I am making these final notes at home in Miami at the start of 2021. All around me are boxes for the removal men. The walls are bare and much of the furniture has gone. I am moving on. I have ‘lived’ in Miami for more than twenty years, splitting my time between here and Newmarket in England, escaping the cold winters for the Florida sunshine. I put ‘lived’ in quotations because although I have had a house there for that length of time, I only became a permanent resident in 2011, previously requiring a visitor’s visa because of my constant travelling for work. Early on in 2019 I decided that I didn’t want to live in America any more. There were plenty of reasons for that decision and most of them were completely irrelevant to this story. But one wasn’t.
The atmosphere in the country had changed. It wasn’t immediate. It happened slowly and surely. And it is difficult to explain but I felt less safe as a Black person than I had done previously. Not that I was exactly gallivanting about the place. I rarely left the house, preferring to stay in and watch the horseracing from the UK on my computer in the mornings and local television in the afternoons. I had friends there of course and caught up with them on occasions but, to be honest, I wasn’t there that much anyway because of the reasons stated above.
Maybe my attitude was (is) to be blamed for my uneasiness. I don’t know as I haven’t lain on a couch for a psychiatrist to tell me what’s going on, but what I do know is this: speaking to Hope, Adam, Ibtihaj and others who were born and grew up in that kind of atmosphere made me appreciate their strength even more. Those who know me are aware of my travels all over the world (Australia, England, India, Pakistan, South Africa) and I have friends of all races and creeds, but I just felt different in America as time passed by. Maybe things will change, but at the moment, I need to spend even less time there.
Michael Johnson’s words struck a chord as you would expect. ‘We’ve had a president who has stoked this racism and who said the things out loud, and wasn’t afraid to say out loud, what a lot of conservative politicians have always worked for underneath the surface.’
I don’t want to spend too much time on Donald Trump. But it is no coincidence that, during a presidency that focused on hate, fear and division and resulted in white supremacists rioting in an attempt to get his election defeat overturned, Black people have felt more threatened than they have for years. And that’s saying something. Why would I want to live in a country that could put a guy like that in the highest office in the land? Why would I want to run the risk of him getting another four years? I was getting out of there.
Thank goodness he lost. What could have happened in another Trump term doesn’t bear thinking about. And already – Joe Biden has only just been sworn in as I type – the streets feel safer. This might be more wishful thinking than reality but in the past few days, when I’ve ventured outside, it seems people saw me when I went out. I actually existed. A white gentleman held the shop door open for me before it closed. A small thing. But it stopped happening under Trump.
What I like to think about Trump’s legacy – because I’m sure he’d hate it – is that he will be remembered as the president who unintentionally forced America and the world to finally recognise the fact that white supremacy is a dangerous problem. And one that we need to start solving. For a man who wanted to empower and embolden the racists, it’s good that, seemingly, the people have said ‘enough’. ‘We can thank him for that,’ Michael Johnson told me. ‘I think that it has woken up a lot of us.’
Yes, maybe America has woken up. Maybe the world has woken up. I think about a line in ‘The Hill We Climb’, the poem by Amanda Gorman at Joe Biden’s inauguration, which says: ‘we’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace’. A lot of folks have been asleep at the wheel. In small moments like me finding my voice, or Michael finding his, the message is being passed on and people are learning. The Black Lives Matter movement has told people that it is okay to speak up and out. And it has educated people to what is really going on. It shows no sign of slowing.
That’s progress. Perhaps in the past when there was an incident – thinking back to Rodney King’s beating in 1991 and the riots that followed in Los Angeles – there would be an outcry. But it was fleeting. People moved on, they forgot about it, too busy with their own personal worries and issues. I remember another poster carried by a young woman at a BLM protest which read: ‘Everyone is saying this is America’s wake-up call, but this is not the first, you all just keep hitting the snooze button.’ This thing has real momentum now. So hopefully no snooze button this time around.
When I started writing this book, I was worried that it would just be a hashtag movement, something that was popular on social media for a few weeks before disappearing because people were outraged by something else. I don’t think that has happened. It has gone on and on. And, unfortunately, that is true because of the political situation in the world. Tragedies have kept on happening to keep it relevant. But I also like to think it has remained relevant because folks are really listening for the first time.
I am positive that progress has been made. But we have to keep going. And in these final pages I think it is worth really trying to reiterate the key points about how we rise. How do we make sure that folks don’t just slip back into their old habits? Or politicians don’t just pay lip service to an issue? Naturally, I’ll do that with a little help from the friends I have made along the way. At the end of each interview, I asked the same question: how do we rise? Each athlete I interviewed said the answer was education. But we will expand a bit on that.
