Tuesday, 23 rd June 2020
*Dr Gale Frazier (author, ordained minister)
** Marzieh Hashemi (journalist)
*** Ben Studd (Anti-racism campaigner)
The ongoing strife against racism has rekindled memories of the veteran activists who had dreamt of a world in which justice, equality and humanity prevail. Despite the apparent lapse in direct racism as had existed half a century ago, the rise in populist culture in the West in recent years has led to many incidents that point to institutionalized racism especially in the US. The tragic death of George Floyd is only the tip of the iceberg of this never-ending saga. What has happened to the much-proclaimed achievements on equality, humanity and democracy under “modern” statehood? On 26th June the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture is marked by many, but how much has been achieved in the realm of human rights? Racism, Islamophobia and bigotry have reached frightening levels. Could the ongoing upheaval herald the dawn of real change or the doom of human values?
Dr Gale Frazier: Yesterday I was part of a reparations rally to address our issues pertaining to restoring us and making us whole. We are getting quite a lot of push back because people do not want to do that. They feel they have already paid their debts, slavery is long since over and as a result of that they feel they owe us nothing. We must be continually engaged and pushing for reparations and self determination.
We have suffered such devastation since our forbearers came here to this country. We are still under the “I can’t breathe”, under the knees or the neck from every form of heinous crime and evil, wickedness that could possibly be done to a human being. We have been subjected to it.
We have mentioned a few individuals who have been jailed. But there are others where the police continually get on the necks of our black men and do what they have always been doing. It has even been reported that some of them are going to leave their vocation because they are now being sanctioned for what they are doing.
But the reality is that we demand reparations. That is what we are all working on now. You many know the history and how that particular history has never left us. We have never received the 40 acres and the mule. We have never received any form of recompense for all the atrocities that have been committed against us and that continue to be committed: mass incarceration, red lining and as you may have already been aware as far as Covid 19 is concerned they say that the black population is more affected than anyone else.
They said there was a rise Covid in the Latin community but those who are actually dying are the black people. They have a lot underlying illness. And many are concerned about going to the doctors because they are worried about what is going to happen to them.
People sometimes say that when they go to the hospital they don’t come back. So even some of the community members are afraid to go. I recently got a call that a pastor who we all knew died from Covid 19. There are health disparities and wage disparities that we continue to be subjected to.
So the problem is this. Many people do not want to acknowledge this. The response to what we put out on facebook and on social media the response is absolutely reprehensible. Many of the Caucasians those who are supposed to be Christians cannot understand how their white privilege has allowed them and afforded them the possibilities to do so much more than we have been able to do.
Everything reveals that we are on the bottom row. The Hispanics are passing the blacks up. Everybody is using our platform to push their agenda. But they do not come back and reciprocate with help. And that is the unfortunate thing. Now with the deaths and the murders that are going on at the hands of the police people all over the world are seeing these atrocities.
I want to say that is divine providence that is causing this to happen because people in this country have been totally clueless to the plight of our black men and our black women. At least that is what they say. As we speak now I am writing a book and I am addressing the white church because the white church has been a culprit in forcing these laws and practices.
So when you come before people as a moral agent you have to have evidence to back it up what you say. Now some of the white pastors are coming up and saying they don’t agree. Others are saying we have to repent but what we are saying is that your repentance has to come with some dollars. Okay. And that is the issue here.
I am going to take my position and I am going to say it in front of a public audience. I don’t care if this country is crippled to its very core we are supposed to have what is our just due. They gave reparations to the Jews for the holocaust, they gave reparations to the Japanese for the internment but they have not given us our just dues and the rationale behind it is because we are not a nation in and of itself.
So what has happened is that many African countries have stepped up and said come back home. You have a home here. So with all this turmoil going on people are in an uproar. They are still protesting about the death of that young lady Briana Taylor, they are still protesting over the death of Floyd George but that was just the tip of the iceberg. That was not the main ice berg that was just the tip.
