Tag: Justice

This is who I call for when I call for my mum

When I call for my mum

While George Floyd was being killed, he called for his mum.

I can’t move
Mama
Mama

His mum had passed away two years prior to this moment yet, at the forefront of his memory as he understands he could die, he calls for her. He is not delirious, dumb or silly. He knew what he was doing and why.

In that moment, he simply wanted his mum.

When I call for my mum, I call for the woman who stayed with me for 100 days while I was in an incubator in the early days of my life.

When I call for my mum, I call for the woman who would go to work in the early hours of the morning, come back late, and still want to know what my day was like in school.

When I call for my mum, I call for the woman who wanted the best for her children every day and tried to make sure it happened.

When I call for my mum, I call for the woman who wishes she could take my chronic pain and hold it herself just to make sure that I’m comfortable.

When I call for my mum, I find myself calling for warmth, love, and fantastic jollof rice with plantain (mum, if you’re reading this – please and thank you).

I’m lucky to have wonderful women in my life who are still here to experience its ups and downs with me. For that, I will be thankful.

I am lucky I am able to be thankful because my life wasn’t slowly squeezed out of my body at the hands of someone who was meant to protect me.

In the midst of these protests, this anger, this injustice, let us remember that the community we are fortunate to have, will often carry us through adversity. Sometimes how we approach adversity will change the world. Other times, it’ll change our small knit community. Maybe it’ll even just change one mind.

Often, the smallest changes that are made consistently over time will be the most impactful ones. Attitudes, thoughts and feelings will change. To help the world finally understand what it means for a black life to matter.

Gianna Floyd now says “Daddy changed the world!”

Indeed he has, Gianna. He will continue to do so.

For me, my world has been strongly influenced by my mum, my grandmother and aunts. For my dad, I know his world has been influenced by his mum.

In these times, I think of all of the black men and women who have been unjustly killed as a result of systematic racism. How many of them thought of their mum’s in their last moments?

Perhaps, when the world cries for its mum, it cries for love and warmth too. Or even the anger that only mothers seem to have when their child is hurt.

That is who I call for, when I call for my mum.

I’m 25 – and I’m angry

Every year, around my birthday, I write a post about myself. When I wrote regularly about self-improvement, it would usually be a reflection on how I’m achieving my goals.

Yet, when I reflect on being 25, within the context of our current world, the only emotion that comes to mind is anger.

I am angry. I am hurting.

I am hurting for my brothers and sisters who have to live through racism. I am hurting for those who have lost their lives for demanding a simple thing – respect.

I am angry for my brothers and sisters who have to live through racism. I am angry for those who have lost their lives for demanding a simple thing – equality.

Anger, in these times, is arguably the most appropriate reaction to the death of George Floyd and all our brothers and sisters before him. We cannot always control how that anger is expressed and we certainly cannot tell people to not be angry for that only works to silence their pain.

Demanding “cool pragmatism” simply says “take a number, we’ll get to you” then closing the shop indefinitely.

Must we come to sit at your table for justice? It is not as though we do not have space at ours. Our invitations are simply not accepted or acknowledged.

As I’m writing these words, Kendrick Lamar’s I Hate You has popped up…

Let me start off this letter saying I don’t like you, scared of you but I will fight you

I stare at the ceiling and think about you

Curiosity killing me, thinking of when Ima meet you

You introduced yourself to so many others, mothers, sisters and brothers, children

Kendrick Lamar – I Hate You (Letter to Death)

There are no black people who have not experienced racism, whether it is explicit or implicit or even been harmed by unconscious biases and systems that work to disadvantage them on a daily basis. Whether they are in the UK (as I am) or anywhere else.

I am simply lucky that I haven’t been pinned to the floor with a knee behind my neck.

Even though I’m 25, Tamir Rice will never be 25. Nor will Mike Brown. Nor will Trayvon Martin. Nor will… who is next?

We all have a responsibility to make the world better, to rid it from injustice and to not only look for the helpers – be a helper.

Even if it isn’t our fault. It will forever be our responsibility.

#JusticeForGeorgeFloyd