Black Lives Matter isn't about statues or TV shows. It's about real lives being ruined
Nosheen Iqbal
In the past six weeks, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been contacted about police brutality in Britain. As a reporter, I’ve been sent photos of a black child picked up and thrown to the ground by an officer on Hampstead Heath. I’ve witnessed a dozen officers chase and aggressively pin an unarmed black 14-yearold boy on to his belly in a Tottenham park. I’ve been emailed a video of black teenagers cuffed, harassed and searched by officers while their white friend can only watch. You simply have to open your eyes and look.
These are desperate and enraging stories. Many are barely investigated and rarely reported. It’s difficult to hold the police to account on every individual case when details are lost – the officer’s badge number, or the phone number of a witness – when the victims are traumatised and worn down. Basically, when they’re real people with real lives that don’t fit the script of what makes a newsworthy victim.
It’s harder still when there is an institutional denial that something is wrong, even when the stats tells us otherwise: in London black men aged 15 to 24 were stopped and searched more than 20,000 times during lockdown, a figure that equates to 30% of young black men in the capital, although some may have been searched more than once. More than 80% of these cases led to no further action.
Every Black Lives Matter event I’ve been to in recent weeks has felt political and urgent. Black, white, brown people and more are marching for equality in jobs, housing and health. Black male graduates, for instance, are paid on average 17% less than their white counterparts; the ethnic pay gap for men and women across industries is wide and it is pronounced. This is the change people are asking for.
They want justice for black police victims, for refugees, for trans people, for Grenfell. They want protection for frontline workers dying at alarming rates from Covid-19 who, because of the way society sifts and sorts itself, disproportionately come from ethnic minorities. They are refusing to shut up and just accept small progressive gains made decade by decade. This should be inspiring for all of us; it shouldn’t be repackaged as a national threat.
If you simply want a better, more equal world, where justice is real and not simply a slogan, it’s worth attending a Black Lives Matter rally. If you can go to a protest, do. Bear witness to what is genuinely being fought for. Black Lives Matter isn’t just a viral brand. It isn’t a political party. It shouldn’t be defined by its quickest and loudest critics. As a movement, it draws in everyone, and everyone should see that they have a stake in it. Ultimately, it’s about changing all our futures for the better.
Avaiable at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/10/black-lives-matter-statues-tv-showspolice-brutality. Retrieved on August 1, 2020. Adapted.
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