BLACK I’ve been sickened to my stomach
BY PAISLEY AND RENFREWSHIRE SOUTH MP MHAIRI BLACK
George Floyd, a black American, was killed by police in Minneapolis recently.
This has sparked huge protests that resonated around the world.
There is video of this killing, and I’m sure almost everyone reading this has seen at least part of it by now.
It sickened me to my stomach, so I can’t imagine how any person of colour felt as they watched it.
It is not, of course, the first time that something like this has happened, nor is it the first time it has been filmed and shared for the world to see.
But, in a world in economic decline, with huge numbers of people newly out of work, facing the existential threat of a virus we cannot currently cure, it seems that some of the factors that normally lead to people being unable to continue the fight after a short burst of intense protest have crumbled.
Protests continue daily in America, despite threats from Donald Trump to use the American military against American citizens on American soil.
Protests have also continued in the UK, including citizens pulling down a statue in Bristol of slave trader Edward Colston, before pushing it down to the harbour and dumping it in.
For what it’s worth, the statue has now been removed from the harbour and will be placed in a museum, keeping the messages protestors sprayed on the statue intact.
This statue discourse has led to the most upfront, and long overdue, discussion I’ve witnessed about the UK – and yes, that does include Scotland– and the part we played in the slave trade.
The UK’s ties to the slave trade are far-reaching and all around us.
From the statue of
Edward Colson in Bristol to far closer to home.
I was asked my opinion on Renfrewshire’s part in this by journalists over the last few days, and frankly, it seems to me that now is the perfect time to have a reckoning with our history.
To ensure that we teach it accurately, diversely and whilst attempting not to honour and celebrate those who built their wealth through the kidnap, buying and selling of human beings.
I was asked only today about the recent vandalism of a statue at UWS in Paisley.
I was asked whether it should be removed due to its links with the slave trade.
It is not for me to decide whether statues should be removed or not.
As a white person it is not my place to take charge of this conversation.
Last year, Glasgow City council launched a major academic study into the city’s colonial history and links to transatlantic slavery. Perhaps Renfrewshire Council and UWS could collaborate to see if it would be possible for a similar study to be conducted here in Renfrewshire.
Other voices that have been silenced too long have much more authority on the matter than I ever could.
So, what I will be doing, and what I think all white people should be doing as we move forward, is listening to the voices of people of colour.
Not simply hearing what is being said, but truly listening.
If you are speaking and saying anything other than, ‘Black Lives Matter’ then you aren’t doing it correctly.