3 girls were murdered
3 girls were murdered, their names were Bebe, Elsie and Alice.
3 young lives tragically cut short, 3 families deeply lost in grief, countless other children and adults who witnessed this heinous crime will be haunted by trauma.
My heart goes out to them, as a mother I cannot begin to comprehend how this must be for them, to lose a child to such madness, such cruelty. What might drive a person to do such a terrible thing.
This is the question that should have come out of this tragedy. What drives one person to act in such a way? It is an important question for us to understand, when an individual behaves in a way that we cannot comprehend, there is an assumption of mental illness, it has to be, because no sane person would walk into a children’s dance class and murder innocent children. It is uncomfortable, but it is a question that can be asked, there is a difference between us and them, us who have mental stability and them that for some awful reason do not.
Yet there is another question that has now blown up, that is far less straight forward, because it is not the question of one person’s actions that are so beyond our lived existence that it doesn’t really touch on us and our experiences. The question now is why off the back of this tragedy has the UK witnessed deplorable scenes of racism, islamophobia, violence and hatred from, although a small minority, it is spread across the country and perhaps touches us all in ways that are a little too close for comfort.
It isn’t one ‘madman’ it is the voices of our neighbours and peers on social media, in the pub, on the streets. Because as much as the media will have you focus on the actions of the ‘thugs’ this fire hasn’t just blazed out of nowhere. Once again it is just evidence of the fact that we live in a racist country that has been destroyed and devasted by poverty and successive governments who do not listen to the people.
I will state this now loudly and clearly, I am anti racist and will always speak up against racism and continue to do the uncomfortable work as a white person to listen and understand the lived experience of Black and Brown people and be part of the change.
My lived experience of living in a female body gives me the tiniest glimpse of what it is like to live in a body that has darker skin, to live with a constant knowledge that because of this one thing I am always at risk. At risk of being attacked, of being blamed for this attack of being judged, of being held back. But what I don’t have is flare ups of public group hatred against me.
I cannot begin to understand how it must feel to have to consider not going into town today for a shopping trip because I am at risk of being attacked purely because of the colour of my skin. Because this will be the thought process of some young people today. Young people who are like your own kids, just trying to enjoy their summer holidays, but perhaps choosing to stay home today in case they get targeted because of their skin colour. That is not ok. Or the GP’s, dentists, pharmacists, shop owners who are still showing up for their communities despite being afraid they might be attacked due to their religion or skin colour.
I implore people to take a moment to think about how this might feel, and how this is not ok.
The thing is, Black and Brown people live with this underlying fear all the time, it is ingrained into their very being, in the same way that women live with the fear of attack all the time, a knowing that the systems that are in place do not protect us, and that society as a whole continues to blame us. This isn’t new.
Fear and anger is all the same. Meeting anger with more anger feels unhelpful. Most definitely a valid reaction but it is fuelling more hatred. There is a sense of fighting the wrong systems in pitting it us against them.
The thugs that are mindlessly destroying property and creating fear and pedalling hatred are most definitely a problem that needs to be stopped, but they are just the top notes of a much wider problem. A problem of a country stuck in poverty, a country that is built upon racism, a country that doesn’t feel represented or heard.
Please stop being blindsided by hateful rhetoric, you are throwing your hatred in the wrong direction. And it is harming the wrong people. It is harming young people who are our future, it is harming local community that is made more beautiful and fuller with diversity.
The rich keep getting richer whilst the poor throw missiles at the vulnerable. The health system crumbles meaning mental health services are not in place to support those who need it.
Perhaps we need to stop being shocked when the spark lights a burning blaze in a country that is crumbling. It isn’t falling apart because of immigration, it is falling apart because the system is failing us, the system is not fit for purpose. This particular blaze is deeply uncomfortable for the majority of us because we live in a privileged place where we don’t have to experience abject poverty and racism on a daily basis, so it feels shocking, but really it is inevitable when we don’t look at the uncomfortable places, eventually it all blows up.
The murder of 3 young girls, Bebe, Elsie and Alice is shocking, is devasting, let us not forget this. Let us be brought together in our humanity over this tragedy. Let us meet fear and anger with compassion and questioning. We are all human, let us not forget this.
Love to the families of the young girls who tragically lost their lives, and strength to all my Black and Brown friends, colleagues and humans.