We have to educate people. As Louis Farrakhan said: ‘If they don’t treat you right, why do you expect them to teach you right?’ The decolonisation of the curriculum is the single most important change that we need to see. The true history of the world needs to be taught for there to be equality. And, as I’ve said, that will benefit people of all colours. Black people will realise that they are not just descendants of slaves. We come from some of the earliest and greatest civilisations. We have a history that we can be proud of rather than be cowed by.
If you teach a young Black kid about Septimius Severus, the first Black emperor of the Roman Empire, or show them how the Moors educated and enlightened Europe, or describe the bravery of the Black Rattlers or the brilliance of Lewis Howard Latimer, what do you think happens to their self-esteem? They walk taller and feel good. That person values themself. Just as the West Indians living in England did when their cricket team won Test matches. But what if they only learn about how they come from folks who were treated like cattle and were stripped of their identity? That is not very uplifting.
The impact is two-fold. White kids are in the same class. And they’re learning about all these great things that Black people did. They’re learning they are as smart, as important, as innovative as themselves. And those early seeds of white being superior to Black are never given the chance to grow into something ugly. What happens if nothing changes? The white kids continue to leave that class having been taught that all Black people ever did was be enslaved.
If that change happens, everybody benefits. That vicious cycle that destroys Black lives stops turning. We get educated, we get jobs, poverty decreases, we own homes, the prison populations shrink and, guess what, police forces don’t need so much money any more and it can used for other things. And round and round we go. But this time in a positive way. And everybody rises.
‘We have to educate people that to be different is okay, to have a different skin colour is okay,’ Hope Powell said to me. ‘We’re not stupid people, we’re intelligent. We have offered lots and have lots more to offer if you’re prepared to have a difficult conversation about racism. Fifty years from now, we don’t want to be having the same bloody conversation. It is about educating the next generation to ensure that another person doesn’t have to write a book, another person doesn’t have to bare their soul and say, “Look, this is an injustice.” ’
But, as I acknowledged that morning on Sky, this is a challenge. There has been huge resistance in America and Britain to teaching the truth. And, as the BLM movement has gathered pace, it has become almost weaponised by those who want the status quo to remain.
Before leaving office, Trump tried to rewrite America’s history curriculum. With this in mind, he set up an advisory committee called the 1776 Commission to support his idea of a ‘patriotic education’, while railing against ‘decades of left-wing indoctrination’. Trump said: ‘Our youth will be taught to love America.’ It attempted to downplay the horrors of slavery by excusing the American founders for owning slaves and defending the law that Black people counted as only three-fifths of a person. The commission said that law was necessary.
Within days of Joe Biden taking over, the 1776 Commission was dissolved. And, of course, that’s great. But let’s not rest on our laurels here. Trump gained just over 10 million more votes in the 2020 election than he did in 2016. In total, 74,222,958 Americans thought Trump should be president. That is a big problem. And anyone who thinks that just because he is no longer in office the division and hate and racism he gave legitimacy to are going to go away is destined to be disappointed. Barack Obama was president for eight years but the system was still in place when he was done. And, unfortunately, the fact that he held that position so enraged the white supremacists that Trump was able to come in and be at his absolute worst. That’s a lot of education needed right there.
In Britain, the Conservative government launched a ‘war on the woke’ in early 2021, just when you thought things couldn’t get much worse. I suppose it would be ‘woke’ of me to point out that Britain has the worst Covid death rate in the world, and the majority are people of colour, because of their policies?
What sort of government wants to demonise people who are alert to injustice and racism? Well, it’s one that, for the first time, did not hold a reception in Downing Street for Black History Month in 2019. It’s one that came up with the ‘hostile environment’ as an immigration policy. It was as nasty as it sounded and aimed to make life as unpleasant as possible so that people would want to leave. It’s one that deported, detained and denied legal rights to members of the Windrush generation. One that employed an aide who believed that Black people are genetically predetermined to be less intelligent than white people. The press secretary of Prime Minister Boris Johnson was asked thirty times for Johnson’s views on that one. And thirty times refused to answer. But maybe that’s because we already know. Johnson has called Black people ‘picaninnies… with watermelon smiles’.
He has been very vocal about the real history of Britain being taught. ‘We cannot now try to edit or censor our past,’ he said. ‘We cannot pretend to have a different history.’ I have dealt with this earlier in the book but I will repeat: no one is asking for history to be edited. It has already been edited to suit a particular narrative. We need the unedited version. In 2014 there was a petition to update the curriculum in the UK to better reflect Black achievements, their history and the role of empire. It was rejected.