People are protesting about the deaths of all the innocent victims of police offences. We have civilian vigilantes who put it in their hands to do this dirty work. We have had several hangings that have been sighted because they say they are standing their ground. You may not be aware but certain states have what they call stand your ground laws. If you feel afraid of a black person you have the right to kill them. History is still here.
My position is and always will be that the United States acts as if it is the moral compass of the world but the root of this very nation is wicked, it is evil, it is ruined in all forms, infections, demonic powers, principalities and governing spirits that are in its laws. There is institutional racism, structural racism, genocide, matricide, abortion – you name it has been done in the name of the moral compass.
So when we come forth and my prayer has been and it is a scripture that I use to cry out loud and spare not. And so that is the season that I am in and many of us are in because I am tired of seeing these things happening. We are tired of all the injustices and they are great and many. So we want them to make sure that the individuals who are galvanising around this cause give us our just dues.
In addition the governments and all the sanctions are still in operation. So if you are considered a nationalist or a pan Africanist you have an ‘s’ on your back already. We have to stand up and contend with what is going on because it is extremely evil and again I say and continue to say that the things that are being done to us are inhumane.
When we speak of these things, when we held the rally yesterday and the press conference we want our reparations when it comes to housing. We have discovered the Caucasians would get many more dollars than we would receive to purchase houses and all of that. We would only get 12 percent of what they get. They get 18 or 19 percent.
We already know about mass incarceration. We are supposed to be 13 percent of the population of this country yet we make up the majority of mass incarceration with the mandatory minimum sentencing. In the juvenile detention centres they give our young people psychotopic drugs. In the courts where you have bigoted judges they skew justice because they can do it without any reprisal.
So what you see in a powder keg here. It is powder keg now. I am at least grateful for you all to be able to listen and understand our fight. They present our young men as thugs and gang members. The Caucasians are just considered to be children who came from a troubled home. They do not provide mental health care and there is sustained trauma. This is what makes our situation unique. We have had sustained trauma. So as a result of the sustained traumatization we are hyper vigilant. So when people see us they automatically think that we are mad. These things are engraved in our DNA because of the atrocities that we continue to experience with no let up.
So if you can imagine someone being under oppression every day of their lives. They are afraid that their children might not come back home because they might get killed by a police officer or somebody else called a vigilante. This is something that no human being is supposed to be subjected to. This happens.
This is our plight. So my major argument comes back to the white church. If you are supposed to represent a deity, if you are supposed to represent Jesus, what he represented to the world they have no understanding of who he is. Our African forebearers believed what these white missionaries told them.
They came to Africa. Our African people believed them. But the problem is that now many people realise that this white Jesus portrayal has messed up our people and given us the thinking that God is against us. So you have it on all sides. The schools did not teach you our own history. They refuse to do it.
I have sat on panels which have demanded that you teach African history from Africa to the west. Some chose to do it, others don’t. So if you do not know your identity you will become whatever they say you are. So now this a relentless warfare of trying to change the mindsets of people who are unwilling. But I believe in divine providence and I believe that now is the time for the change. But so many have had to die, so many people are suffering and will continue to do so because this evil disease if running rampant and being unchecked
They go to everyone else’s country and tell them what they are supposed to do. This is a terrible thing to say about the country in which you live. This is a terrible thing to say but it the reality of us as black people here in this country.
So I just want to say within the time I have that you don’t realise how blessed I feel to be able to share my thoughts with you so that you will all really know that truth
Chairperson: Your struggle represents the struggle of many nations against slavery in different forms, from Indian colonisation to migrant labour in the Gulf. We were born in colonial settings. We realise the uniqueness of the black struggle in the West. There is the specific history of slavery and Jim Crowe and the council estate that continues to feel the legacy of racism.
Marzieh Hashemi: I am glad to be with everyone. Bismallah Al Rahman Al Rahim. Thank you to Gale for a very impassioned talk. I just want to look at it from the media side because that is my speciality.
Gail talked about the image that is portrayed of black Americans. That is a very important point. I want all of us to understand because it not only affects Americans, black and white and their perspective of the situation but also globally. We are talking about the media, for example the American media more than their films, but about something global which has an effect on their perspective.
