Black Bodies Matter
It is nine short months since Black Trail Runners made its first public statement, announcing that “Trail running has a problem with diversity.” A frequent challenge we’ve had since then is the claim that, despite the evidence to the contrary, the trails are open to everyone, the landscape is colour-blind. Our assertion that black people are systemically treated differently, that black bodies are perceived differently, is dismissed and belittled. Two recent stories give the lie to this disingenuous narrative.
It was revealed last week that an Ivy League university had kept bones from black children killed in a 1985 police bombing (a phrase the explanation of which this blog does not have enough space to explore), and is currently featuring them in an online anthropology course, without the permission of the children’s living parents.
If you imagine this disregard for black bodies is a uniquely American phenomenon, please let this second story, from the UK, disabuse you. Last week a report into the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (formerly the Imperial War Graves Commission) concluded that more than a hundred thousand black and brown allied casualties from World War One had been commemorated unequally from their white comrades, or not commemorated at all. While white soldiers are buried individually in carefully tended war cemeteries, black soldiers – no less citizens of the Empire – are in unmarked and disregarded mass graves. Of course, we aren’t surprised but this pervasive racism in the early 20th Century. But this injustice – which directly contradicts the stated purpose of the Commission to treat all Commonwealth casualties equally – has been known of, and ignored for more than a century. Allowing unequal treatment to persist is no different to treating people unequally today.
It’s tempting to employ a counter-factual as a rhetorical device – can you imagine if these bones were those of white people? – but to do so is to insult your cultural and moral intelligence. There needs no dissonant opposite to demonstrate the inhumanity of this. Just imagine your child’s bones being used in a lab demonstration for curious students, without your consent. Without the thought that your consent may even be necessary. Because you are black. Because your child, when she was more than a bone specimen, was black. Imagine your ancestor lying anonymously in a mass grave because the colour of his skin deemed him not worthy of individual commemoration.
What does this have to do with trail running? Why does this matter? It’s a question I’ve asked rhetorically before. And the answer is the same. Trail running does not exist outside of society; it is part of society. While that society is able to perpetuate these injustices, it is no wonder that trail running is unrepresentative. If you are not outraged by this current-day lack of respect for a black girl’s bones, this persistent unequal treatment of imperial soldiers of colour, if all the people you know are not outraged, how likely is it that you and they will be concerned about a black person’s access to the trails, representation on the trails, inclusion on the trails?
The social media channels of many UK sports teams, athletes and governing bodies went dark this weekend, in a protest against continuing online racist abuse, bullying and harassment. At BTR, we respect the intentions of those supporting this action, but we aren’t joining the boycott. We do not believe the answer to online abuse is the silence of those being abused. One of our founding principles is the amplification of our voice and presence in the media, in an ongoing attempt to undo decades of under-representation. Social media will not be improved by our absence. Our voices have been unheard for too long.