Thank goodness it rained.
It was the morning of 8 July 2020 in Southampton. I was supposed to be commentating on live television for Sky Sports as England played West Indies. But the sky was heavy and dark and full of rain, meaning no play was possible. Without on-field action to discuss, there was only one subject to talk about.
George Floyd had been murdered in Minneapolis only six weeks previously. A police officer called Derek Chauvin had forced him to the concrete ground and put a knee on his neck. ‘I can’t breathe,’ George said. We know that because passers-by were filming what was happening on their mobile phones. He said it more than twenty times. George pleaded for his life. He called out for his mother. ‘Momma, momma, momma.’ ‘He must be high,’ said another policeman. Onlookers pleaded for Chauvin to get off his neck. That knee was on George’s neck for eight minutes and forty-six seconds.
The footage was seen all around the world. Those who could watch until the bitter, tragic end were shocked and appalled at the senseless brutality. We saw a person being killed in front of our eyes. Someone’s father, husband, brother. If you were Black, you probably watched it and thought: Could have been me, could have been a member of my family. But you also knew it was not an aberration, it was not the first time a Black man had been senselessly killed by a police officer. This time the whole world was able to see.
And it couldn’t be ignored. Everybody, it seemed, was talking about racism, the Black Lives Matter movement, and asking how and why this was still happening in 2020.
With no cricket and the rain still falling, Sky showed a short film involving me and my commentary colleague, Ebony Rainford-Brent, talking about the Black Lives Matter movement, protests and our personal experiences of racism. When it was over, I was asked to speak again. And it was live. Ian Ward, the anchor of the show, asked me how hard it was to make that film and speak about such things. Well, I didn’t hold back. And from what I said, and the way that I said it, I think people saw anger, frustration and emotion. I just about managed to hold back tears.
In those minutes I wanted to help people to understand how and why Black people like George Floyd were being killed. George Floyd was not an isolated case. In March of that year Breonna Taylor, a hospital worker, was shot by police while in bed at her home in Kentucky during a drugs raid. Only one of the three white policemen, who fired up to thirty-two shots between them, was charged. And it wasn’t with murder. Instead ‘wanton endangerment’ was the charge because bullets from his gun ended up in a neighbouring apartment. In 2020 alone in America there were 226 fatal shootings of Black people by police. Harvard research showed that, in some parts of the country, if you are Black you are six times more likely than white people to be shot to death by those who are supposed to protect you. In the United States, according to data provider Statista, the rate of fatal shootings (per million of the population) from 2015 to June 2020 was as follows: 30 Black, 23 Hispanic, 12 white, 4 other.
It is not just an American problem. Let’s get that straight early on. I’ve heard people in the UK say that it is. For George Floyd read Christopher Alder, who died in a police station in Hull, England, in 1998. CCTV footage showed Alder lying face down on the floor, not moving and with his trousers around his ankles. Police officers are standing around laughing for ten minutes while Alder, unable to breathe, dies. Five officers were prosecuted for manslaughter and misconduct but all were acquitted. For Christopher read Sean Rigg, Ricky Bishop, Mark Duggan, Leon Briggs, Kingsley Burrell, Mikey Powell, Sheku Bayoh, Darren Cumberbatch, Simeon Francis. According to the BBC, Black people account for 8 per cent of deaths in custody but only 3 per cent of the population.
Black people suffer. Our lives are worth less. And the statistics don’t lie. In the US and UK our children are more likely to leave school without qualifications, we are more likely to go to jail, more likely to live in poverty, more likely to live in social housing, less likely to own a home. We earn less, our women die in childbirth at a higher rate, our infant mortality is higher. And, not surprisingly, our life expectancy is lower.
All of these things happen because we live by a system that tolerates and enforces deeply entrenched ideas that Black people, or people of colour, are inferior. From a seed of an idea hundreds of years ago that Black people were ‘different’ and ‘other’ has grown a belief system that has led to the consistent dehumanisation of Black people. It has given us the transatlantic slave trade, ‘science’ that ranked Black people as the lowest of the low, governments enforcing segregation of races, economic policies that deprived Black people of houses and jobs, and, of course, police brutality.
Underpinning all of that is education. Or the lack of it. And that was the main thrust of what I said on Sky Sports.
