It’s a whole lot easier to resist when you can find something to brace against.
It’s a whole lot easier to resist when you know what, exactly, you’re resisting.
Our country is not America. Collectively, the people of the UK both snootily look down upon and secretly envy the people of the US. We see the US as our immature, if overgrown, little brother. We are much more refined. Much more sophisticated. Much more domesticated.
Members of our police force are very unlikely to kneel on a man’s neck for nine minutes in broad daylight. That’s barbaric. If any of them did, they’d be thrown under the bus for sure. We’re civilised. We save that sort of thing for behind closed cell doors. Then we only maybe have to gaslight a few members of close family rather than millions of digital onlookers. The US still has a good few things to learn.
I’m only just beginning to dive into the truth of racism in our modern British society. But one thing I can see from Facebook alone is that it’s as present as it is in the United States. It just seems that we’ve had more practice at keeping it covert. As we learn to open the curtains, I believe we’ll be dismayed at what we find.
Our leaders will keep trying to convince us that there’s nothing to uncover, and our innate defensiveness around owning up to the racist ideas we’ve taken on from our racist society will make many of us easy to convince. That’s the beauty of the system. We are so much easier to control when we don’t realise we’re being controlled.
It’s harder to fight a floppy sock than it is a police baton. It’s easier to laugh at it. But that’s just the perfect opportunity for it to suffocate you. And I bet it fucking tastes bad, too.