On safety pins
Dear every person I know who’s currently in the UK and doesn’t look like a migrant*:
Please wear a safety pin.
Its not like I haven't experienced mild racism in the UK before, but this referendum seems to have legitimised the fact that migrants are now apparently open targets. I've had friends have racial slurs yelled at them, openly, on streets and tubes and buses, and apparently 52% of the electorate endorsed this.
I am suddenly so very angry and so very terrified.
Home isn't home anymore, it turns out, and public transport is a waking nightmare of not meeting anyone's eyes while making sure i'm near other people of colour because at least we can maybe have solidarity in numbers.
Seeing a safety pin is a nice little reminder in this weird scary new world that actually, maybe it's not everyone.
At a time when the politicians are too busy ignoring their responsibility to their electorate, it's a welcome reminder that Britain is made up of decent people doing decent things, every single day.
To everyone who thinks I'm being a little melodramatic here - its not even that race crime is up 56% that terrifies me so, it is that 15 days ago one of these people caught up in this rhetoric shot and stabbed an MP in broad daylight, and, in the collective fugue state following Brexit we seem to have somehow stopped being horrified by this.
To my well-meaning liberal friends who've been engaging in earnest debates about whether really a safety pin is enough and whether going along with it is discouraging bigger, more long term action aimed at tackling xenophobia and racism - I love you but get over your fucking privilege.
Of course bigger, more direct action is needed. A lot of the people who voted to leave and who will be hardest hit by the ramifications because they felt overlooked and disenfranchised did so because they have been let down by every major public I institution in this country. We need better education, more public infrastructure, a less virulent media, dots joined up between globalisation and colonialism and the economic benefits of migration and whatever else.
But actually, where all of this starts is in the next two days, and two weeks and two months. It starts with everyone taking whatever small step they can to say 'Not in my country and not in my name'.
If even one person sees your pin and feels a little better for it, a little less like an unwelcome leech and a little more a part of the community, then good job, and let's get to work on the bigger things.
*This whole spiel is predicated on you not being a closet racist; if you are then kindly unfriend me and fuck off out of my life.
(So I understand this is all caveated with the fact that the issues of free movement and labour within the EU and general racism got horrendously mixed up during this referendum campaign and the post above wasn’t trying to address all of it — it was more a very personal and somewhat visceral reaction to the bit of it that affected me. It’s not trying to be all encompassing political commentary, just one slice of the collective trauma that the country is currently going through…)
