It is not the responsibility of black people to make the case for structural racism.
Here is just one of the (many) ways I have benefitted from it in my life in the UK.
In Year 4 (or 4th Grade to my non-UK friends), a black boy - the only black boy in my school - picked on me, for the same reason any child bullies or picks on another: he was hurting, and didn't know what else to do.
One day, that boy left very suddenly - taking all the blackness I had ever known with him - and our teacher sat the class down to explain that he lived 4 hours away from our school.
This poor, poor, exhausted black boy - Dominic - had to rise at 4 or 5AM every morning, just so his poor, exhausted mother could do the school run, because no school in his area would take a black boy.
Some context for his dislike of me: I was not a bad student, but I was an autistic boy in a mainstream school. Sometimes lessons would move too quickly, and I would hide and make a show of working to avoid getting told off for not doing my work.
Already, I had learned that boys don't ask for help.
I lived 20 minutes away. Of course my school would take a disabled white boy with no issue. I got a good breakfast and a full night's sleep every day, and could be ready to learn - even if it was not in my style.
Poor Dominic was too exhausted and hungry to notice. He looked at me, and he saw a white boy that got to sleep in, who got a good sleep, who had his breakfast -- and then couldn't even be bothered to do his work.
He hated me for that. He got angry, because he was so tired.
He took how upset and frustrated he was out on me. Of course bullying must never be tolerated - but punitive deprivation never works as punishment.
We must use rehabilitation and reparation. We must understand why the bully does this, and address why.
We were both 9 years old. 9 years old, and already this boy suffered the horrors of structural racism that ruined his education, whilst I coasted by, happily oblivious, always welcome at my local school, that was always willing to understand my problems, but never his.
I have always been able to access local education. I have never had those opportunities denied. Yes, some of these places have had an ableism issue - but they have always had a far greater race issue.
White Privilege - any privilege - describes the advantage of compound interest on social capital. It's not a cudgel. We only have to understand that this accrues - as it did for me - from 9 years old. Certainly even earlier than that. Across an entire life.
Did Dominic target me, partly for the unique advantages of my race and disability? Perhaps. I'm almost certain. Yes, he is accountable for the harm he did me - and he is also owed accountability from the racist system that picked on him in the first place.
His anger and frustration at his circumstances was not wrong. His crime was a targeting error. Nobody can be accurate when they're so young and so tired and so hungry.
Two disadvantaged people resenting each other didn't result by mistake. It is the system working as intended.
We are all held back by this pretended hierachy of oppression. We are all, in our own ways, the victims of capitalistic white supremacy, even when we are, like me, beneficiaries of it.
We must not succumb to the ploy of pitting the disadvantaged against each other.
We must move forward in a spirit of solidarity, and work together. By dismantling racism and its institutions, no more Dominics need to resent white boys for being able to sleep and eat before they come to school ever again. We all benefit.
I hope Dominic is thriving today, in spite of everything. I hope he is enjoying a good life, and managed to get a good education - and I hope things can only get better for him, and others like him.
Let us work together, brother. #BlackLivesMatter
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