“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”
I couldn’t resist taking a famous line from an oft-quoted author — himself a descendant of slave owners — that was published in his political fable, ‘Animal Farm’.
And I trust my audience to know why. I expect them not to jump to some irrational conclusion about comparing humans to animals. Just as Orwell did.
At the time of its publication —1945 — George Orwell’s ambitious allegory depicted pigs as an anthropomorphic representation of those who were in charge. Specifically, it reflected Russia’s Bolshevik revolution and the betrayal by Joseph Stalin.
As with much of Orwell’s writing, this message has undeniable pertinence today.
In the eyes of many, we are not all equal. For a lot of people, there will always be greater and lesser human beings in the world. In their view, there will always be those who are ‘bad’, some who are ‘good’ then probably a few who sit somewhere on a spectrum in between.
Judgment of others is something we all do. Each and every one of us. As humans, we have prejudices that exist as protective systems, hardwired into our survival coding in order to protect and prolong our lives.
Or are they?
Those who could argue the case ‘for’ this point may well say, “well, without scrutinizing the behavior of others we may lose our life or those of our dear ones. We could potentially lose our homes or possessions or our livelihoods.”
These folks, on the side of realism — a large section of society — would usually say that bad people are out to get them. They may be fretful of being hurt or badly affected in some undesirable and unsatisfactory way. So, at all costs, certain other people must either be destroyed or, where this is usually illegal, persecuted, put down or avoided.
But what about the arguments against?
Orwell’s depiction of animals was an attempt to convey how structural political systems were based on hypocrisy. Those who were in control, generally, were prone to making overt reassurances that they “had no greater privileges than any others”, that “everyone had an equal stake in society” and that “we are all in this together”.
And the truth is that there will probably always be a collective of individuals who want to, or need to, be in control of others. And a lot of people will want them to be in control. They will want to believe in someone who is confident, competent, courageous and charismatic — all the things they feel they’re unable to be. They need guidance, wisdom and instruction to know how to live a fulfilling life. They trust and believe in their leaders.
And for these reasons, among others, throughout history human beings have built powerful structural forms of hierarchy.
But then what if, as Orwell depicted, we should consider a need to be wary of those who reside in power? In the end, what if it is those in power whom we should be more scared of? Those who may be crooked, corrupted, bent and intent on holding detrimental control over us?
The transatlantic slave trade ended in 1808. In America, it continued illegally for another 50 years. The British ended their trade in 1807, however, did not abolish slavery completely until 1833. This was merely a few days before William Wilberforce — the figurehead in the fight against this injustice of human rights— passed away.
Until this time, then, for around 400 years it was OK to own another human being. Those who enabled this power said, “yeah, fine, you can have total power over someone else, treat them as an insignificant and exert whatever means necessary to get them to work for your, and our, benefit. And while you’re there, make them do what you yourself are not prepared to do while allowing them to feel that their lives mean absolutely nothing. That they exist merely to provide a service to you.”
This is when large numbers of British, Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, French, Spanish and — latterly — Americans chose to exert their power over others to their maximum capacity. And this happened for hundreds and hundreds of years.
Today, when the world witnesses the shocking and appalling death of George Floyd, I think it’s fair to say that human structural hierarchies are still perverted. The ensuing outrage is surely driven by the realization that people are not at all equal. George Floyd, may he rest in peace, was certainly not equal in the eyes of officer Derek Chauvin, nor those who enabled him to follow through on this dark agenda.
Can we really be surprised at the protest against this? And not just in the US, but around the entire globe. It’s as if the global pandemic which has affected all of us, has also made us realize that there are insidious structural, systemic issues at play that affect every single human being on the planet.
In Bristol — the 6th largest city in England — a statue of a prominent slave trader has just been torn down after 125 years.
During his lifetime, slave trader Edward Colston was responsible for exerting his power over at least 84,000 Africans. His statue had stood proudly in a street named after him, in remembrance of the Bristolian lives he’d changed through his philanthropic works. And today, having been recklessly tossed into Bristol’s waters, Edward Colston’s statue acts to symbolically represent the treatment he recklessly displayed to 20,000 African’s who he let perish in the waters of the Middle Passage under his watch.
With such a dark history to how white people traditionally treated black people, we cannot attempt to countenance a response to #BlackLivesMatters with the phrase ‘All Lives Matters’. The reason for this is that, still today, black and white people are not equal citizens.
There are those who hold power over us — our politicians, our public servants, our law enforcers — who show that they are also not equal to us. They have power and privileges that could never be afforded to the likes of you nor I.
And then there are those who haven’t forgotten that — for 400 years — white people held and exerted power over black people.
Take my name, for example. I am a white, Anglo-Saxon protestant male from the UK, with Celtic ancestors and English blood. My name, King, is shared by many black people and — in particular — the leader of the Civil Rights Movement, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
MLK was in fact born ‘Michael King’. However, when his pastor father changed his name to reflect the leader of the Protestant Reformation — Martin Luther — , Michael King Jr then chose to become Martin Luther King Jr.
So why does anyone care?
Well, it certainly has crossed my mind that my ancestors could well have owned slaves, as did George Orwell’s. My hunch tells me, if I listen to it, that my surname reflects a family history of white ownership over black people. And if that is the case then I am frankly ashamed.
And whether it is true or not won’t ultimately matter. As a white person, I have a responsibility to put the work into making the structural systems better for all black people.
As a white person, it is my responsibility to ensure that the systems are not biased towards white people. As a white person, it is my responsibility to raise my voice and challenge racial prejudices or biases against black people.
And the reason it’s my responsibility is because white people have not had to face up to our shameful past with any sense of real accountability, until now.
I also see that it is a sign of apathy to troll out a quick hashtag of ‘All Lives Matter’ on social media, just as it is far too easy to simply darken our social media pages on a Tuesday to say we stand in solidarity with black lives, without actually doing anything to change them.
Action needs to happen. Words and images are not enough. But this action can only happen once white people accept that for hundreds of years we were influenced both to seek control over black people and to be scared of them.
And let me say it — white people have a history of perverting justice over black people.
So, of course all lives matter.
Except when they don’t.
And it is the people who hold the power who can change that.
