WHY I CAME OUT AS BEING BLACK IN 2020

Over 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. 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.

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 were white, the villains were people of colour, and the heroes who swooped in and saved these damsels in distress were the police. 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.

"MY EXPERIENCE OF BEING BLACK AND BRITISH MEANT SEEING MY MALE FRIENDS AND FAMILY START TO BE HARASSED 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 that I was categorised as IC3 before I left secondary school. The message is clear: Know your place. You don’t belong here.

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. 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.

"A COLLEAGUE HAD WARNED ME IN THE DAYS FOLLOWING FLOYD’S MURDER THAT THERE HAD BEEN SOME DEFENSIVE COMMENTS BY POLICE OFFICERS IN THE TEAM."

Due to the pandemic we had been mainly working from home. On my first day back, I felt tearful walking into the police station. I sat down at my desk and then…nothing happened. Police officers made me cups of tea and asked how my weekend had been. The world was shifting under my feet and no one else noticed.

The protests started and there was a moment when I felt the weight lift off my chest, when I felt heard. These feelings didn’t last long. My colleagues all talked in the social workers’ team meeting about how wrong Floyd’s murder had been, but how it was nothing like that over here. A team member referred to the peaceful protests as ‘riots.’ I felt like a collaborator. The rest of Black Britain was out in the streets protesting against the police while I sat quietly in a police station.

"I CAME OUT AS BEING BLACK IN WORK IN JUNE 2020. I SHARED WITH MY TEAM THAT I HAD BEEN OUT PROTESTING SO THAT WE COULD LOOK AT HOW TO MANAGE THE RISK OF THE INFECTION."

This immediately drew the ire of a colleague who insulted me in front of the team. When she was pulled up on this, instead of making a meaningful apology, she told me about how my behaviour was going to impact on her family’s ability to meet up and the impact on her husband’s earnings if there was a second wave. She helpfully informed me of how I should have managed the situation better. My white manager later told me that, while it had been wrong for the colleague to insult me, the incident had nothing to do with race and I needed to understand my colleague cared about her family.

While I don’t believe that anyone involved felt any animosity towards Black people, I do feel that these responses spoke to deeply embedded cultural understandings about our places in society, whose voice should be heard, and whose welfare should be prioritised. Weeks later, I overheard senior police officers joking defensively about how it was all the rage to complain about police brutality while another angrily asserted that it was nothing to do with them. I questioned how our team could say we were against racism while not challenging the police to address clear racial disparities in their work. When I raised it with my manager the next time we were together, she told me that no-one in the team was racist but if I wasn’t comfortable working with police, they could find me an alternative working space.

"THERE WAS NO SUGGESTION OF ADDRESSING THE TEAM’S COMPLACENCY ABOUT RACIST OUTCOMES OR MAKING IT AN INCLUSIVE SPACE."

So often when Black people raise concerns about racism we are accused of being divisive and yet here was my manager suggesting that we segregate the team on racial lines.

Following these experiences, it came as no surprise when a senior manager raised that they were having meetings to address the fact that ‘complex safeguarding simply isn’t reaching some communities.’ I pictured a room of white senior managers all scratching their heads wondering why Black people wanted nothing to do with this team, why people from ethnic minorities might be reluctant to engage with police or share their most difficult personal experiences with these social workers.

I was sent the data analysis showing the cohort of young people we worked with were disproportionately white. This didn’t surprise me. While I was aware of some Black service users, I personally hadn’t worked with a single Black child in three years. My three years in complex safeguarding practice experience taught me that one of the biggest weapons we have against exploitation is showing people they matter.

"HOW CAN WE EXPECT CHILDREN FROM ETHNIC MINORITIES TO TRUST PROFESSIONALS WHEN THEIR NEEDS ARE SO LOW IN OUR PRIORITIES? WHY SHOULD PEOPLE ENGAGE WITH SERVICES WHICH WERE NEVER MEANT FOR THEM?"

The reality of institutional racism is there are no racial slurs, no hatred, no white hoods or burning crosses. Just relatively homogenous teams who haven’t considered that other people’s experiences don’t match their own.