I want to expand on education. When I say education, I mean going back in history. What people need to understand is that this thing stems from a long time ago, hundreds of years ago. The dehumanisation of the Black race is where it started. People will tell you, ‘That’s a long time ago, get over it.’ No. You don’t get over things like that. Society has not gotten over something like that, so how can individuals?
I didn’t quite understand as a young man what brainwashing meant – I now understand. People – Black people and white people – have been brainwashed in different ways.
Everything should be taught. In my schooldays, I was never taught anything good about Black people and you cannot have a society that is brought up like that, where you only teach what is convenient to the teacher. History is written by the conqueror, not those who are conquered. History is written by the people who do the harm, not by the people who are harmed. We need to go back and teach both sides of history.
Until we do that and educate the entire human race, this thing will not stop. We need to teach and re-educate, as a lot of Black people in this world are growing up believing that they are lesser than other people and that cannot be right.
At the time I had no idea what impact my words would have. But as soon as I was off-air and saw the messages and emails coming through on my phone, I realised that people had taken notice. Job done, I thought. The clips of the speech were being passed on through social media. I think the phrase they use these days is ‘gone viral’ (it has now been watched almost 7 million times). The next evening, I was asked to talk again on Sky News. I agreed, thinking that it would be the last interview I did on the subject. I had made my views clear so I didn’t see any reason to keep repeating the same stuff – if people didn’t get what I was talking about from what I’d already said, I thought, then they wouldn’t ever get it and perhaps didn’t want to understand.
I almost made it through this time without crying. It was the last question that got me.
Mark Austin, the interviewer, asked about the emotion I had held back. And I told him it was because I was thinking about my parents. And what they had been through. And, as I started explaining it to him, that emotion came again. And it was too much for me. I was overcome. I wiped the tears from my eyes. I struggled to find my voice.
My mother’s family stopped talking to her because my father was too dark. He was dark-skinned but I have seen so many others much darker than my father; however, her family didn’t want her marrying him. All she wanted was to build a family with the man she loved. And she sacrificed her relationship with her family for that. Because of that, she barely existed to them.
When I was a young man growing up, her siblings were always around, along with her mother, but no one else from the older generation. It was much later that I found out the reason for that. Of course, at the time, I had no idea why; I just enjoyed the relationship with her brothers, Eric and Henry, and her sisters, Norma and Etta.
I was looking up at those dark Southampton skies again, wiping my face, as the interview came to an end, thinking about my mom and dad who are no longer alive. Thinking about how, as a family, we had never talked about it. Soon after that interview my sisters, Rheima and Marjorie, messaged me, asking: ‘How did you know that about Momma and Daddy?’ They didn’t even know that I knew, as it had never been discussed as a family. It had been swept under the carpet, a family secret that had been ignored.
And, to be honest, I was ready and willing to do the same as this thing blew up. Not quite sweep it under the carpet but move on and put it behind me. As I had said to Jason Holder, the West Indies captain, during a discussion live on Sky, and to use a cricket analogy: I had bowled the ball and found the edge; it was up to others to now take the catch to complete the job.
I felt exposed and vulnerable. And, unsurprisingly, I didn’t like those feelings. Who would? I was inundated with requests from the media to talk more about my experiences and my family. And I wanted nothing to do with it.
My collaborator on this book, Ed Hawkins, who helped me write my autobiography in 2010, messaged me. He thought it would be a good idea to keep spreading the word. To produce something that would do exactly what I had demanded: to re-educate, to tell the true history of the world and how Black people had been dehumanised. But I was unsure. I didn’t want to be appearing here, there and everywhere. I felt people needed to absorb it, rather than having it shouted at them every which way. ‘I will leave people to use what I’ve said already,’ I told him, ‘although I could have said much more.’
Then two things happened. The morning after the discussion with Mark Austin, my Sky colleague Ian Ward came up to me.
‘So, what happens next?’ he asked.
‘Next?’ I said. ‘I’ve nothing to add, Wardy. It’s there for anyone who wants to see it.’
‘Are you sure?’ he said.