So for example in the black community in general when black people are portrayed black men will be portrayed as drug addicts and thugs. A male that never takes care of his family. If they show a successful black man it will be someone who plays basketball, football or can dance and sing. These are the categories that they have limited us to. And the rest are drug addicts and drug pushers.
So that is an image that they have portrayed inside the country and out and it and it makes a big difference in how people deal with one another. The importance of the media in image creation was seen in New Orleans when hurricane Katherina hit and I remember this event and the images that were coming out of the media.
A lot of people in New Orleans were stranded. So in one of the newspapers there and also the television they showed almost the exact same image. One was a black man with his kid and one was a white man with his child. They had both gone into a store and the store was closed. They took what they could out of it to fed themselves. The black man in the paper was said to be looting. This was after the hurricane with no access to anything. He went to try and find some food and he is looting. And the white man is trying to provide food for his family.
This is what we go through all the time. That is one important aspect that I want to look at especially for our international community. The hegemon is one. That United States entity acts against Yemenis, Sudanese and Iranians, is the same enemy and we have to understand. The unity is very important globally. Martin Luther King said that his cause was beyond the civil rights movement. It is human rights that we are talking about. Basic human rights are not abided by in the United States.
The entity, the United States that talks about human rights the most uses this cliché to destroy countries and people all around the world. Understand what this hegemon does. First they did it to black people inside the country. That is really important that we understand that about the native Americans and the black Americans. There is biological warfare. We know what has happened in the past with hepatitis and syphilis giving it to black soldiers to see how they were going to react. The victims have been tested with their biological weapons from the very beginning.
We know that they had given black women medicines or situations or actually made them sterile with various excuses. The black race has been targeted from day one in that country and continues to be targeted. The difference now is that especially outside the country and even inside the Caucasians inside the country do not see it and they do not understand it.
It is not like Jim Crowler that everything is in your face. Sometimes it is very subtle. So when a black person complains about racism inside the work place he is told you have access, you are working. When that person knows that he or she did not get that promotion because they are black because of a lot of things that they see it is very hard to prove.
So black people live under this constant stress. We are taught by our parents that you better be so much better and work twice and hard to get half as far as the overall community. So there is always that pressure to be the best that you can be to perform as well as you can and to behave in the best way as you are under constant scrutiny. It does not matter in which way you rise, which company.
When Barack Obama was president there were monkey jokes about him Understand the mentality that we are talking about. Overall in the society there is a lack of respect for black people. Our problem is unfortunately the same system is educating our kids and our kids are not getting a proper education. A lot of them don’t know their history unfortunately. And they lack that self esteem.
Many of you have seen the doll test. A black child is sitting there and a black doll and a white doll is placed in front of the child. They ask the child which doll is the pretty one and the child answers ‘the white one’. Why? Because she has blue eyes. Which doll is the ugly one? The black one. Understand what we are saying about a child growing up and having that kind of perspective. All of this is done to destroy the black community.
In the 60s we started all sorts of civil actions. There was Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and the Black Panthers. They were very active in trying to free our people and we saw one by one they were shot down, assassinated, killed or put in prison. This is what happens to the real leaders on the ground who are effective in the states.
They want to destroy the black family because it was a cohesive until. How do you do that. You bring drugs into the community. You bring crack into the community. You bring guns into the community. The USA government did this itself. I made several documentaries about this and I have talked to many people across the country who witnessed so many things or were involved in them and they talk about how that crack was brought in. and it destroyed the family.
And at the same time we know what they did with the crack. They had to put crack in the black community. White kids were using cocaine. When they got caught the sentence for anyone who used crack was so much higher than anyone who used cocaine. Cocaine was more expensive. The white ones were using it.
We know that when Clinton talked about the war on drugs it was the war on the black community. The whole stop and search going on and then putting black people in jail. It is a war against black people and talking about the incarceration side I would like to relate my experiences when I was in jail for a short time last year. My God the majority of the prisoners are black people and then brown and very few white.
