{"id":49490,"date":"2016-10-17T01:01:00","date_gmt":"2016-10-17T01:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=49490"},"modified":"2016-10-26T22:36:42","modified_gmt":"2016-10-26T22:36:42","slug":"black-lives-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=49490","title":{"rendered":"Black Lives Matter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Black Lives Matter<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Wonderland<\/a>
\n2016-10-11<\/p>\n

As the Black Lives Matter<\/a> conversation continues to unfold the world over (BLM<\/a> crowds stormed London City Airport<\/a> as <\/em>Wonderland went to press), we asked Emma Dabari<\/a>, a teaching fellow at School of African Studies, to organise a debate between a few of London\u2019s most independently-minded young creatives.<\/em><\/p>\n

Emma Dabiri<\/a>, Fellow, SOAS<\/strong>: What are all of your experiences with Black Lives Matter<\/a> and the\u00a0differences between the UK and the US? Capres, you organised the recent London protest\u00a0[which was meant to be for 30 people, and closer to 3,000 turned up].<\/p>\n

Capres Willow<\/a>, protester, Black Lives Matter<\/strong>: The reason I organised the protest was because\u00a0I was online and I came across one of the killings. I was like: \u201cThis isn\u2019t the first one, this\u00a0isn\u2019t the last one. It seems like all people are doing is typing about it online.\u201d Okay, that\u2019s\u00a0great, show your opinion, but we need some real action. So I just organised a protest, not\u00a0expecting much from it and then 3,000 people turned up. After that I thought: \u201cOkay, now\u00a0I\u2019ve got responsibilities.\u201d I\u2019m not an activist and I\u2019ve never been to a protest before, but\u00a0from that I was like: \u201cAlright, what\u2019s next?\u201d Do you go about it in a political way? Do you\u00a0approach the government and say: \u201cThis needs to change\u201d? Then you look at the fact that\u00a0it\u2019s an institutional problem within the police. I\u2019m not saying a policeman is racist, but the\u00a0police as an institution is a racist institution\u2026<\/p>\n

E<\/strong>: Do you think that police brutality is one of the main issues affecting black British people?\u00a0We know it\u2019s not to the same extent that it is in the US…<\/p>\n

Mischa Notcutt<\/a>, a stylist who runs the clubnight PDA<\/strong>: That\u2019s because they have guns! That\u2019s\u00a0the only reason we\u2019re different from America. Brexit proves that we\u2019re not as forward as a\u00a0country as people think…<\/p>\n

…E<\/strong>: I\u2019m not in any way trying to suggest that\u00a0the UK is better than the US, that\u2019s not\u00a0what I think. But what do you think some\u00a0of the differences might be between how\u00a0racism manifests itself here and there? I\u00a0actually think British people are a lot more\u00a0sophisticated in the way racism operates. I\u00a0think there are issues that are specific to the\u00a0UK, that are maybe harder to unpick.<\/p>\n

Ronan McKenzie<\/a>, fashion photographer<\/strong>:\u00a0Exactly, it\u2019s more undercover.<\/p>\n

M<\/strong>: It\u2019s a lot more insidious here. People are\u00a0more scared about being called racist.<\/p>\n

E<\/strong>: Precisely. In Brazil they had a policy called\u00a0\u201cThe Whitening<\/a>\u201d. Unlike in England where\u00a0there was generally a fear of so-called \u201crace\u00a0mixing\u201d, in Brazil they had this huge African\u00a0descent population in the late 1800s\/early\u00a01900s. It was this actual policy where they\u00a0thought if they could just dilute the black\u00a0population enough, through mixing with the\u00a0white, they could eventually rid Brazil of the\u00a0\u201cNegro problem\u201d\u2026 Obviously the whole\u00a0forbidding mixing thing didn\u2019t work here,\u00a0but we\u2019ve said racism is more insidious here.\u00a0Have you read those articles that say that the\u00a0African Caribbean group will be the first\u00a0group to disappear in the UK? It\u2019s regularly\u00a0reported and the articles always finish in,\u00a0I think, a quite gleeful tone. I just feel like:\u00a0\u201cOh, is that what you want to happen?\u201d\u00a0I wonder if the more softly integrative,\u00a0assimilate approach in the UK is maybe a\u00a0low-key whitening thing.<\/p>\n

R<\/strong>: You can see that in fashion, for example,\u00a0where people will be talking about diversity\u00a0but they won\u2019t cast any dark-skinned girls.\u00a0That\u2019s not really diversity, if really you only\u00a0like your black girls light-skinned.<\/p>\n

Mischa<\/strong>: That\u2019s interesting, because when I\u00a0was younger, me and my sister would aways\u00a0be like: \u201cBut we\u2019re the future! Everyone\u2019s\u00a0going to be like us eventually!\u2019 The Jamaican\u00a0side [of my family] always see us as the white\u00a0cousins, and the white side always sees us\u00a0as the black cousins. So we always felt in\u00a0the middle. We always thought: \u201cThe more\u00a0mixed-race people, the better\u201d, because that\u00a0would give us more things to identify with\u00a0being mixed race and dual heritage.<\/p>\n

R<\/strong>: I think it depends on where you are, as\u00a0well. I\u2019m from north east London and if\u00a0you\u2019re mixed race you\u2019re like, the gods.\u00a0Everybody wanted to be mixed race, everybody wanted to have\u00a0lighter skin, curly hair and look mixed race, and all the mixed race\u00a0boys in my area were so sought after.<\/p>\n

Munroe Bergdorf<\/a>, model<\/strong>: It\u2019s almost fetishised.<\/p>\n

R<\/strong>: But it wasn\u2019t a celebratory thing\u2026 It was more like: \u201cI don\u2019t want\u00a0to be dark-skinned. I want to be more beautiful. I want to have lightskinned\u00a0babies, so they look better and be respected more.\u201d It\u2019s not\u00a0because you thought it would be great mixing\u2026 I remember, when\u00a0I was younger \u2014 maybe even up until a few years ago \u2014 when I\u00a0didn\u2019t want to tan, I\u2019d put factor 50 sunscreen on because I didn\u2019t\u00a0want darker skin. I never looked at my dad thinking: \u201cI don\u2019t like his\u00a0colour.\u201d I just didn\u2019t want to be darker skinned myself.<\/p>\n

E<\/strong>: I think that\u2019s a difference I\u2019ve experience between white\u00a0environments and black environments. In addition to the racism\u00a0that often occurs in white environments, there\u2019s the more liberal,\u00a0celebratory, \u201cOh, one day everybody will be brown like you! This\u00a0is the future!\u201d If you put that in black context, and you see the way\u00a0colourism operates, and the way there\u2019s all this pressure, and desire\u00a0to be lighter, and to have more mixed, European features, then that\u00a0kind of celebratory narrative seems quite perverse! In that context, it\u00a0gets really gross\u2026 What do you see as the role of non-black people?…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Black Lives Matter Wonderland 2016-10-11 As the Black Lives Matter conversation continues to unfold the world over (BLM crowds stormed London City Airport as Wonderland went to press), we asked Emma Dabari, a teaching fellow at School of African Studies, to organise a debate between a few of London\u2019s most independently-minded young creatives. Emma Dabiri, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,13743,8,23674,10,20],"tags":[25233,13842,25234,25237,25236,25232,25235],"class_list":["post-49490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-interviews","category-media-archive","category-social-justice","category-uk","category-usa","tag-capres-willow","tag-emma-dabiri","tag-mischa-notcutt","tag-munroe-bergdorf","tag-ronan-mckenzie","tag-wonderland","tag-wonderland-magazine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49490"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49549,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49490\/revisions\/49549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}