Poor box office performance reflects broader challenge for Hollywood as it vies with domestic productions
The poor performance of Disney’s The Little Mermaid at the Chinese box office has reopened questions on Hollywood’s increasing difficulties in the world’s second-largest economy and the role racism has played in the film’s reception.
The live action remake has grossed just $3.6m (£2.9m) since its release in Chinese cinemas on 26 May, according to Box Office Mojo.
Continue reading...Writer of Empireland, which examined Britain’s imperial past, says culture war-fuelled online trolling and heckling ‘gets to you’
The writer Sathnam Sanghera has said he barely ever does public events in the UK because of a fear of being attacked amid a culture war-fuelled backlash over his views on Britain’s imperial past, saying he feared a Florida-style push towards the banning of books.
Sanghera, a journalist and author whose bestselling book Empireland assessed how the UK’s colonial territories still infect contemporary politics and discourse, said he had begun to dread holding book events here.
Continue reading...Nearly half of respondents said they did not know where to access the medication if they needed it
Asian Americans do not have adequate access to information about how to obtain an abortion, according to a new report.
Cultural stigmas against conversations about sexual and reproductive health and a lack of in-language information on abortion has stifled knowledge of abortion care among Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders and Native Hawaiians, researchers found.
Continue reading...Senator’s comments come as leader Adam Bandt says the party is yet to see the complaint of racism foreshadowed by Lidia Thorpe
Senator Mehreen Faruqi has revealed she has “experienced racism in the Greens” as leader Adam Bandt declined to rule out that the party had received complaints about alleged racism beyond one expected from Lidia Thorpe.
Faruqi, the Greens’ anti-racism spokesperson, made the comments at a press conference on Tuesday at which Bandt confirmed the party is yet to see the complaint of racism foreshadowed by senator Thorpe on the ABC on Sunday.
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Continue reading...Investigators of alleged fraud were asked to group suspects by racial features, including ‘negroid types’
Lawyers investigating post office operators in the Horizon computer scandal used a racist term to categorise Black workers, according to documents released to campaigners.
Investigators were asked to group suspects based on racial features, the results of a freedom of information request found.
Continue reading...Durrell Goodall, Reano Walters and Nathaniel Williams are applying for a formal review of their convictions as teenagers
Lawyers for three black men convicted as teenagers of a 2016 murder in Manchester will apply for their convictions to be formally reviewed, arguing they resulted from institutional racism by the police, prosecution and judge.
The mothers of the three men – Durrell Goodall, Reano Walters and Nathaniel “Jay” Williams – will travel to Birmingham to personally deliver their sons’ 180-page application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC).
Continue reading...Bermondsey MP had whip removed last year after complaint by reporter Henry Dyer about racist comments
Labour is to restore the party whip to Neil Coyle after the MP was suspended for drunken abuse and making racist comments to a journalist.
Coyle was suspended in February last year after a complaint by Henry Dyer, a political reporter for the Insider website who now works for the Guardian, about the behaviour of the MP for Bermondsey and Old Southwark in London.
Continue reading...Other payment companies do business with Palestinians in the occupied territories, but PayPal only provides services to Israelis there
Eleven members of the US Congress have demanded PayPal end a ban on doing business with Palestinians in the occupied territories while permitting Israeli settlers to use the digital payment platform.
The letter, authored by Representative Mark Pocan, says PayPal is discriminating against Palestinians by denying “equal access to the digital economy”.
Continue reading...Three detained after racist slurs directed at Real Madrid forward, with four more held over mannequin hanging from bridge
Spanish police have arrested three people in connection with the racist abuse suffered by Real Madrid’s Brazilian forward Vinícius Júnior during a match with Valencia on Sunday, and detained a further four suspects over an effigy of the player that was hung from a bridge in Madrid four months ago.
In a brief statement on Tuesday morning, the Policía Nacional said three young men had been arrested in Valencia over the “racist behaviour” that took place during the match at the city’s Mestalla stadium.
Continue reading...Judicial sources say incident during Real Madrid’s match with Valencia is being treated as possible hate crime
Spanish prosecutors have opened an investigation over racist chants hurled at Real Madrid’s Brazilian forward Vinícius Júnior during a weekend match, as the head of Spain’s football federation admitted the country had a “problem” with racism.
The prosecutor’s office in the eastern city of Valencia, where the game took place, was investigating the incident as a possible “hate crime”, judicial sources said, after Luis Rubiales of the Royal Spanish Football Federation called for zero tolerance.
Continue reading...The ABC presenter says he has been a media target for racism and for now he’s ‘walking away’
The host of Q+A Stan Grant is standing down from the show after receiving “grotesque racist abuse” which escalated after he spoke on the ABC about the impact of colonialism ahead of the King’s coronation.
