Black Girl Magic (For my sisters)

“Black women aren’t bitter. They’re just tired of being expected to settle for less.”

– Issa Rae

Somewhat ironically, today would have been Olive Morris' 68th birthday. If you don't know who Olive Morris is (do your research) I'm not here to preach to you but suffice to say, she is yet another in the endless list of heroic individuals to challenge the brutalities of white supremacy in the UK. In 1969, she was savagely assaulted by 2 police officers - in full view of a large crowd of the good old British public - because she attempted to prevent the officers from continuing to brutalise a Nigerian diplomat whom they had forcibly removed from his car. Of course, his sole crime was to be born with an abundance of melanin in his skin.

Not believing Olive to be a girl, perhaps due to her short Afro, she was taken to the station and further beaten, stripped naked in front of leering male officers and threatened with rape. There were further transgressions but you get the picture. The police saw her as just another - and I quote their words to her - 'black cunt'.

She was 17.

Fast forward to the present day, an age in which we are told by our leaders like #BorisTheLiar that 'we have made great strides' and other bromidic platitudes designed to reassure uninformed white people that everything is fine and that black and brown people are a tad paranoid, what with their concerns about equal opportunities, being disproportionately afflicted by Covid due to their job roles, living conditions and a plethora of other factors - but I digress.

It's 2020. And ostensibly, there is a mass epiphany and realisation that black people's lives actually matter just as much as everyone else's. Well, that is unless you're Priti Patel or any other self-loathing twunt of African or Indian origins not forgetting of course, self-serving politicians of all stripes. 'We've come a long way' is the repeated refrain, as if credit needs to given for recognising that equality is a right. And yet again, black and brown people have to endure and absorb the incipient anger that rises up each time we hear a man - who referred to Africans as 'pickaninnies with watermelon smiles' and believes you can inherit Islam like a genetic code - tell us how things have changed.

No, they haven't.

The news that two police officers have been arrested for essentially desecrating the memory (and allegedly, the crime scene) of 2 murdered black women was a small relief after hearing about their alleged contraventions. The fact that they took selfies posing with the corpses is unfathomably macabre, perverse and ultimately from where I stand, downright evil. But the realisation that these pictures were shared in a What's App group, the knowledge that the police didn't take the report of the sisters being missing seriously, the fact that the family conducted their own search and found their corpses themselves - to then have this desecration and indignity heaped upon them - I just don't have the words. Who are the people in this What's App group? Other police officers? Magistrates? The local Masonic Lodge? Members of the public? Whoever they are, the police officers felt emboldened enough to believe that their actions would have no consequence because the dead women were seen as less than human by them and they assumed members of their group would share their sentiments. After all, just 2 more black cunts I suppose. As it was in 1969 so it is in 2020.

When you're black it seems that the police are powerless to help you but certainly not to punish you.

No doubt someone will explain that the officers' actions were not the result of racism, but poor judgement, poor training, blah, blah, blah. We'll be told the vast majority of police officers are decent hardworking people, etc, etc. Well, I don't care and I call bullshit. And I say enough al-fucking-ready. Some protesters chuck bottles and a crowd of people are deemed to be rioters and criminals. Police commit sin after sin and it's a few bad apples. Well if that's true, black people seem to have the entire rotten fucking orchard when dealing with the police. And here in the UK, the country that taught the United States how to subjugate and terrorise indigenous, black and brown people the world over and were prime beneficiaries of the transatlantic slave trade, we are told things are so much better than America. Racism is AmeriKKKa’s problem and our police would never do that. Take it from me, a middle-aged black man whose first encounter with the police (I was 9) was being chased across Hackney Downs by 2 police dogs because their handlers were having a bet on ‘how fast a little spear chucker could run’, that our police can be equally awful. That wasn’t my worst experience and I have friends who can tell far more chilling tales. We’ve got stories of police misdeeds for days.

No creature on earth has been more dehumanised, sexualised, exploited and defiled more than the black woman. The (white) world wants their hips, lips, butts, breasts, hair, power, strength, stoicism, voice, excellence - but not the woman herself. Oh no. She's too angry. She's disagreeable. Irrational. Even if that were true, she has EVERY DAMNED RIGHT TO BE. The arc of history always seems to bend away from justice for black people, especially our women who are often silent casualties of the war for equality. 51 years after Olive's courageous stance, the police are still determined to debauch black bodies be they alive or dead, male or female. And I haven’t even mentioned the horrifying death of 12-year-old Shukri Abdi earlier this month, literally bullied to death by some of her classmates. But hey, they were just kids, they couldn’t know what they were doing, right? Fuck you very much but no, they knew what they were doing. I did at 12 and I have nothing like the perspicacity of today’s youngsters. If their parents are anything like the scumbags masquerading as policeman that are featured in this piece, they are likely taught to hate and ‘otherise’ people even if they’re defenceless children.

Okay, I'm getting increasingly upset so I'll need to end this. To all of my sisters, my aunties, my nieces, my daughters and all of the goddesses out there, please accept my apologies. For not having your backs each and every time the way you do ours. For not protecting each and every one of you with every fibre of my being. For perpetuating, wittingly or unwittingly the myth of the angry black woman. It WILL NEVER happen again. Know that there is at least one brother who has tried to, and will always defend you to his dying breath. As will his sons, brothers and nephews. To my brothers - it's time to step up and HONOUR OUR WOMEN. No one will love and protect you more than they do so reciprocate or your children will be morally destitute idiots auditioning for Love Island or some other chlamydia petri dish. And to all of my white brothers and sisters that have genuinely had our backs - thank you. I love you guys more than I can say for preventing me from becoming a black reflection of the racists that I loathe.

Black women's lives matter. They always have. It's high fucking time this was borne out in reality.

#OliveMorris #BlackLivesMatter #BlackGirlMagic