Why I feel blamed by Black Lives Matter

I AM a white, mature British male who has led my life accepting my fellow humans on their personal merits, whether that be in social or employment settings.

How a person conducted themselves and respected others was my primary marker of a good person.

Their ethnicity was of interest as I learned about the different cultures and customs because I was genuinely inquisitive.

Since 1973, I have worked and continue to work for my community as both volunteer and professional, applying my commitment to whoever needed me at the time, regardless of any human trait.

I give this personal character resume because my sympathies toward the Black Lives Matter movement are now turning to anger.

I feel because I am a white British male, all the wrongs, by today’s values, of those men and women who existed centuries ago are being presented to me as the fault of present day white people, ergo me.

As awful as slavery was, and continues to be in some parts of Europe today, it was an accepted practice of its time in the same way the death penalty, workhouses, the presence of slums and transport to another colony for minor crimes was.

Black Lives Matter is a statement of the obvious, but that should not preclude me, or anyone else, reminding each other all lives matter, regardless of their ethnicity, religion or politics.

The Black Lives Matters movement is calling for history to reflect the truth in full. Here is a slice of history rarely spoken of: slavery was and is a vile trade, but let’s not forget it was not just white people who traded in human misery.

It was the the native tribes of Africa who went on to “slave raid” other villages, killing the elderly and children before dragging the young men and women to west coast ports to sell them to the ship owners.

Had those native tribes not been the suppliers of native slaves, the trade in misery may not have been so lucrative.

I have a certificate awarded to me from a national black organisation for my work with them to improve the standing of minorities in British society.

I am now feeling alienated from the Black Lives Matter movement as anger seems to have become revenge against my British culture. My country’s history is being engineered to visually wipe out what cannot be wiped out, that of our country’s well-documented history, warts and all.

In decades to come, this episode of “statue cleansing” will become a shameful period.

The Black Lives Matter movement would garner much more sympathy outside politics and the media if it showed the tolerance and forgiveness most British people have shown over the past several decades. We white British of today are not to blame for human misery of centuries past.

Stephen A Warden, Wigston