Lives Matter
A letter from Revd Nick Bird
Friends,
In the past weeks we have seen demonstrations take place across the world in reaction to the death of George Floyd. There have been protests in New Zealand, Canada, Germany and here in the UK, as well as the huge gatherings in the USA. George, as is well known, was killed by police whilst handcuffed and laid face down on the ground. For nearly nine minutes an officer knelt on his neck, even whilst he protested that he couldn't breathe, and he continued to do so even after his colleague informed him that Mr Floyd no longer had a pulse. Maybe this is just another black death in police custody, soon to be forgotten. Perhaps this tragic iniquity will cause a sea change after it was caught on film, exposing a clear and malicious injustice.
The Black Lives Matter movement has gained a pace more recently, and has received much media coverage, and also a fair amount of criticism. Emotions within the black community have been running high, in this country and in America, but this has not arisen out of nowhere. I recently read a first person account of a young black barrister in London who has repeatedly been subject to 'stop and search' by the police, and on one occasion arrested, all without good reason. Is this the common experience of his white peers? Again, a recent the story of a black American father who says that he now only feels safe to walk out in his neighbourhood in the company of his young daughter. He says that being young, black and athletic, he is at risk from the police – the very people sworn to serve and protect. With a systemic injustice and a structural prejudice that corrals people in poverty and discriminates against the colour of skin, this is a tinderbox waiting to be struck.
The push back against the Black Lives Matter has sometimes been with the response, 'but all lives matter – white lives matter too'. But that, I believe, is the very point that we can become blind to. It is because 'all lives matter' that the Black Lives Matter movement is of such significance. Injustice against one ethnic group is injustice against all, in the same way that a wound to an arm or a leg is a wound to the whole body.
Religion has been used to institutionalized racism over the millennia, and we Brits are clearly not guiltless, but is also something we have shared with other faiths. Whilst in India I was at first shocked to be told by a Hindu friend, “We are the most racist country in the world”, and here he was referring to the historic caste system, a system of institutionalized discrimination.
I believe that all lives matter. The New Testament describes a man who waded through the prejudice present within his own society – against women, foreigners, military occupiers, persons of negotiable virtue, people of other faiths, and even children – because, clearly for him, all lives mattered. Life has value, sanctity and singularity of created purpose wherever it is found. Life matters because it signifies the presence of the divine, against whom we do violence if we think it of less import than our own.
Black lives matter because all life matters, and so why are we not all joining the protest against the harm injustice does to everyone.
Nick Bird
your Rector