Category Archives: Race

Earliest European portraits of African men on show together for first time

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Rijksmuseum says change in focus prompted by renewed interest in wake of Black Lives Matter

The two earliest portraits of men of African descent in the history of European art are being exhibited together for the first time in their 500-year history, reflecting a change of focus championed by the Black Lives Matter movement, curators at the Rijksmuseum have said.

Among more than 100 portraits by Renaissance artists being showcased by the museum in Amsterdam from Tuesday are Albrecht Dürer’s 1508 sketch, discovered in the German painter’s workshop at the time of his death, and Jan Jansz Mostaert’s portrait, dating from about 1525.

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‘It was never about saving Newsom’: how Latino voters played a major role in California

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About 30% of California’s registered voters are Latino, and it appears they voted largely Democrat – but some say it was ‘about ensuring this state didn’t move backward’

Luis Sánchez worked overtime to rescue Governor Gavin Newsom in California’s recall race. His group PowerCA Action reached more than a quarter-million voters ahead of election day, encouraging young Latino Californians to head to the polls.

Related: ‘Study Newsom’s playbook’: what Democrats – and Republicans – can learn from California’s recall

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Bernardine Evaristo on a childhood shaped by racism: ‘I was never going to give up’

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My creativity can be traced back to my heritage, to the skin colour that defined how I was perceived. But, like my ancestors, I wouldn’t accept defeat


When I won the Booker prize in 2019 for my novel Girl, Woman, Other, I became an “overnight success”, after 40 years working professionally in the arts. My career hadn’t been without its achievements and recognition, but I wasn’t widely known. The novel received the kind of attention I had long desired for my work. In countless interviews, I found myself discussing my route to reaching this high point after so long. I reflected that my creativity could be traced back to my early years, cultural background and the influences that have shaped my life. Not least, my heritage and childhood

Through my father, a Nigerian immigrant who had sailed into the Motherland on the “Good Ship Empire” in 1949, I inherited a skin colour that defined how I was perceived in the country into which I was born, that is, as a foreigner, outsider, alien. I was born in 1959 in Eltham and raised in Woolwich, both in south London. Back then, it was still legal to discriminate against people based on the colour of their skin, and it would be many years before the Race Relations Acts (1965 and 1968) enshrined the full scope of anti-racist doctrine into British law.

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New Zealand is no ‘off-grid’ safe haven from the apocalypse | Max Harris

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From 19th-century colonists to today’s super wealthy, New Zealand has been wrongly depicted as a ‘blank slate’

New Zealand has become the prime destination for the world’s wealthy elite. Their relocation could be to do with the country’s famous scenery and quality of life but it could also be that the pandemic has renewed people’s interest in New Zealand as supposedly the best place in the world to survive global societal collapse.

It’s true, as a recent study observes, that New Zealand is a set of isolated islands with renewable energy resources and a temperate climate. However, there is also a long history, intertwined with the country’s colonisation, of New Zealand being seen as a blank slate or empty land, open for the taking. That false image served to justify colonial settlement in the past. It’s now being used again to prepare the ground for further settlement by the super-wealthy.

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‘We want people to freak out’: inside Hollywood’s Museum of Motion Pictures

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Boasting the shark from Jaws, the robe from the Big Lebowski, and the slippers from Oz, the Academy museum is finally open. But the real story is its exposé of Hollywood’s racist, sexist past

In 1939, the Academy of Motion Pictures published its first “players directory”, which grouped actors into categories such as “leading women” and “comediennes”, but set aside separate sections for “coloured” and “oriental” performers. The Academy removed the segregated categories a few years later, but many of the actors of colour weren’t integrated into other sections. They were eliminated.

These racist directories are on display at the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles, which celebrates some of the most important film-makers in history while also attempting to confront head-on the dark legacy of exclusion and discrimination in the industry. The hope is to tell a much more complicated, and accurate, story of Hollywood through the years.

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Texas women in New York restaurant vaccine brawl say race a factor

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Activist says there will be protest over treatment of Black patrons after confrontation outside Carmine’s

A lawyer for three women from Texas arrested after a brawl outside a popular New York City restaurant over the requirement that guests show proof of vaccination has said race was a factor in the case.

