People's Health Trust Chief Executive John Hume reflects on the recent racist violent disorder across Great Britain and the Trust’s response.
Discrimination kills. Sometimes it takes the form of every-day and structural discrimination causing a stress response which, over time, makes us sicker. Other times it is altogether more obvious: hatred which crosses into visceral physical and verbal attacks.
Was the level of violence we all witnessed (and many experienced) vile and stomach-churning? Too right it was. Was it surprising? Unfortunately not. As reported in the second edition of the hate crimes report, 70% of hate crimes were racially motivated. And this does not include the every-day discrimination and structural racism and discrimination for which there is no means of reporting.
Over the past few days, it has been frequently reported that such violence is an indication of a much deeper societal unease: maybe - but nothing can justify the level of violence and fear heaped on people of colour in this country.
Since People’s Health Trust started our equity work in 2011, we have worked alongside communities whose health is often severely compromised by overt and less visible discrimination because of their race, class, religion, disability, sexual orientation and gender. Both our Local Conversations Programme and our Active Communities Programme focused heavily on both supporting social connections and encouraging community power. As well as protecting health, social connections and community power are the foundations of any community-level support.
Our work together over the years focuses on developing anti-racist and anti-oppressive work, uniting people, finding shared purpose and kindness, and it is for moments like these that such strong foundations were laid.
We are directly influenced by what communities tell us needs doing and therefore our aim over the last couple of weeks has been to support those communities most affected. We wrote to all of our funded partners, and we brought together partners from our network to offer a space for mutual support, to listen and to understand what we could do.
What we heard were experiences of immense anxiety and fear, and increased worry for the long term psychological impacts within communities. We heard that grassroots organisations feared continuing their work. We heard people afraid to go out or visit the doctors and we heard about fear for young people.
Our partners also told us stories of positivity and connectedness and of people helping one another. Community groups told us that they know they are supported by the majority and believe in the compassion of others and that the work has already begun to build and strengthen their networks and to push back against the abhorrent violence they have experienced.
We wanted to share some of the points they asked us to take forward in the hope that they are useful when viewed alongside others’, such as the Funders for Race Equality Alliance:
- Providing resources – for example resources on mental health and wellbeing; managing risk and safeguarding; training in how to safely confront racism and oppression
- Communication – putting out statements of support and the promotion of majority behaviour/positive stories to counter the negative rhetoric.
- Convening – bringing people together again to talk about what is next and offer a safe and supportive space for listening for action.
We are actioning all of these and some resources and tools can be found here with more to come.
Our trustees and staff continue to commit to:
- Bringing people together through our networks
- Prioritising our anti-racist and anti-oppressive work
- Supporting greater equity through our Health Justice Fund - in particular our discrimination and health priority in partnership with the School for Public Health Research.
We will stand with communities in fighting racism, hate and discrimination and its harmful effects on health.
John Hume
John Hume is the Chief Executive of People's Health Trust