I think I’ve largely proved that much of the British education system is based on lies, disinformation and bias to prop up racial hierarchy, the legacy of empire and white supremacy. And why not? It is all that people like Johnson have known themselves. And he is terrified, just like all politicians, of the truth coming out.
Populist politicians, like Johnson and his ministers, know perfectly well what they are doing. It is a scheme, a ploy. It is deliberate distortion, misrepresentation of facts and straight out of the populist playbook. It doesn’t actually matter what is true to these people. What matters is what lies they can get away with, who they can enrage or make feel threatened to preserve and enhance their position and ambitions.
The row over the tearing down of statues is a good example. Politicians will argue that removing a statue of a slave trader is rewriting history. No. The statue being there in the first place is rewriting and whitewashing history. What other conclusion could you come to when the murder of Black people is something to be celebrated? In the summer of 2020 protestors in Bristol toppled a statue of Edward Colston. Colston was part of the Royal African Company which sold about 100,000 slaves from West Africa to the Caribbean and Americas. They were branded with the initials ‘RAC’ on their chests.
Quite a few people are now aware of who Edward Colston was and what he did. Why? Was it because there was a statue in Bristol praising him? Or was it because that statue was torn down and pushed into the nearby docks? Who is trying to rewrite history there? And how on earth can you possibly be offended by such an act? I want them all removed from public places. Place them in a museum if you like, so those who may want to learn their history can go and get themselves educated on the subject. I am not telling anyone to forget but please, in these enlightened times, don’t tell me you think those people should still be honoured.
This is serious stuff. These are dark and dangerous tactics by politicians. In my opinion it is the new form of brainwashing. They can see how their modus operandi has been challenged and they are desperately trying to provoke a sort of culture war, portraying people who just want education, equality and justice as traitors. That may sound strong but that is exactly where these politicians want this to go. They want to divide and rule.
They are trying to get into people’s heads and fill them with more rubbish. They are trying to continue the same story, or learned behaviour, which has been passed down for hundreds of years. They can no longer, unhindered and on a mass scale, physically abuse Black people, they can’t take away their rights, segregate them or deny them freedom, so they use this new method. It is a major concern that there is an evolution to the dehumanisation. Look at the insurrection at the Capitol in Washington. People carrying Confederate flags in the home of America’s democracy, for goodness sake.
The same people who are up in arms about history being rewritten are the people deliberately misunderstanding the term white privilege. The same people who retort ‘all lives matter’ in the face of the BLM movement. Or who claim that being woke – which, it seems to me, is being a human being of compassion – is a bad thing. That is how low they will go.
To combat that, people of all colours have got to come together. And, as I’ve said quite a few times in these pages, through the discussions with the icons who agreed to talk with me, nothing can be achieved unless white people and people of colour are hand-in-hand in this thing together. I think back to that white kid and Black kid playing together in New York City when I was young and my mom saying: ‘Mikey, we’ve got a chance.’ What she didn’t take into consideration was the age of the kids. No one is born a racist and those two kids hadn’t yet been influenced by the society they were about to grow up in. But things are changing. And the multicultural representation on the marches and protests proves that.
On that point, when I asked Adam Goodes about how we can bring about change, he turned the question round, asking not what people of colour could do but what their friends and neighbours from a different creed or culture could do.
‘How can you help your fellow countrymen and women, Black people, minorities in our community rise?’ he said. ‘Well, first of all, for me, it’s about understanding our differences. And noting that those differences, well, we may have a lot. And that’s okay, it’s okay to be different to other people and speak to a different God that has a different name. We love different people and the way that they love.
‘We have to acknowledge that we’re all different, but also that we’re all bonded by one thing, and that is we are humans, and we should want to see the best of each other and not the worst. And we need to celebrate that.’
Indeed, what was striking to me when talking to these athletes was how often they would have been brought up in multicultural environments, only to suffer racism as soon as they left. Thierry Henry didn’t see it in his community, nor did Michael Johnson. There’s a lesson there. If people from different backgrounds and cultures and countries can mix well, then multiculturalism works. Now, does it work because those folks are all in the same boat, united by their status? Possibly. But at the same time there is no ‘otherness’ there holding back those communities. As Thierry said, he ‘travelled without moving’. He could well have said that he learned to be open-minded and accepting of people who are different.
For Thierry, it was important for Black people to have role models. To have someone to look up to and aspire to be like. And I think education is wrapped up in that.
‘We do rise because we need heroes, we need examples,’ Thierry said. ‘We need guys who are going to be at the top for us. That’s why you stand up again – to try to reach the top. Because if you kneel, you know exactly what kneeling means. We need people from our community to be able to represent our community in business, in politics. That’s why we rise and we fight in an intelligent way. It’s not about how you fall; it’s about how you get up.’
