“No dogs, no blacks, no Irish”

This was a sign that was hung outside many rental properties in the UK in the 50s and early 60s. Many returned from the Korean War and couldn’t find a place to rent in London

The fact that we are still talking about racism in 2020 is a global embarrassment but a friend presented me with an analogy today, which I will share below, which explains the reason why we are still in this mess and why people like myself (who do not see colour and choose to treat everyone equally) are a big part of the problem due to our silence. Here is the analogy:

When you attend a football match in a stadium with 70,000 fans in attendance and players on the field can hear racist abuse and we say: “it is the action of a handful of idiots”. Well, if the voice of 5 individuals can be heard as 69,995 others remain silent, therein lies the problem

It is that majority who need to stop being silent and get our voices heard and we will succeed in drowning out the racists, bigots and idiots out there. But if you look at social media today, instead of the majority standing up to be counted, we accuse Facebook, Twitter and others for not doing enough. We accuse owners of football clubs for not doing enough, we accuse governments of not doing enough. Well, that is the reason this problem is never going to end

When we find our voices as a majority and weed out those few, drown out their hateful voices, we will make progress as a society. This starts with each individual and that is the reason I have addressed this matter this week. A topic I never spoke about prior to now as I always believed the real issues are those of poverty, illiteracy and inequality

As Lewis Hamilton said last week: WHERE’S THE REST OF US?

Silence offers no solution…..