UK Black Pride's 2022 Pride Month Statement

Piecemeal progress only works for the few it serves

As Pride Month barrels through June with its cavalcade of rainbow flags and floats, UK Black Pride would like to acknowledge and honour those whose lives continue to be excluded from meaningful recognition and support all year round. While noble advances have been made to secure rights for some, we all know very well that many LGBTQI+ people continue to be left behind.

LGBTQI+ people across the country are experiencing rises in hate crimes, our trans siblings are under constant attack and racism is as virulent and persistent as it ever was. Our refugee and asylum-seeking siblings are forced to live on £40.85 per week, punished for exercising their human rights by a Draconian asylum-seeking process. The wellbeing and mental health of LGBTQI+ Black people and people of colour requires urgent attention, the cost of living crisis has increased well-entrenched disparities and pride movements that refuse to acknowledge pride’s intersectional roots continue to advance as a one-dimensional representation of all that’s been achieved. 

Piecemeal progress only works for the few it serves. 

LGBTQI+ communities include a breathtaking diversity of lived experiences and the continued erasure of the ongoing impact of systemic inequalities and injustices does a tremendous disservice to those who live in the shadows cast by Pride Month’s light and those who fought hard for the progress some of us have been able to enjoy. Now, as ever, our pride movements must be undergirded by an intersectional politics that demands the needs of all LGBTQI+ people be met.

UK Black Pride thanks those who won’t let up, won’t shut up and won’t let anybody forget that structural discrimination and an obscene lack of care stand in the way of LGBTQI+ people who are poor, Black, trans, disabled, asylum-seeking, homeless and those who cannot advocate on their own behalf. And we thank and admire those who – confronted with the worst of society – continue to be unapologetic in their self-expression and unwavering in their celebration and support of those who refuse to wedge themselves into boxes that were never generous enough for them in the first place. 

This month and every month, UK Black Pride stands with those at the margins – by choice and by force – to demand that the rights and lives of every single LGBTQI+ person are protected as the sacred rights and lives they are.

UK Black Pride