If He Were Brown
If he were Brown,
they'd have called it terror
before the tyres stopped spinning.
Before the smoke cleared.
Before mothers clutched their children's arms like shields
on the streets of Liverpool.
If he were Brown,
he'd be a name you spat with fear.
A face lit up in breaking news banners,
words like radicalised foaming at the mouth
of every polished presenter saying
we just want to understand
but meaning
we want someone to blame
as long as his skin fits the frame.
But Paul?
Paul's just a man.
Confused.
Troubled.
Misunderstood.
He didn't plough into a parade-
he crashed into it.
Like it was an accident.
Like it wasn't a crowd of kids.
Like we're meant to wince at the wreckage
but not the intent.
Where are the mugshots,
the press conference rage?
The righteous fire?
Where are the cold words, the blunt ones?
Where is justice
when it looks like him?
Because if he were Brown,
we'd have heard his father's birthplace
before his name.
We'd have been warned.
Told to be afraid.
Don't tell me this isn't about colour
when the headlines bleach the truth.
When White boys get sympathy,
and Brown ones become statistics.
When the comments read like eulogies
for the driver,
not the children he could've killed.
"He panicked."
"He wasn't well."
"He didn't mean it."
He didn't look like a monster;
he looked like someone's son,
someone's neighbour,
someone like us.
But when the skin is darker,
intent doesn't matter.
The benefit of the doubt
is taxed
by how foreign your name sounds
when shouted by a news anchor.
And don't think I didn't notice
how fast the world moved on.
No vigils. No hashtags.
No mural. No march.
Just a shrug,
a sigh,
a second chance
for a man who never deserved a first one.
Where's the outrage?
The echo?
The unholy roar we summon
for every Brown body that breathes too loud?
Because we've seen how the script plays out:
they're buried
in character assassinations
before the facts are dry.
But this one?
This White one?
He's a victim of his own poor mind.
Not radicalised-just rattled.
Not evil-just human.
Remember Belli Dlamini:
no weapon, no threat, just walking home
with skin too bold for their comfort.
Headlines called him suspect,
never innocent.
Ahmed Hassan ran
because he was scared-
they turned his accent into evidence,
his silence into guilt.
But Paul?
Paul gets the soft edit.
"Mental health crisis."
"No terror links."
Just a poor White man
who made a mistake.
Tamir Rice was twelve-
twelve-
and they called him a threat
for a toy gun in a playground.
But Paul can drive full speed
into a sea of joy,
scatter it like bones in a storm,
and still...
they call him a man in need of support.
There's no justice here.
Just a media machine
that feeds on melanin,
paints them villains
while powdering his skin with pity.
They criminalised Trayvon
before he was buried.
Questioned Breonna
like her body summoned bullets.
Filmed George
as he died under a knee,
dared to ask what he'd done wrong.
But this White man
who almost painted the pavement red-
he gets quiet coverage,
soft language,
a chance to explain.
So don't tell me justice is blind
when she peeks through her fingers
to check the colour of the skin she's weighing.
When she holds scales in one hand
and excuses in the other.
Don't tell me it's not about race
when a Brown boy's sharp breath
is treated like a warning,
a Black woman's grief
like a riot.
Don't tell me this is fairness
when White violence gets rewritten as fragility,
when truth is chloroformed
before it reaches the evening news.
Because we saw it:
how you tucked Paul into a narrative
stitched from sympathy and silence.
How you looked away
from the deliberate weight of that engine,
the screams, the terror.
Because if he were Brown,
they would've called his mother a failure,
his father a ghost,
his home a breeding ground.
He wouldn't be a man-
he'd be a message.
A warning.
A war cry.
But he was White.
So they called it a tragedy,
not a pattern.
Called him Paul,
not a monster.
Called it an accident,
not a choice.
And they called it news.
But it felt like a eulogy
for the justice
we never had.
I’m Harriet Courtney, a poet and writer from Wales, and most of what I write lives in the space between ache and defiance. I’m drawn to the uncomfortable: race, sex, power, grief- and how they twist around each other in ways we’re taught not to name. My work tends to bleed, whisper, and snarl all at once. If He Were Brown came from a place of reckoning: with my own gaze, with how the world loves unevenly, and with the stories we choose to believe depending on the colour of the body they’re draped on.