Black lives, white privilege and why we all have a duty to make a difference

Covid-19 has dictated our lives for the last three months, dominating our news coverage and impacting even the simplest of decisions.

But there is another global story gaining a lot of momentum.

The killing of African-American man George Perry Floyd Jr by a police officer in Minneapolis on May 25 sparked international outrage. In the weeks since the horrific killing, it has also caused a lot of soul searching, and rightly so. 

The manner of his death was awful - the unjustified force, the callous nature of the man who pressed a knee into his neck for nine minutes, the heart-breaking vulnerability of George Floyd as he called out for his mother. But it is also deeply troubling that the police officer who carried out this act seemingly felt that it was quite alright to do so, showing that this was no isolated or freak occurrence.

George Floyd was born one month before me. But how different our outlooks on life must have been because of one basic difference over which neither of us had any control - the colour of the bodies into which we were born in autumn 1973.

Prejudice is an animal instinct that warned our  cave dwelling ancestors that someone who looked a bit different was not of our tribe and could pose a threat. That does not make it OK in 2020.

We are not animals and we have evolved a long way from being cave dwellers with a narrow view of the world - or have we? Why does a person’s skin colour or sexuality evoke such hatred in some people? 

The death of Geroge Floyd and the subsequent rise to global attention of the Black Lives Matter movement (which has been running since 2013) has shown us that not being racist is not enough. We need to examine white privilege, no matter how uncomfortable that feels. 

I saw one response to the question of white privilege where a man said: ‘But I didn’t choose to be white. George Floyd’s death is not my fault.’ 

White privilege is not about wealth, or attitudes or beliefs, or being a good or bad person, nor is it about whether we are anti-black or not. It is not about the extremes of Ku Klux Klan, or slavery or Jim Crow laws.

Neither George Floyd nor myself - born as I already said, one month apart - chose our skin colour. So why should he be persecuted for his while I get to live my life, while not without challenges and unpleasant encounters, at least without constantly being under threat because of my skin? That is  what is meant by white privilege. 

Racism is plain and simply wrong. The open anti-black sentiment among certain people from the top down in the US is very worrying. I don’t know what I can do to help change it. I don’t know what are the right and wrong things to say or do. But what I do know is that many of the great evils of the world happened because good people did nothing. In other words, doing nothing is contributing to the evil act. 

I have reservations about protests at the moment. There are many ways we can express our unhappiness and solidarity, but only one way we can suppress Covid-19. 

Racism is rife, the anti-black sentiment we are witnessing in the US is appalling. But there are good people in Ireland, in the US, all over the world.

The least we can do is not be silent spectators.