A Conversation
Tags: Racism, BlackLivesMatter, George Nkencho, Ireland, George Floyd

This is a new year. But a new digit on a date can herald no real change when it starts, as it has here in Ireland with a Black man named George (Nkencho) being gunned down by armed police in Dublin, in front of his family.

When we see on the media his name erased and replaced with the word ‘Thug.’ When repeated requests from his family that the video not be shared, are ignored. When social media outlets like Facebook transgress the Nkencho family’s grief and the collective sorrow of Black people by refusing to take down the video.

What change can a 0 moving to a 1 have in this perpetual story where skin colour means a life is worth less and therefore deemed worthless?

By those who hold the gun, the pen and who write the rules and the stories.

But this is not my story to tell — though like so many others the reverberations of hurt, anger, and awareness of injustice move me to speak — I can only speak to my own experience.

And so my story is about a conversation.

A day I talked at length with a young man. Who was so tense in his body, so distressed, raging and hurt in his mind it robbed his ability to form words, when I first approached. His anger was in his rapid breath, heaving shoulders and unintelligible half-words. Evident too, in the chef’s carving knife he had carried and the rock he held, and in his desire to do hurt to someone.

I remember the adrenalin in my body when that conversation started, when I had first intervened.

All I had were words.

All five foot nothing of me.

Talking. Listening. Waiting. Walking — with him.

No police background.

No tactical training.

No pepper spray.

No taser.

No gun.

No armed unit of men around me.

(who were also armed thus.)

No protective clothing.

No helmet.

No bullet proof and stab proof vest.

I was just a lass in my early twenties, wearing my flip flops and a summer dress.

Just talking. And listening. And waiting. And talking. And listening. And walking with him.

A distance between us, so neither of us felt hemmed in or threatened.

Listening. Talking. Walking.

For as long as it took.

Till we sat.

Because he finally did as I had been intermittently asking — put the objects down — and walked further on to sit with me in the shade of a tree.

To talk more.

And that is what we did.

It was a conversation that did not end in Death.

It was a conversation that did not end in Violence.

Actually, to be honest, it probably ended because we were both really tired.

Adrenalin and anger will do that. Hurt will do that. It will drain you to talk of it and to listen to it. It will leave you limp with exhaustion, or flatten you with the heaviness of the realities of life — that weigh so many of us down. The kind of problems that you feel have no ready solution and seem interminable.

But he, with his brown skin the same as mine, he did not die.

Because, in the end, I did have something more than words. I had something more important than any spray, a taser, a gun, a bullet proof — stab proof vest, a helmet, a team of similarly armed and trained men around me.

I had the belief that his humanity mattered.

As much as those others around me, whom I was intervening to protect, and my own.

That our lives mattered - equally.

That is what racial prejudice does not allow.

I can reference white mass murderers, (and they are predominantly white and male when it comes to multiple killings), who were armed with assault rifles, successfully brought to Justice, not Death — despite the immense harm they had already done to others. The Christchurch Massacre, The Norway Massacre, The Port Arthur Massacre — these white male shooters were successfully disarmed and detained. It is not an impossible thing. Gun or Knife.

But it did not happen for George and it is not a question of why when it comes to White Justice Systems, because lost in the Irish news of the same day is the story of a Black Woman named Elaiki.

Seeking asylum, as entitled via International Humanitarian Law, she was detained and interred for eight years, then died within the Irish State Justice process of a segregation and holding system, known as Direct Provision.

No reporting or clarification possible, aside from a few tweets.

No records because the Irish Justice System will not publish this data.

There is no account, it seems, for those who in such systems do not count.

George and Elaiki.

The last day of 2020 they did not go to their beds and see the dawn of a new year.

Because the change of digits cannot change the predilections of a prejudiced and racist White Injustice System.

Additional reading: George Nkencho death: ‘I just want justice for my brother’ Sorcha Pollak Thu, Dec 31, 2020

Information about deaths in Direct Provision no longer released by department Between 2003 and 2013, 53 people who lived in Direct Provision died. ‘Don’t feel guilty for being white — do something with it’ Dr Ebun Joseph speaks out by Lizzie Gore-Grimes 13 JULY 2020

Inar: Racism in Ireland Resources

Images below sourced from indicated Twitter accounts