We Need To Talk About Race

Understanding the Black Experience in White Majority Churches

Ben Lindsay

• Publisher: SPCK Publishing
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780281080175
• eBook ISBN: 9780281080182
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

From the UK Church's complicity in the transatlantic slave trade to the whitewashing of Christianity throughout history, the Church has a lot to answer for when it comes to race relations.

Christianity has been dubbed the white man's religion, yet the Bible speaks of an impartial God and shows us a diverse body of believers.

It's time for the Church to start talking about race.

Ben Lindsay offers eye-opening insights into the black religious experience, challenging the status quo in white majority churches. Filled with examples from real-life stories, including his own, and insightful questions, this book offers a comprehensive analysis of race relations in the Church in the UK and shows us how we can work together to create a truly inclusive church community.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 Is it because I'm black?

2 Family feud

3 Why black man dey suffer

4 You don't see us

Interlude: Don't touch my hair

5 Love like this

6 Kick in the door

Interlude: Black (wo)man in a white world

(Interview with the Revd Dr Kate Coleman)

7 Jesus walks

8 Let's push things forward

Bibliography

Song credits

Notes

At the age of 14, I had a rude awakening to adulthood. It was a cold January Saturday afternoon and I had just finished playing football for my school team. I was running late for my second match of the day for my Boys Brigade team at Woolwich Common, south-east London. My mum suggested that I get a cab. The cab driver was an older white man, maybe in his late fifties. I sat in the passenger seat. We drove to the top of the road and turned right. As we went down the hill, another car was driving towards us. The gap was very tight for the approaching car to get through, so the cab driver paused to allow the car to pass. The oncoming car, at speed, misjudged the space and crashed into the cab. Slightly dazed, I saw two white men in their twenties rushing out of the car with purpose. I thought they were coming to see if we were all right. Instead, one of the men opened the driver’s door and started punching the cabbie, while the other man dragged me out of the passenger side of the car and started hitting me. They kept calling me ‘nigger’ while repeatedly pummelling my head on to the bonnet of the car. Suddenly it was two against one. I remember screaming, ‘it wasn’t me’ and ‘it was an accident’ as the blows continued to shower down on me. Eventually I managed to slip out of my coat, leaving my football kit and belongings in the cab. Powered by fear and adrenalin, I sprinted back to my house. I remember my front door opening to my mum with me in a state of complete hysteria. I had been a victim of a racist attack in south-east London.

Three months later, the black teenager Stephen Lawrence2 was killed in a racist attack a mile away from where the assault on me had taken place. My assault happened on a busy road with lots of people watching. Not one person came to my aid. No one intervened. People were watching a 14-year-old boy being beaten to a pulp. The police never found the attackers. I remember my dad putting up posters asking for information and then the next day seeing them torn up on the pavement. While there was sympathy and letters of concern, support and encouragement from individuals from my local church about the incident, I do not recall the church calling for a prayer or community meeting to address the issue of racism that was having such an impact on black Londoners at that time. I do not remember the pastor of my church publicly denouncing racism from the pulpit. Reflecting back, I’m not sure how equipped my local church was to be a voice for justice and equality for the local community.

The sad truth is, ask any black person, rich or poor, young or old, who was living in south-east London in the early 1990s, and many will have a similar story to share. As black people, our parents teach us that education is the key to a successful life but, as American writer Ta-Nehisi Coates puts it, ‘Some black people will always be twice as good. But they generally find the white predation to be thrice as fast.’3 This was certainly the case for my black friends and me in the 1990s.

Level playing field?

In 2018, the BBC published a report on career progression and culture for its BAME staff. The aim of the report was to identify gaps and best practice. It found that BAME employees were under-represented in senior positions. As a result, the organization committed itself to establishing leadership programmes and pathways for BAME employees and measures to evaluate ethnic minority leadership progress.4 In a blog post written for Premier Christianity responding to the BBC’s diversity measures, Canon J John wrote:

The focus of PC/PD (politically correct/positive discrimination) culture is negative rather than positive. It seems to encourage people to see themselves as victims needing compensation rather than those who should strive against the obstacles to make it to the top. It emphasises what has been done to us, not what we should do for ourselves.5

J John’s call to ‘strive against the obstacles to make it to the top’, while admirable in theory, makes the common mistake of assuming that people from every culture and race start at the same position. It also assumes that when white people flourish, it is on merit alone, without the benefit of mentors, champions, intergenerational wealth and other advantages. Black people in the UK face all kinds of challenges that white people have probably never even thought about. If you are a white person, the black people you know may never have mentioned these matters to you. It’s easy to assume that we all just need to work harder, but what if the UK is not a level playing field for black people? What if it is easier for white people to thrive, right across the class system? Of course, working-class black people share many of the same experiences and challenges as the white working class, but with the add­itional barrier of race discrimination. Race and class are very much interwoven. It is impossible to separate the two in discussions about structural inequalities. In fact, evidence suggests the ‘existing race inequalities are compounded rather than erased by class inequalities’.6 So for the majority of black people in this country who come from working-class backgrounds, there are many challenges to overcome.

The year 2018 was significant for race relations in the UK. In a strange coincidence, the UK marked three milestones, the first being the seventieth anniversary of the arrival of the Empire Windrush at Tilbury Docks, where Caribbean members of the Commonwealth were invited by the UK’s government to help rebuild the country after the Second World War. The second milestone was the fact that it was 50 years since the MP Enoch Powell’s vile ‘river’s of blood’ polit­ical anathema of a hate speech towards black people in the UK. Finally, 2018 marked 25 years since the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence.

