I apologise that this will be a little bit of a rant. I had hoped that this blog would be a place of positivity and pretty artwork but this subject has just pushed too many buttons...
I am the mother of three extraordinary, beautiful, talented, infuriating, happy girls. One small observation that can be made about them is that their skin colour isn't the same as mine, and that they have the most incredibly curly hair that is insanely difficult to brush. This isn't something that defines the people they will grow up to be. It's just well...a thing. Their dad is Ugandan and I met him in deepest, darkest Devon after he had been sponsored to come over here by a youthwork charity. We chose to get married and we fought to get visas for him in order to make that happen. We paid best part of £3000 over about 5 years in order for him to stay in this country.
So that's a little background. Here is what has made me mad...my Facebook newsfeed has become increasingly full of people sharing hate filled propaganda about migrants coming to this country and about how we should be taking care of our ex-military personnel.
Today I saw a picture of two african guys at the top saying "coming to England is like being reborn" and a homeless guy (supposedly ex-serviceman) on the bottom saying "Ex-servicemen should be housed before immigrants, share if you agree"
This was being pedalled by Britain First.
What disturbs me is that most of these things i keep seeing are being shared by an older generation of people.
"Oh, it's because of their generation. They just have no filter"
Um, excuse me. NO!
Racism is learned, and I do not want my girls to learn it. For the African gentlemen in that picture (that was obviously plucked off Google and used), coming to England probably was like rebirth. I would like the idea of being able to walk down the street at night in safety, if in the past I had been in fear for my life. Just because you can still hide behind a computer and hit "Share" that does not make it ok!
Now, I understand the sentiment. There is something wrong in the system. However, just because someone wasn't born in this country, why the hell should they bear the brunt of you mindless prejudice? What's laughable about this particular picture is that the African guys are probably from either Somalia or Sudan (I'm taking a little guess here but bear with me) Seriously, have you even been to either of those countries?!?! Have you ever walked through a refugee camp?!? Oh wait, let me guess, you gave a fiver after watching Comic Relief last year. Did it make you feel better?
This is a little bit of a geographic jump but when i was in Uganda in 2007 I went to an IDP camp...a camp for Internally Displaced People. It means they're still in their own country but just happen to have lost everything and had to move because the north of the country was being ripped apart by Militia groups fighting the military. That trip was probably the most harrowing experience of my life. Never have i felt so completely helpless or looked around and wondered what on earth the human race was doing to itself.
Children kidnapped and made to become soldiers and kill their friends as an initiation.
Girls kidnapped and gang raped
Livestock stolen
Homes burned
Livelihoods destroyed
All in a country that was struggling to recover from the echoes of Idi Amin.
The camp i went to was the smallest ones in the area, and it contained 11,000 mud huts. These huts don't have any land, electricity or running water. There are no schools, or jobs. There is no hope. If you estimate very conservatively that each hut housed 4 people, that's 44,000 in one small area. In the height on Uganda's conflict in 2005 there were 1.8 million Internally Displaced People in 251 camps across 11 districts in Northern Uganda. I'm picking this particular conflict because I've experienced it, but the point I'm making is that while we sit in our warm living rooms, with our broadband and our cups of tea, blaming immigrants for taking our jobs, our homes and our wives we need to understand the circumstances under which these people left their homes.
Go, and damn well educate yourselves, people! You are responsible for what you associate yourself with! No more excuses!
Of course it's a disgrace that our military are not treated better. Military personnel account for 1 in 10 of homeless people in this country, you know what, that's 9 other people who need a home too! But would it be a little too radical to point out that as one of the most prosperous countries in the world...we might actually have enough to look after EVERYONE! How about we dock the Bankers bonuses and use that to pay for housing?! Just a thought.
The true issue in this world is that if we stopped killing each other and oppressing each other things would change so much. But our world is so saturated with attitudes of fear and hate that it's literally ripping humanity apart. When you share stuff by people like Britain First, you are taking part in this hate. Hate needs to be fed in order to grow and that's what you're doing.
You are jumping to the defence of our ex service personnel in the very manner and attitude that those who lost their lives in WW1 and WW2 and many wars since, were trying to protect you from!
How, oh, how can you not see that sad irony.
I would like it noted that some of the people sharing and agreeing with this garbage also tell me how wonderful my children are - to you I say this, you might want to think about that - if you tell me my children are so wonderful, imagine the other wonderful people who come to this country who could be your potential new best friends.
This post is written in anger and frustration. I am shaking as I write because my heart is breaking for this world. I refuse to share this stuff because I do not want my children to inherit this world of hate that you are perpetuating. I want them to love people. Period.
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