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Novara faces reckoning after showing its arse over racism in the Lucy Letby case

The case of serial baby killer Lucy Letby has shocked the country – though seemingly for the wrong reasons. Predictably, media coverage of the case depicted Letby, a young white woman, in a sympathetic light. People expressed disbelief over how ‘someone like her’ could have committed such heinous acts. Worse still, supposedly left-wing media outlet Novara decided to deny that racism played a role.

Lucy Letby: ‘her violence is the standard’

The subtext behind ‘someone like her’ is obviously someone who is a young, attractive white woman from a conventionally respectable background. Barrister Dr Charlotte Proudman noted:

Almost immediately, to those who know better, the role of race became evident in explaining how Letby managed to evade justice for so long. This was particularly obvious in the fact that a senior doctor of South Asian origin, Dr Ravi Jayaram, repeatedly raised alarm bells regarding Letby – but hospital management shut him down.

As author and lawyer Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu tweeted:

Writer and podcaster Kelechi Okafor took to Twitter to state that violence from white women is not anomalous:

Okafor said:

They’re presenting it like an anomaly, when actually when we look at it historically and presently, the violence of white women is not an anomaly, it is the standard …

She went on to state that:

One of the greatest crimes against humanity was the translatlantic slave trade and colonization, and it was a white female monarch in Britain, if we’re talking about this in the British context, that said, yes, let’s run it.

Okafor described how the presumed innocence of white women was central to the existence of white supremacist hetero-patriarchy. She also pointed to the way in which white supremacy protects white women despite the evil they commit.

This, of course, relates directly to the way the Countess of Chester Hospital protected Letby. In fact, even the head of the Royal College of Nursing has said that Letby got away with it for as long as she did because she was white:

It’s bizarre, then, that talking heads from Novara Media decided to suggest this case doesn’t have to be about race.

#NoMoreNovara

Novara‘s Ash Sarkar declared on Twitter:

Apparently using the words “incredibly reductive” means you can say something stupid and pass it off as intelligent without expecting any scrutiny.

Fellow Novara-er Michael Walker also decided to get in on the action, though he later deleted his tweet:

Image

Never one to sit out a messy take, Aaron Bastani chimed in too, directly quoting Okafor’s words:

Okafor has written extensively about Black women’s experiences within healthcare. So for Sarkar, Walker, and Bastani – none of whom happen to be Black women – to diminish her input in this way is nothing short of appalling:

Unfortunately for them, sensible people on Twitter weren’t taking their word for it:

The hashtag #NoMoreNovara gained traction as people shared their anger in a Twitter space:

Bad taste

It also seems as though this has gone far beyond a hashtag. Novara employees minimising the experiences of Black women won’t be forgotten any time soon:

And although Sarkar later apologised for her words, she didn’t delete her tweet. As Okafor noted:

And that’s the crux of it, really.  Why would a group of ‘leftists’ – none of whom happen to be Black – argue with a Black woman about the role of racism in shielding white women within healthcare? They’re either complete idiots, or they’re doing it because messy opinions will boost their engagement in a way that standing up for what’s right won’t.

With allies like these, who needs serial killers.

Featured image via YouTube/ The Mirror

By Afroze Fatima Zaidi

This post was originally published on Canary.