This is in Washington DC. And the thing is that they have created this situation of total inequity and when these poor people having come from very tough neighbourhoods when they are accused of a crime they don’t have the money to get private lawyers. They are represented by lawyers from the state. And the lawyers tell them to plea bargain. They say I didn’t do it or I did do it but it was something very minor. The prisoners in the prison I was in told me that they told their lawyer they would not plead guilty. And the lawyer said if you don’t plea bargain your sentence could be 20 years and I will get five years for you. Just accept that you did it and I will get that for you. Five years out of a person’s life who did nothing.
And what happens when they get out or prison? They can’t get any public housing. They are no longer allowed. They are branded. They can’t get work. They have nowhere to live. What will happen? They will actually have to break the law to feed themselves. So look at how complex and how wicked the system is.
I want to quote someone who had a very big impact on my life: Imam Khomeini who led the Islamic revolution in Iran. He called that system the great Satan. A lot of people said whoa. But if we look at that system, the plans that they have what we are looking at is not really a simple situation. Four hundred of years of oppression, four hundred years of treachery, four hundred years of covering their tracks with pretty words and now pretty pictures and no talking about how everyone is created equal. No they do not believe that.
Not only the police and what they do and how they deal with black people. White privilege comes in here. They think they are better. They think they have a right to arrest you. They think they have a right to kill. Because they do it and nothing happens to them. With George Floyd it is not the first time and it will not be the last time this has happened as we have already seen it happening. But hopefully now the stakes are being raised higher. There is a lot of focus on this now. I hope that this focus is not temporary.
What I see is that the people who have come from the system and are part of the system all of a sudden found it in their heart to take a knee from black people. How long have you been in Congress? Why are you doing it now? What happened all of a sudden that they care? They do not care. You will not get your rights from the system if it is based on oppression. Those rights have to be taken. They can only be taken. It is not out of the goodness of their hearts that they will do anything. It is only when they feel the pressure that they themselves are in danger or that the whole system is about to fall and they have no choice.
What about reparations? They never want black people to have even a minimum of what they call an equal footing. This is not how this system was set up This is not how capitalism is set up. The capitalist system was set up on the oppression of the people they climbed on: the black Americans and the native Americans. Now not only black Americans but the whole world is now saying enough is enough.
Chairperson: Thank you Marziah for these wonderful words. I am always reminded by what the great Tony Morrison said. If you can only be tall because someone is on their knees you have a serious problem. This is something he addressed to the white people. You can only be tall because someone is on their knees. That is what they have done to the black community in the US. It has been on its knees for 400 years. This fictious state of America appears to rise on the back of the blood and toil.
Ben Studd: Thank you for these two amazing speeches and for the work you do. I am a white person. I do not experience racism but have a duty to oppose it and that is the work I have been doing for the past 20 years. I want to echo the words of the chair. I totally recognise how specific the racism in America is and the rest of the world is trying to fight this kind of monster. And we have achieved that kind of leadership. We see your struggle as our struggle and we are united.
One of the things people complain about there is that we have more people coming out onto the streets even though it did not happen here. This was the case with George Floyd and Mike Brown. We had huge mobilisations here. It reflected the reality that it is incredibly important that the people who are the descendants of the people who were enslaved by British colonialism are now fighting against the same injustice.
I saw for the first time the documentary from 2016 based on James Baldwin’s finally complete work. He was talking as a black person in America and he said when you stand up and look the world in the face as if you have a right to be there you have attacked the entire power structure of the Western world. A lot of people are waking up to this for the first time. A lot of people are now waking up to the shocking reality that in the history of Europe and the United States black lives don’t matter. This is something that should be challenged. It is an incredibly basic thing that will need a huge amount of struggle and work to defeat.
I would like to talk about the British situation, the kind of anti racist struggle that has been going on here. Before the 1950s, before the Windrush generation, the biggest form of racism was the ideology of British colonialism and the countries of France, Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands that instituted the slave trade and colonised large parts of the world. The struggles in Britain are addressing this. We saw the toppling of the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol. He was the deputy governor of the African company which initially was based in London and had a monopoly on the trans Atlantic slave trade.
