Blackout

Yesterday, for me, felt weightier than the days and weeks before it. The combination of grief and exhaustion was so damn overwhelming.

In the midst of all the Instagram posts and passionate conversations with friends and family, Lanre and I visited our building site to take a look at our home that is rising slowly out of nothing.

I stood in my ‘kitchen’ and looked towards what will soon be my view of a brick walled courtyard. I looked over the threshold of what will soon be my front door. I looked down at the men creating the frame that will soon house the concrete walls that will form our staircase.

Watching our home slowly start to take its form really is a joy and I feel such gratitude for everything and everyone that has enabled us to get to where we are now. I am proud of all my black family and friends all over the world who bless me with their attention and care despite all that the world lays at their doorstep.

Later that evening, after my toddler was taken to bed and our flat fell quiet again (well as quiet as a flat with single glazed windows on a busy artillery road can ever be), I started to write to the senior leadership team at the company I work for.

In my note, I highlighted that it was important to remember the community of Black people within our work family and to ask them how they were doing, as when events like this happen, it hits fast and it hits hard.

I wanted them to know that although the death of George Floyd, and the protests that have followed, happened in the US, the experiences of Black people in the UK are so closely paralleled it’s shocking.

I shared examples of the poor outcomes Black people face when it comes to interaction with police, postnatal care and Covid-19. That the health care disparity can only marginally be explained by diet and genetics, and that the data points more directly to the jobs they held, the level empathy and care afforded to black people within our healthcare system, and their housing conditions.

I wanted them to know how vital it was to acknowledge the existence of these problems for the black communities within companies all over the world, and how vital it was to create a meaningful dialogue to create an inclusive, trusting empathetic and diverse company.

I told them that I believed acknowledging where bias creeps into working practices, like recruitment or promotions, and making a priority to root it was vital. That being transparent about diversity stats and what we plan to do about it, is vital. That acknowledging Black History Month, regardless of whether we get the tone right is vital.

As it’s been written, again and again, I also share that it is not mine, or any other black person’s, role to tell non-black people what to do, what to read, or how to behave. I shared that honestly do not yet know how to use my own voice, and I certainly was not able to tell anyone how to use theirs.

I finished by explaining that I have learned that protests are born out of discomfort and our comfort is irrelevant. They are complex and messy, but that if we feel compelled by the issues at hand we must get stuck in and add our voice.

After I pressed send, just before midnight, after deliberating whether sending it was the right thing to do. I concluded that I can no longer stay silent. To be silent is to be complicit and if I do not do something different, nothing will change.

Writing about my build experience and sharing it wider than my immediate family is scary. However, I realise now that alongside the activism and shining light in the areas that some wish would remain in the dark, it is so important to share our stories. To embrace our spectrum, range, diversity and nuances.

So, here I am.