A seismic shift has occurred. People are doing the unthinkable and talking about racial injustice and it isn’t just the ill-treated doing the talking either. It took the footage of a man being slowly murdered for 8 minutes 46 seconds to kick-start the conversation.

In light of the worldwide protests following the murder of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and many others, I wrote an Opinion piece for Al Jazeera (AlJ) on racial discrimination. It went viral.

The title of the piece should have been what you read above ‘Britain developed institutional racism, the Americans perfected’ (edit: 22/07: Title changed from ‘Britain invented racism’ to the title of this article); Al Jazeera went for a more shocking title. Shock garners attention and attention drives ad revenue. A lesson in SEO and the editorial process. I found this cheeky and particularly telling as AlJ add the caveat that the ‘views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance’.

Interesting debates rose to the fore on social media following its publication. Of course the UK didn't invent racism, it would be foolish to assume so. For many years the UK has housed one of the most tolerant multi-ethnic societies within the OEDC, but not without significant fault. It is on us to tackle those faults. I instructed readers to ‘go beyond the shock title and interrogate the content’. We, as a society, can and should be doing far better.

I wrote the piece for many who do not have the words or platform to adequately express their views on the myriad of indignities they and others like them have suffered. Racism isn’t just a slap in your face due to the colour of your skin (which has been on the rise, since the Brexit vote); it is in being denied pain medication, bank services, adequate housing services, jobs and other essential services due to your ethnicity.

Awareness of systemic racism has been raised. We're on the cusp of acknowledgement. Soon, we can take action on the changes (from numerous unimplemented government report recommendations) required to make our society more just.

The British developed institutional racism, the Americans perfected it

Systemic racism within British institutions shows that the UK isn’t far behind the US.

Members of far-right Football Lads Alliance hold a British flag in front of the covered statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square, London, June 13, 2020 [AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth]

In Britain, we tend to look at the United States with smug contempt over the police brutality and overt racial injustice on display there. Yet, Black people account for 3 percent of the population, but 8 percent of deaths in custody in the United Kingdom. Moreover, since 1990, just one police officer has been convicted for their role in the death of someone in their care. This, despite almost 2,000 people dying in police custody, or otherwise following contact with the police, in England and Wales during the same period.

For all of the diversity initiatives, government reports with limited actionable outcomes, and box-ticking exercises that have followed them, racial discrimination continues to permeate throughout British society. Research shows ethnic minorities in Britain are facing rising and increasingly overt racism, with levels of discrimination and abuse continuing to grow in the wake of the Brexit referendum. Some of the oldest institutions in the UK have thrived because of racial injustice. As one commentator put it, "The British invented racism, the Americans perfected it."

The bulk of discrimination faced in the UK is often far more insidious than that shown in the US. Racism in the UK is systemic. It is daily. It is tiring. We see it both in the language and methods used for dealing with anybody who is labelled "other". It was evident in the Windrush scandal and the anti-immigrant rhetoric in the Brexit vote. It is evident in the education system, barriers to employment for minority candidates and the increased risks to ethnic minority people receiving healthcare.

Leroy!

As one of the 2.5% of ethnic minority officers who made up HM Armed Forces, I saw this prejudice first-hand in many forms. In its most common form, it was masked by humour. “Leroy!”

Ask any British soldier who Leroy is and what he does. Their response will be the same. Leroy is a mythical, hulking, Afro-Caribbean bogeyman, equipped with a larger-than-life appendage, who "will sleep with your partner while you're away".

I was introduced to Leroy for the first time at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and was struck by how normal this hypersexual, deviant, black male figure was, for my white colleagues. It was an accepted everyday trope there. I had never come across it before.

Perhaps the myth of Leroy was born out of the indignation some English men and women felt when the first wave of post-war Afro Caribbean migrants settled in the UK and found English partners. Perhaps some of these Caribbean men lived up to stereotypes around sexual prowess. Or maybe it is a representation of the even older white nationalist fears about black people mixing with a white population and sullying the blood. The same fears that surfaced for some when Prince Harry married, and had a child with, Meghan Markle, an African American woman.

On one occasion, I recall hearing of a woman leaving her soldier partner for another man. "Well at least he's not black" was the lotion offered by the soldier's white colleagues for the burn of being ditched. It has been repeatedly shown that white supremacy places black and brown individuals from ‘the developing world’ at the bottom of the social pecking order.

It's just banter, get on with it

Much of what the military does is behind closed doors for operational reasons. Beyond the battlefield, this culture of concealment allows behaviour that would be deemed anachronistic by wider society to continue unabated within the military bubble.

British society reached the consensus that blackface is unacceptable some time ago. HM Armed Forces did not get the memo. Just a few years ago, a colleague attended a costume party supposedly impersonating me, with their skin covered in black shoe polish and red golliwog lipstick (they were brazen enough to express the desire to want to do this earlier in the day - I told them not to - but they valued cheap laughs and social acceptance above all else). Senior commanders at the event looked on amused, awaiting a fiery response from me. These commanders preached the importance of moral courage, yet were complicit in normalising inappropriate behaviour steeped in racism under the guise of banter. I left the social gathering. Later, when photos surfaced online, the blackface aficionado begged to have them instantly removed. They knew what they did was wrong and feared exposure to the judgement of those outside of the military bubble.

In the military context, the onus is often placed on the person who has been aggrieved to make light of the situation and "get on with it" - we see this is in recent UK military discrimination cases won in civilian courts, having been originally quashed by internal investigations. Individuals are being forced to go outside of the bubble of their organisations to seek justice. A recent investigation found that within the last five years, just over 17 percent of racially aggravated crimes investigated by military police resulted in guilty verdicts at court martial. The Ministry of Defence admitted the number of cases investigated by military police services for the Army, Navy and RAF was already low. Not many people dare to report racially motivated harassment in the military, because personnel who issue a formal complaint mark themselves an outcast from their colleagues.

Things don’t seem to be improving.

Just last year, the service complaints ombudsman for the UK military, Nicola Williams, stated that within the UK military "incidents of racism are occurring with increasing and depressing frequency".

Black Lives Matter

We in Britain are not in a position today to watch the protest over George Floyd's killing, and the wider Black Lives Matter movement in the US and say ‘we are beyond all this’. To eliminate racism in the UK, it must first be acknowledged that systemic racism exists and affects the lives and livelihoods of millions of black and brown citizens every day. It is so deeply ingrained into the fabric of society that to many, it looks like it isn’t even there.

Those who fail to recognise systemic racism, perhaps because they may benefit from it or because it has become the norm, cannot negate the experiences of the black and brown citizens and residents of the United Kingdom who have to deal with overt and covert racism on a daily basis.

The British military prides itself on reflecting the best elements of society, it also harbours some of the worst. Allowing racism to fester within its barracks under the guise of banter and adequately investigating racially-motivated harassment will harm the operational effectiveness of its soldiers and its international brand image.

As we look to the death of George Floyd and the worldwide protests over police brutality, racial injustice and #BlackLivesMatter, we repeatedly hear the .cry that it is not enough to not be racist. To combat systemic racism one must be actively anti-racist. The onus is now on you reading this, to do your part at home, at work and socially, to hold yourself and others to account to be actively anti-racist and ensure that we live in a more just society.