Black Lives Matter - by Keren David

I didn’t learn about slavery at school. I didn’t learn about empire. I learned about the industrial revolution, and the satanic mills which produced cotton, but I couldn’t have told you where that cotton came from.

There was no Black History Month. There was not even a Black History Day. We learned nothing about Windrush.  We knew nothing about Africa, America, civil rights, social injustice.

There was only one black boy in my class in primary school. He was the class clown, always playing for laughs. I met him again last year, at a reunion. Now he’s a successful businessman. ‘They didn’t really do diversity at our school,’ he said. ‘We were it.’ (I’m white and Jewish. Every year I hoped we'd learn about Jewish history. We never did). At secondary school -  I went to the girls’ grammar in the next town -  there were no black girls at all in a class of 32. Diversity? I was it.

I’m trying to think of books that I read when I was a child that widened my outlook.  I can’t think of one black character. I can’t think of one book that invited me to think through the eyes of a person of colour. That can’t be right, surely? But I can’t think of one.

There were black people on television. There was the (cartoon) Jackson Five, which was on when I was around eight, which I loved for its music, its accents, its unmistakable cool.  ( There was also the  Black and White Minstrel Show which ran until 1972, when I was nine, which I didn’t like, and we didn’t watch anyway.) When I was 10, Trevor Macdonald began presenting the news on ITV. But it wasn't until Roots in 1977 that I began to learn about the history of slavery in America. Britain's role in all of this -  no.

This white-centric childhood, this lack of information, this white-washing of British history was pretty standard for those days. Later on, I remember a newspaper executive from a tabloid paper telling me that they didn’t run stories about (I’m sorry to repeat his words) “dusky people.” The newsrooms I worked in were as white as my classrooms had been. One black reporter, one black sub editor, no black executives on one national broadsheet. This was the 1980s.
 

In 1993 I was working on the newsdesk of The Independent, and Nick, the environment correspondent  came to tell me that he had a story for me that was off his usual beat. A young black man had been murdered in south London, by a group of white youths. His name was Stephen Lawrence, and his father had called Nick because he knew him, he had recently plastered his house. I put a 400 word story on page four, I remember thinking that it wasn’t the sort of story we would usually cover, it was more of a local paper story. We were the only national paper to write about Stephen that day. I could never have imagined that his death would become a 20 year fight for justice for his parents, and that the Macpherson report would uncover institutionalised racism in the British police.

I worry enormously that the recent protests about racism have exposed more people to Covid-19. I worry particularly because BAME people have been disproportionally hot by this terrible pandemic. I hope that some of the protesters will now self-isolate for the sake of their families and the NHS.

But otherwise, I can only applaud their actions. For decades, for centuries, black people have been stifled and erased, their stories ignored and unheard. It is shameful, and it must not continue. The many young people taking part in the protests suggests that my children's generation is far more knowledgeable than my own.


I am reading and listening, to try and learn more, and understand better. To make up for the omissions in my past, and my education. When I saw people yesterday, baffled, asking why all lives didn't matter, I gently suggested they educate themselves too.

I never thought I’d see statues toppled by cheering crowds in the UK. I hope that yesterday will bring more change than just an empty plinth.