Black History Matters | Don John | TEDxSouthampton

[Music] right hi guys thank you so much for a very warm welcome well my name is Don John and I have little tolerance for racism I've spent much of my working life identifying it addressing it and confronting it you could say it's been my life's work I intend to share with you why I think black history matters not just to me but also to you yes I know that black lives matter was occupied the sense of ground in race politics in recent times and it certainly has got everyone's attention but it is an appreciation of our history that helps us to understand its relevance I'm going to break this presentation up into three parts firstly awareness then discovery and then delivery okay black black black black and even more black how does that word make you feel does it already invoke emotion so you're little unsure love some say the trouble really started when colored people turned into black people so what does that tell us I think was water Benjamin who said their history is written by the victors so what does that mean to a black boy who was raised in a culture dominated by the myth of the Commonwealth I went to grammar school didn't do me any harm and studied Latin Greek ancient history and the victories of the Empire so where was my black history okay picture this a world where black people up to 37 times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people a world where black people are three times more likely to be arrested than white people a world where black people are forty-four percent more likely to be detained under the Mental Health Act than white people a world where black people are three times more likely to be unemployed than white people we seem to be somewhere between the mad and the bad or perhaps both now my father was one of those proud Africans where status and position was everything and he believed who religiously yes religiously in education education and education can't believe on quoting Tony Blair but what was I thinking of school gave us a world where the pink bits on the map on the world map was the context that underpinned our understanding of that world Africa was the dark continent where they all lived in mud huts and they traveled by swinging from tree to tree and white Tarzan was the king of the jungle in black Africa and Christianity was a step towards our salvation always remember that iconic image of Stanley meeting Livingstone remember that picture like two great God's a civilizing influence in this dark dark world I guess the context of my Sierra Leonean background should have given me a greater understanding but the heroes we were reminded of were people like Sir Walter Raleigh and Francis Drake remember those guys the English hero who coolly played bowls when the Spanish Armada a potion but casually said yet to finish the game how very English and it was only later that I learned that he was a pilot and a slave and well invested in the slave industry I was shocked and he certainly was not my kind of hero furthermore the history we learned was the shame of slavery and we were constantly reminded that our own black people assisted in the process of our historical enslavement and subjugation so was this my black history well this was the family plan my older sister was to become a solicitor and she did my younger brother was to go to Oxford and he did and I was to become a doctor we know what happened to that plan however hallelujah I was saved and I joined the place called Her Majesty's Treasury and ended up working in the chancellor's office and the charts at that time was a guy called Dennis Healy what an experience for a young black man the only young black man in ER in a sea of pinstripes and moral certitude a world where those pink bits on the map were ever so important and when I left the Treasury I took that damn that with me I still got in my room actually at home one thing about the map was Great Britain was disproportionately larger than it really was strangely seen and it actually was in the center of the world and that line from the glorious hymn Rule Britannia echoed in my head remember that one Britons never never never shall be slaves who's wondered what would that was all about and started to suspect something was afoot strange times however it was the civil rights movement of the 60s and the 70s that woke me from my slumber where I fallaciously consumed rich children people like Alex Haley LG's cleaver Bobby Seale Frantz Fanon Angela Davis and as a young man I absolutely loved it I was awake or so I thought however it was the arrival of a remarkable young man who doubled our numbers in the church there were turfers in there now it's almost like a riot isn't it and focused that new state of awareness his name was Linton quasi Johnson and the history of his footprint is a matter of public record at that time the quasi they had not been born so what did we do we go poetry we went to book shops that more than anything else we supported each other in that see what I call blind in whiteness Linton left and went to Goldsmith and I asked myself what on earth was I doing there my life had been enriched by this greater knowledge and awareness and I also lived and decided to go to the Caribbean for six months or so and discovered a world where black people had some say in their own destiny and was seemingly more connected to their black history mostly but as they say the first step towards change is awareness and the knowledge of our black history was starting to make some kind of sense ok discovery we're getting close to what black history means to me my work in race relations in South Hampton was a logical next step in my desire to immerse myself in matters relating to my black culture and this city of South Hampton gave me the means to explore that heritage and history at a grassroots level and in an environment where I felt that I could make a difference fertile ground South anson at that time was still confused about who these black people were why they all lived in Darby Road and those who know Southampton know exactly what I mean and why the area they lived in was called the jungle I do recall when I was making the film about black unemployment in the early 80s with a local ITV company the editing room was labeled Coons cabin and that was the way things were at that time this was a time when there was a heightened level of consciousness and black youth of flexing their newfound pride and were more sensitized to the experiences that their parents had endured stoically however these young people