Racism wants your silence: it’s time to speak out | Dexter Dias | TEDxExeter

Will the horrific death of George Floyd and the global Black Lives Matter protests be a turning-point in the struggle for racial justice? Human rights lawyer Dexter Dias QC (http://twitter.com/DexterDiasQC) believes they can be - but only if we use our power and privilege as citizens to demand change in every one of our spheres of influence. Dexter uses his research on four continents for his bestselling book The Ten Types of Human and his three decades’ experience of representing the families of people of colour who have been killed in state custody to expose how “race" is a myth used to justify inequality and discrimination. He argues that racism needs our silence. The antidote is for us commit to being anti-racist. And the time is now.
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This talk was recorded remotely for a virtual TEDxExeter event (http://www.tedxexeter.com) in June 2020 exploring racism and racial justice..
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CURATOR: Claire Kennedy https://twitter.com/clairekennedy__
PRODUCTION: Andy Robertson http://www.taminggaming.com and First Sight Media http://twitter.com/firstsightmedia
MUSIC: FONN http://www.fonnmusic.co.uk/
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Dexter Dias QC is an award-winning international human rights barrister, part-time judge and prize-winning researcher at Cambridge and Harvard. His areas of specialism include: terrorism, female genital mutilation, gender and honour-based violence, human trafficking and modern slavery, child soldiering, domestic violence and children in the criminal justice system. He has been instrumental in changing the law to better protect girls at risk of gender-based violence. During the last 30 years, Dexter has been involved in some of the biggest legal cases involving human rights, murder, crimes against humanity, terrorism, war crimes, contentious custodial deaths and genocide.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

Racism.

Everybody’s thinking about it.

Last week, the streets,

filled with thousands of people
in support of Black Lives Matter.

This weekend in central London,
other people standing around statues

making Nazi salutes and chanting,
"I’m racist and I’m proud."

And in the streets near to me,

youths chanting at me,
"I’d rather be a Paki than a Black."

So what is it like where you are?

And how can we change this?

I’m a human rights lawyer,

I've been a human right's lawyer
for 30 years, and this is what I know.

Once there was a man alone in a room.

He was 25 years old,
and his name was Alton.

And seven other men, seven strangers,

rushed into his room and dragged him out.

And they held him
in a horizontal crucifix position,

one on each arm, two on each leg,

and the seventh man

held Alton’s neck in a vice-like grip
between his forearms.

Alton was struggling for breath
and saying, "I can't breathe,"

just as George Floyd said,
"I can’t breathe."

But they didn’t stop.
And soon Alton was dead.

When I was asked to represent
his mother, his brother, and his sister

in the inquest into his death,

they asked me, How could it happen?

And I didn't have an answer.

Because Alton had injuries
all over his body.

He had bruising to his neck and his torso,

he had injuries to his arms and his legs.

He had blood in his eyes,
his ears, and his nose.

But they claimed no one knew anything.

They claimed they couldn't
explain how he died.

For Alton had two problems:

firstly, the corridor in which he died
was a prison corridor,

and secondly, he was black.

I want talk to you today
about Alton’s mother’s question:

How could such a thing
happen in our country?

How can these things happen
in countries across the world?

How can they happen still?

And what can we do to stop it?

For three decades, I’ve been representing
the families of people of colour

who have been killed in state custody
in the United Kingdom,

and I’ve done human rights work
across four continents,

and what I’ve learned is this:

if we want to do
something about racism,

we have to first understand what it is.

So let’s talk about
this thing called Race.

What exactly is it?

A fact of our lives,

one of the most powerful
forces in the world,

something we don't particularly
want to talk about.

It is all these things,

but it is something else:

It is a myth.

There is no such thing as race.

Scientific research from Harvard
and many other universities

shows that race is an illusion.

For example, someone of European descent

might be genetically closer
to an Asian person

than to someone else of European descent.

So if race isn’t a biological fact,
what actually is it?

It is a social construct,
which means it’s been invented.

But by whom? And for what reason?

As a species, we share 99.9%
of DNA with everybody else.

