John Lansdown seeking up to £76m, which he will use to set up trust to help fellow seafarers
A former P&O Ferries chef is suing the company for £76m over its decision to sack almost 800 staff without notice last month.
John Lansdown, the only seafarer to launch a legal action, has filed a tribunal claim against the company and its chief executive for unfair dismissal, racial discrimination and harassment.
Continue reading...‘We must teach that America is good’ says top Republican of bill banning teaching that US is ‘fundamentally racist’
The Georgia senate passed a bill on Friday that would limit discussions of race in kindergarten through 12th grade classrooms.
House Bill 1084, the “Protect Students First Act”, was approved by the Georgia senate. The measure requires local school boards and administrators to ban discrimination on the “basis of race” by limiting how race can be discussed in classrooms.
Continue reading...Ruling throws out Wisconsin’s redrawn electoral map, which included a new district to account for Black population growth
Even for experts who closely follow the US supreme court, there was something stunning about an emergency decision from the justices on Wednesday.
In an unexpected move, the court decided to throw out new districts for the state legislature in Wisconsin that had been picked by the state supreme court. But what was even more surprising was that the court’s conservative majority seemed to go out of its way to attack the Voting Rights Act, one of the most important civil rights laws designed to prevent discrimination in US elections. “Extra headspinning,” was how Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice, described it. “Bizarre,” observed Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine. David Wasserman, a redistricting expert at the non-partisan Cook Political Report, tweeted that the supreme court had entered “uncharted territory”.
Continue reading...Trio file lawsuit against homeland security department, alleging questions about faith were in violation of constitutional rights
Three Muslim Americans filed a lawsuit this week alleging that US border officers questioned them about their religious beliefs in violation of their constitutional rights when they returned from international travel.
The men involved in the lawsuit claim that US border officers at land crossings and international airports peppered them with questions about whether they were Muslim and attended a mosque and how often they prayed.
Continue reading...Police commander also admits Met has problem with officers treating inner London children as ‘adults’
Two of the five officers who were involved in the traumatic strip search of a 15-year-old black girl in her school in Hackney, London, have been removed from frontline duties, the Metropolitan police has confirmed.
The admission came at a community meeting on Wednesday evening as anger over the treatment of the girl, known as Child Q, continues. The meeting was originally supposed to take place in person but had to be moved online after the police force could not find a venue. More than 250 people attended, with more wanting to but unable to join because of the meeting’s limit.
Continue reading...Francia Márquez, 40, an environmental campaigner who has survived at least one assassination attempt, is leftist Gustavo Petro’s running mate
She is an Afro-Colombian environmental crusader who has faced down untold death threats and survived at least one assassination attempt to become one of the leading lights of Latin America’s new left.
Now, Francia Márquez, 39, could be on the verge of becoming Colombia’s next vice-president after the leftist frontrunner, Gustavo Petro, picked her as his running mate – a move that has thrilled progressives and civil rights activists across the region.
Continue reading...Nominee talked of ‘historic chance’ to be the first Black woman on supreme court – but first she had to listen to a lot of white men
History was made Monday, as the first Black woman ever nominated to the US supreme court testified to the Senate judiciary committee. But before Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson could speak at her confirmation hearing, she first had to listen to a lot of white men.
The Senate confirmation hearings for Jackson started Monday, giving the judge and every member of the judiciary committee the opportunity to deliver remarks about her nomination.
Continue reading...Senate judiciary committee chair Dick Durbin says Hawley’s attacks should be ignored in confirmation hearings this week
The Missouri Republican Josh Hawley is wrong to attack Ketanji Brown Jackson, Joe Biden’s supreme court nominee, and should be ignored in confirmation hearings this week, the Senate judiciary chair said.
Hawley, the Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin said, is “part of the fringe within the Republican party … a man who was fist-bumping the murderous mob that descended on the Capitol on 6 January of the last year.
Continue reading...Critics say race is an issue in treatment of African students fleeing war in Ukraine
Two weeks ago, Alani Iyanuoluwa fled Kyiv as the Russian invasion intensified. Making her way across Europe, the 24-year-old hoped to be reunited with family in London. Yet for 10 days she has been stranded in a French port – because she is Nigerian.
Iyanuoluwa is among a growing number of refugees who claim the British government is ignoring black people who fled Ukraine.
Continue reading...The author tells why he spent five years on a new draft of his 2008 novel Starbook to give more emphasis to one of its key themes
Self-criticism, perhaps even regret, is common among writers looking back at old work, but the novelist Ben Okri has now gone so far as to rewrite a whole published novel. And it is a book he already liked quite a lot.
The Booker-prize-winning Nigerian author has spent much of the last five years re-crafting his 2008 story Starbook, a mystical romance set in his homeland. A new version, complete with a new title and cover, is to be published this summer as The Last Gift of the Master Artists, and Okri believes that he has given more emphasis to transatlantic slavery, and will now offer his readers a “more considered” narrative.
