The value we assign to autonomy could be one of the reasons why activists leading the Black Lives Matter movement on both sides of the Atlantic, continue to pursue fairness. Fairness, however, means diffierently to different cultures, ages, faiths and genders. Since the #BLM movement started in the USA, the agenda has been largely focussed on raising awareness of the disproportionate numbers of blacks that are stopped, searched, arrested, given custodial sentences and died while in police custody, compared to whites in the western countries, including England and USA. 

Any successful activism has to be followed by action to progress the agenda, which will achieve the said mission.  The capacity to progress the agenda can be missed, if there are only protests and no platform afforded for the next phase to take place.

With the needs of black British being different to those of black Americans, there is a need for clarity on how to pursue the next steps. For example, while there are disproportionate numbers of black people who are stopped, searched and given custodial sentences on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean compared to whites, advocacy is often sought in the USA to solve problems relating to black Americans. Yet in the UK rarely are blacks offered the opportunity to discuss solutions that relate to them or do they pursue sitting on numerous platforms that progress activism to notable action. With the latter suggesting that black British are not heralded so easily as part of the solution, but rather, as part of the problem. Equally in the USA, I have been confronted by racism that would have resulted in attending a court room if the same act had been committed in the UK. As a teacher in Washington in the USA in 2006,  I had two children removed from my class and parents were happy to say it was because I was English!

Data can include proportionate number of black CEOs;  governors; pastors; societies that support the progress of the #BLM agenda; businesses; teachers or lecturers or professors; and finally actors, writers, and TV or radio presenters. 

From personal experience, I remember, as I scrubbed my arms as a child to whiten my skin, feeling ostracised and lacking a sense of being loved and belonging. Commiting this act as a child is not like plucking your eyebrows or wearing platform shoes so that you fit in with the other 1970's teenagers. It is a realisation that the country that you live in is defining you unfairly, by the images that you see and the policies and behaviours that you are subjected to. They remind you that your sense of reality is distorted because of the colour of your skin. It comes as a great shock through playing with white dolls, through watching nursery programmes where no black presenters or children are seen, through the use of racist language such as wog and coon being accepted and used by your family and those you call your friends and through the books that you read where black people live on the edge of the town or are often the enemy, that the country where you live and are proud to live has not evolved any place for you.