Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry

[ArabellaScott]

bylinetimes.com/2021/03/22/uncomfortable-conversations-need-to-be-had-about-why-murder-of-two-black-sisters-hardly-made-the-news-says-mp/

Article including quotes from Dawn Butler.

Noting that the man accused of killing the sisters is due a trial in June. Please be mindful if commenting that the case is pending.

This was a horribly upsetting crime, but I remember at the time how fast it seemed to slip out of the news.

Hard topics to discuss sensitively, but I thought it might be a relevant article.

@ArabellaScott

I wish I could do something to help her. I can't iimagine what she's going through, either.

Yes. I too wish I had more to offer than tears and a numb recognition of inevitability with regard to the way this case has been handled.

@LizzieSiddal

It depresses me that (and I've not read this thread but others) so many posters get defensive instead of listening and thinking

Very well said!

This is so true. There are many black mumsneters who are put off posting on FWR for that reason.

Nicole and Bibaa’s death really does show up the horrible racism in society. It did get attention at the time but the actions of the police should have attracted more outrage.

I have also been thinking of Blessing Olusegun a lot and why her death has not got as much coverage or been solved.
www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-england-sussex-56416399

I have just finished reading Jane Monkton Smith’s book Control. She argues that there are many murders that are unsolved or not investigated because domestic abuse is not taken seriously. In particular she argues that systematic racism and ageism influences if something is investigated as a murder and many murders of older women are falsely attributed as natural deaths. It is a brilliant but really chilling read.

I was as saddened by the murders of Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman as I was by the murders of Alice Gross, Iuliana Tudos, and Sarah Everard, it goes without saying, among countless others. But reading Mina Smallman's poignant and tragic words brings back the poignant and tragic words of another mother, Doreen Lawrence, who said,
"For me, institutional racism is ingrained and it's hard to think of how it will be eradicated from the police force."
"We have more than earned the right to live and not have our children killed in the way Stephen was."

And although the motive for Stephen Lawrence's brutal murder differs from the murders of the victims mentioned above, to me, reading Mina Smallman's words is a stone-cold reminder of how real institutional racism is in relation to how victims and their families are treated/neglected by the LE meant to protect and serve them.

Sarah Everard, et al deserve every protest march in their name. But isn't institutional racism within the police force at least one of the pertinent reasons why Stephen Lawrence's family members have never truly gotten the justice they deserve? I mean, how many years did it take to jail two of the perps? How much police corruption shaped by institutional racism contributed to their failure to help deliver justice to the Lawrence family? That's just one example.
And isn't it sad that we're still here, in need of those 'uncomfortable conversations about injustices'? Why indeed was there not way more of an outcry over how those sisters, Bibaa and Nicole, were treated posthumously by police? That's the burning question. Because I believe the same thing happened to Sarah Everard, which then points out that such behaviour among police is not entirely driven by racism. It's also driven by predatory sexism within the force. That said, the word racism cannot, should not be taken off the table and replaced with the word classism.

This wasn't classism. The mother was retired Archdeacon of Southend, Wilhelmina Smallman, who was also the first female archdeacon from a BAME background until her retirement 5 years ago

Wilhelmina made the point herself that the Met weren't interested in looking for her daughters once they realised 'they were black and lived on a council estate. So she definitely felt classcism was involved as well as racism and I think she's right.

If two white women from a council estate were reported missing I expect you'd get a similar response from the Police.

I also wondered if it was because there were two women together - could they have dismissed it as sisters off on a jaunt because it’s rare for two women to just up and disappear at the same time?

That said, the word racism cannot, should not be taken off the table and replaced with the word classism.

No, but there is a case for adding words to the table, isn't there? What's the line about underestimating the amount of bullshit there is out there - the fact that racism affected these murders or the way they were handled doesn't mean that they weren't also influenced or affected by sexism and/or classism.

Isn't this what the concept of intersectionality was for?

Identifying that multiple forms of prejudice could have been at work?

If their mother says the police stopped taking it seriously when they found out that Nicole and Bibaa had the wrong postcode, that's important.

Double whammy, no triple whammy.
Women
Black
Wrong postcode.

I can't stop thinking about it was left to the family to search for them and it ended up being one's boyfriend who found them both. How horrific. How do you recover from losing a loved one to homicide and being the first one to find them

Add words? Yes. Use a word to erase another word, to co-opt the oppression, eliminate personal discomfort and remove the need for personal reflection? No.

That's how I understand, it, Pothole, yes, although I get a bit wary about theoretical terms like that as I'm not an academic and don't know the history and context.

PicsInRed - who on this thread has said it isn't racism its classism? Confused!

re similarities to Stephen Lawrence case

It is only when the white establishment is forced to recognise their charicature of Black people as being other than them that they begin to grudgingly give equal notice.

As I posted yesterday, it was only when the local Southend press wrote about the sisters mother being an Archdeaconess that any of the nationals bothered to get in touch with her.

And it was only when the editor of the Daily Mail realised that the man painting his bathroom (whose name he didn't know) was the father of the young black man killed in south London that he took a personal interest. And it was the DM that raised the profice of that case.

This is the video of the interview with Mina Smallman www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-56450969

I'm not finding this thread a comfortable read but I'm glad I found it and I'll keep following, even though I might not feel I have much to add.