Bristol as a city is rich because it was founded on slavery. People in Bristol have experienced racism more so than in other parts of Britain. There was a report by the Runnymead Trust which revealed that Bristol has one of the worst records of institutional racism. Black people had to walk past that statue every day and it represented to them that their lives don’t matter. This has led to a conversation about the statue outside the Docklands Museum that is going. The statue of Cecil Rhodes in Oxford is going to go. It started a very important conversation of how we deal with this. We have to look at compensation for the victims of slavery and I think that is something that we have to think about. We have to talk about reparations from the Bank of England and Lloyds of London. What we are talking about is a very serious process of looking at countries that were oppressed by slavery.
In the 1950s there was colonialism that brought people from the Caribbean and India to come and contribute to the economy. They were met with dire forms of racism. Today we have deaths in custody. It is not as large a problem as it is in the United States but the question of institutional racism is here. We have seen with the impact of Covid 19 that the effect is even more disproportionate than in the United States. We have been lobbying for an independent public inquiry into the effects of Covid 19.
We want to hear from the victims. Over 20,000 people from ethnic minority background have died. We have to look at institutional racism in the health and education service. In terms of the history of the British struggle against institutional racism we big support with the McPherson report after the killing of Stephen Lawrence that led to recognition of institutional racism.
There has been some change in the policing and in education and other areas of public life. immediately after that report was published. But there were comments that institutional racism does not exist anymore. It is not very helpful to talk in these terms. That was the immediate backlash and it is happening to this day.
The financial crisis in 2008 saw the scapegoating of migrants, Islamophobia which is a huge thing in developed countries. This is a huge amount of my work. In Britain it accelerated because of Brexit.
People like Toni Robinson whose role in last general election was not very great. He is talking a very prominent role. Donald Trump is a racist populist. The reality of the world we are living in is that the power is now in the hands of racists even more so then in recent years.
Chairperson: The reckoning that needs to happen in Britain is that we are taught the history of the British Empire in the school curriculum. Where is this moment situated in history. This is the largest rebellion since the 1960s. There is someone on twitter who has been documenting police brutality and he is at number 600. I have never seen this intense amount of police brutality in such a short space of time that is on camera. It has always struck me that the policing in the US is almost like a promotional video for policing tactics globally
We work in the Middle East, we have seen the Arab spring, we have seen the repression that takes place there. Some of it was incompetence, some of it was bad training, some of it was lack of equipment some of it war fear and paranoia. But in the US it is pure brutishness.
* Dr. Gale B. Frazier is an educator, civil engineer, social entrepreneur, author, inspirational, and conference speaker, certified clinical trauma professional, and ordained minister. She received a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering from Tennessee State University; a Master’s in Project Management from DeVry University—Keller Graduate School of Management; Doctor of Education from Roosevelt University; Certificate in Urban Leadership from Harvard University Graduate School of Education; Certificates from the Illinois Institute for Entrepreneurship Education, Edge University, the Joseph Business School; and Honorary Doctor of Divinity from the Kingdom of Heaven University. Dr. Frazier is also a wife, mother, grandmother and godmother.
**Marzieh Hashemi is a journalist and documentary filmmaker. She was born Melanie Franklin into a Christian African-American family. She was a student in the field of broadcasting in 1979, when the Iranian revolution happened, as a result of which she converted to Islam and began her career as a journalist and television presenter. She works with Press TV news agency. On January 15, 2019, Hashemi was arrested while boarding a St. Louis flight to visit her children in Denver but, according to US officials at the time: “has not been accused of any crime”. Following testimony before a federal grand jury in Washington D.C., Hashemi was released on 23 January 2019.
***Ben Studd is an anti-racist campaigner and researcher in the UK. He has worked with groups including the National Assembly Against Racism, One Society Many Cultures and Unite Against Fascism, and is currently a coordinator for Stand Up To Racism, a national organisation which campaigns on issues such as institutional racism, Islamophobia, migrant rights and the rise of the far-right.
Link to the discussion : https://youtu.be/mngQwcTNkAY
