A family was shocked to receive a letter from a neighbour telling them to remove a ‘Black Lives Matter’ sign from their window because it ‘doesn’t reflect well on the area’.
Aj Shehata and his family live in Cheam, Sutton, and couldn’t believe it when the disgruntled letter arrived – complete with a photo of their house and the ‘offending’ sign.
‘Whilst I applaud your support for Black Lives Matter, personally, as a local resident, I rather feel as if it’s a protest message to your neighbours and neighborhood, implying that we need to change the way we think,’ reads the letter.
‘That is not the case; we are all on the same side.
‘I do feel the notice does not reflect well upon the area – imagine if we all put up notices in our windows to visibly show our support for good causes? How would South Cheam look?
‘Sadly, many of the young black lives taken these days are by young blacks themselves – hopefully one day that will change.
‘Lastly, may I congratulate you on a marvellous looking house which is a real asset to the local area – it has been very tastefully designed (apart from your sign).’
Speaking to Metro.co.uk, Aj – who is 24 and works as a manager at a private medical clinic – says his parents were born in Sudan and that the entire family resonate strongly with the Black Lives Matter cause.
‘We received the letter in our postbox – I believe posted directly by whoever wrote the letter, as there was no stamp – dated May 9th,’ Aj tells us.
‘My father opened it yesterday (May 13th) and then sent the picture of the letter straight to our family group chat.
‘To receive a passive aggressive letter with some seriously wrong racial undertones, a picture of our house with the BLM sign circled, was not just upsetting but also quite scary.
‘Everyone in the house is shocked, however, this has just spurred us on to do more for the movement and to not back down.’
Aj says that during the time of the Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, he and his sisters created a number of signs to take with them when they went to the protests.
‘We then put the signs up in our windows to show support for the movement and all the people oppressed and racially discriminated against everyday,’ he explains.
‘Naturally, as time went on the majority of these signs went down, but we decided to keep one sign up to keep the message alive.’
Aj posted a picture of the letter on Twitter and people were outraged.
‘A very well written way of saying “I’m racist”. Just a pity they were too cowardly to admit which neighbour they are,’ wrote one person.
‘Britain’s form of racism hahahaha so subtle but also very loud,’ added another.
Others suggested that the only appropriate response was to add more signs to their windows, which is something Aj agrees with.
‘We are planning on getting a number of larger signs and maybe even flags to put up,’ he says, ‘just so that whoever wrote the letter can see, and know that we will not be told what to do with our own property, as well as help to spread the BLM message even more.
’It is also important to note, that we have sent this letter to a group chat containing a number of people on our road and they were all shocked. Some of the houses on the road have even decided to put up BLM signs of their own.’
He adds that although this is a good start, it is unfortunately only a couple of houses that are showing this support.
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Get in touch: metrolifestyleteam@metro.co.uk.
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