Thoughts and feelings have to be backed by real action, though, from the power brokers in the world. And that means big business has to start behaving like activists, donating money, putting pressure on politicians to end the cycle of racial injustice.
‘We’re going to need help from the corporations and institutions because big money around the world makes a difference,’ said Ibtihaj Muhammad. ‘You ain’t gonna change it just on the streets.
‘If we think of it as a fight, I think that that can be a deterrent for people. This is a marathon. This has taken hundreds of years to get to where we are today. And it’ll take time to dismantle this system of oppression that exists, and big corporations are going to be a major part of that.’ There is good news on that front. JP Morgan committed $30 billion to advance racial equality for five years from 2020. That’s the largest bank in America, right there. In real terms, that money, they claim, is going to be used as loans for Black people, to fund community projects, build more affordable housing and help grow businesses. Remember redlining? Remember how Black folks could not get the financial support they so desperately needed to rise? Well, that’s a huge step in the right direction. Citibank and Bank of America have each pledged $1 billion for the same.
Nike has donated $40 million up to 2024 to support the Black community in the US. Apple plans to give $100 million to racial equality initiatives, Amazon $27 million and Sony $100 million. These numbers show that protest works. People walk, money talks. Adam Goodes spoke about money for indigenous businesses in Australia. We can’t get anywhere without that sort of financial support. It comes with a warning, though. Consumers are watching you, just to check it’s not being done for good publicity. Michael Johnson was clear on that.
‘I think we have to remember that they’re not just doing these things out of a moral obligation or because it is the right thing to do,’ he said. ‘They’re doing it because it hits the bottom line. And I’m fine with that. I don’t care how we get them there as long as we get them there, and I’m going to always assume that it’s because they want to do the right thing but it has to be economically advantageous to them. Whether that’s because it’s helpful to them, or because doing nothing is hurtful to them.
‘Racism didn’t all of a sudden just start happening with George Floyd. It’s been happening for hundreds of years, which just got highlighted in the moment. And you could turn on your television and not see major Fortune 500 companies with all these heartfelt, beautiful messages about their commitment to equality, and acknowledging the inequality in our systems and all of these sorts of things. Well, we’re not seeing any of that any more. In the moment you were, we were flooded with that. They’ve gone back to their same advertising, pushing their products, pushing their services.
‘A good friend of mine just went over to JP Morgan to run the programme that you’re talking about. Bank of America are trying to get financial institutions to loan to Black families and Black businesses for homes and mortgages and that sort of thing. So there are a lot of companies doing a lot of good, but let’s be clear that it’s our job to continue to hold them accountable.’ I suppose you could compare this situation to what the South African government legislated regarding inclusivity at the end of apartheid. Hopefully what these companies are doing will soon not be considered extraordinary but what socially responsible companies do.
I think the message here is ‘don’t let up’. I know I won’t be. And that’s something for me to recognise. In that summer of 2020, I stood up and said something. And as soon as I did, I thought, Uh-oh! I didn’t expect this reaction. I thought I would be able to slip back into a quiet life. I know I have to keep talking, keep trying to get people to listen to the truth. That’s progress for me, a guy who, when he encountered racism as a young man, turned the other way and thought, Not my problem. Then, as an older man, shrugged and grimaced inside without really doing anything about it. I have been on a journey myself.
And I am fully aware that for the words I have put together in these pages there will be a backlash. People will reckon I hate white people – I don’t (unless they reckon I married my wife to punish her!). Or that I don’t think ‘all lives matter’ – please, not again. And I’m ready for that. We can’t change the minds of those people. We can’t waste our time on them. But if we focus on those people who have open minds and are willing to learn and be taught new things, then we will continue to make progress. Bit by bit.
One day, people of colour might have equality. It will be the generation, young and hopeful and fierce, who marched together in 2020 that will propel us to that point. They are smart enough to see through the lies and the schemes and the tricks. They are smart enough to go online and educate themselves and educate others through social media. And as time goes by and those people rise themselves into positions of power, still teaching, still changing, progress will be accelerated.
And, listen, I don’t expect to be around to see the fruits of that labour and love. I will be long gone by the time we have a genuine level playing field, a day when the Black person is not stuck on first base and the white person is on third. It is going to take time. Maybe as long as my 6-year-old grandson getting to the ripe age I am now. But like my mom said to me, I think I can safely and happily say to him, and to you: ‘We’ve got a chance.’
STILL I RISE
By Maya Angelou
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise. […]
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries? […]
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise. […]
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.