keeping educated

May 2023. For some, a joyous month. Three bank holiday weekends, the beginning of warmer weather and the start of summery activities. With tens of thousands of people travelling into London for the coronation of the new monarch and other related events, the weekend saw our much beloved capital city step into the international spotlight once again. And yet, in the same beloved city, away from patriotic celebrations, street parties and national anthems, violence ripped across East London as a series of shootings and stabbings occurred. On the eve of the coronation alone, three unrelated attacks would take place in the span of just 8 hours. Each one of these attacks would result in the loss of a young life. A train-station in Dagenham. A doorstep in Hackney. A secondary school in Walthamstow.  These were the locations where Jordan Kukabu, 18, Sebastian Zon, 27, and Renell Charles, 15, would take their final breaths. Renell's death marked the 150th teenager to be murdered as a result o...

On the 16th March 2022, I posted a trigger warning to my Instagram story, preparing to post what for many would be yet another provoking wake up call and what for many young black teens (especially young black girls in regards to this article) was unfortunately an every day reality. Angry and upset, I would go on to spam my story with screenshots of news articles, posts by several different accounts and my own little personal contributions.  This story, although representing a wider issue that we all knew of, was one like I'd never seen before. I'd seen plenty of horror stories in the news, stories regarding the Met and other police forces. It had been two years since 2020. Two years since 14 year old me took it upon herself to learn about institutional racism and the 'bad guys' who were police officers. The 'bad guys' who were the Metropolitan police: the force that had been 'taking care' of me since I was born in London just over seventeen years ago. I...

On the 20 th of April 2021, nearly three months ago, former Minneapolis police officer – Derek Chauvin- was found guilty on the charges of second degree murder, first degree murder and third degree manslaughter after being swiftly and unanimously convicteby the jury for the killing of 46 year old, Black male,   George Floyd on May the 25 th 2020. Although it was a relief that Chauvin had finally been convicted, this quickly raised questions about why we as the black community as well as our allies were so scared to find out what the verdict would be, even though there was video evidence on what had happened and the verdict was nothing but obvious.  Unfortunately, the answer is simple.  We have been in this situation countless times before. With the murder of 7 year old  Aiyana Mo'Nay Stanley Jones  in 2010, the murder of 12 year old Tamir Rice in 2014 and the murder of   Breonna Taylor just last year just,  We have seen police officers murder and the...

Like a lot of you reading this, I spend most of my time split between school, homework, spending time with friends or family, and scrolling through social media for what seems like endless hours on end. Whether it be Instagram, Twitter, Tik Tok, Snapchat, or Facebook, social media is constantly evolving and seems to have a new purpose every day. Originally, social media appeared to be a place to communicate with your loved ones with easier access. As well as this, it was a great place to be creative and to be bold. It was a place where you could put forward your ideas and also have them challenged, with limited fear of threats or violence. Social media was also extremely helpful to businesses wanting to grow and capture an audience, no matter how small or large the business is. It has its positives but also its negatives, and this is the very same today.   Today, social media still has its key uses communication, business, ideas, and freedom of speech. However, as I mentioned e...

If you use any type of social media platform, whether it be Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat or even Facebook then you may have heard of ‘#blackouttuesday’.Black Out Tuesday took place on the 2nd  of June 2020 and was an organised online protest to police brutality and in the wake of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor’s murders, it spread like wildfire. By 16:45 pm on the same day, the hashtag had a staggering 14.6 million Instagram posts alone. As well as this, google trends suggest that searches to do with Black Out Tuesday surged by 400% on that same Tuesday morning. As great as this event was at bringing people together and showing a front that was ‘united against racism’, it left us with the big question of ‘what we have done since then’? The answer for lots of people seems to be less than they would’ve liked to do or maybe even nothing at all. In addition to this, it seemed that posting black squares were getting more attention than petitions for certain important events. Th...

Today, the 26th of January 2021, is the 77th birthday of a woman who inspires me and millions alike all around the World. Her name is Angela Davis. Angela Davis was born on the 26th of January 1944 in Birmingham, Alabama to an African - American family. Her home was within a neighborhood nicknamed 'dynamite hill' after several houses were bombed in an attempt to drive out African-American families of middle class backgrounds out by the KKK. As a teen, Angela (like most African-American teens) was exposed to life as a black person in the USA. She attended Carrie A. Tuggie School, which was segregated at the time and later moved up to Park Annex. Her mother, Sallye Bell Davis, was very much involved in communism and similar sorts working as a national officer and an organiser of the Southern Negro Youth Congress (which was influenced by the communist party and resolved to help black youth in the south form alliances). As a result, Angela practically grew up around 'radical...

