{"id":240705,"date":"2023-08-07T12:00:16","date_gmt":"2023-08-07T11:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=240705"},"modified":"2024-07-02T08:49:37","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T07:49:37","slug":"sinead-oconnor-always-knew-that-black-lives-mattered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/08\/sinead-oconnor-always-knew-that-black-lives-mattered\/","title":{"rendered":"Sin\u00e9ad O\u2019Connor Always Knew That Black Lives Mattered"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
The singer, who died on 26 Jul 2023, made an unforgettable protest song about the police killings of black people 30 years before the murder of George Floyd.<\/em><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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\"\"<\/a>

Sinead O\u2019Connor performs on Rock Torhout, Torhout, Belgium, on July 7, 1990.
Paul Bergen \/ Redferns<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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28 Jul 2023<\/em> – Sin\u00e9ad O\u2019Connor explained<\/a> the point of her career in her 2021 memoir: \u201cEveryone wants a pop star. See? But I am a protest singer.\u201dAnd her protests were epic. After O\u2019Connor\u2019s death<\/a> on Wednesday at age 56, there were many recollections of her 1992 appearance on Saturday Night Live<\/em>, when, in a carefully plotted effort to highlight child abuse in the Catholic Church<\/a>, she performed Bob Marley\u2019s \u201cWar,\u201d urged people to \u201cfight the real enemy\u201d and tore up a photo of Pope John Paul II.<\/p>\n

The ensuing backlash upended O\u2019Connor\u2019s career, but she was unrepentant. She had written in her 1991 letter to the Grammys<\/a>\u2014in which, at the peak of her fame, she withdrew from the awards in objection to the \u201cfalse and destructive materialistic values\u201d of the recording industry\u2014that \u201cas artists I believe our function is to express the feelings of the human race\u2014to always speak the truth and never keep it hidden even though we are operating in a world which does not like the sound of the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Connor spoke many truths before and after the Saturday Night Live<\/em> appearance, which shocked the world at a time when child abuse within the church was still largely neglected. She advocated for the unification of her native Ireland, for the rights of Palestinians, for peace when the United States was preparing for attacks on Iraq, for women\u2019s rights in Ireland and abroad, for trans youth, for an end to human rights abuses globally, and for an economic order in which poverty was banished. She took risks, and she wondered why other artists did not. \u201cThousands of children are starving to death every day\u2026children are being beaten up because of problems in society\u2026children are being sexually abused and emotionally abused, people are living in the streets,\u201d she explained in that 1991 letter<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s not enough any more to just sit in you[r] chair and say, \u2018Yeah, it\u2019s terrible.\u2019 Musicians are in a position to help heal this sickness, but I\u2019d say 90% of the artists in the music business fail in that responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Connor took responsibility, raising issues years\u2014even decades\u2014before others who had her level of prominence began to address them. Such was the case with what many argue was her greatest song, \u201cBlack Boys on Mopeds<\/a>.\u201d A cry against the killing of Black teenagers and young men by police officers, the song was recorded more than 30 years before the murder of George Floyd inspired millions to take to the streets in Black Lives Matter protests against police violence. Written in the late 1980s, the song was released on O\u2019Connor\u2019s internationally acclaimed 1990 album I Do Not Want What I Haven\u2019t Got<\/em>\u2014which, despite her protests, was nominated for four Grammy Awards in 1991 and took top honors for Best Alternative Music Performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cBlack Boys on Mopeds\u201d was an inspired protest song that began with an instantly memorably blunt denunciation of the hypocrisy of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher<\/a>, who had objected to the Chinese government\u2019s violent crushing of the Tiananmen Square protests while pointedly failing to respond to police violence and systemic racism within the United Kingdom:<\/p>\n

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Margaret Thatcher on TV<\/em>
\nShocked by the deaths that took place in Beijing<\/em>
\nIt seems strange that she should be offended<\/em>
\nThe same orders are given by her<\/em>
\nI\u2019ve said this before now<\/em>
\nYou said I was childish and you\u2019ll say it now<\/em>
\nRemember what I told you<\/em>
\nIf they hated me they will hate you<\/em>
\nEngland\u2019s not the mythical land of Madame George and roses<\/em>
\nIt\u2019s the home of police who kill black boys on mopeds\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Thatcher inspired many of the finest protest songs<\/a> in modern history, including the English Beat\u2019s \u201cStand Down Margaret,\u201d Morrissey\u2019s \u201cMargaret on the Guillotine,\u201d and Elvis Costello\u2019s \u201cTramp Down the Dirt.\u201d Yet, O\u2019Connor\u2019s \u201cBlack Boys on Mopeds\u201d\u2014with its stark observation, \u201cThese are dangerous days \/ To say what you feel is to dig your own grave\u201d\u2014was characterized by a rage that was at once personal and universal.<\/p>\n