Then, I got a call from a number I didn’t recognise. It was Thierry Henry, the football star. He said two words: ‘I understand.’ We spoke for some time, and later exchanged messages. And he encouraged me to keep talking. He said that I could reach out, help influence people and bring about some change, however small. ‘When I saw you on television I thought, I have to call you,’ he said. ‘Wow, it was emotional. Here is a Black guy saying it is okay to cry. To show people what this means. You know Black men aren’t supposed to cry, right? Well, it changed me.’
I spoke to my colleague Ebony Rainford-Brent, who was the first Black female cricketer to play for England, in 2007, and won a World Cup. She endured racist abuse throughout her career. Truly appalling abuse that, if I put it in black and white on these pages, it would turn your stomach. She has suffered. It has affected her health and it had a profound impact on her career. It is such a tragedy that Black people can’t even go to their jobs, where they excel, where they want to achieve and want to thrive, without having to put up with this. And since doing that film with Sky she has withdrawn from the conversation, fearing a backlash because she dared to say something. She is afraid. Women, whatever the context, always seem to suffer more. They are considered targets for particularly vile abuse. And I don’t blame her or judge her for taking a step back. She was brave to say anything at all at her age or stage in life. Should I speak for her and people like her, to help?
I started thinking. I thought about my 6-year-old grandson who lives in America. I mentioned him in my interview with Mark Austin, saying that I hoped there would be change by the time he was my age. And I also thought how, when he gets a bit older, his parents will have to tell him not to walk around wearing a hoodie, never to say anything to a policeman apart from ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, sir’, and to be completely compliant. And how, if I had been given such instructions when living in a country riven by racism as a young man, I’m not sure I could have done it.
We will never forget the story of George Floyd, in the same way that we will not forget the story of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old boy from Cleveland, Ohio, who was shot by a white police officer, two seconds after he arrived at the scene, for carrying a toy gun. Parents are now having conversations with their kids about how they should and should not play.
My two daughters live in America. And I am lucky that I’ve not had to have those same conversations with them because they know, and I know, that if they were ever unfortunate enough to have interaction with a police officer, they would do exactly what they were told. Every day the mothers and fathers of Black kids in America are having to sit them down and tell them what to expect. ‘Now, if you’re stopped by the police, this is what you need to do.’ I understand the need to be respectful, but why should any kid growing up in any country have to be told exactly what to do and what not to do because of the colour of their skin? And why should their lives depend on it?
I also thought of my own early experiences of race and colour. Very, very early memories. Things that happened which I hadn’t thought about for years.
New York City in the sixties. I was in my early teens. I had gone there from Jamaica with my mother to visit an old family friend. I must have been on an outing with this friend. And she was holding my hand, showing me the sights in Manhattan. And I see a guy in the gutter. A homeless person, poor, broke and begging. And my eyes are on stalks and my mouth is open wide. And she yanks me by the hand and says in our Jamaican way: ‘What happen? You don’t know white people can be poor too?’ I had never seen a poor white person.
New York again. But this time we’re visiting a relative in upstate New York, Rochester. It’s early morning and my mom, as usual, is up before me. Our bedroom is on the second floor of the house and my mom’s at the window. She says: ‘Mikey, come over here and look at this.’ And she points out a white kid and a Black kid, playing together in the neighbour’s yard below. She shows me and says, ‘Mikey, we’ve got a chance.’ That was the only time I ever heard her speak about anything to do with racism. I never even heard her use the word. And it shows how much it had to be on her mind all the time for her to call to her youngest child, who she had never discussed such things with before, and make such a remark.
And here’s the thing. When I said what I said, a lot of people who know me got in touch to say: ‘Mikey, we had no idea you felt like that.’ Well, that’s pretty much how I’ve lived my life. I mostly keep my thoughts to myself but if you ask me, I’ll tell you. And that’s what Sky Sports did. They asked me the question.
The truth is, though, I’ve been running away from this issue my whole life.
My family – and I understand perfectly why they did it and apportion no blame – pretended there wasn’t a problem. As my sister Marjorie said to me a few years ago, and we were laughing about it: ‘Momma didn’t really prepare us for what this world was really like.’ And I never knew what racism truly was until I left Jamaica to play cricket all around the world and commentate on it. England, Australia, South Africa. And yet, I chose to keep my head down and do my best to ignore it. It was far easier for me to do that instead of make a fuss. That’s not an easy thing to admit.
