Campaigners say Cambridge is still divided a year on from Black Lives Matter

More than a year after the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter protests, the movement has all but disappeared.

However, racism in Britain became a hot topic last week after three footballers from black England suffered a torrent of racist abuse from the public after losing the final match of Euro 2020.

Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka responded gracefully and five were arrested for their comments online, but the rest of the country was forced to face the ugly truth of racism in Britain.

Read more: Five excluded from the Cambs school after racist attack after the final of Euro 2020

For Cambridge activists, their commitment to ending racism never went anywhere.

Barnie Hakata, who grew up in Chesterton, experienced racial slurs from his classmates and peers.

He said that this racism was simply "acceptable" in Cambridge, and that the barrage of abuse "destroys you as a person."

Now 22, Barnie was behind some of the biggest Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 that Cambridge has seen in a long time.

Looking back on a campaign year after the assassination of George Floyd and the recent racism suffered by black British footballers at Euro 2020 games, CambridgeshireLive He spoke to Barnie about anti-racism work that he says still needs to be done in this "divided city."

Cambridge's wealth division is "extremely obvious"

Barnie said the "obvious" division in the city affected his childhood, as well as the city's black communities.

Barnie explained: "[At school] my name was [the N-word and variations]. Absolutely disgusting derogatory terms that people were using openly, who were confident they had a lot to lean on. They were friends, schoolmates.

"[This language] it is more acceptable here than in other cities such as Manchester and London, where the division of the population is not as marked between ethnic groups.

“When there is a word that can describe the total destruction of your identity as an individual, the torment and torture that your entire family has experienced for the past 400 years, that word will hurt you deeply. It affected my sanity growing up. "

With a younger brother and sister still in school, he felt the need to "do something personally about it" to make sure they were never called that.

But according to him, the problem is not specific to his school.

He said: “Black and brown communities are so disadvantaged that they are essentially divided into ghettos in certain areas. [in Cambridge]. It is very clear where the wealth of the city is. "

On a broader level, a 2018 report by the think tank Center for Cities identified Cambridge as the least equal city in the UK for two years in a row, with the top six per cent taking home 19 per cent. percent of the total income of the population. city, leaving the bottom 20 percent of wage earners taking home 2 percent of total income.

On a personal level, Barnie said that he has been rejected from job interviews because of his natural afro.

He said: "A friend who worked in the business told me that the manager had laughed at my hair after I left, commenting on how ridiculous it was that he thought I could get a job there with 'hair like that.'

“Now I work in a bar and they constantly tease me about my afro. You may have a hard time finding a job if you have your hair in its natural form when our prime minister can walk around with his hair looking the way he does, "he added, referring to Boris Johnson's hair sometimes seemingly unbrushed.

The University of Cambridge, one of the largest employers in the city, is improving its track record on various student hires and admissions each year.

However, there remains a problem with the representation of Black and Ethnic Minority (BAME) in leadership positions according to the University's 2020 Equality Information Report, which shows fewer Black and Ethnic Minority (BAME) staff. ) in academic positions (12.3 percent) than the Russell Group Average of 16.1 percent.

TO report published in 2020 revealed systemic racism suffered by both students and staff, with the incidents occurring primarily in universities. Of the 117 incidents reported between October 2018 and 2020, 87% of the reports came from students and 10% from staff.

Outside of college topics, Barnie named areas north of the city "poor areas with large numbers of ethnic communities."

Abbey and Kings Hedges are the two most deprived areas, according to a 2019 Multiple Deprivation Index from Consumer Data Research.

The Map shows that parts of Barnwell and Kings Hedges are in the second decile of deprivation, marked in red. Orange represents the third decile, light green and then dark green represent the most prosperous areas.

Deprivation is measured using levels of income, employment, education and skills, deprivation of health and disability, crime, barriers to housing and services, and deprivation of living environment.

Barnie added: "These areas are particularly known for lacking the worst schools, facilities, access to hospitals and resources in the city."

And despite the relatively low proportion of BAME students citywide, disproportionate numbers of black Caribbean and Gypsy, Roma and nomadic children received fixed-term exclusions in 2018/19 in Cambridgeshire, which was criticized as a "devastating failure of local authorities".

In his experience, Barnie said that this was the educational system that taught young black men like him that they are "bad." He said: “Blacks have to grow up faster. That is a failure. "

In addition to education, there has been criticism of the way the police treat racism.

In 2021 Cambridgeshire Police Force was one of 12 British forces that did not accept a single complaint of racially motivated misconduct, after receiving accusations against 132 police and personnel for five years.

Barnie said, “Black youth are seen as a danger, a threat. There is not one aspect of our society that you can name that does not have a racial problem. Education, health, police, law ”.

He referenced the over-representation of BAME people in the prison systems of England and Wales, who make up 25 percent of all prisoners, while only 14 percent of the general population.

Lammy Review 2017 evidence found that black people nationwide were 53 percent more likely to be sent to prison for an indictable crime, black men 26 percent more likely to be arrested, while a 60 percent more likely to plead than not guilty.

In the healthcare sector, black and ethnic minority people accounted for a disproportionate number of deaths at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

A June 2020 Public Health England report found that Black Caribbean and other black ethnicities, along with Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis and other Asians, had a 10 to 50 percent increased risk of death from Covid-19 than white British.

Mortality rates were higher in black and Asian ethnic groups compared to white ethnic groups.

Black women are four times more likely to die than white women during pregnancy or childbirth in the UK, according to the MBRRACE-UK 2021 report. Statistics like these, says Barnie, show that the racial problem is systemic.

The Black Lives Matter protests that continued throughout 2020 and 2021 in Cambridge, which Barnie helped organize, were aimed at highlighting racism as "a British problem" not just an American one and uniting the "power found in numbers."

He said: “The protests are to educate people about the racist structures in the city of Cambridge. Nothing has changed structurally, everything we said last year we continue to do. This requires a long and constant effort to dismantle deeply ingrained structures in our society that benefit a small group at the expense of many ”.

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