#or that woebegotten idea that we 'need to take a joke' etc

[ladymazzy]

One year on: the BLM event that divided a Gloucestershire town

I'm beyond furious and exasperated with the perpetuation of the lie that racism is a thing of the past. This woman is only 25, and her recounting her experiences of going to school as a Black girl in the West Country only around a decade ago speaks volumes

Some highlights from the article. (CW for racism and White Fragility™️):

Growing up, Khady Gueye was one of just a handful of black pupils at her school in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire. By the time she was a teenager, she was desperate to fit in and conform. And so when her nickname became “Nigs” – short for the N-word – Gueye didn’t challenge it.

Here, in the rural west of England, where she had been fed racist stereotypes of black people her whole life, she didn’t want to be labelled “the angry black girl” or the self-pitying minority who “couldn’t take a joke” or what was considered a “bit of light banter”.

And so it was, that on the last day of school where it is tradition for year 11s to scrawl goodbye messages on one another’s school shirts, Gueye took home a shirt covered with the N-word in giant block capital letters across the front. “Gonna Miss You Nigs” was written on the back next to jokes about golliwogs and messages of good luck.

Gueye was supposed to consider it an affectionate send-off; it was written by her own friends. It was 2012, the year Britain proudly celebrated its optimistic and diverse Olympic Games opening ceremony, or as Conservative MP Aidan Burley would call it, “multicultural crap”.

“I became complicit in allowing it to continue, by being ‘Ha ha! Good joke guys,’” says Gueye, flatly. “But when you grow up in an area that is so predominantly white and are already made to feel different, you just do your best to fit in. The ideal is don’t call out racism. Let it slide. You become so accustomed to it, it becomes your norm.”

Now 25 and on the verge of finishing her English degree at Manchester University, Gueye has become a local community organiser and is more visible than ever in the town where she was born and grew up.

“I don’t want my daughter to grow up with the same experience I did,” she says emphatically, over lunch at her local pub. “This is my home and it’s a lovely area to bring up a family in. I want my daughter to have a life where she is celebrated for who she is, not feel attacked or unwelcome because of her skin colour.”

But Gueye’s attempts to hold a small “celebration of BAME (black, Asian and minority ethnic) culture” sparked a furious backlash that, one year on, still reverberates throughout the small Gloucestershire town of Lydney.

...an online petition was set up to stop the event going ahead on the grounds that it was unsafe and high risk in the middle of a pandemic. Organiser Natasha Saunders wrote: “A mass gathering is a slap in the face to people who have been tirelessly shielding themselves, the elderly and loved ones from this virus.”

Anger, tension and outright abuse boiled over online as a counter-petition to support the event was organised. It got twice the number of signatures, leading Saunders to say that hers was more valid by claiming “90% of [signatories] are from Lydney, can you say yours was?” Later, she would make Eldridge-Tull gasp by posting: “He couldn’t breathe, now we can’t speak”, in a reference to Floyd’s murder by a police officer.

“We’re a happy community, we don’t really have an issue with racism,” said one middle-aged man, who didn’t want his name published, as he nursed a pint outside a local pub. “Outsiders bring their problems, but there’s not a lot of them here,” he said, echoing in politer terms a point that was made repeatedly to the Observer last week.

Last year, Gueye and Eldridge-Tull spent hours patiently replying to comments online in an attempt to explain the event and reassure people about it, but still received threats. Hundreds of screenshots of the abuse have been shared with the Observer. A typical missive read: “Fuck off. Not everyone agrees with black lives. I can’t say what I want on here coz I’ll be reported for racism. But I would bring back black slavery.” Gueye was repeatedly told to go back to where she came from if she didn’t like it and that she would be responsible for bringing harm to Lydney residents.

The pair’s standard response to those with genuine concerns about mass gatherings in a health pandemic, during a lockdown, was to keep explaining that social distancing was being strictly adhered to – two-metre grids were hand-chalked by Gueye and Eldridge-Tull on the site – and that PPE was being provided to anyone who didn’t have any.

“I think it speaks volumes that BAME people are still willing to protest for their human rights even though they are disproportionately affected by the pandemic,” wrote Gueye. “Maybe this should highlight the severity of the inequality in our society”.

....

When asked if she [deputy mayor, Tess Tremlett] accepted there were a lot of racist aspects to the abuse the organisers had endured, Tremlett replied: “I think some of the comments coming from supporters of the event were actually racist in themselves. They were called ‘white trash’, they were called Nazis and all sorts.”

But as anti-racist activists have spent the last year explaining, racism isn’t simply prejudice based on how one looks, but a system...[based] around a specific set of ideas – in this case, racist ones.

It is useful to explain why it is possible for white people to experience individual prejudice and unpleasant behaviour simply based on the colour of their skin but why it is inaccurate to call that “racism”. Being white does not mean one is more likely to be criminalised by the police, or that one is more likely to work in lower-paid frontline work or that one is more likely to be exposed to and die of Covid as a result.

In Gloucestershire, for instance, police statistics show that being black means you are nine times more likely to be stopped and searched by the police than you would if you were white.

The numbers are blankly disproportionate; there are just over 5,000 black people resident in the county compared with 570,000 white people. Last year, Gloucestershire council published evidence that jobseekers from minority ethnic groups had to send an average of 60% more applications to receive the same level of interest as white candidates. It’s not a conversation that Lydney, like much of the country, appears to have much interest in yet.

Tremlett, who has two decades of experience working in community engagement, explained that her sole reason for opposing the event was to be lawful. “Racism is the biggest insult anyone can say to me and I was called a racist by Khady’s team, whoever they are.” Was being called a racist worse than the actual racism that Gueye was continually facing in her everyday life? At this, Tremlett began to cry.

”You don’t understand,” she said, explaining that her daughter had been to three Indian weddings, that her builder was black, and that she had run an equalities panel for years as a councillor. Her experience – being called a racist, being abused online – when she felt she was doing the right thing, understandably made her defensive and upset. But it’s a difficult position for Gueye and Eldridge-Tull to deal with. Especially as she described Gueye as “aggressive and confrontational”.

Last year, Tremlett took the matter of the Forest of Dean’s BLM movement to local Conservative MP Mark Harper, who raised the matter in the House of Commons.

On 17 June, Harper, who may be best known as the immigration minister responsible for sending vans encouraging illegal immigrants to “go home” around parts of London, appeared to encourage an online pile-on against Eldridge-Tull, who had a tenth of his 30,000 followers, and demanded she apologise to the local community for tweeting: “The reaction to the BLM protest in Lydney has brought to light so much support, but so much hate. I love where I live, but I’m ashamed of my neighbours, and ashamed to be part of a community that has so widely endorsed and exacerbated racial hatred.”

....

When Gueye posted a picture of her school-leaver’s shirt on Instagram last year, one of her schoolfriends wrote that it was outrageous, and that she was impressed with everything Gueye was doing. “I was really happy she felt that but it was awkward,” says Gueye. “I messaged her back to say that she was one of the people who wrote those messages.” An embarrassed silence followed, but Gueye is hopeful and optimistic. “It’s still a positive sign.”