Why We Are Divided Over Diversity

I re-joined Twitter yesterday at the recommendation of my university’s careers advisor, and I counted about four whole hours before I found myself engrossed in a polarising comment thread about Black Lives Matter, holding myself back from joining the mush of noise. No, instead I thought I would talk about exactly what is causing so much uproar among British families all over the UK. Is it the revenge of Brexit? Is it the health secretary telling young people off for socialising using the government’s own guidelines? No. It is something far, far worse.

Diversity are a street dance group who rose to fame through the widely loved(?) reality TV show ‘Britain’s Got Talent’, winning the 2009 series and going on to tour and take part in films. As a majority black group, their success was another great step forward for black artists in mainstream media and culture, especially so for BGT; a show generally watched by families of young children, parents and their grandparents. So, after Diversity performed a routine drawing attention to the recent outcry about police brutality, both in the US and the UK, I was not entirely surprised to stumble across a Sky News story that reported on the ‘hundreds of complaints’ that the episode received from viewers.

I was interested to find out what could possibly offend a bunch of white, mostly middle class families so much that they had to take to the internet, and reading through made my eyes roll so far back into my head that you’d have thought I was a frog swallowing its latest meal (they do that).

Firstly, I have to ask, since when did racism and police brutality become a political issue rather than a systematic one? A lot of commenters seem to be confused about exactly what racism is and who has the power to combat it. The word ‘political’ is thrown around far more often than it perhaps should, having been re-issued to describe any issue that is deemed ‘controversial’. They might add pressure to the problem, but the politics of our country do not determine how race is dealt with or viewed by the general population. Racial minorities in the UK are not hindered by law and legislation, but by what are called ‘systematic’ issues; the preconceptions and held beliefs of the general public.

While many would slate our leadership and government for their methods of dealing with this oppression, and their public opinions as individuals, it is not their say as to whether black people are treated with distaste by Greg, 44, bricklayer from Slough, whose only experience with racial minorities are what his parents told him about the Windrush, and what their parents told them. Our government can support minorities in a variety of ways, but the issue is rooted far deeper than holding ingenuine press conferences for the cameras and tweeting about how the whole conservative government so loved Black Panther.

Another misconception that’s floating around like a half-dead fruit fly is the belief that the BLM movement in the UK is irrelevant due to the issues being ‘4000 miles’ away in America. How people can jump on a thread like this and complain about representation on our TV while simultaneously claiming that racism doesn’t exist in the UK blows. My. Mind. Racism exists. Look at what you are saying!

The fact that there are privileged white people getting riled up about what is being ‘forced down [their] throats’ on an entertainment channel tells us exactly what the issue is. The fact that these people can complain is privilege in itself. This is your biggest worry on a day-to-day basis, while there are people being arrested and killed because of the pigment of their skin. It will never cease to amaze me that there are people in our society who believe they are entitled to comment on and dismiss the almost-industrialised pain and suffering that black people are faced with on a regular basis.

Ironically, the bulk of this essay is centred around my belief that we need to stop complaining about the small amounts of freedom and liberty that is being handed to black institutions. And I don’t even want to get started talking about the people who believe BLM is a ‘racist’ organisation against white people. Yes, those people exist.

Someone please explain to me how they've turned 'peaceful protestors' into 'domestic terrorists' without using the word 'triggered'...

I attended the first Manchester Black Lives Matter protest of 2020 back in June because I believed in the issue, but also because I had seen the stories of the violence and damage that had been caused elsewhere in the world by rioting and wanted to find out first-hand what a BLM protest was. Unlike the videos seen across the US and in London, Manchester was completely different. There were no break-ins. No fights. No violence or talk of such. In fact, it was so peaceful that the media couldn’t even make it look as though it wasn’t, because they had nothing to blow out of proportion and lie about. This made me question the legitimacy of the videos we had seen previously.

Another big thing to note about this particular protest, and others around the country that were entirely peaceful, was the lack of a police presence. The vast majority of violence that is seen in the videos taken at the protests in the US features horrific scenes of police officers battering and nearly killing members of the public who are doing nothing to provoke them. When I attended, this was nowhere to be seen. While black people of all ages, class and backgrounds are being unfairly apprehended and even killed by white police officers, there are some online who are calling the ones protesting the violence ‘terrorists’. If this doesn’t make you angry, you need to read the news more often.

Luckily for you, you can afford to call it 'nonsense'

There is a serious issue with knowing what to believe. With so much media and information available to us it is difficult to sift through the automatically targeted advertising to find what is actually true and just. Greg from Slough is not an idiot. He is a very talented bricklayer, but until he pulls his head out of the concrete and realises that there are far more sides to every story told by The Sun or The Daily Mirror, I will continue to call him an idiot.

I think this guy needs to look up Ariana Grande...

Ignorance is not always chosen but, accepting that you are wrong is the first step to escaping it. Ignorance is a trap that the news and media giants would have us kept in so they can pit us head-first against each other, when in reality we are all suffering from debt, inflation and are being lied to. Surely these issues are far more important to your immediate life than what you see on reality TV. You might not want to see Diversity, and George Floyd, and news of young people ‘destroying’ your country and ideals, but until something changes, this is how it will stay. Your discomfort for their survival is hardly a fair trade.