On the 12th of June, the Black Lives Matter movement unveiled a memorial in Westminster in the form of a billboard, containing the names of over 3,000 Black victims of police brutality and other racist violence and inequality. Their names are arranged to read "I can't breathe", the phrase which has become one of the movement's rallying cries after it was uttered by George Floyd whilst a white police officer knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes.
The billboard serves as an important wake-up call to all those who are not aware of the racial injustice and inequality which surrounds them every day - here, in the UK, not in the US. It is all too easy for white people like myself to minimise the extent of racism in this country, especially when it is seldom reported on by the media and is certainly not regularly in the public consciousness. Most non-racist white people, as studies have found, believe racism to be perpetuated only by a tiny majority of extreme individuals, like the EDL or Katie Hopkins. Black people and other people of colour, however, see it as a systemic issue.
In 1993, a 40-year-old Jamaican woman named Joy Gardner was living in London while studying for a degree in Media. Her name is among those on the billboard in Westminster. She was murdered by immigration police in her home, after being restrained with handcuffs and leather straps, and being gagged with 13 feet of adhesive tape, which was wrapped around her head so tightly that she was unable to breathe. She died of a heart attack in hospital three days later, having suffered asphyxiation and brain damage. Three of the police officers who murdered her were put on trial in 1995 for manslaughter. They were all acquitted. In the 27 years since her death, no public inquiry has been held into why police used lethal force to detain Joy Gardner.
There have been many Government reviews on racial inequality and injustice in the UK, but in many areas sufficient action has not been taken. The Lammy Review in 2017, for example, which looked into the treatment of BAME individuals in the criminal justice system, made 35 recommendations to the Government. So far, only six have been fully implemented, despite Prime Minister Boris Johnson claiming that 16 had been met.
Or take the McGregor-Smith Review in the same year, which made 26 recommendations on how the Government could improve racial equality in workplaces after finding that BAME people were under-employed and under-promoted. The Government agreed with the recommendations, but claims that "reasonable employers in the UK will rise to the challenges" and that a "non-legislative solution is the right approach". Striving for racial equality in it's workplaces, however, is not in the corporate handbook. Leaving racial inequalities to be dealt with by the private sector has never, and will never, result in an fair system.
These kinds of systemic issues, and the reluctance on the Government's part to legislate against racial inequalities in the UK, are the cause of so-called "isolated incidents" of racial violence and police brutality like the murder of Joy Gardner. They are the symptoms of a system which continues to facilitate and enable discrimination against people of colour, particularly Black people, through inaction and unwillingness to make meaningful change. It remains unclear as to whether this is due to ignorance in Government or outright racism. I fear it may be both.
A Met police officer was suspended this week for kneeling on a black man's neck - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CREL4yx5Kf4