Each of these events has in some way contributed to the collect­ive experience of black people living in the UK: the good, the bad and the very ugly of Britain. The hope and optimism black people such as my grandparents felt coming to the UK was met with a barrage of hate from some white people. Whether that came from the ­police, politicians or the average white person on the street, black ­people struggled to be seen as equals. Getting good jobs, renting and buying homes and being treated fairly were all a struggle. Even so, many black families in the UK persevered, worked hard and, in most ­cases, made a better life for their families than they would otherwise have done. I for one will always be indebted to my grandparents for deciding to risk it all and leave Jamaica to start a new life in the UK. While the majority of the members of my family are university educated, have good careers and own their own homes, this is not a given for all black families in the UK.

In August 2017, the UK’s then prime minister, Theresa May, announced the ‘Race disparity audit’, which was launched with a view to publishing data held by the Government to shine a light on how people of different ethnicities are treated across public ­services. What was discovered was bleak but unsurprising news for black ­people in the UK.7 The findings present a clear disparity between white and black people in the UK. In terms of poverty and living standards, the research showed that one in five children in black households were in persistent poverty compared to one in ten white British ­households.8 In fact, in nearly every category, from housing to school exclusion rates, from police ‘stop and search’ tactics to employment, black people, particularly of Caribbean origin, were at the bottom.9 Acknowledging these difficulties and disparities does not mean that I am playing the race card or creating a victim mentality – I’m just presenting the facts.

We can be fooled into thinking of racism as simply superficial and surface-level verbal abuse. The truth is, racism is structural and often unseen, its purpose to consolidate power for the majority culture while blocking ethnic minority cultures from flourishing. There is evidence to suggest that even the most well-educated and ­affluent black people in the UK face race discrimination (I encourage you to read Brit(ish): On race, identity and belonging by Afua Hirsch for more on this). Clearly being middle class does not make you immune. As black academic Kehinde Andrews says, ‘The unfortunate truth is that it is delusional to pretend that racism can be overcome by amassing more qualifications. Much wider shifts in society are necessary to ensure equality for all.’10

In 2009, the University of Bristol published a study looking at the racial bias in teachers’ marking. The ‘Test scores, subjective assessment and stereotyping of ethnic minorities’ study exploited the typical way that teachers marked examination results, known as ‘non-blind’, ‘to compare differences in these assessment methods between white and ethnic minority pupils’.11 Looking at all state school pupils in England, the results were that, on average, black Carib­bean and black African pupils are under-assessed relative to white pupils. In other words, based on the teachers’ ‘local experience of an ethnic group’12 the classic way of marking affected the assessment of black pupils in the education system. Racial bias influences how teachers mark work, so right at the start of black children’s educational journies, they are already facing discrimination.

The portrayal of black people in the media is also detrimental. For example, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) has highlighted the nationalistic, anti-immigrant propaganda by parts of the UK press as ‘contributing to creating an atmosphere of hostility and rejection’.13 UK politicians have been neglectful and ill informed in terms of their opinions of black people. For instance, when talking about the increase in knife crime in the UK, the media and politicians are quick to blame black people. In 2007, the then prime minister Tony Blair, while speaking in Cardiff on knife crime, said, ‘We won’t stop this by pretending it isn’t young black kids doing it.’14 While official UK crime statistics acknowledge that knife crime disproportionately takes the lives of young black people in London and other major cities in the UK, these statistics present a skewed view of the nationwide picture. Journalist Gary Younge has pointed out:

If we are talking about ‘knife crime in Britain’, it cannot be reduced to race and culture in the capital – but very often has been. Half of the children killed by knives in Britain are not in London; of those, only around 15% have been black in the last decade. Indeed, taken as a whole, two-thirds of the young people killed by knives in Britain, including London, are not black.15

It is important for white-led and white majority churches to understand the misperceptions, stereotypes, hidden trauma, hurt, struggles and collective pain that some black people are dealing with. The UK has never been a level playing field for black people and if the UK Church becomes conscious of this fact, then we can begin to contextualize our churches so that they can set about meeting the real needs of our communities.

Secondary trauma

On 14 August 2017, I wrote a response on social media to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States. Organized by the far right, ‘its stated goal was to oppose the removal of a statue of (Confederate soldier) Robert E. Lee from Emancipation Park.’16 During the rally, a man linked to white supremacist groups rammed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing one person and injuring another. President Donald Trump failed to denounce the actions of the far right, saying there was ‘hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides’17 a comment that was widely condemned and ignited more protests and riots in America. One young black man, 20-year-old Dre Harris, was brutally attacked at the rally. I typed the following Facebook post:

Still not seeing enough condemnation and outrage about #Charlottesville. Trust me, if you’re white, your best black friend knows that this could happen in the UK. The black people at your work and places of worship and at your gym know this could happen in the UK. Show him or her you care and engage with what’s going on. Don’t be afraid to talk, ask questions, speak out against racism and show solidarity. #Charlottesville.

The post came out of the continued bombardment of videos and images of black people being killed in the USA. Since 17-year-old, American black teenager Trayvon Marti...

Table of contents

• We Need To Talk about Race
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Is it because I’m black?
• 2 Family feud
• 3 Why black man dey suffer
• 4 You don’t see us
• Interlude: Don’t touch my hair
• 5 Love like this
• 6 Kick in the door
• Interlude: Black (wo)man in a white world
• 7 Jesus walks
• 8 Let’s push things forward
• Bibliography
• Song credits
• Notes