The global injustice to Black lives

The Talk Talk radio presenter Julia Hartley - 'the killer' - Brewer (her shock jock promotional blurb) called up yesterday wanting to talk about the ‘Blacklivesmatter’ protest at City Airport.  Actually, she didn’t really want to talk about ‘Blacklivesmatters’ or the issues they seek to raise, but rather to spew scorn on the movement because of the ‘disruption they are were causing to passengers’.

My first rhetorical question to her outrage was: ‘if these activists had not  done this would you be calling me up to even remotely talk about race inequality?'

Then I tried to spend the following ten minutes or so using all the trusted and recent evidence that showed, for no other reason than the colour of one’s skin and or religion, people are being discriminated against. Including, a point made by the protestors that poorer areas, where a disproportionate amount of Black people live often have the poorest air quality too.

Hartley Brewer’s predictable response was to brush aside the mountain of evidence outlining ‘entrenched racism’ which was highlighted by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and the Prime Minister herself, and to spout: ‘yeah but, Black single families, rap music, attitude, drugs’, etc, etc, etc.

In the end I suggested that if she really wanted a debate about race inequality, she should do some basic research instead of showing her own prejudices.  Then we could talk about how we address the problem, rather than arguing if the problem exists.

I don’t advocate all the actions of Black lives matters UK, but I applaud their energy and desire that demands these issues be confronted.

Moreover, when we look at the research not just in our own back yards, but globally, it’s easy to get a sense of how global injustice works against Black people.

Recent data from the Medigo – a global medical research organisation that maps out what diseases kills populations around the world- has just released some truly shocking facts.

In almost all the four corners of the globe- Europe, the Americas, the Pacific, the Middle East, and South East Asia - Coronary artery disease and strokes are the two biggest killers. The monstrous exception is Africa which puts the number one global killer at number 4. The biggest deaths in Africa are HIV and Pneumonia. These alone account for more than half of the deaths on the continent. Furthermore, on other continents these deaths don’t even register on their top 6 indicators because the numbers are so small.

The great sadness about HIV and pneumonia is that they are very treatable diseases, and like diarrhoea, another big killer only in Africa, they are bound up with poverty and lack of power. Not surprisingly, Central and Southern Africa has the lowest mortality rate on the planet, some 15 years lower than the average.

Blacklivesmatters and other race equality organisations must continue the fight to confront this monstrous inequality that literally kills millions of Black people who shouldn’t have to die.

But ‘shock radio jocks’ such as Julia Hartley - 'the killer' - Brewer would not want to engage in this discussion except, perhaps to inform her listeners that these Africans had brought these deaths on themselves by doing this, that and the other.

Simon Woolley

https://www.medigo.com/blog/infographics/mortality-causes-of-death-2015-...