Louise Lucas noted she received a text from Glenn Youngkin congratulating her for a speech Mamie Locke gave
The Virginia governor, Glenn Youngkin, has apologized after mistaking one Black legislator for another in a text message.
Youngkin is the new Republican governor of the state, which has trended Democrat in recent election cycles but stunned observers by picking Youngkin as its new leader last year over a centrist Democrat candidate.
Continue reading...The London mayor vows to oppose anyone who fails to understand deep problems at beleagured force, in wake of Cressida Dick resignation
Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, today sets the stage for a dramatic showdown with the home secretary, Priti Patel, over who should be the next Metropolitan police commissioner as he vows to oppose anyone who does not understand the deep “cultural problems” within the beleaguered force.
Writing in the Observer, three days after his intervention forced Cressida Dick to abruptly resign, Khan says recent revelations of officers bragging about violence towards women and exchanging racist and Islamophobic messages rekindled personal memories of the “bad old days of the Met” during his own childhood.
Continue reading...‘It’s time to burn the Confederacy down’, says Senate hopeful Gary Chambers, who smoked marijuana in his previous ad
A Louisiana candidate for the US Senate has burned a Confederate flag in a powerful campaign ad about racial injustice in Louisiana and America.
Democrat Gary Chambers is also known for a viral ad where he smokes marijuana to “destigmatize” its use and discusses the unfair policing of drug laws.
Continue reading...When I was shot, I was interrogated as if I were the guilty party. All people saw was a Black man with a gunshot wound who was in the wrong neighborhood
As a nation, we witness the tragedy of gun violence on a regular basis. On the surface, it could be easy to look away – many Americans are desensitized to the devastation following the lives lost and the communities affected by someone with a gun. But if you take a closer look at the public portrayal of gun violence it correlates with the villainization of Black and brown Americans.
When people of color are involved in acts of gun violence, the assumption is we are to blame. We are living in the wrong neighborhood, or the violence was result of criminal activity. However, it is our communities that are most affected and harmed by these tragedies. This past year we have seen a significant rise in shootings nationwide – an increase that disproportionately affects majority-minority communities like mine. While Black men and boys make up only 2% of the population, we are most likely to be victims of gun violence. Failure to recognize the humanity in victims, regardless of the color of their skin, inherently diminishes the personal and societal value of that individual. This negligence is consistently applied to Black people. If we are the criminals, we are at fault. If we are the victims, we are at fault. If we are bystanders, we are at fault because we live in a country that does not afford us the presumption of innocence.
Continue reading...Outcry as club that is symbol of black resistance finds itself at the centre of politically charged squabble over Bolsonaro’s far-right government
The beer-soaked samba session was drawing to a close and, as usual, the crowd was preparing to vent its spleen.
As percussionists from one of Rio’s top samba groups hammered their tamborins and tantãs, revelers raised their glasses and let out loud, cathartic cheers demanding the removal of a president they despise. “Fora Bolsonaro!” jeered the sweat-drenched throng. “Bolsonaro out!”
Continue reading...Killings took place two weeks apart but neither received national coverage, prompting questions about whose stories are told
Three recent killings in the Los Angeles area have put the spotlight on the disparate impact of American gun violence on Black women and the lack of attention their stories receive, as the country reckons with some of the most intense spates of gun violence in years.
Both killings took place on weekends, a mere two weeks apart. On 8 January, California officials found the body of Tioni Theus, a 16-year-old girl who was found shot at a busy onramp of the 110 freeway. On 23 January, sisters Breahna Stines and Marneysha Hamilton were among four people shot dead during a mass shooting at a birthday party in Inglewood.
Continue reading...Top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell has been criticised after saying that Black Americans vote 'in just as high a percentage as Americans'. The comment came after Senate Democrats failed to pass voting rights protections in the run-up to this November's midterm elections that will determine control of Congress in 2023.
A reporter asked McConnell if he had a message for voters of color who were concerned that, without the John R Lewis Voting Rights Act, they were not going to be able to vote in the midterm. 'Well, the concern is misplaced because, if you look at the statistics, African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans,' McConnell said
Continue reading...February issue cover shot is an important statement of anti-tokenism, says magazine’s editor
British Vogue has hailed a new era that spotlights African fashion. The magazine’s February issue features nine dark-skinned models of African heritage on its cover, including Adut Akech.
Seemingly referencing Peter Lindbergh’s “Supers” Vogue cover from 1990, which introduced the world to the idea of the supermodel, the shot is a challenge to the traditionally white fashion industry, which has, since the murder of George Floyd, been under pressure to change and become more inclusive and diverse.
Continue reading...Jane Campion’s Netflix drama and HBO hit triumph as stars distance themselves from Hollywood Foreign Press Association
The Power of the Dog and Succession were the big winners at an unusual, stripped-back Golden Globes.
Traditionally, the ceremony is a glitzy telecast with A-listers in attendance but after a year of controversies surrounding diversity and amoral practices, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association lost its footing in the industry, with publicity firms, studios and celebrities choosing to distance themselves.
Continue reading...Taskforce including civil rights leaders and attorneys scrutinizes legacy of centuries of injustice
Dawn Basciano’s ancestors arrived five generations ago in Coloma, California, as enslaved people, forced to leave behind an infant son enslaved to another family in Missouri.
Those ancestors, Nancy and Peter Gooch, were freed in 1850 when California joined the union as a free state, and 20 years later, their son and his family were able to join them in the fertile agricultural land north-east of Sacramento. Their journey west was funded by the sweat and hard work of Nancy, who grew and sold fruit, mended clothes and cooked for the local miners.
