As a Black person myself, I have heard phrases that undermine black oppression and belittle our feelings as a minority group. They say, “But slavery happened over 400 years ago”, or “but the UK is one of the least racist countries.” That is correct but should not be a sentence used to invalidate the fact that racism still occurs towards Black people and is something that hinders them in today’s society.
Although slavery is over, institutional racism is colossal issue which needs to be brought to light and eventually extinguished. Institutional racism is a form of racism that is embedded as a normal practise within society or an organisation. In the UK it has been confirmed that institutional racism has been present in the Metropolitan Police service, criminal conviction, healthcare, education, and employment. It is important to recognise that for Black people and many people of colour, race provides a barrier. Black people are treated disproportionately to other races within several key sectors, and from an outside perspective it is difficult to fathom the reality of racism beyond government-run institutions.
Twenty-four-year-old Nicole Thea died from a heart-attack along with her unborn son during labour. She was not unfit or unhealthy. She was a dancer. This death left many confounded with shock and confusion considering her age and health. The likelihood of a young, healthy woman dying in labour must be next to nothing, so it left me, and her other 250,000 followers flabbergasted. Then it clicked. What other limiting factors are there other than her age and her health? Her race. Nicole Thea was a bright, young, Black creator who died in labour with her unborn son and many believe that her race played a pivotal role in her death. In her YouTube video she explained: ‘I’m so out of breath 27/4. I would walk from here to the end of the room and feel like I am dying. I feel like the baby’s eating me.’ She also addressed blurred vision, vomiting, and shortness of breath – symptoms of preeclampsia (a pregnancy complication). In her video it was also revealed that she told her midwife how she felt but the midwife told her it was ‘normal’ since she was ‘carrying a human being’. Many speculate that Nicole’s complaints were not taken seriously due to her race and would have been taken seriously if she were white, which is devastating.
These statistics that show the disproportionate maternal death rates:
The Independent says ‘Janet Fyle, a senior midwife and professional policy advisory, is adamant that underlying prejudice among midwives is a crucial factor in the deaths of black mothers: “Black women are categorised according to a white perspective; they are not believed, this notion of them having a higher threshold for pain and these biases mean that we miss serious conditions or the opportunity to escalate serious changes in the woman’s condition in a timely way.”’
What we as a community can do to help end the racism and prejudice black people face today is to stay informed and do our best to contribute to making a change. Signing petitions is one way you can help and is one way that is efficient since websites such as change.org can be accessed through your mobile and done in under 60 seconds – so you can quite literally make change to the world in the palm of your hand.
After Nicole Thea’s death I signed the petition “Improve Maternal Mortality Rates and Health Care for Black Women in the U.K.” (https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/301079) and received an email link to The Joint Committee on Human Rights (a group of MPs and Members of the House of Lords) talking to the Chief Midwifery Officer about the disproportionate levels of maternal deaths among black women and the protection of black women’s human rights in maternity services, which you can watch here: https://parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/a8f4e521-bca9-48df-90dc-a69c011b9b9b. This shows how important something as small as signing a petition is and how big of an impact it has.
Here is a list of links to petitions that target Black issues which you can sign:
