by Dr Steve McCabe

I

AM A WHITE, middle-aged, privileged man and, as such, I can never be a victim of racism. But over the last few years I have become increasingly aware of the Black Lives Matter movement and, as a result, I have tried to find out and learn more about the issues, particularly in the way it affects my profession and the people we serve. I want to share some of what I have learned.

In 1965, whilst Martin Luther King Jr was marching people from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama to secure the right of Black people to vote, the BBC in London chose Robert Gardiner to be the first African to give the annual Reith Lectures.

Gardiner was born into a merchant family in the Gold Coast area of modern Ghana. He went on to reach the upper echelons of the United Nations. The topic of his Reith Lectures was ‘World of Peoples’.

During one of these lectures, Gardiner addressed the issue of why humans, uniquely among the animal kingdom, chose voluntarily to slaughter one another on a regular basis. His thesis was that people assign particular characteristics to other people – such as race, colour, or ethnic status – which allows them to see others as a different species, allowing them to attack the others without morals getting in the way.

This is the essence of racism – prejudice, power and a sense of superiority.