Today on Welcome Wednesday we welcomed back Char for her 4th visit on the show [I think] and we talked about unconscious bias, as well as finishing up with the stereotypical and archetypal questions that people have of Black people.

Char came on after my own education in watching 13th on Netflix, directed by Ava DuVernay, who also directed When They See Us.

I highly recommend you watch 13th and When They See Us to fully understand the Black Lives Matter movement and how systemic the racism is in the US in this instance. My education will continue by looking at racism in the UK in due course.

For those of you who haven’t seen Char before, please go back and watch the show. She is articulate, funny and knows her stuff! Her ability to take to a highly sensitive topic and make it real and to be understood regardless of your background is brilliant.

This quote from Char resonated for me and really highlights what is going wrong with the discussion around race today. We are letting our unconscious bias be portrayed as truth, which is just isn’t. The ask from Char, and from everyone else is to recognise that when thoughts come into our heads, they are based on the portrayals that have come before us – and the media and politicians in particular have been inciting racial bias for decades.

We need to take control of this rhetoric in our head and realise that we are looking at another human being. Not a monster from the movies, a violent drug user, a gang member. We are looking at someone just like us.

Lets be mindful of these thoughts, as we know we’ll get them, just as Char does, and lets respond. Lets open our eyes and our arms and really see the person opposite us.

Char and her sister are launching their own food prep service, Food by Frost, and are currently fundraising via Go Fund Me to get the business off the ground. You can help Char realise this dream using this link: https://gf.me/u/ybawu9