Grant said in a column published on the ABC website that after Monday’s episode he was “walking away”.
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Continue reading...A worker at the rental chain demanded to see the American man’s passport, apparently unaware that the island is part of the US
The US rental car giant Hertz has apologized and pledged to retrain its staff after an employee denied a Puerto Rican customer a prepaid vehicle on the mistaken belief that he was from a foreign country and needed a passport.
During the encounter with the customer at New Orleans’s Louis Armstrong international airport, the Hertz employee also called over a law enforcement officer even though Puerto Rico has been a US territory since 1898 and has a (non-voting) member of Congress, according to a stunning report the CBS correspondent David Begnaud published on Twitter and Instagram late Saturday.
Continue reading...Indigenous community says the plan to meet with Torin O’Brien only legitimises his offensive views
First Nations people in central Queensland say the state government is inflaming local tensions by pushing ahead with plans to meet with the former leader of a far-right “patriots” group, who was booted off Facebook after leading a mob to surround the Rockhampton home of an Indigenous teenager.
Guardian Australia on Tuesday revealed that the ringleader of the group, Torin O’Brien, is the former president of a group that regularly posted offensive anti-Islam content online.
Continue reading...First-of-its-kind committee gives final approval to long list of proposals including cash to descendants of enslaved people
A California taskforce on reparations voted this weekend to approve recommendations on how the state may compensate and apologize to Black residents for generations of harm caused by discriminatory policies.
The committee, the first of its kind in the United States, gave final approval to a hefty list of proposals, including cash payments to descendants of enslaved people.
Continue reading...Bid to reflect an inclusive modern Britain countered by ‘terribly white’ Buckingham Palace balcony
For many, King Charles III achieved his ambition for a diverse and inclusive coronation, though not everyone agreed.
There were far more black and brown faces in Westminster Abbey than 70 years ago, as would be expected given societal change over Elizabeth II’s reign.
Continue reading...Jaws star went on to defend Laurence Olivier’s performance in blackface in the 1965 adaptation of Othello
Academy Award-winning actor Richard Dreyfuss has harshly criticized the Oscars’ new diversity and inclusion standards, saying “they make me vomit.”
In an interview with PBS’s Firing Line, the co-star of Steven Spielberg’s 1975 thriller Jaws told host Margaret Hoover that he disagreed with the new set of rules that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has imposed for films to qualify for best picture nominations.
Continue reading...Greens senator says she is ‘drawing a line in the sand’ after One Nation leader told her to ‘piss off back to Pakistan’
Mehreen Faruqi will launch federal court action against Pauline Hanson under the Racial Discrimination Act, after the One Nation founder told the Greens senator to “piss off back to Pakistan” in an ugly social media clash following the death of Queen Elizabeth II.
Faruqi wants Hanson to make a $150,000 donation to charity and to publish a new tweet saying she had used offensive language. The New South Wales senator said she chose to escalate legal action over the September 2022 tweet after a complaint through the Human Rights Commission was terminated.
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Continue reading...Advocates say it will cast welcome attention on a system mired in scandals of prisoner mistreatment and racial injustice
A United Nations human rights group is touring Los Angeles county jails on Friday, bringing international scrutiny to a detention system criticized for overcrowding, mistreatment and abuse of people with mental illnesses, and conditions described by civil rights groups as “barbaric”.
A panel of experts appointed by the UN human rights council and formed after the murder of George Floyd is visiting LA as part of a two-week trip to cities across the US examining racial justice and police violence. In California, the investigators will meet with families of people killed by police and formerly incarcerated people. They will also enter the LA county jail system, the largest in the country, which is run by the LA sheriff’s department (LASD).
Continue reading...Chart-topping calypso singer who supported US civil rights movement and African initiatives dies of congestive heart failure
Harry Belafonte, the singer, actor and civil rights activist who broke down racial barriers, has died aged 96.
As well as performing global hits such as Day-O (The Banana Boat Song), winning a Tony award for acting and appearing in numerous feature films, Belafonte spent his life fighting for a variety of causes. He bankrolled numerous 1960s initiatives to bring civil rights to Black Americans; campaigned against poverty, apartheid and Aids in Africa; and supported leftwing political figures such as Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.
Continue reading...Calls for police powers to be rolled back in favour of funding for youth services and mental health initiatives
A community-led approach is needed to tackle serious youth violence, such as more funding for youth services and mental health initiatives while rolling back police powers, a report has said.
Education is central to the fight against serious youth violence, which must involve an end to school exclusions and the removal of police from schools, according to Holding Our Own: A guide to non-policing solutions to serious youth violence.
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