We’re reachable, but are we connected?

We’re more connected than we’ve ever been, endlessly reachable, everywhere, all the time. And yet despite that, loneliness keeps rising anyway. That paradox is where I want to start, because I don’t think you can really honour community without asking why it feels harder to access than ever, even now.

Here’s a psychological truth I keep coming back to, humans are literally wired for connection with others. An amazing facet of being human really, shaped over time. Community shows up across every culture, every era, because we genuinely need each other, for safety, for comfort, for meaning. Sometimes, though, I think the culture of the West sits at odds with something deep and hardwired inside us, that pull toward competitiveness, hyper independence, doing it all alone as some kind of invisible badge of honour. And slowly, there’s a swing back toward understanding what a lot of traditional communities have always known: interdependence, the ability to ask for support and receive it, to give it back in turn, and to actually recognise each other along the way.

A philosophy worth borrowing: Ubuntu

There’s a word for this that I love, Ubuntu, from the Nguni languages of Southern Africa, Zulu and Xhosa among them. Roughly translated, it means “I am because we are,” or “a person is a person through other people.” Your humanity, in other words, is bound up in mine. We don’t get to be fully human alone.

For Black and Global Majority people, especially those of us who are second or third generation, this comes with an extra layer of work. You’re often learning your own heritage almost from the outside, working out what it means to you personally, while also holding whatever national identity surrounds you, and figuring out how those things sit together rather than compete. And I think it’s worth saying plainly: you don’t have to fit neatly into one community to belong. Most of us are part of several at once, and that’s not a loyalty problem to solve, it’s just what being a complex person actually looks like.

We are all Professor Arday

This year, that question of belonging has felt sharper. Since Professor Jason Arday’s death, there’s been a phrase going around: WE ARE ALL PROFESSOR ARDAY. I understand exactly what it means. In my own work, I’ve watched people recognise themselves in his story again and again, not being seen, being questioned, having to defend a version of yourself that shouldn’t need defending.

But I don’t want to end there, because community, at its best, is the answer to all of this, not just the backdrop to it. Think of 60 years of Notting Hill Carnival, decades of Caribbean culture, joy and resistance, taking up space in the streets. These aren’t small things. They’re what happens when people decide to build rather than wait to be let in.

Support and emergency contacts

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An invitation, not just a month

That’s what this Black History Month is, for me, an invitation to rediscover what community actually means, to act in service, and to take the small, active steps, learning, showing up, reaching out, that keep it alive.

If you’re working behind the scenes in this industry and any of this resonated, that’s your step, showing up, reaching out. The Anti-Racism Wellbeing Service is here for exactly that, a space to be heard, no judgement, nothing to have figured out first. Drop the team a line at [email protected]

I’m going to grab an oxtail and rice and peas as fuel to do this along the way.

Happy Black History Month.