Continue reading...Louis Sojo claims that his captain racially harassed him and said he was ‘not a real cop’ after he paid for an alleged shoplifter’s food
A New York police officer who made headlines after buying food for an alleged shoplifter is now suing the department and his captain over racial harassment and slurs following his good deed.
In July 2019, Louis Sojo and a few other officers were asked to confront a woman who was suspected of shoplifting at a Whole Foods grocery store in New York City. Sojo found food containers in the woman’s bag, filled with food from the store’s hot food bar.
Continue reading...Response to Sewell inquiry also lays out plans for greater police scrutiny and a ‘model history curriculum’
Ministers will drop the term black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME), beef up local scrutiny of police stop and search and draft a model history curriculum to teach Britain’s “complex” past in response to the Sewell report on racial disparities.
Launched as a response to the Black Lives Matter protests, the Sewell report caused controversy when it was published last year for broadly rejecting institutional racism as an explanation for many of the challenges faced by ethnic minorities in the UK.
Continue reading...Analysis: ministers publish response almost a year after commission delivered its controversial findings
When Tony Sewell released the report by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities last March, it was met by an avalanche of criticism.
Wednesday’s reaction from ministers, after a year of delay, artfully ignores its most damaging and ridiculed conclusions.
Continue reading...Cherish Oteka’s film is about a former police officer who discusses his memories of homophobia and racial profiling in the Met
The Guardian documentary The Black Cop has won the Bafta for best short film.
Directed by Cherish Oteka and produced by Emma Cooper, The Black Cop is about Gamal “G” Turawa, a former Metropolitan police officer who explores his memories of homophobia, racial profiling and racial harassment in his early career.
Continue reading...Supermajority runs out of time to greenlight House version of bill but does pass abortion restriction
Republicans who enjoy a supermajority in the West Virginia legislature nonetheless failed to pass a controversial bill restricting how race is taught in public schools because they missed a midnight deadline in the final moments of the 2022 session.
Lawmakers spent weeks during the legislative session debating and advancing proposed bills similar to the Anti-Racism Act of 2022. It wasn’t immediately clear why Republicans waited until late on Saturday to take a final vote. The act had passed the Senate and House overwhelmingly and the vote was merely to greenlight the House version.
Continue reading...Census also undercounted Black and Native Americans, while overcounting non-Hispanic white people and Asian Americans
The 2020 US census undercounted America’s Latino population at more than three times the rate of the 2010 census, according to a report released on Thursday by the US Census Bureau.
The census also undercounted the nation’s Black and Native American residents, while overcounting non-Hispanic white people and Asian Americans.
Continue reading...We hear from a some of the members of the Black Women Photographers collective, a group facilitating greater diversity in editorial photography
The Black Women Photographers collective, established via a Covid-19 relief fund, is approaching its second year of promoting and empowering Black female photographers, as well as increasing the visibility of their work.
In March, a virtual summit supported by Adobe will feature Raven B Varona, Kimberly Douglas, aka @kihmberlie, Audrey Woulard, Lola Flash, Lola Akinmade Åkerström, Amanda J Cain, NHL’s first Black woman team photographer, Whitney Matewe, DeLovie Kwagala, Cheriss May, Sade Ndya, Chaya Howell and Idara Ekpoh.
2017: My friends Dara and Isioma, who I have known since 2008 in boarding school. This photo was taken at one of our many mini alumni meetups. After spending six years of the most formative parts of our adolescence in a remote school campus – loving, hating and knowing each other – we can say that we come from each other.
Continue reading...Vulnerable women face huge bills before giving birth, campaigners say
The health of pregnant migrant women and their unborn babies is being put at risk due to fears around NHS charging, with some trusts demanding upfront fees for maternity care or wrongly charging those who are exempt, it has been claimed.
Vulnerable migrant and asylum-seeking women with no recourse to public funds are frequently being issued huge bills ahead of giving birth or aggressively pursued for payments during their pregnancy against current guidance, maternity rights groups have warned.
Continue reading...Non-white refugees face violence and racist abuse in Przemyśl, as police warn of fake reports of ‘migrants committing crimes’
Police in Poland have warned that fake reports of violent crimes being committed by people fleeing Ukraine are circulating on social media after Polish nationalists attacked and abused groups of African, south Asian and Middle Eastern people who had crossed the border last night.
Attackers dressed in black sought out groups of non-white refugees, mainly students who had just arrived in Poland at Przemyśl train station from cities in Ukraine after the Russian invasion. According to the police, three Indians were beaten up by a group of five men, leaving one of them hospitalised.
Continue reading...Civil rights groups say the district maps, which were signed into law last year, dilute the voting power of communities of color
A federal judge has ruled that new congressional and state legislative maps in Georgia, which allegedly discriminate against voters of color, can be used for this year’s election cycle.
In a ruling late on Monday, US district judge Steve Jones said there was not enough time to make changes before the primary.
Continue reading...