had no time for the stiff upper lip and just wanted to kick some ass and they did and I helped them bad bad person black pride and a sense of black history were the tools we deployed and a deep desire to recognize and confront the injustice is the world way of life for black communities this was becoming a crucial part of my black history so why do these black people keep going on about black this and black that and why was this assertion of who they were so disturbing for many the assertion of that consciousness was certainly a threat and black people became more organized partly through the supports of wage equality organizations and empathetic local people and started to challenge the accepted norms in the major institutions likely the local authorities the police services Health and Social Services and others the political climates at that time nationally played its part in disavowing racist opinion unlike the political situation we have in the here and now there was a time indeed when Black Studies was an essential part of our cultural education in the black communities and we clenched our fists and we world and protested and marched and many of you white people marched with us and this did make a difference perhaps the assertion of our real black black history is our new form of protest delivery the black history movement was formally celebrated in Southampton from 2005 even though there were random acknowledgments prior to that however the real confusion the real confusion again was who was it for and who was allowed to celebrate it some white people felt that they should not intrude in this private grief some people of mixed race were unsure whether they should get involved and would they be betraying the white side of their family and some black people were embarrassed about us going on about this black stuff all the time it just made things bad for black people who'd quietly found a place for themselves by not making too much noise nonetheless there were many black and white who welcomed this and have contributed to what we have now in the first couple of years Black History Month kicked off with yes is still banned with white people and of course the slavery exhibition it seems more embarrassing now than it did at the time however it gradually coaxed white South white South Hampton citizens into accepting the idea of loads of black people coming together in a large group without being policed and not singing and dancing the main objective Black History Month words there are to promote the knowledge of black history you'd be surprised at what people don't know in fact many people still believe that Egypt is not in Africa they really don't believe that second thing to disseminate information on positive black contributions because you see the knowledge of what black people have done must influence people's perceptions of what black people are capable of and thirdly to heighten the confidence and awareness of black people in their cultural heritage an inevitable consequence now the key thing that many failed to guard initially was this was just not our history but a history that belonged to all of us and we in the South played a crucial part and such information is available if you choose to look for it so let us just look at relatively basic information that does not fall so easily into our laps black inventors for starters the freeway traffic light and the gas masks invented by Garrett Morgan a black man the three musketeers a book a film a play Alexander Dumas a black man the blood bank that we depend on so much for our health Charles drew a black man the guitar Robert Fleming jr. a black man the lawn mower J Tabor a black man and many many more can go on and on about black inventors Invensys that people don't know anything about of course there will be many who will seek to debunk all of these much in the same way Napoleon soldiers thought that if they smashed the noses from the Sphinx and early Egyptian statues and we didn't notice they coulda raised the African history of the Egyptian civilization and dwell academically on the possibility of alien intervention because of course black people could never the technical expertise to construct the Pyramids of Giza always reminds me of them Muhammad Ali's classic answer to why as a child your ways saw images of white angels and never black angels and he suggests that they were obviously in the kitchen making the milk and honey as they do nonetheless black as she does more than ticking the boxes of accomplishments it provides us with a sense of who we are and therefore who we can be unfortunately we still have an issue about our identity and back in the day if we were not white we were black and it was much simpler complexion was the less irrelevant Malcolm X being a classic example light-skinned but at that time one of the blackest men on the planet yes I concede that it is now fashionable to have several cultural identities and people are quite rightly proud of all aspects of these identities however sometimes I wonder how far the black aspects of these many identities are relegated to the periphery of our consciousness so where does that leave us when our forebears came here they came with a history a history that some of them were not even aware of many also brought with them a perception of themselves and sometimes a twisted perception of was a consequence of the Western history that was fed to local black people in the colonies which systematically and purposefully denied their true heritage and identity sadly some of this legacy has continued in my view to infect some black people's perceptions of themselves and so it gets handed down further and further down the line but what compounded this even further was Western societies capacity to weave in the narrative of sort of racial superiority and to convert that into many aspects of the encounters between black and white peoples the knowledge of black history were not completely eradicate the falsehood still in play but it may be one small step in helping all of us in more fully appreciating the part the black people have played and are still playing in the development of the world as we know it yes black history matters to you and to me thank you very much for listening you [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 119,888

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United Kingdom, Social Science, Activism, History, Race, Social Interaction, Social Justice

Id: zUDA5NLnGYY

Length: 17min 52sec (1072 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 18 2017