It’s Black History Month! Some say ‘Yea’ while others wonder what the point is. I’m no politician or historian but I am grateful for the month where we are free to talk about our heritage without everyone rolling their eyes and thinking me unable to get passed the sensitive issue of slavery! I will say one thing though, what I have found over the years is a preoccupation with American Black History and little about what happened in Britain. Also there is a fixation with the past without the balance of the present and hopes for the future.
Olivea Ebanks is my lovely wife and she often says she is making black history today! She says this throughout the year! Shouldn’t we all be doing something like that...looking back, acknowledging what’s being done today and planning well for tomorrow? BHM should be the springboard for a whole year of activity and individual commitment to make today something our children are proud to talk about in years to come.
So then, no doubt some of you have attended functions celebrating how far we’ve come...but what are you doing about the mess we have to deal with today? Do you know what the current state of affairs is? Is anyone in your circle oppressed at work and being treated unfairly? Are they doing anything about it...are you? We love to talk about Malcolm, Rosa, and Martin but who are their equivalents today and are they being supported in the same way that activists of old were?
My wife experienced racism in the prison service. It was hard for me to watch layer after layer of confidence being stripped off her by their prejudice, arrogance and insensitivity. I kid you not, I was ready to go to the prison service college in Rugby where she worked as a development advisor to Governors, and try and sort the problem myself! No prizes for what I would have loved to do. But of course I didn’t behave unwisely...she wasn’t at school being bullied and I wasn’t an angry parent. Listening to her recount dehumanising incident after incident made me feel like I was failing her; I wasn’t able to protect her. Now Olivea is no push-over, she’s one of the strongest people I know but I watched her battle and become a shadow. I felt that simply being there for her was ineffective. I wanted to do much more...but what? This was incredibly frustrating.
When she decided that she needed to go to court to prove that the treatment she had experienced was racist, I was determined to give her every support. She presented her case ALONE for 15 days, and the Tribunal sifted through everything she placed before them. They found 5 counts of racially motivated differential treatment. She had won her case and proved that racism was in the upper echelons of the civil service. Then my wife did 2 amazing things...she wrote about her experience to help others and you've guessed it, the book is entitled 'Almost British'; and she went back to work to try and fix things from inside the organisation.
How did that turn out I hear you ask, well...to cut a long story short, after informing her new managers at the Judicial College of her plans, they effectively gave her the thumbs-up. Then in a matter of weeks they changed their minds, told her to stop everything, suspended her from work for a few months, formally investigated her conduct, disciplined her for gross misconduct and then essentially forbade her from having anything to do with the promotion or selling of her own book on pain of dismissal. What did she do to deserve such harsh discipline? Apparently when asked to run the manuscript by the prison service for approval Olivea felt that might open her up to more victimisation (bearing in mind she had already proven 2 counts of victimisation in the past)! The Ministry of Justice considered this reticence to be a refusal to follow a reasonable management instruction and concluded that her behaviour was insubordination. Go figure!
So there you have it! I stood by Olivea the first time and being in the background though fully appreciated by her, made me feel like I wasn’t doing enough. Thus I am silent no longer. Olivea’s story is universal. It shouldn’t be, but it is. Her story should be something we find difficult to conceptualise in this day and age, but it is all too familiar and painfully current for many. You might be in a position where you can’t speak out or don’t have the strength or know-how; we don’t all have to go to court but we can all show support for those who are prepared to go further than we ourselves dare. My name is Rudy Ebanks and I am making a difference with one voice – imagine what we could achieve if you added your voice to mine.
