My dad is Jamaican, my mum is white British. Black Lives Matter is important to me as a human and I have lived my life at times feeling ‘other’ in all worlds.  As a mixed race woman, I have been thinking long and hard about Black Lives Matter, and the role I can play in tackling both systemic and everyday racism.

I fess up that for me, tackling the everyday feels much more achievable than the systemic racism. I have had my mind blown in training situations over the years. I’ll never forget a session that I was facilitating, with my colleague Richard a few years back, for a group of councillors with a local authority. One delegate argued with Richard that using the term Golly Wog was not offensive, as I stood there along with another colleague, who is of an ethnic minority. It’s a strange world where the white man (Richard, my colleague) was reasoning with this delegate and challenging the racism, while we stood on aghast.

In some ways, the activism of the last few weeks, from so many people, has reminded me of that moment. That white people, people from all ethnicities, come together to address the inequality and injustice of the experience that black people face. Being mixed race has for many years meant that I have just gone along with the BAME (Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic) umbrella, but as I think now about my identity – my heritage – I understand the group wide categorisation of BAME, but also clearly see the need for de-categorisation. Not just for personal reasons about how we identify, but also to help other people learn about deeper differences that just white and BAME. Think about this from the broadest use of Black: well, what is the person’s heritage? Are they Somalian? Are they Jamaican? Are they Nigerian? And, also without forgetting… are they British?

We need to dig into these differences. Right now, some lives don’t seem to matter, or maybe, matter less than others. They are Black lives. We need to tune into this and turn it round, for all of us, so that when black lives matter, then, we can start talking about all lives matter.