Tuesday 9 December 2014

Breathe





I'll make this short. I'm in no place to write about the experiences of peoples of the African Diaspora anywhere in the world. The events in America brought about by police brutality, which many should be reminded are also not uncommon on this side of the Atlantic, and the lack of justice thereafter, has caused several African American athletes to show their support.




As someone who fights for true equality and recognises "white privilege" exists, it would be too easy to hope that more sportsmen and women would take up the cause. The problem is the world's expectation that it should be black athletes who should do the fighting. What those of the African Diaspora should or shouldn't choose to do as individuals, or collectively, I cannot speak for. What I can speak for is my absolute disgust that athletes of my pale complexion do not carry the same fight.

Are white sports men and women really so separated from their team mates, colleagues, and their "black friends" that they can only isolate issues of race as a black struggle. Oppression is not white sufferance, but its instigation is a flaw in white society that should be countered and objected to.


"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." 
Martin Luther King Jr


This same struggle is seen on European football pitches whenever a racist crowd incident occurs... it's  always on the black players to stand up for themselves. When do their white team mates actually make a stand for them? Imagine if a David Beckham actually had some golden balls and said ENOUGH, and led their team off the pitch when one of their team mates has been racially abused.






Racism's hiding place is among the white liberals who claim they don't see colour, but then do nothing to take ownership of fighting evil in their society. And this makes them complicit.


"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. 
He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it." 
Martin Luther King Jr








"Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate" 
2 Corinthians 6:17


No comments:

Post a Comment