Irish-born and raised, O\u2019Connor had moved to London as her career soared. She was a witness to Thatcher\u2019s many cruelties. But the prime minister\u2019s response to racism in Britain, and especially to the police violence toward Caribbean immigrants, provoked the singer-songwriter, who was well aware of the UK\u2019s long history of oppressing the Irish. Based on an incident that occurred near where she in London, in which a Black teenager named Nicholas Bramble was chased by police\u2014who assumed he had stolen the moped he was riding\u2014and died in a road crash, \u201cBlack Boys on Mopeds\u201d delivered a searing critique of racism in the U.K. \u201cThis was at a time when there was a terrible scandal in London about Black men going missing in police stations,\u201d recalled O\u2019Connor in her memoir. \u201cIt was a time in London also when if a burglar was apprehended, he was reported as a \u2018Black burglar\u2019 (or, alternatively, an \u2018Irish burglar\u2019). There was a lot of tension created between Londoners on the one hand and the Jamaicans and the Irish on the other.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Connor\u2019s recognition of systemic racism and her determination to call it out was reflected not just in the song but also in her dedication of the album\u2014which would become an international hit, selling 7 million copies\u2014to the family of Colin Roach<\/a>, a 21-year-old Black Londoner who had died in 1983 from a gunshot wound in the entrance of a police station in the London borough of Hackney. Police claimed Roach had committed suicide, but jarring inconsistencies in the official story led to widespread protests and a 1983 The Special AKA song (\u201cBright Lights<\/a>\u201d) with the lyrics: \u201cI got down to London<\/a> and what did I see? One thousand policemen all over the street, The people were shouting and looking at me, They say \u2018the Colin Roach family demand an enquiry.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

As the years passed, \u201cBlack Boys on Mopeds\u201d remained an essential song on O\u2019Connor\u2019s setlist. She became one of the music world\u2019s earliest and most ardent supporters of the emerging Black Lives Matter movement, to which she donated proceeds from a 2020 cover of \u201cTrouble of the World<\/a>,\u201d a gospel song made famous by Mahalia Jackson. The video<\/a> for that song portrayed O\u2019Connor marching alone with a placard and wearing a movement shirt. But O\u2019Connor wasn\u2019t alone. Younger artists had begun to cover \u201cBlack Boys on Mopeds,\u201d recognizing i+t as one of the most meaningful protest songs of our time. Shea Rose, <\/a> who performed a brilliant version, explained that she was drawn to the song by its continuing relevance in an era that saw rising consciousness of police violence following the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Breonna Taylor in Louisville, George Floyd in Minneapolis, and so many others. As mass protests across the United States raised the cry of \u201cBlack Lives Matter,\u201d the song became a staple in live performances by Phoebe Bridgers<\/a>, Sharon Van Etten<\/a>, and others.<\/p>\n

Asked about the song\u2019s legacy in a 2021 interview<\/a> with arts writer Geoff Edgers, O\u2019Connor said: \u201cI get very sad when\u2014it\u2019s actually beautiful, though, but when\u2014the song that gets the most, you know, applause from the audience when I first start singing the lines is actually \u2018Black Boys on Mopeds.\u2019 It\u2019s more popular, and nothing compares, and that\u2019s gorgeous. But I always am thinking every night, \u2018Oh, my God, isn\u2019t it sad that this is still so fucking relevant, you know, after 30 years?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

_________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>John Nichols is a national affairs correspondent for <\/em>The Nation. He has written, co-written, or edited over a dozen books on topics ranging from histories of US socialism and the Democratic Party to analyses of US and global media systems. His latest, co-written with Senator Bernie Sanders, is the <\/em>New York Times bestseller<\/em> It\u2019s OK to Be Angry about Capitalism<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Go to Original – thenation.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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