In video shot by an onlooker last Thursday and shared widely on social media, a restaurant hostess, who is white, is seen being attacked.

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No more white saviours, thanks: how to be a true anti-racist ally | Nova Reid

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In order for true diversity to flourish, we need to first become unswervingly anti-racist. That means doing more than watching a few documentaries or reading some books, says Nova Reid. Consciously ‘unlearning’ racism is the crucial first step

I felt overwhelmed: 40,000 hits to my website – 50 times more than the average month – plus 2,000 emails, people tagging me in social media posts to let their followers know they had signed up to my online anti-racism course – but not always actually signing up. The murder of George Floyd had thrown up a very apparent collective sense of white guilt around the world.

I had been doing anti-racism work long before the summer of 2020, so I didn’t understand why – increased volume aside – some of these interactions felt so different to the usual business inquiries I receive. I felt there was such a sense of ownership over me, my time, my words, what I should talk about and when. The more boundaries I put up, the more they would trample over them.

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New hustle: Pulitzer winner Colson Whitehead on his heist novel

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The author talks about his book set among small time crooks in 1960s Harlem, the joy of switching it up - and why he looks up to Stanley Kubrick

Something strange happened the morning after Colson Whitehead finished his forthcoming novel. “I put the book to bed, and then I got up the next morning and Minneapolis was on fire,” he says. It was 26 May 2020, the first of three days of riots last year after the murder of George Floyd. Whitehead had chosen to conclude his latest novel, Harlem Shuffle, against the backdrop of the Harlem riot of 1964, which erupted after a 15-year-old black boy, James Powell, was shot dead by police lieutenant Thomas Gilligan. What were the odds that the day after he wrapped up a fictional contemplation of “how we pull ourselves together” in the aftermath of such an incident, there would be another one? As Whitehead himself observes, the coincidence was proof of a point he’s always making: “If you write about fucked up racial shit, wait five minutes and something else will happen.”

Long before our conversation, I’d resolved that I wouldn’t let the topic of race dominate it. For a start, it’s the subject (often the only one) that black writers are always asked to offer opinions about – an architecture of expectation that builds itself up around us. But also, it has never dominated Whitehead’s work, which has ranged in nine previous books over areas as diverse as elevator inspection, the World Series of poker and the zombie apocalypse. And there’s plenty else to talk about. Music: “I’ve done homework, college papers on Ice Cube’s first record and I’m still listening to it now. I’m brought back to other moments in my life when I’ve been writing really hard and Radiohead’s been there, Public Enemy’s been there.” Lockdowns: “I guess the cliche is that writers’ lives didn’t change that much, I’m pretty much sitting right here all day.” Whether he regrets chickening out of accepting Toni Morrison’s invitation to coffee several years ago: “When I’ve had the opportunity to meet some of my idols at conferences, I’m very reserved.”

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‘How is Pauli Murray not a household name?’ The extraordinary life of the US’s most radical activist

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She explored her gender and sexuality in the 20s, defied segregation in the 40s and inspired Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Now, a film is bringing her trailblazing achievements to light

It seems inconceivable that someone like Pauli Murray could have slipped through the cracks of US history. A lawyer, activist, scholar, poet and priest, Murray led a trailblazing life that altered the course of history. She was at the forefront of the battles for racial and gender equality, but often so far out in front that her contributions went unrecognised.

In 1940, 15 years before Rosa Parks, Murray was jailed for refusing to move to the back of a bus in the Jim Crow south. In 1943, she campaigned successfully to desegregate her local diner, 17 years before the Greensboro lunch counter sit-ins of 1960. Her work paved the way for the landmark supreme court ruling Brown v Board of Education in 1954 – which de-segregated US schools – to the extent that Thurgood Marshall, a lawyer for the NAACP civil rights group, called Murray’s book States’ Laws on Race and Color “the bible for civil rights lawyers”.

