Black lives matter in B&NES: A webinar for young people
Recently two of our fantastic young people from Off the Record made an inspiring contribution to the Black Lives Matter In B&NES webinar. Our MYP Indra Black spoke at the event alongside other young people from organisations across B&NES, which was also attended by Councillor Dine Romero and Councillor Kevin Guy, who were keen to listen to young voices. Alongside Indra, Jasmine Hammond gave a powerful insight into the key issues that the Black Lives Matter movement has brought to the forefront of young people’s minds. Indra found this really valuable: “It was incredibly useful and gave me insight into issues people of colour face everyday. Jae gave me a lot of ideas on what we can all do to improve and new ways to engage with black history. Jae’s statement made me realise there are far more actions we can take.”
Below are Jae’s thoughtful reflections on the Black Lives Matter movement and what needs to be changed and improved worldwide and in B&NES to ensure we reach true equality. Young voices need to be heard, and Jae’s voice gives us all food for thought on what we must do to ensure that young people are respected, listened to and acted upon:
Police brutality
(George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, Breonna Taylor+ more)
My peers and I are angry that the people who have the upper ground (police, president, government etc) and ALM supporters because as they blame these events on movements like BLM protests, saying things like ‘if they protested peacefully perhaps something would change’. There doesn’t seem to be a lot being done to the people who are guilty.
•BLM
I fully support the BLM movement and all the protests. However I think some people are tokenising this and making it into an aesthetic (online) and completely missing the point. BLM doesn’t need to be made cute because it’s about serious actual issues, and the people who are already ALM will take BLM even less seriously if people are turning it into an aesthetic.
•Racism in our local area
Personally, as many of my peers can agree, we’ve not experienced much direct racism. Although, a lot of people are ‘uneducated’ of cultures other than their own which can come across as hurtful when they ask certain questions or say certain things that they might not be aware that some things can be hurtful even if that’s not their intent. I think that’s mostly the school's fault for not teaching less talked about cultures.
•Spreading awareness
My peers and I would like to see less posters and more actions. I think that posters aren’t going to do anything but advertise racism, and not tackle and problems. Perhaps, bullying or racism would be less of a thing if schools taught positive things about other cultures rather than the negatives, so we’d be able to break the stereotypes because bullying mostly originates from people being different. For example, at the moment my school leads us to think negative things about cultures. Lots of people believe that Africa is all mud huts and hunting because of what school has taught.
•Opportunities for black history
There are lots of opportunities for black history, but these aren’t being used. In history at school we could easily be taught things other than just the slave trade and maybe even add some of today’s racial issues in too (police brutality). I think the main thing is to just change the curriculum to some positive things about black history or black icons. I cannot recall learning about any black people other than the half-hearted power points the teachers squeeze into their schedules throughout black history month (this year is the first year of doing something for it). The things that schools are doing for Black history month just aren’t enough; a 10-minute power point that you’ve rushed into your busy schedule isn't good enough, why isn’t it your priority to teach us about this?
Watch the Black Lives Matter In B&NES Webinar via the link below: