WHY I CAME OUT AS BEING BLACK IN 2020 O
ver the past year, there has been much in the media about the impact of the murder of George Floyd. Personally, it led me to re-evaluate my own practice, and social work’s relationship with our safeguarding partners, the police.
were white, the villains were people of colour, and the heroes who swooped in and saved these damsels in distress were the police.
that I was categorised as IC3 before I left secondary school. The message is clear: Know your place. You don’t belong here.
For many people from ethnic minorities the over-policing we have experienced in our lives is one of the most visible experiences of racism we endure.
Being in the heart of Babylon was not an easy experience as a black woman. For the first three years, I managed this internally, debating whether these issues were still a concern, or whether I was being disloyal to my loved ones by being there.
At the end of 2020 I left a complex safeguarding team due to my ongoing concerns about institutional racism in this area of practice, and the sector’s inability to meet the needs of diverse communities.
FAMILY START TO BE HARASSED
My previous team was a mix of police, social workers, parenting workers and health practitioners, set up following the grooming scandals in the north of England. This was the knowledge base the sector was built around: the victims
MY EXPERIENCE OF BEING BLACK AND BRITISH MEANT SEEING MY MALE FRIENDS AND ONCE THEY REACHED PUBERTY. Black British contact with the police is so pervasive that over 30% of Black British men are on the police’s DNA database. Our community radio stations complete sessions to teach our boys how to manage the inevitable police questioning they will receive in their adult lives, and I was aware
The officers I worked with were all lovely; they made me cups of tea and asked how I’d spent my weekends. The arch-whiteness of the space meant it never felt safe for me to raise my concerns and I never shared my family’s experiences with the police, or mentioned the children I had known growing up who were now men in prison following years of exploitation. My internal battle became unsustainable, however, following the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