As a person with a platform and a reputation, I could have done more. I could have campaigned and been vocal. Then, when I did say what I said, it wouldn’t have been a shock. And by shock, I mean to me. I was taken aback by the reaction and thought, I’m not sure I like all this attention… gonna shut up now. That is in part due to how I am perceived to be. I tend not to get overexcited. I think as a commentator I am mostly known, or at least I hope, for being fair-minded and rational. A lot of people were saying, ‘Well, if Mikey reckons it’s a problem…’
That was good to hear, for sure. But after Ian Ward spoke to me, then Thierry Henry called me up, I thought long and hard about my life and I realised it was time to speak. Maybe my voice could make a difference and my reputation for being even-handed could be of benefit. I thought back to all of the occasions when I could and should have said something. But didn’t. Inside I grimaced. It was time not to make that mistake again. Time to become unselfish. So I spoke to Ed again. ‘Let’s do it,’ I said.
You see, I have been fortunate. I have travelled the world because, simply, I was good at playing a sport. It has been a privileged life. And one of the big privileges was that it gave me life experiences that educated me. As soon as I left Jamaica I started to become aware of racism. I listened to people tell their stories. I heard their problems. I saw them. And the more I experienced, the more I wanted to learn. This is over several years. Thankfully, because of all the time spent on aeroplanes and in hotels, I was able to read. And I educated myself as to what had happened in the world and what was happening in the world. That is darn lucky. Not everyone gets that time. So an opportunity to try to pass on some of that knowledge, I felt, shouldn’t be ignored.
There was not one ‘lightbulb’ moment when I suddenly realised that something was not right, although I would say that my trips to England in the 1970s and 1980s proved to be a particularly rich – and troubling – education. So apologies if you were hoping for some one-off dramatic moment of awakening. But I guess that’s what life is, a constant lesson. I know more now than I did in my twenties, thirties and so on. I know more than I did yesterday.
This story, in many ways, aims to right some wrongs. Perhaps chief among them the way my mother’s family reacted to my father. And this brings me to probably the most important point of the whole book, and I know some of you are thinking it: how can Black people be racist like that? Well, racism is not a white-only issue. This thing affects everybody. We all live under the same system, are affected by its skewed rules and education system.
That is why my mother’s family didn’t want her marrying someone with darker skin. My mother was relatively light-skinned. And let me tell you, a lot of Black people covet that. They want to be as light-skinned as possible, or their offspring to be as light as possible, so it can help them to get on in life. The perception is that the lighter skin you have, the less likely you are to be affected by racism, whether that’s being abused in the street, or your chances of being offered a job or shot at by a cop. The darker you are? Bad luck. That’s what the system has done to people.
On the same point, this is not a story about hating white people. The word I used on Sky Sports was ‘brainwashed’. White or Black, pink or green, we have all been indoctrinated to believe that one colour is the purest and best. The further down the colour chart you go, the lazier the person, the more aggressive, untrustworthy, less intelligent. Of course it is ridiculous to blame ‘white people’ for that. They don’t know any better and have been to the same schools and colleges and lived in the same societies and cultures as the rest of us. You are a product of your environment. As I said on Sky that morning, this thing gets into your head and psyche almost by osmosis. It happens without you being aware.
And, for that reason, you are likely to find some parts of this book difficult to read. The savage treatment of Black people is hard to stomach and I guarantee that you will turn a page in this book and say to yourself, ‘Huh, I didn’t know that.’ If your mind is open, I really hope you will learn something. And maybe by the end of it you will realise, Black or white, why George Floyd was murdered. Not in a way designed to make whites feel guilty or ashamed, or for Blacks or people of colour to feel angry, but just to make you recognise that, for hundreds of years, people of colour have been treated like sub-humans. And now it’s time they got some equality.
But it is also not a gloomy book. I want it to be a story about positivity. And that’s why you will learn about brilliant Black minds and bodies and the incredible life-changing, life-saving things they have achieved. About how we can fix the education system so that everybody, regardless of their colour, benefits. If we have a fairer system, or start to move towards equality, nobody will lose out. There’s enough to go around, folks.
So it’s about hope. It’s about why we kneel, and how we rise.