Decolonise This X: The WhiteLash Summer of 2024
Diary Entry: 5th September 2024
One of the things I noticed was that a holiday for racialised people(s) is not the same as for those who embed their identity within the privilege of whiteness. When they go away, they can sit on a beach, in a bar or taverna, and rest and relax. They , free of the potential hatred which may appear based upon their racialised otherness.
They can rest, recuperate, and freely recharge.
This is not the same for the racialised other.
For us there is a constant alertness. A fear that where we sit, who we sit amongst, where we eat, who we meet, that these places, these spaces, and these people, may hold a racialised hatred for us based upon characteristics which are seen as threatening. A holiday for us, at its very core were we to really take one, would be a revolutionary act, where the traumatic stress of living within racialised countries dissipated just long enough for tiredness to take over.
How rare it is that this happens.
I took the whole month of August off work because I was burnt out. I was not just tired from work, from writing. I was tired from these last 14 years of living like I was always on edge, always waiting for the next horrific cut against my racial identity. I chose to take a month off not only to retreat, not only to spend time with those close to me, but to also come back to me. To remember that I have a body, that I needed to practice some self-care.
Then the Whitelash happened. This is something Guilaine (2024) speaks to regarding the reactive tide which was always going to come to the surface post the murder of George Floyd and the worldwide protests against racism which followed. In some ways, even before this summer it was there. Within the anti-migrant narratives of the ‘Stop the Boats’ posse, and within the collective (re)forgetting of those corporations who had stood up to be seen post Floyd (a move more commercial than moral), examples of the insidious creep and then the rageful roar of whitelash. The double headed hydra of hate was always there waiting to have its moment, unenabled by and now unhidden by the right-wing politics which dominated these past 14 years. This first test of the latest incarnation of the United Kingdom was probably always coming.
August 2024
The Race Riots of 2024 were scary for so many racialised identities. As Far Right groups manufactured their anger against races of all colours, but not part of the systemic white project, we all watched as they kicked in shopfronts, raided hotels, spat and threw stones at nurses, tore taxi drivers from cabs. But the importance of these riots was not just the reminder of the constant sword of Damocles’ racialised minorities live under. It was the subsequent standing up of so many, of those who woke form the white sleep of supplication and complicity engendered in us by these past 14 years. A fitful sleep. A sleep full of nightmares.
The riots of the summer were that regular reminder of my place here in the United Kingdom. Of my tenuous place within a systemically white world. Even though I had a break in Tunisia in the July, where, as always when I leave parts of Europe, I felt better able to let my shoulders sag, and that constricted gut of internalised caution and suspicion was not then needed. Even though I had a week free from systemic (self) oppression, there was always the hope that it would be a quiet summer. That I could just do my thing and rest.
How naïve I can be.
How silly the beliefs we all have from time to time.
Sometimes, the idea that we are ever safe makes no sense. This life, this world, is not one of comfort. Yet, psychologically, what I am increasingly aware of is that certain socially constructed groups crave the privilege of comfort over the reality of unsafety that the rest of us all live within, irrespective of our intersectional identities. And when their fear that this perceived comfort culd be threatened in some way, in this case by the presence of the racialised other, they go on the kind of crusade we witnessed in August.
Fear really does lead to anger.
Anger really does lead to hate.
Hate really does lead to suffering (for the racialised others on the receiving end).
4th of September 2024:
The Grenfell Inquiry
After an enquiry lasting several years, the British Government finally published their report into the Grenfell disaster (Various, 2024). The report concluded that governmental and private sector failures led to the Grenfell Tower becoming a death trap. The fire, which killed 72 people, was particularly horrific because the cladding being used allowed the fire to spread rapidly trapping many inside.
I remember the Grenfell Tower well. I grew up in West London, and would often go out around the Notting Hill area when I was a child and then later as a teenager, as I had friends who lived there. Seeing the tower during the Notting Hill Carnival often meant myself and my boys could orientate ourselves as to where we were at any point as we marched around the area trying to get to the next Sound System.
To drive past the burnt out remains of the tower so many years later, and after the horror of the disaster, was therefore to see and feel the pain of a people lost forever. I recall during the days after it all took place, just how little Teresa May, the then British Prime Minister, cared for the immigrants, the poor, the non-white persons who lived there. She didn’t visit, she paid the atrocity very little mind, and only after Queen Elizabeth herself visited the scene was there any kind of contrition, any attempt to be seen by those who would have needed her.
I point out the minority status of so many of those who lost their lives as this is important. I point it out as, as per the riots which occurred this summer, the hatred of the racialised other squeaks free from its barely concealed confines during times like these. In ways both subtle and hateful, with the cost cutting of a capitalist housing system, and the political marginalisation of minority servant class, colliding here in the deaths of men, women and children, so many of whom were then doomed to spend years waiting to be rehoused. So many of whom, are still waiting for justice and compensation. So many of whom who are now gone, who initially just wanted a safe space to live within, a place to call home.
Diary Entry: 12th of September 2024
I sigh.
Even though I have had a break, a holiday, I still feel tired.
This has not been a summer solely of beaches and walks in the countryside. It has been a summertime of sadness, depression, anger as I have watched the racist reality of the United Kingdom rise to the surface once again. Should I be surprised? No, of course not. But at times it is easy to be lulled into a sense of racial complacency by the constant systemic denials of racism. Or perhaps, become tired at the constant need to stand up and fight. Yet, this fight, our fight, this is the reality of being racialised in Britain. So, after residing over august, after resting, recuperating and recovering myself, it is time to stand up again.
Even though I am tired.
It is time to go back to work.
References
Kinouani, G. (2024). Whitelash. Race Reflections: At Work The Podcast. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/whitelash/id1551468359?i=1000647871168
Various. (2024). GRENFELL TOWER INQUIRY : PHASE 2 REPORT OVERVIEW REPORT of the PUBLIC INQUIRY (Vol. 1). https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66d817aa701781e1b341dbd3/CCS0923434692-004_GTI_Phase_2_Volume_1_BOOKMARKED.pdf