But visible external characteristics
like hair type and skin colour

have been used in order
to promote this racist genetic lie

about the supposed
racial genetic differences.

Racism has been endemic for centuries.

The Nazis, of course, were very keen
to promote the racist lie.

But also in the United States, there were
eugenic experiments and eugenic laws.

In Australia, children
of dual Aboriginal heritage

were confiscated from their parents
in order to create a White Australia.

This kind of thinking is rising again,

with alt-right groups hankering
after racially pure homelands.

How does this work?

You see, we don’t have
social inequalities because of race.

We have social inequalities
that are justified by race.

I started to understand this when I was
representing anti-Apartheid activists

and they showed me how Apartheid

was a system of social
exploitation and discrimination

that was justified by race,

by the supposed
superiority of white people

and the supposed inferiority
of Black people.

The Apartheid regime said it was Nature,

and so it was inevitable

and there was nothing
you could do about it.

The Mother Nature lie gives
discrimination and injustice a pass.

I've also found it in cases
where people suffer

from the legacy
of colonisation and empire.

I’ve seen similar effects amongst people
of the same colour in Africa

and how people of certain castes
are looked down upon in India.

The victims may be different,

but the mechanism,
the labelling, and the lies

is exactly the same.

And so you can see why people
are so keen to embrace the race thing:

because it gives the privileged,
people like us,

a get-out-of-jail-free card.

The simple truth is that Race is a system.

It is like oxygen, like an atmosphere.

It flows everywhere in our society.

It infects everybody it touches.

It protects power and privilege.

Whose?

Well, look around you.

So what is it like for people of colour,

people like me,

to try to speak
to white people about racism?

Many, many white people
find it extremely difficult to do.

Some white people
say they know nothing about it;

others say that our societies
may not even suffer from racism at all.

So if you are a white person
who is wondering about all of this,

there is a thought experiment
that you can do.

Because here’s the truth:

You know.

You already know.

So ask yourself this:

Would you, would you really,
want your son or your daughter,

your brother or your sister

to marry a practising Muslim
from the Middle East?

Or someone recently arrived
from South Asia who is a Hindu?

Or an asylum seeker
from Sub-Saharan Africa?

Or someone who's recently
crossed the US-Mexican border?

You may not have a total objection,

but you may have a concern,

a qualm that scratches
at the back of your brain.

It’s not because
of the colour of their skin

but because you know that in countries
like ours as things stand now,

their life prospects are likely
to be affected by this union.

And you realise that you do know,
you do understand,

that people will judge them.

And in a hundred ways,

those judgments will impact their lives
and the lives of their children.

At that moment, you are connecting
with a powerful truth,

which is that you know
systemic racism is real.

So why do you not want to talk about race?

Because it’s uncomfortable, certainly.

But that’s only part of the answer.

The bigger truth is far more damaging.

Your bristling is not just defensiveness;

it is a defense mechanism.

It defends the system of privilege

and the unequal division
of wealth and power.

Fragility gives racial inequality a pass.

Who are the winners and losers?

Well, look at the data.

In income, in health inequalities,

in school exclusion, in career prospects,

in "Stop and Search."

Look at how people of colour

have been disproportionately
dying of COVID.

So if the racial myth invisibilises

and the fragility response silences,

what choices are you left with?

The binary choice between you
being a racist and a non-racist?

Or is there another way?

Because almost everyone
in this TED Talk

will say that they are non-racist.

But we have to face it:
being non-something is not enough.

The third choice is being
actively anti-racist.

So if you agree that Black lives matter,

ask yourself,

How do Black lives matter in my life?

What have I done to show
that Black lives matter to me?

By adopting a visible, conscious,
active anti-racist stance,

what was once invisible is made visible,

what was once silenced
is shouted out loud and clear.

But that still is not enough.

After weeks of bitter struggle
at the inquest,

the all-white jury returned
to the courtroom in Alton’s case.

There was a moment of complete silence
when the foreperson stood,

and then he announced the verdict,

and it was unlawful killing.

And at that moment,
all hell broke loose in the courtroom,

and there was just
this deafening noise.