I cannot imagine how Mina Smallman must feel

The helpless rage I feel, knowing the police cared so little about finding Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman that they didn't even look for them at the place they were last seen, and where they were found by a family member. That the police so blatantly saw finding out what had happened to these women as such a low priority, and didn't even feel the need to hide that fact by even going through the motions of looking for them, tells me (if I needed telling) about the culture of that police force. Mina Smallman was 100% right to call them on their racism and classism, I can't fathom what she's been through.

@stumbledin

PicsInRed - who on this thread has said it isn't racism its classism? Confused!

It's there. Before my comments.

The Met is institutionally racist and misogynist. It's a double whammy for black women. Class is a secondary (tertiary?) factor.

Black people in nice cars get stopped way more than white people. Remember Bianca Williams, one of the fastest women in Britain, who was dragged out of her car with her boyfriend last summer and handcuffed for being black and in possession of a Mercedes? Their baby son was left alone in the car.

Even if Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman had lived in W9, like Williams does, there is no guarantee the police would have given their disappearance any more attention.

There was a 16 year old Chinese girl stabbed to death near me the same week (I'm pretty sure it was) that Sarah Everard was murdered. The difference in response and press coverage was enormous. Whether that was the result of race or class or something else I don't know. But it struck me strongly at the time.

OP, you wrote in response to my post the fact that racism affected these murders or the way they were handled doesn't mean that they weren't also influenced or affected by sexism and/or classism.

Yes. Which is why I said this in that same post:

such behaviour among police is not entirely driven by racism. It's also driven by predatory sexism within the force. That said, the word racism cannot, should not be taken off the table and replaced with the word classism.

Of course there’s plenty of room on the table for all sorts of language used to describe the actions of others. But classism tends to be used in place of the more accurate racism. Rarely are the two used together, if at all. People try hard to dance around the uncomfortable truth that is institutional racism. We need to talk about that.

Glad to find this difficult thread here and to see that Mina Smallman is being heard - but it's too little too late for her and her daughters.
We have some very skewed priorities at present - both the media and as groups / individuals. I have no idea how to change this to ensure that the realities of people who don't fit the media's definitions of 'popular' or 'stunning and brave' are heard but we must talk about it and try to influence this.

But ... I wasn't saying it was classism and not racism, I said there were perhaps elements of both. I am a bit confused, one doesn't negate the other. Class and race are separate, if often related, issues.

I think that arguing over the isms is not productive, personally.

The police in the end are not interested in helping lots of different groups of people. Class does have impact. Race. Sex. Religion. Disability. Etc.

In the end my view is (and sure others will disagree) that the role of the police is to protect the interests of their paymasters. And due to the inequalities in society, the group that form their paymasters tend to be white, older, male, certain types of education, live in certain areas, without long term disabilities etc etc

On class my anecdata is reporting a crime from my home Vs my parents. The first, nothing happened. The second, two officers came out immediately, were very nice and sympathetic, spent ages etc etc. Down to postcode.

In the end it's the white wealthy education etc who the police are there to protect. Not the rest of us. Often they would see it as from the rest of us.

The met is my force my whole life. I'm nearly 50. They have failing after failing after cover up after lying year on year under their belts.

Every time it's lessons learned blah blah.

I can't see what good at all they do for the lives of the general population. And their awful behaviour just keeps being revealed over and over.

I note that there is a bit of ?? saying maybe the initial police response and the lack of attention from the press was actually not out of line under the circs.

There is no doubt in my mind that it became reported on more widely and seriously once their mother started talking about it, as she had a voice due to her role.

Whether they would have searched earlier for different women that age? Not sure.

But they posed with their bodies for selfies. And sent them to others in the police in watsapp. They had been brutally murdered. That is just. I have no words for that. And the POLICE did that.

Sorry this is long.

Bottom line is that change will only come if the remit of the police is genuinely to investigate and uphold the law irrespective of who the probable perpetrator or victim is. And to have massive reform to totally change the culture.

Agree that all should be used together.

I have noted that the murders in the USA recently are having headlines about race and not really seeming to notice they were all women. All women in the same sort of work as well.

Why the press seems to have a 'pick one' mentality is beyond me. To hard to report the whole truth?

Hm. I live in a remote rural area of Scotland - we have very, very few black people here, or other minority ethnicities.

Policing here is, I would imagine, a whole different world than it is in inner-city Glasgow, let alone London.

Is this a police problem generally or is it specifically the Met? They do seem to get a lot of criticism for the culture.

I have a not very positive view of the police but in general I'd think that the ideas about who matters and who doesn't / who is honest and who isn't would be different depending on the main groups in their area.

To be honest though in an area with very few of X type of person I'd be surprised if they weren't viewed with suspicion (because different) and also numbers would be low so it being noticed as a structural problem (by people outside those groups) would be unlikely.

That's my thoughts.

I totally understand why different parts of the country have different experiences and views on this.

Maybe it's useful to talk about X police force rather than 'the police' where all sorts of factors are different.

I could give you a list of appalling things the police have done as long as my arm. From lying about people they've killed, to corruption, to putting victims under surveillance, and just a host of shit.

Arrrgh didn't follow my own suggestion!

Things the met have done.