NOW IS not the time to be a bad bwoy. You can be a mad boy, a sad bwoy or a glad boy. 

But I beg unuh, leave the bad bwoy business alone. Indeed, I cannot think of a worse time to show how much of a bad man you are than right now, right here in the midst of this coronavirus epidemic. Especially if you’re a black man. 

Because in case it’s escaped your notice, the police have been given unprecedented powers to put you under manners. And not just you, so don’t feel no way. 

With these new coronavirus powers the police don’t have to account for jack when it comes to race. After all, coronavirus is ‘colour blind’

Dotun Adebayo

The old bill run tings. Right ya so. In this coronavirus crisis, coronavirus don’t run the boys in blue, it’s the other way around. 

And they have got us all on lockdown, as the government says, or as the youngers say nowadays, they have got us on smash. 

Now, before they had these extraordinary powers, the police we know were focused on stop and searching black yutes. There’s no two ways about it. 

Five to six or seven times more often than they were focused on stopping and searching white yutes. 

Based on that evidence, I think it is safe and fair to assume that the special attention that black youth have been receiving from the police will continue. 

Indeed it would be negligent of us to assume otherwise. Except now the police don’t have to account for the use of their new powers in favour of one race or another. 

At the moment they have to share the stats on the race of the people they stop and search. 

With these new coronavirus powers the police don’t have to account for jack when it comes to race. After all, coronavirus is ‘colour blind’. 

‘They can stop anybody they like’

They can stop anybody they like at any time without having to explain themselves by way of a wall chart. 

So there will be no way of knowing if it is black youths who are predominantly being stopped or not. 

And that, surely, is worrying. Because if black folks couldn’t trust the police to carry out their work without prejudice before the crisis, how on earth can black folks trust them now to carry it out any more equitably?

And it’s not only that. As we are seeing across the world, autocratic governments from China to Iran to Saudi Arabia are using this crisis as an excuse to consolidate power. 

They bring in sweeping new powers of which no right-thinking person could disagree, under the pretext of trying to save lives. But when will these new powers ever come to an end? 

Or are they an end in themselves? Your guess is as good as mine. 

I have never known a government to reduce its power over ‘we the people’ and, even though Boris Johnson says that what he has brought in are temporary powers to deal with the corona virus crisis over here, we have to be concerned that these powers will be in place at least for another two years after the crisis is presumed to come to an end. 

Long after the crisis then the police, for example, will still be able to stop people with no obligation to collate the race statistics. 

Many black parents will be extremely concerned

Surely that is unacceptable and alarming. Many black parents will be extremely concerned. 

There seems to be no justification to keep these extraordinary new powers beyond the length of this crisis. 

However, when one considers that Boris Johnson, the former Mayor of London, was in office during the 2011 riots, which saw many homes and businesses in London and elsewhere up and down the country destroyed, and he famously showed up for a photo opportunity in Battersea/Wandsworth where he was going to sweep away the mess with a broom, one can see why he might want to hang on to his extraordinary new powers for a little while.

I don’t doubt that the prime minister is planning for the future. Because this crisis won’t just wash and go like some shampoo. 

One can only imagine what the post coronavirus world that we will find ourselves in will look like. 

We may well witness unprecedented scenes and behaviour given how many people are likely to have lost their jobs at the end of it and when the realisation hits, well who knows how people will react and how they will deal with it. 

When it’s all over we’ll be able to assess the full level of the dire situations that people have found themselves in. 

And people will express themselves – particularly if they are not getting the help financially, socially, and medically.

Fear of the unknown

If large numbers of people are left to fend for themselves once the crisis is over, woe betide us all. It won’t be pretty. 

If that fear of the unknown is the reason why these extraordinary powers to the prime minister are being extended for the forseeable future then the PM should come out and say so and make it clear. Because we too have a fear of the unknown.

Normally, we would look to the opposition to curb the powers of the executive. But I don’t have to tell you that Labour are in disarray – whatever happened to their leadership contest? And whilst those cats are away Boris and his band of merry mice will play away to their hearts’ content.

So it is left to us to protect our children. They are the ones who are going to bear the brunt of the government’s new powers. 

‘Youngers have got less of a leg to stand on’

They are the ones who are living on the frontline face to face with the police force. In the ever increasing us versus them scenario that is played out on our streets every day, the youngers have got less of a leg to stand on and will keep losing out. 

For the foreseeable future. We have to protect them and support them. 

No, now is not the time to play bad bwoy. Like Willie Williams sang it’s Armagedion time – a lot of people won’t get no justice tonight. 

It might be as good a time as any then to re-visit the example that was given to us by our fathers and forefathers and mothers and foremothers when they had to endure all sorts of discrimination in this country and to give our children that resilience that their foreparents had in the face of adversity. 

It is perhaps time to realise a ‘new’ black man/woman with the wherewithal to survive. Inna dis ya time.