After George Floyd, Scotland must face its own issues with racism

Footage of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of a white police officer hasn’t just provoked an understandable wave of protest across the US, it’s sparked outrage across the world from those who understand the impact of racism, police brutality and oppression.

Scenes of property damage might be alarming, but property can be rebuilt. Those murdered by the police cannot be brought back to life, as the African American community know far too well.

When a president so openly embraces extremism, it’s distressing but again not remotely surprising to see America’s so called “moderates” and “centrists” focus their criticism on the actions of protesters, or resort to the sickening whataboutery of “all lives matter”.

“All lives matter” is grotesque sloganeering which erases a very specific problem, replacing it with a vacuous platitude. When black lives are repeatedly treated with far less value by those expected to “serve and protect”, it says a lot about others who can’t bring themselves to recognise it, in case it throws their own white privilege into uncomfortable perspective.

Singer-songwriter Billie Eilish put it well when she pointed out: “Are you gonna make the fire department go to every other house on the block first because ‘all houses matter’? No, because they don’t f***ing need it.”

Black people are killed just for being black. That’s something to revolt over.

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In Scotland, like elsewhere, these feelings can be hard to articulate, especially if we are white. Privilege can’t be “renounced”, but being an ally means listening to those who are oppressed when they tell us how to help dismantle the whole system.

This black-led liberation struggle needs to happen everywhere. It needs to happen globally, where predominantly white countries still enjoy a legacy of wealth extracted from predominantly non-white countries and the continued economic, political and military dominance that brings.

And it needs to happen in Scotland too. Our claim to be a diverse and inclusive country must be earned, not assumed.

Racism is in Scotland’s bones. Our history of Empire surrounds us in statues and street names, in the surnames of those around the world descended from slaves on Scots-run plantations forced to take their owner’s name, and in the stolen goods which fill every inch of our major museums.

The grandeur of our cities was paid for by slavery and Empire, but the brutal atrocities of British imperialism remains almost entirely absent from the curriculum and public knowledge. Scottish history isn’t just Wallace, Bruce and the Jacobites.

Where are the lessons on Scotland’s role in the pillaging of India, for example, or the massacres and atrocities committed from Africa to New Zealand to America? The UN has reprimanded us for this colossal curricular omission and the impact it has on our attitudes to race today.

Whilst we must teach our colonial history, we must also recognise that a vibrant and largely untold black history is part of Scotland’s story, one deserving of its own space in our curriculum.

And we must recognise that ours is still a country where people experience racism every day.

Scotland is a country where a black man died in police custody five years ago, without a single officer being charged. The death of Sheku Bayoh in Fife is now the subject of a public inquiry.

Whatever the findings of that case, the Scottish and UK governments have a responsibility to look at their own actions and to publicly condemn racial injustice and police brutality in the US.

When the Scottish Greens have challenged the Scottish Government’s handing of millions of pounds of public money to global arms dealers, Nicola Sturgeon assured us that this is used to support the “blue light sector”.

This week has shown again that the “blue light sector” (police and law enforcement) are often at the forefront of brutalising and even murdering their own citizens. The companies who supply them simply don’t need or deserve public money.

If we really want to show that Black Lives Matter, we must start by clearing up our own house here in Scotland. End support for arms dealers whose products disproportionately kill people of colour, address the legacies of Empire through education and re-evaluate its lingering presence in our public spaces, teach and celebrate black history and face up to the problems that communities of colour face here and now, from disproportionate policing to systemic demonisation by right-wing media outlets.

And listen to black voices, especially when it makes those of us with the unearned privilege and safety of white skin feel uncomfortable. If we can’t even do that, do we really believe that Black Lives Matter?