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Dennis Billups: he helped lead a long, fiery sit-in – and changed disabled lives

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Blinded by medical intervention as a baby, Billups became one of the leaders of a groundbreaking, world-shaking 1977 protest. He talks about what drives him and why Barack Obama loves his energy

“My mother used to tell us we had to be really good,” says Dennis Billups. “There were always two strikes against us – so you had to hit the third strike out of the park.” The “strikes” were being Black and being blind. And growing up in San Francisco in the 1960s and 70s, both were potential sources of open discrimination. “There were times when, even walking in our own neighbourhood, we would get: ‘You’re supposed to stay inside.’ ‘Don’t you have a dog?’ ‘Don’t you have a cane?’” At times this could turn physical. “Some neighbours would turn water on us and stuff like that.” Finding employment was also a challenge. “Being blind, they didn’t have to do too much except say: ‘We’re not going to hire you,’ or: ‘We don’t think you can do this.’ So it was a glass ceiling, more or less. I’m sure with my twin sister there was a lot more, being a woman, African American and blind as well, but she was a hell of a fighter.”

Billups is a fighter, too, albeit one whose principal weapons are determination, congeniality, optimism – and a mellifluous voice. Now in his late 60s, speaking on Zoom from the San Francisco public library, he still radiates an infectious positivity that helped him as a young man when he played a key role in a lesser-known battle for civil rights.

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UK aid cuts make it vital to address anti-black bias in funding | Kennedy Odede

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Covid-19 has shown the effectiveness of local partners. If the sector is to respond and rebuild, it must redistribute power

The UK’s cut to its aid budget comes to about £4bn a year. Such a dramatic reduction is a blow to many, but most of all to the local organisations who perpetually find themselves last in line for funding.

New research by the Vodafone Foundation reveals that, too often, only a small proportion of philanthropic funding earmarked for African development reaches local, African-led civil society organisations. Instead, most development funding favours intermediaries in the global north and international organisations.

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‘These are the facts’: Black educators silenced from teaching America’s racist past

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As 22 states pass or consider legislation on race and racism discourse in classrooms, some Black teachers are reminded daily that their racial identity is a liability

History teacher Valanna White filed into the auditorium the first week of August for the customary back-to-school all-staff meeting at Walker Valley high school in Cleveland, Tennessee. What she heard shifted her outlook for the coming school year. On 1 July, a new law took effect banning the teaching of critical race theory in Tennessee public schools. White listened intently as a school district official gave a vague overview informing the group that critical race theory was prohibited, though without fully explaining what critical race theory entails. Instead, teachers were told a list of actions – such as discussing racial discrimination – that were forbidden.

White left the meeting confused and frustrated. Tennessee’s academic standards for US history require high school teachers to cover topics including Jim Crow laws, Plessy v Ferguson – the 1896 supreme court case upholding the separate-but-equal doctrine – and the civil rights movement. “I can’t talk about the civil rights movement without talking about Bloody Sunday and the premise behind Bloody Sunday, the premise behind voter suppression,” she said, dreading the repercussions “for just teaching my standards”.

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Lashana Lynch, the first female 007: ‘I never had a plan B’

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Lashana Lynch, star of the new Bond movie, on ninja training, doing her own stunts and why now’s the time for an agent who’s a ‘real woman’

Lashana Lynch knew she was on a very short shortlist. She had taped a couple of auditions for Barbara Broccoli, the producer of the James Bond films since 1995. She met and read with Daniel Craig, who would be making his fifth and final appearance in No Time To Die, the 25th 007 adventure, a new release that you may have caught wind of by now. Then, finally, there was the stunt test, overseen by the Bond stunt and armoury teams (yes those are actual departments).

Is that like circuit training? “Deeper than that,” Lynch replies. “They hand you a bunch of weapons and they teach you a routine for a few seconds or a minute and then you basically have to copy the routine. So it was like, ‘OK, grab the gun! Shoot! Get down on your knees! Shoot! Roll on your back! Land on your feet! Shoot! Run, run, run! You’ve run out of ammo! Throw that away! Assemble this gun! Shoot!’ And that was the first out of five routines they taught me.”

