Racial Profiling

*Check out this here blog post: it inspired me to write my own take, though sheltered, on the views that are explored in this issue at this time.*

As you may or may not have heard, a young woman was murdered at the beginning of November. Now I know that there are likely many other more pressing news stories and other tragic events and I am, by no means, belittling them. I just simply feel that this news story has a prominent message on our society and the way we think.

Renisha McBride, 19, was shot in the face and killed after a car accident.
What actually occurred here is unclear at the moment. Some reports say that the girl was going door to door asking for help, others say she was trying to get home. Almost all of them point out that she was a black girl in a predominantly white neighbourhood where black people shouldn't be seen after sunset.

That is what I want to talk about.
The shooter claims that he thought that someone was breaking into the house and also that his 12 gauge shotgun 'discharged accidentally'.
Now, setting aside the fact that I find that very hard to believe indeed, I want to talk about the fact that nothing has been done.
The white man that shot Renisha, while he has been spoken to by the police, remains free to go about his life. Surely he should be in custody? Or, at very least, be under house arrest? Or something, anything at all, that isn't just free to go about his day to day, his normal business.
The fact that these towns, districts, counties, exist where people of a certain race, be it black, white, asian, can't be seen after dark for fear of their lives is terrible! It's archaic! It's something that I'd expect to see either in the deep south in the 1930s or in Germany in the 1940s or somewhere in the 3rd World that is ruled by suspicion and superstition. It is most certainly not something that should be happening in America. Or England. Or anywhere for that matter.

I grew up in a fairly rough area. Now 'rough' in England, in the North-East, is starkly different from 'rough' in London, or Libya, or southern America. But all the same, if someone was trying to break into our house, my step-dad had a large stick, sort of like a baseball bat in size, shape and weight, and I know that, on more than one occasion, he has chased someone down the street with it. Guns are not widely available in England like they are in America. We just don't have those laws but, similarly, we don't seem to need them.
Now I'm not sure if it's just me being naive but while our justice system leaves a lot to be desired - and that's a post for another time - our police don't need to gun people down to be effective. England has one of the lowest gun homicide rates in the world. Because we don't have guns.
The solution to stopping gun crime is not to give more people guns. If there's a shooting in a school, the way to remedy that is not to give the security guards guns or hire more armed security but to take the guns away! I don't see how that's so difficult!

As for racism and racists? I genuinely believe that this is a real flaw in society. Anyone who believes that skin colour has an effect on how a person can work or learn or be a human is flawed beyond measure. Yes, skin colour can define a person. It can be something to be proud of. It can give you an identity, a home, a sense of belonging. Most black people would probably like to be seen as black people, whether that's Nigerian, Jamaican, Caribbean, and so on, much in the same way that white people want to be seen as white people be that English, Irish, American, European.
I'm a white girl, I don't want to be seen for anything other than I am. I have Nigerian family - lots and lots of Nigerian family - they are so incredibly proud of their culture and heritage. I can't imagine it being taken away from them.

Everyone wants to be seen for who they are. They don't want to be pigeon-holed into something that they're not because it fits a viewpoint better. Just in the same way that it's wrong and illogical to discriminate against eye-colour and hair colour, such is it wrong to discriminate where skin colour is involved.

Now I thought, with the election of President Obama, that America was streaking forwards where race issues were concerned but now it feels worse than it has in a long time. People are segregating themselves and others are just letting it happen.
The white, middle-class politician, whether male or female, will never understand issues of race in the same way that a working class black man or woman will. They will never feel racism in the same way, every day of their lives. They will always have the opportunity to walk away. To make it stop. To change. They can support people speaking out against racism but they cannot do it themselves. What they say will never be as powerful as what someone who has lived it will say.

Renisha McBride was murdered, unlawfully. As yet, no justice has been given.

NaNoWriMo and Being An ML

As many of you will know, it's NaNoWriMo in a few days time. For those of you who don't know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month - a phenomenon that started in America in the late 90s, by a guy called Chris Baty and a few of his friends, and has spread across the world like wildfire since then.
I discovered NaNoWriMo in early 2010 because of a girl in my english language class. I didn't end up keeping in touch with Charlotte and I regret that deeply but at the same time, she's led me to meet so many other people that I'm almost glad I didn't know anyone else doing it when I started. Because I didn't know anyone, I got to know people on the forums and started going to the in-person meet-ups in cafes and things last year.
It was also the year I found out that we didn't have a Municipal Liaison.
Now MLs aren't essential. They're handy for organising things and getting people together as well as creating goodies and incentives for the Wrimos to reward their hard work but largely their job can be done by the Wrimos themselves. They don't get paid and the only real reward is a tonne of extra work, occasional angry rants from writers and a load of fretting over whether everything is going to turn out fine with their Wrimos and  the 50,000 words they're churning out on top of their real lives.

Now up until last year, I'd never 'won' NaNo. And by won I mean I'd never hit the 50k word count in the 30 days of November. Last year, however, I decided it was time. Come hell or high water I was going to hit that ambitious target and thus earn a purple banner under my avatar and the ability to legitimately buy a winner's t-shirt in the beginning of December.
And I did it. Just.
I succeeded and over shot the 50k by 506 words. Happy just isn't what I would use to describe that feeling. When I hit 50,506 on the evening of November 30th, it felt curiously like the world had ended and started all at the same time. I'd finished that one thing that I'd been striving to do. It was all over. I had achieved my goal and had no where to go and nothing to do afterwards. But at the same time there were so many new opportunities. I still needed to write the actual ending - I may have hit my targets and deadlines but I was still a few chapters short of the final scenes. I needed to edit - oh boy did I need to edit that baby. With plot holes that could engulf small nations, there was some serious explaining and patching up to do. I finished my baby and started editing in May - I was just too devastated by the fact that NaNo was over that I couldn't pick it back up. That and the time flew by so quickly that I barely even realised that we were in 2013! I finished writing and editing in June - I didn't edit much, it's still my raw, raw NaNo baby, but I put away the document and haven't opened it again since. I will, for sure, finish editing and get a copy printed - for myself if nothing else - but for now, it's resting. We're getting some separation so that I can look over it objectively.
In the summer the ML applications opened.

One of my major driving forces for finishing NaNo last year was so that I could apply to be an ML. Even if my application was rejected, I still wanted to try. I knew that I could bring a better, more communal, more involving NaNo to Newcastle and Durham and I wanted to give it a shot. I filled in the application, sent it off and waited. And waited. And waited.
It went on and on until finally, when I was out shopping, I got an email saying that my application had been successful and to look out for other important emails in the weeks to follow.
So far I've had a massive number of really, really helpful emails as well as buckets of encouragement. Over the last few days, I've been writing packs and booklets for my region of Wrimos by hand and on the PC to put together little (hopefully) helpful writing kits to kickstart word counts and battle the dreaded writers block. I tied up the first half of the NaNo packs with string and a sticker and handed them out today - I think they were gratefully received by most. I think they're pretty cool to be honest and  there's the promise of foamy dinosaur stickers when people hit word count targets and slay the procrastination dragon and banish the writer's block bats.
Our haunts are mostly going to be the Settle Down Cafe and Bar Loco this year, with the possibility of Clayton Street Caffe Nero on Saturday afternoons. The food at both the Settle Down and Bar Loco is amazing and who can fault a good hot caffeinated beverage to get the creative juices flowing?