Read on Twitter
I'm not going to lie this has disturbed me on a soul level. I completely accept and respect the decision to take the statue down. The truth of it is that the racist feelings of some towards it would have put actual lives/livelihoods in danger. That is the truth of our lives...
And I absolutely support what takes up the empty space should/will be decided by the people of Bristol. However what I WILL NEVER ACCEPT is how many people spoke about yesterday and about the statue without once mentioning Jen Reid's name...without even looking at the Black woman
I can't even articulate the ways it hurts right now. No one cared about her choices - whether flawed or not - no one cared to read or see how story, her Black Bristolian/British story, not one dared to was human enough to have any agency in her image being there...
The tears flow again. Some of you will never understand that as I speak these words all the women before me, all Black, some ancestors , almost all flawed and complex and told time and time again their lives don't matter, all never asked for their story are crying too...
I can literally feel it. I can hear my grandmother saying 'nwa m ọ dị mma'. But I am a result of all their stories, ships from Bristol went to Biafra, and us Black women deserve to be seen, to be raised, to be multitudes, and to be honoured. And this pain is ancestral...
And it will never sit easy for me. NEVER. Whoever's mouth the erasure is coming out of. I will never make this okay for you. I will never stop asking for better because I know soon it will be my daughter you are doing it to. It will be her name you are refusing to say.
You see how it goes? You see how easily it happens? You see how in order to knock down the White man, it's always the Black woman that is erased or easily forgotten. You see it yet? My blood fizzes...and I don't know if it's ancestry talking through me or rage. Or both...
So as you choose to swill, spit and swallow the White artist's name around your mouth over and over, I SEE YOU. As you talk as though that plinth was not filled with an image of whole woman's body and life, I SEE YOU. Because in doing so you too become a threat and I SEE YOU.
