Stephen Lawrence

There has been a great deal in the news this week about the Stephen Lawrence case, and now nearly 19 years later two men have been convicted for his brutal and pointless murder.  I wanted to write  to Doreen Lawrence and thank her.  The loss of her Son must be unbearable but she has still had to keep moving on.  I can't imagine my children not being here, not planning their futures for them and wondering what kind of adults they will grow into.  I can't imagine the pain and anguish she has had to endure over all the years.  The thought of that pain is too much to even contemplate.  

I am writing this as I have lived in London for over 10 years now and my feeling and opinions about this city have changed so much over the years.  I believe and have seen for my own eyes that racism still exists and is very apparent on the streets of London, the streets that I that I live on.  We as people, as a community have to take responsibly for what is happening on our streets, in our schools, in our work places, in every aspects of our lives.  It is up to every one of us not to tolerate bigoted and racist behaviour.  We are the only ones responsible for teaching our children compassion.  If no one does anything differently and nothing changes how do we move forward as a community? We all breath, we all bleed and somewhere along the line we all die.  So how does the colour of a our skin make us different?  It doesn't!  Our parents, our grandparents, our socio-economic background, our religion and our peers make us different.  In difference is beauty. The world would be a tragic place if we were all the same. 

I want to thank Doreen Lawrence for never giving up on seeking justice for her son's death and showing the rest of the world that "we" are not willing to sit back and be tarred with the same brush, the brush that calls us "niggers", stupid, uneducated, hoodlums, gangsters, drug dealers, pot heads and any other name you may have ever been called.  Her belief and faith in the black community and supporting young black people in developing their futures has not gone unnoticed.  The trust Doreen set up to promote a positive community legacy in her son's name gives so much to those who now were not even born when Stephen Lawrence was killed.  I want to thank her again, because hers is a truth I will be sharing with my children when they are old enough, and I pray in 10 years time these kinds of stories will be resigned to the hall of historical events that changed the world we live in today, so that all of our children, past, present and future, will not have to know the hatred of racism.  I do not want this to be my children's truth.

R.I.P. Stephen Lawrence.