"The Cart that overturns on the road ahead is a warning to the one behind” said the Buddha in an ancient text. Sometimes we learn from the failures of others and by observing take lessons that could save us pain and anguish in the future.
The outpouring of racial tension in America this summer brought
on in equal parts by Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and the shootings
of young (and older) black men by uniformed white officers, shocked the world.
Here is a country with a black President not just in his first but in his
second term of office - how could things be so bad when the popularly elected
chief executive himself is black? Then there is the apparent willingness to
absolve Trump of wrongdoing in his core support (mostly white, non-college
educated voters) group following his "Pussy Grabbing"
live mike incident, in which he suggests you can do anything to women
so long as you’re a star. Endless radio programmes have wondered how the “Teflon
Don” has not yet had any accusations stick despite the loud calls of his
unfitness for Presidential Office.
As the Trump Clinton campaign has laid open
the fault lines hidden but denied in American society, so we in the UK have
also hidden fault lines in our social fabric. I’m going to lay bare some of
these in my series #BeingBlackInBritain. The challenges I write about all hide
in open sight but are cloaked by a web of public denial, personal censorship
and minimisation.
The truth hides in plain sight
If black folk in Britain act as society expects and say only
what is “welcomed” by society, the faults lay hidden, incubating to burst forth
in unhealthy ways later. Black folk can even act in a criminal way, especially
the younger ones, and be absorbed. They are acting out the stereotype script.
They can fail educationally and be absorbed, again acting right on script.
Above all the most important thing that ensures our societal status quo is for blacks
to be silent - not engage too vociferously with the democratic process or
social relations in terms that white Britons don’t approve of. That would
include talk of issues like white privilege or the unspoken but presumed
greater value of white lives in all ways than black lives. The statistics from
the judicial educational and economic systems don’t lie. All put black Brits far behind other ethnic
groups. So long as this silence is maintained, our social fault lines remain well
hidden in plain sight.
Blacks can’t lead, the stereotype does not exist.
The immediate result of this law of silence, this mafia
style social Omerta
, is to give a false sense of normality, even progress. However, the current
silence hides the fact that a stereotype or role of a black Brit as a
leadership figure does not yet exist in any group activity. In individual
sports and creative endeavours like music you do find exceptions, but wherever
recognition depends on the support or cooperation of others, blacks must play
the invisibility card; they advance best when they are silent or saying ONLY that
which society wants them to say. But of course the most important thing about
being an executive is to be a little more visionary, to go beyond what everyone
else says does or thinks, and so open new vistas and pathways. If the stereotype
of a black person at the helm of affairs, does not exist, even talented black
folk must be limited by the imaginations of their judges and appointers – a
mostly white society. The second big effect of the great silence is that it
stifles creativity. Who even knows what black folk can do if they are disapproved of, for speaking freely.
Society “assumes” what black folk think
Finally, society by so dumbing down thought and expression
in the minority group act on repeated assumptions of what black folk think and
want. My experience shows that the best
advocate for the individual is themselves. We end up with people who have no
idea what black folk actually think and feel speaking on their behalf. Because
of the social pressure to dumb down public expression of their experience, such
expression from blacks when it finally bubbles over is loud, angry, and sometimes destructive. Meanwhile a stitch in time could
have the saved the nine that are required following say radicalisation into a
terrorist cause, crime, a riot or even mental health problems brought on by the
social pressure to be mute. In another post I will explain why Black folk do
not speak up, but even in social relationships, blacks don’t typically talk to
their white friends about how they feel. Such talk leaves people uneasy and is
quickly disabled. So even when white Brits and black Brits are friends, the
former don’t discover what the other knows thinks or feels. They only know what they ALLOW black Brits to
tell them. Conversation is censored to avoid embarrassment on both sides, but
mostly the white side because, being dominant, it sets the agenda for what is
on the menu of "appropriate" talk. All of this is unspoken, unacknowledged and
usually just denied.
So, until black Brits rise beyond being seen and not heard,
we store a world of unease for our society, block social mobility, destroy
creativity and exclude many from the social mainstream, then wring our hands in
wide eyed disbelief that this could be happening. It happens because in this
case society has decided silence is golden.
