose to bury my head in the sand now and ignore the blatant systemic racism that still continues, both in the US as well as the UK, and the plight of people of colour all around me, I would be just as bad as those slave traders back in the 1700’s who vehemently opposed abolition.
“There comes a time when silence is betrayal.”
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr
I refuse to sit on my hands and do nothing when injustice is occurring all around me. I refuse to let history repeat itself by being a white person with privilege who does nothing with her voice. I refuse to be ok with another person of colour being degraded, incarcerated or killed on my watch.
If we allow it, our history, both personal and national, can empower us to see change in our future, but it won’t happen if you plead ignorance or wave these issues away as yesterday’s problem. If you’re white and reading this, I challenge you to own your story as it relates to race. Own where you come from, own your family’s history, own your culture’s perspective and privilege, because it’s only once we own up to these things that we can choose a different way. And if you’re a person of colour reading this, I want to take this moment to personally repent on behalf of my ancestors, my city, my country for how we have not cared for you - my brother and sister - as we should have done. I’m sorry for how we used, abused, and killed you, believing that you were somehow less than us simply because of your shade of skin.
This week has broken my heart in a deeper way than ever before as I have sat with my black and brown community and grieved over the death of George Floyd. May these tears be unto breakthrough. May his cries not fall on deaf ears in the weeks to come. May we choose to turn from our wicked ways, to repent, and allow healing to flow through our lands. May we never forget their names as we move forward forever changed.
