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How can we ensure financial investments flow to Black and minority communities?

YVONNE FIELD

ON the 25th May 2020 a video was posted of George Floyd online, that went viral across the world. This video, followed by many, many more: gave us nowhere else left to look, but at the truth.

It exposed something latent in the entire fabric of the West. The topic of race has long been denied, avoided, rebuked, refuted, dismissed, eliminated, repressed, invalidated and silenced. This truth, triggered a global re-traumatisation of Black people everywhere.

In May 2020, the deepest parts of Black people’s personal trauma went viral. As trauma became in the hands and devices of everyone, the people living it as their reality were forced into action and grief simultaneously, regardless of the state of their mental health that a shocking global pandemic may have put them in. A man died in the making of that video.

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More videos, more tear gas, more shootings, more deaths. Whilst Gen Z were claiming on social media they are the ‘wrong generation to mess with’; Indigenous communities in the U.S, Canada, Australia, New Zealand have miraculously survived to stand on land that was stolen from them, being denied human rights to this day.

This trauma; dates back to when Europe decided to leave their land and kill people peacefully existing on theirs- to steal their natural resources. In Africa, this was followed by capturing, torturing and enslavement of Black humans in servitude of them. This is White History.

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In the summer of 2020, white people timidly began to broach the subject with each other, attempting to centre people who were dying; more ensued. Celebrities began to speak, leaders and companies and everywhere Whiteness lives, began to talk.

As race and racism began to spill into daily conversation, the boundary of silence could not contain the ocean of noise that broke like a dam all over the world. We joined global protests, and took to the streets. In the UK, signs could be read saying “The UK is NOT INNOCENT”, or “THE BRITISH STARTED SLAVERY” and especially “No Justice, No Peace.” People knew exactly what this was.

In May 2021, what is it that you hear now? Is this peace or is it the sound of silence? Millions of people have died from COVID all over the world, the crisis is about to hit low-income countries including across Africa and the Caribbean, even harder.

Even the UK statistics show that Black African and Black Caribbean people in the UK were two and half times more likely to die of COVID than White people. Young Black men are 19 times more likely to be stopped and searched by the police. Black women are five times more likely to die giving birth.

Windrush deportations are still happening. The Home Office admitted that it wrongly deported at least 164 and probably many more, and at least 11 have died on the streets of countries they were wrongly deported to.

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Who is making a noise now? Well, communities are. Black and minoritised people in communities are plugging the gaps that the UK system has left them to fall through. Not to mention; the rehabilitation, recovery and mental health support for the bereaved. This is often unpaid, overworked and without sustainable funding to continue long-term. It is often on a project to project basis, unable to plan for longevity or transformational change not yet coming from the people who have privilege and power to do so.

The Ubele Initiative released a report on behalf of the Black and minioritised community, voluntary and social enterprise sector called The Booska Paper (Booska means ‘position’ in Somali). 

A respondent to the paper told us: “Just because governments have pulled out of being responsible, it does not eradicate the basic needs of Black and minoritised people that are not being met. Whilst people are arguing over whose role it is to plug that gap – we are dying.”

Many of the funders interviewed cited Ubele’s previous research showing that 9 out of 10 Black and minoritised led organisations were facing closure, which influenced their strategic response to the crisis.

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Dedicated sources of emergency funding for the COVID response were unlocked, which many Black and minoritised infrastructure groups were able to channel onwards to grassroots organisations.

These groups have been a lifeline to struggling families and individuals who have nowhere else to turn. The same Black and minoritised organisations however, spoke of the cliff-edge that was faced when emergency funding ceases in March 2021 and the on-going anxiety that funding will cease to continue.

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This can’t be a one-year show of performative care. We need long-term investment into communities that are keeping each other alive.

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By The African Mirror

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