On the 29th October 1929, there was a sharp decline in the U.S stock market. This day became known as 'Black Tuesday' and the situation as 'The Wall Street Crash'. However, this day marked what would be the start of what we now know as the 'The Great Depression.' The Great Depression had an impact on absolutely everyone, regardless of who you were. Whilst it was long lasting and rather severe in the US itself as well as Europe, it also affect places like Japan and Latin America but just in milder form. It had worldwide impacts and took over America itself for roughly ten years. Unfortunately, for one group of people the Great Depression was particularly harder to live through. One group of people who were very much affected were African Americans. African Americans , who were just gaining their rights and being made 'equal' again, even under the remorseless Jim Crow laws, suddenly seemed to have a reminder of their overall position in society and how muc...

From worrying child labour operations in Ivory Coast and Ghana to scarily high femicide rates in South Africa and displacement numbers in Cameroon hitting the roof, Africa is currently going through extremely unfortunate times. Three countries that you may have seen trending on your social media feeds recently are most likely the Democratic Republic of Congo, Namibia and Nigeria and so those are the three countries that I would like to try and talk to you about before addressing other issues in Africa that are also very important to write about. If all we can do to help is to just keep ourselves educated and share awareness then just like I've said before... that is more than enough.   Congo (#whatshappeningincongo) Congo has one of the World's largest reserves of Coltan, which happens to be an important mineral for things such as aerospace engineering, the making of electronic devices and the innovation of technology in general. In almost a dystopian manner, the people of Con...

October, in the United Kingdom, marks Black History Month. This is a month that allows us to reflect and look back at the events and people that played an important part in getting black people to where we are now.Not only is it a month to reflect on our past and consider how to move forward even stronger but it is also a time to share our rich history with anyone interested like you, the person reading this.  First of all, The origin of Black History Month.  Black History Month started off in the U.S in the 1920s but not officially till 1976. It started off as ‘Negro History Week’ and was introduced after African – Americans: Carter G Woodson and Jesse E Moorland founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. This organisation was dedicated to promoting good things done by African – Americans in the past. Whilst celebrated in February to align with the birthdays of Abraham Lincon and Frederick Douglas, the United Kingdom started to celebrate it also in 1987....

In the very early morning of March 13th 2020. earlier this year, three officers entered Breonna Taylor and her boyfriend's apartment on the basis of a no-knock warrant. Although they claim to have knocked before, it was then a forced entry and it is still not known whether the officers made it clear of who they were. This meant that Taylor and her boyfriend ( Kenneth Walker) did not know who was in their house that early in the day leading Walker to eventually act in self defense firing one bullet. This bullet, although recent evidence tells us that this is not known for sure, ended up injuring an officer and resulted in roughly twenty rounds of bullets being shot back by the three officers. Although Kenneth was not injured by these, at least 5 bullets entered Breonna and ended up taking her life.   After this, Breonna became a martyr, not just for the city of Louisville, or even the U.S but her name is knows worldwide and will certainly be down in history books. The #blackliv...

On the 4th September 1957, nine African - American children became the first black kids to attend Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas. Little Rock Central High School was an all-white public school and so it was very controversial for children of any other race to attend it. These nine children were: Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Patillo, Gloria Ray, Terrence Roberts, Jefferson Thomas and  Carlotta Walls. and they became known as the 'Little Rock Nine'. This first attempt to enter the school unfortunately failed, white supremacists and other extreme far - right citizens were at the school to try to block the children into entering the building, and they succeeded, this included two pro - segregation groups: The Capital Citizens Council and the Mother's League of Central High School. As well as this, Orval Faubus had summoned the Arkansas Nation Guard to prevent the students from entering the school. He had suggested on na...

Earlier in March this year, the quickly spreading virus that we now know as the coronavirus became even more visible in Europe and eventually the UK. This left the UK government with no choice but to shut down schools on a national level. The UK was not first to close our schools and was certainly not the last. By March 27th this year, 1.5 billion children around the world had been affected by school / university / other forms of education closures. This meant that children had to resort to other forms of education such as virtual learning , home - schooling or even no education at all.  However for two year groups in secondary schools around the UK , this would have an impact on their education more than any other year group. School closures meant that year 11's would not be able to sit their GCSEs and that year 13's would not be able to sit their A-level exams. For year 13's who had opted to continue on to further education, the effects of the virus on their A-levels woul...