I have recently started reading Solomon Northup’s 12 Years a Slave and it just happened to coincide with Donald Sterling’s recent comments and, closer to home, the tweet by a UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party) candidate advising Lenny Henry to move to a ‘black country’.
I’ve realised that the older I get, the more contradictory my views on race become. On one hand, I wear my love for rap music on my sleeve – a genre where the word ‘nigga’ and other epithets are key to the culture as any characteristic. Then I read something as harrowing as 12 Years a Slave and it hits home to me the history behind such a word. It reminds you how evil humans are.
I think I don’t truly appreciate that my skin colour is a big deal – the fact that I am black still bothers people today. Like others, I feel like I have gotten caught up in the idea of a post-racial society (or a post-Obama world). I have wanted to forget about racism and discrimination. I have wanted to believe that my little girl, who is mixed race, will live in a world where she won’t even realise she is ‘black’. So when I heard Cliven Bundy say that he thought black people were ‘better off as slaves’ I was just blown away by that statement.
Cliven Bundy is someone that was embraced by the establishment in America, in fact he was championed by many in the media across the pond. It would be a mistake to believe that he is the only high-profile influential figure who has extremely racist views – Donald Sterling proves that fact. So what to do?
I think the NBA Commissioner’s no tolerance approach is the right one and it sends the right message – but fact is many who have the power don’t follow in Adam Silver’s foot-steps. European Football has had a recent history of high-profile racial problems and the responses of the English Football Association and their counterparts in the rest of Europe have been meek and dispiriting.
I think the only answer is education. I don’t know how it is in America but I can rarely remember being taught about the transatlantic slave trade. I think future generations should never forget the evil that has been done to fellow humans in the past.
Just a normal everyday bloke writing about films.