Premier Youthwork Investigates: #blacklivesmatter

What are the questions that come to mind? What are you going to say to parents, relatives and friends as one of the significant adults in this young person’s life? How do you make sense of this? Every 21 hours a black person is killed by law enforcement officers in the USA. That should make us stop and think.

As we come towards the climax of the US presidential elections, after eight years of the first African American President of the United States, we have listened to the pain of many African American families who have died as a result of lethal force by law enforcement officers. A hashtag has defined and developed a movement called Black Lives Matter, which started in 2013. This emerged as a result of the continued death at the hands of law enforcement officers of mainly African American men and women. The movement is an organic protest against structural inequality and has emerged via social media and marches reminiscent of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement in the USA.

I have heard various spins on this come from others (the vast majority of whom are white), especially those who rightly say ‘all lives matter’. Yes, of course they do, but not looking closely at the issues of justice and equality fails to take on board the gravity of the pain and plight of people who have routine indignities, who have their children disproportionately killed and fear for their lives. This is a very real and life-threatening concern. We then have to ask ourselves a critical question: why? It is only then that we can go on a journey and start to investigate and engage issues meaningfully with empathy and compassion. Not only do black lives matter, but black truth matters. This must include stories of the history of slavery, struggle for emancipation, systemic inequities in laws that were primarily created by one ethnic group and privilege and access to the justice system.

The sin of racial discrimination or bias, whether subtle or overt, needs addressing. Can the Church be at the forefront of anti-discriminatory practice, not because it is politically correct but because it is the right thing to do theologically, sociologically and practically? There cannot be opt-outs or our mission is morally questionable at best, oppressive at worst. Can we, through love and justice, as the prophet Amos says (5:23), redress the balance with us as agents of change?

Closer to home, here in the UK, our current Prime Minister recently highlighted the disproportionate effects on black members of our population in relation to the criminal justice system and acute mental health that have long been highlighted for over a generation by African and Caribbean communities. Somehow this had previously fallen on deaf ears in regard to significant remedial action to address this. Deaths in UK police custody (500 British black, Asian and minority ethnic cases since 1990) and the fact that there has not ever been a conviction in any of these cases leaves a huge concern and major trust issue between the police and black communities in the UK. A recent filmed outburst by a police officer on a young black man’s car in North London seemed a disproportionate act of physical force when there are other ways of policing in non-aggressive ways.

Seventeen years ago I wrote an article in Premier Youthwork about Stephen Lawrence, reflecting after his death. Why is the Church not at the forefront of speaking out about these issues? Have our hearts hardened like Pharoah’s? Do we become oppressors by silently condoning what’s happeneing or even feeling somehow these actions are deserved without uncritical thinking? I lament that the Church, in word and deed, in its reflections of service or leadership, seems to have neglected or developed a perception that the black Christian communities do not matter either locally or nationally. I have found this sin of omission in youth work on both sides of the Atlantic.

The words from a recent article from the Huffington Post by Abby Norman shows the journey that we all need to be on: “I need to know what my privilege is costing my classmates. I need to know, mother to mother, that every year her babies grow bigger she cries, like I do, because they are not babies. But she weeps in a way I will never know, because black boys through a white gaze look like black men, and black men, in the eyes of white America, look like danger. I need to know, so that I can adjust my gaze. She is giving me eyes to see.”

God wants all people to be free through Christ and if we are made in the image of God and each life is precious, then we should have no hesitation or discomfort in saying that Black Lives Matter.