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‘Kids need two things – love and education’: how Ian Wright and Musa Okwonga are inspiring young people through fiction

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The football star, with help from the author, has turned his experiences of triumph over adversity into a novel for pre-teens, Here the friends discuss fathers, racism and the redemptive power of sport

Sometimes the detail of a single life story can stop half a nation in its tracks. One such arresting moment was the footballer Ian Wright’s extraordinary Desert Island Discs interview with Lauren Laverne in February last year. I had the radio on in the kitchen in the background while I was working to a tight deadline. As soon as Wright started to talk about his childhood, though, I gave up all hope of finishing what I was writing and gave the broadcast my fullest attention. I texted Lisa, my wife, and my daughters to tell them to stop what they were doing and turn it on. By the end, I was crying nearly as much as Wright was.

In recent weeks, when I’ve mentioned to various friends that I was due to talk to Wright for this piece, they have, unprompted, recalled a similar reaction to hearing him as a castaway: a couple of them remembered blubbing and that compulsion to call loved ones to tell them they had to listen too.

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The quest to find African American graves before they’re lost to climate crisis

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As both the climate crisis and development intensify, Black cemeteries are now at a disproportionate risk of being lost, some before they have even been officially found

On a cloudy weekend day in May, Jennifer Blanks took a trip to Canaan cemetery in Bryan, Texas. The six-acre site is the final resting place for a community of primarily Black farmers and veterans, with generations stretching back to the 1800s. Among the interred is Powell Harvey, the first Black man to serve as the Brazos county constable.

If Blanks hadn’t known this before visiting, though, she might have missed many of the graves completely.

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Queen supports Black Lives Matter, says senior royal representative

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Sir Ken Olisa, first black Lord-Lieutenant for London, reveals he has talked about racism with royal household

The Queen and the royal family are supporters of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, one of the monarch’s representatives has said.

Sir Ken Olisa, the first black Lord-Lieutenant for London, revealed to Channel 4 that he had discussed the topic of racism with members of the royal household in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in the US.

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It’s shameful that it took so long to bring down the statute of Robert E Lee

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Let’s hope Richmond makes its removal more than an empty gesture

When they lifted the enormous statue of the Confederate general Robert E Lee from his pedestal and set him on the ground in Richmond, Virginia, on Wednesday, it was symbolically huge to me. On high, he was undeservedly venerated.

And for years of walking under him on Monument Avenue, going about my day, I always felt the city was in an embarrassing time warp, unable to completely shake its status as the former capital of the Confederacy.

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Biden vowed to make racial justice the heart of his agenda – is it still beating?

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The president named one of the most diverse cabinets ever but efforts to reform voting rights and other priorities are bogged down by legislative and legal obstacles

Defying the punishing August heat, the Rev Al Sharpton recently led a gathering thousands strong through the streets of the nation’s capital on the 58th anniversary of the March on Washington, when Martin Luther King Jr delivered his immortal I Have a Dream speech on that day in 1963.

Now, as then, there was an urgency to their march. In statehouses across the country, Republicans are proposing – and passing – new voter restrictions that activists say amount to the greatest erosion of voting rights since the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965, a crowning achievement of the civil rights movement.

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After slavery, oystering offered a lifeline. Now sewage spills threaten to end it all

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Black people are disproportionately suffering under the weight of a sewage crisis in Virginia, a symptom of decades of neglect by local governments

On a cold winter morning early this year, Mary Hill was helping her 101-year-old mother get ready for the day when she received a distressing email alert. Tens of millions of gallons of raw sewage were heading for her prized family oyster beds.

Yet Hill was not surprised that the wastewater pipe built in the 1940s had succumbed to corrosion. “Here we go again,” she thought grimly.

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Virginia governor pardons seven Black men executed in 1951 for rape of a white woman

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Governor Ralph Northam said the men, tried by all-white juries, were not given due process at a time when only Black men received death sentences for rape in Virginia

The governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam, has granted posthumous pardons to seven Black men who were executed in 1951 for the rape of a white woman.

The case attracted pleas for mercy from around the world and in recent years has been denounced as an example of racial disparity in the use of the death penalty.

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