UNA
Luton supports the worldwide protests against the brutal murder of George Floyd
by police officers in Minneapolis on 25 May 2020.
These
protests are taking place because Floyd's murder is symptomatic of the racism
that damages the lives of minorities in many societies, not only in America -
genocide against Rohingyas in Myanmar, the internment of Uighur Muslims in
China, the removal of citizenship from Muslims in India, the displacement of
indigenous people in the Amazon basin, the marginalisation of indigenous people
in Australia, and many more examples of community injustice.
In
the UK, the USA and Europe, racism has been hardwired into the culture for
centuries through the slave trade and the establishment of empire. Slavery has
been abolished and the empires are gone, but the imperial mindset persists. It
permeates our language and conditions the way we look at the world. We have to
recognise its distorting impact and consciously challenge it.
After
the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and legislation against
racism and discrimination from the 1970s onwards, it sometimes looked as if the
battles had been won and it was only a matter of time before we achieved
societies which respected people as individuals and promoted equality of
opportunity regardless of race, religion, gender, sexuality, disability and
age.
In
practice, progress has been painfully slow. The Me-Too movement has highlighted
the gulf between expectation and reality on gender equality. Like the murder of
George Floyd in the USA, the Windrush scandal in Britain confirmed that slavery
is not past history. Black British citizens were deported to the Caribbean
countries where their ancestors were transported as slaves even though they
lived all their lives in the UK and their parents had responded to the call for
workers to rebuild the country after World War II. The mass deaths in care
homes during the Covid-19 pandemic have shown how little we as a society value
the more vulnerable members of our community.
The
protests are a wake-up call for change. We cannot resolve problems unless we
recognise their existence. This is the moment for every individual and
institution to question their own attitudes and assumptions and take action to
make a difference. For individuals, it means reflection and improvement. For
institutions, the response needs to be more structured. Every organisation
should carry out a rigorous equality impact assessment of its own policies,
practices and procedures, and produce an action plan with measurable targets
and realistic timescales to eliminate discrimination and improve equality of opportunity.
We
believe the worldwide protests are a signal that we will not go back to the
status quo when the pandemic passes. We will take the opportunity to build a
better world.