People were screaming,

and Alton’s sister
got up into the aisle to my left,

and she was pointing
at the prison officers

and shouting at them,

"You killed my brother.
You killed my brother."

The family desperately wanted

that the prison officers
who were responsible for Alton’s death

should be prosecuted.

We all desperately wanted that.

But not a single one of them
was prosecuted.

So we took the chief prosecutor to court,
the Director of Public Prosecutions.

And the highest Judge in the land,
The Lord Chief Justice, agreed

that the decision not to prosecute
was fatally flawed and unlawful.

Every day during Alton's case,

his brother would sit
on the courtroom steps,

and he would say to me,
"Train them up good today, Mr D."

But when he realised

that nobody would ever be prosecuted
for the killing of his brother,

it crushed him.

And he died a few years later
in a psychiatric hospital.

So how does Alton’s death connect to you,

and to the racism and privilege
in our societies?

What do I want from you?

What I want for myself
is to be put out of a job.

You see, families come to me
who are grieving,

and I see the hope in their eyes,

and I have to tell them

that the chances of anybody
ever being prosecuted

for being involved
in the killing of their loved ones

are very remote.

I saw these grieving faces
in the springtime of my career,

and I still see them
now I’m entering the autumn of it.

And the summer season
was full of blood.

And somehow I think
that the blood is on my hands

even though I know rationally
that that is not the case,

but I could not bring back
Alton or Gareth or Zahid

or any of the others,

which is all their
grieving families ever wanted.

So I’m asking you to see through the lies

and to see through one of the most
disempowering lies of them all,

that what we do will not
and cannot make a difference.

I’m sure they said that to Rosa Parks
and to Martin Luther King

and to Nelson Mandela.

And they just went ahead
and did it anyway.

And I tried to think of them

as I was cross-examining
the prison officers,

and I would say to each of them,

"Look at Mrs Manning," - Alton's mother -

"and you tell her why her son is dead."

And not a single one of them
could look at her;

they wanted her to be invisible.

Sadly, realising that no one
would to be prosecuted

for her boy’s death,

she sank into a deep depression

and she died.

But I’ll never forget how,
in the chaos and mayhem,

when that verdict was announced,

I turned to her and said, "Mrs Manning,
I’m very sorry for your family."

And she looked at me and said,
"Mr Dias, you are family."

And she pointed at the prison officers
and the jury, and she said,

"And they are family,
but families bicker and fight,

but we’ve got to sort it out,
and we've got to find a way."

So how do we sort it out, and when?

Dr King taught us,

"The time is always right
to do the right thing."

These contentious deaths in state custody

have taken place in prisons
and in police stations,

but finally, the spotlight
has been shone on them

by the horrendous death of George Floyd.

Now we can’t say that we didn’t know.

The COVID crisis and George Floyd’s death
have shocked us out of our complacency.

They’ve put the world in flux

because what has been seen
cannot be unseen.

So right now is a historic
moment of change.

Now is the time to take action
in our spheres of influence.

And we all have them.

We have voting power,
we have pocket power -

where we spend our money
and what we spend it on.

We have the power to confront racism
wherever and whenever we find it.

Those of you listening today
who have benefited from that privilege

have the opportunity
to turn it on its head

and to demand that society changes.

Ultimately, what happens
is now in our hands.

And this is what I know:

When someone in state custody
says, "I can’t breathe,"

they are in mortal danger,

but when a society doesn’t challenge

the oxygen of racism
that everyone breathes every day,

the hope for racial justice
and equality in that society

is also in mortal danger.

There can’t be any more
Altons and Gareths and Zahids

and Olasenis and Jimmys and Seans

and Cherrys and Breonnas ...

and Christophers and Georges …

But this isn’t just about deaths,

but about life

and about our human flourishing together.

And all of us are needed for that.

Racism wants to stay invisible. Expose it.

Racism wants your silence. Make a noise.

Racism wants your apathy.

Make a commitment now to use your voice
and your privelage and your power

to fight for racial justice always,

and to join the crescendo
of voices calling for change,

and to be part of the hope.

Will you join us?

(Video montage: Black Lives Matter)