Continue reading...Judge rules William ‘Roddie’ Bryan can seek parole after 30 years while Travis and Gregory McMichael cannot
A judge in Georgia sentenced Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael and William “Roddie” Bryan to life in prison on Friday for the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man who was running through their mostly white neighborhood in February 2020 when they chased him down and killed him.
Under Georgia law, murder carries a mandatory life sentence unless prosecutors seek the death penalty. For the judge, Timothy Walmsley, the main decision was whether to grant father and son Greg McMichael, 66, and Travis McMichael, 35, and their neighbor, Bryan, 52, a chance to earn parole.
Continue reading...Ahmaud Arbery's family bared their grief and loss to the judge during the sentencing of three white men convicted of his murder.
The men, father and son Greg and Travis McMichael and their neighbor William 'Roddie' Bryan, chased down Arbery, who was jogging in his neighbourhood, in pickup trucks and shot him dead.
At the start of the hearing, superior court judge Timothy Walmsley rejected last-minute legal motions by Bryan's defense attorney to throw out his murder conviction and spare Bryan from the life sentence that state law imposes automatically
Continue reading...The first Black person to win a best actor Oscar gave a string of groundbreaking performances on screen that helped combat social prejudice
Sidney Poitier, whose groundbreaking acting work in the 1950s and 60s paved the way for generations of Black film stars, has died aged 94. His death was announced on Friday by the minister of foreign affairs of the Bahamas, Fred Mitchell.
The Bahamas deputy prime minister, Chester Cooper, said he was “conflicted with great sadness and a sense of celebration when I learned of the passing of Sir Sidney Poitier”.
Continue reading...Free resource proves widely successful with more than 2,000 schools across the UK signing up
When 12-year-old Rose learned about the Bristol bus boycott in her history class, she felt an immense sense of pride. She knew there was a civil rights movement in the US, but wasn’t aware of the UK’s own struggle for racial justice.
“I’ve felt quite proud that there were big stands here as well,” she says. Her schoolmate Ruqiiya, also 12, agrees and spoke of her frustration of initially struggling to find more information about the boycott online. They both love learning about it in class.
Continue reading...Grant Shapps leads calls to change law limiting prosecution of people who damage memorials
Britain is not a country where “destroying public property can ever be acceptable”, a cabinet minister has said, as Conservative MPs vented their frustration at four people being cleared of tearing down a statue of the slave trader Edward Colston.
Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, said the law would be changed to close a “potential loophole” limiting the prosecution of people who damage memorials as part of the police, crime, sentencing and courts (PCSC) bill.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Labour party research also finds black children at least twice as likely to grow up poor as white children
More than half of black children in the UK are now growing up in poverty, a new analysis of official data has revealed.
Black children are also now more than twice as likely to be growing up poor as white children, according to the Labour party research, which was based on government figures for households that have a “relative low income” – defined as being below 60% of the median, the standard definition for poverty.
Continue reading...Tutu did not spare those in power in the ‘rainbow nation’ – a phrase of his with unfulfilled aspirations
From the moment he resigned from his post as a schoolteacher rather than comply with the orders of the racist, repressive apartheid regime in South Africa in 1958, Desmond Tutu never deviated from his principles, fighting for tolerance, equality and justice at home and abroad. This brought him love, influence and a moral prestige equalled by few others on the African continent or beyond.
But Tutu, the cleric and activist who died on Sunday in Cape Town aged 90, was not just outspoken in support of the causes he felt to be right – such as LGBT rights – but a fierce and implacable opponent of what he felt to be wrong. Criticism was often tempered with humour. On occasion, it was delivered straight. This earned him enemies, and still does.
Continue reading...After the 1919 Elaine race massacre, the men on death row looked to the investigative journalist to use the power of the pen to save them
Throughout the Red Summer of 1919 and beyond, no journalist did more to chronicle the lynchings and other forms of terror inflicted on Black people than Ida B Wells-Barnett. From East St Louis, Illinois, to Elaine, Arkansas, her pen was an instrument for justice.
The 12 Black men had been tortured, smothered with rags soaked in chemicals, strapped to electric chairs, beaten with whips by white mobs trying to wring “confessions” out of them. The men had been arrested after the Elaine Massacre, during the Red Summer of 1919, when white mobs “with blood in their eyes” descended on the cotton fields of Elaine, Arkansas, killing more than 800 Black people.
“Dear Mrs. Wells-Barnett,” he wrote. “This is one of the 12 mens which is sentenced to death speaking to you on this day and thanking you for your grate speech you made throughout the country in the Chicago Defender paper. So I am thanking you to the very highest hope you will do all you can for your collord race. Because we are innercent men, we Negroes. So I thank God that thro you, our Negroes are looking into this truble, and thank the city of Chicago for what it did to start things and hopen to hear from you all soon.”
Continue reading...This is the final episode of Red Summers, a 360 video series by artist Bayeté Ross Smith covering the untold American history of racial terrorism.
After the first world war, Black laborers moved to northern towns like East St Louis, Illinois, trying to escape Jim Crow in the south. In 1917, members of the White American Federation of Labor went on strike – and the company responded by hiring Black workers.
Angry white workers began attacking Black people in the city. Eventually this leads to white mobs firebombing houses with Black families inside, while others outside waited to shoot and kill them. Historians estimate between 39 and 150 Black people were killed in the East St Louis riots.
Just months later, another race riot in Houston broke out after member of the all-white Houston police department arrested a high-ranking soldier in an all-Black army regiment – a group that had recently returned from war. Only the Black soldiers were penalized
Continue reading...The police officer who said she mistook her gun for Taser is charged with manslaughter for fatally shooting Daunte Wright
The defense has rested in the trial of a Minnesota police officer charged in the fatal shooting of Black motorist Daunte Wright.
Kim Potter, 49, is charged with manslaughter in Wright’s death during a traffic stop on 11 April in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center.
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