In 1915 the president, Woodrow Wilson, screened the movie Birth of a Nation at the White House – a film that depicts Black men as brutal people who desire white women. Meanwhile white supremacist groups were writing school curriculums and news media were painting Black men as animalistic beings who attacked white women. This set the scene for a week of racial violence targeting Black Americans in 1919, during which two American cities were left in chaos. In Chicago it started with a Black man drowning after white people throw stones at him at a beach for infringing on their space. It led to a confrontation between Black and white citizens, and escalated into white mobs going into Black communities to burn down homes and kill Black people. In Washington DC it started with a minor argument that turned into rape allegations against two Black men, which prompted white mobs to attack Black people in restaurants, trolleys and in their communities. Dozens of Black people were killed during these riots, and few were held accountable.
Continue reading...Category Archives: Race
UK academic sues university after losing role in critical race theory row
Aysha Khanom claims discrimination after Leeds Beckett accused her of using ‘racist language’ in tweets
An academic is suing Leeds Beckett University after she was dropped from her advisory role over tweets calling a mixed-race man a “house negro”, alleging the decision was discriminatory because of her belief in critical race theory and Black radicalism.
The university ended its association with the academic adviser Aysha Khanom after accusing her of “racist language” in relation to tweets using the terms “house negro” and “coconut” – the former in a question.
Continue reading...‘I’m not a news robot reading an Autocue’: Clive Myrie on politics, personality and Mastermind
The BBC newsreader takes over the venerable quiz show next week. He discusses fighting for viewers, dealing with online abuse – and making his parents proud
There is one correct way to start an interview with the new host of Mastermind: turn the tables on him – put him in the chair, under the spotlight. He hasn’t prepared a specialist subject, though, so I pick one for him, an easy one: the life and work of Clive Myrie, gleaned from previous interviews and the internet. There may be errors, but I can accept only the answer on the card. It will lead to topics for discussion. He is up for it, he says, although his face says: “WTF?”
The setting – a meeting room at the BBC’s New Broadcasting House – isn’t perfect. The lighting is all wrong. There are chairs, but not the chair. At least I can play the theme on my phone. Bam baba bam, bam baba bam, da da …
Continue reading...The Guardian view on anti-Chinese suspicion: target espionage, not ethnicities | Editorial
Close attention to Chinese spying and influence operations is important. It cannot justify racial profiling and the promotion of distrust
Politicians and academics in the US have begun to talk of Researching While Chinese American, in a deliberate echo of the phrase Driving While Black. There is a long, ignoble history of failed espionage cases against such scientists. But the Trump administration stepped things up when it launched the China Initiative, vowing to aggressively pursue the theft of trade secrets and identify researchers who had helped to transfer technology to Beijing.
Though one man was jailed after pleading guilty to making false statements to federal authorities this spring, its first trial has rightly faltered. Anming Hu’s prosecution for fraud, over claims he hid ties to China, ended in a hung jury and a mistrial. One juror later declared that the FBI owed him an apology, after agents admitted they had falsely accused the former University of Tennessee researcher of being a spy. Yet to the shock of academics, Asian American advocacy groups and others, prosecutors plan to retry the Chinese-born Canadian citizen.
Continue reading...Shayne Oliver: ‘Being a Black weirdo is harder than being any other kind’
He’s DJ’d naked, put a great dane on the catwalk – and now with an album, Shayne Oliver is on a mission to bring New York’s queer underground to the world. Is the former Hood by Air designer the 21st century Andy Warhol?
Interviewing Shayne Oliver is a conversational rollercoaster. We hurtle from cult 90s guitar bands to Arthur Jafa, from the problem with political correctness to the pressure on creatives, from Kanye West to Vin Diesel, with little warning of which thrill or spill is next. “I’m such a scatterbrain,” he says at the end of our call. “I’m sorry.”
But Oliver is far from a scatterbrain. He is best known as a fashion designer, the former vogue-dancer who founded the critically adored label Hood By Air, or HBA, in 2006. However, he is no longer limiting himself to clothes. Oliver is moving into music, having formed Anonymous Club – a “creative studio” focused on young talent that began as a series of parties. The studio’s debut release is Screensavers Vol 1, a compilation album based on Oliver’s demos, executive produced by Yves Tumor.
Continue reading...Gaza conflict led to record rise in UK antisemitic attacks, charity says
Community Security Trust recorded 639 incidents in May, 49% of the total for the first half of 2021
A charity that monitors antisemitism and provides security for British Jewish groups has said the Gaza conflict that broke out in May resulted in its highest recording of anti-Jewish hate incidents.
The Community Security Trust (CST) recorded 1,308 such incidents nationwide between January and June 2021, a 49% increase on the same period in 2020 and the highest recorded in the first half of a year.
Continue reading...The last humanist: how Paul Gilroy became the most vital guide to our age of crisis
One of Britain’s most influential scholars has spent a lifetime trying to convince people to take race and racism seriously. Are we finally ready to listen?
In 2000, the race equality thinktank the Runnymede Trust published a report about the “future of multi-ethnic Britain”. Launched by the Labour home secretary Jack Straw, it proposed ways to counter racial discrimination and rethink British identity. The report was nuanced and scholarly, the result of two years’ deliberation. It was honest about Britain’s racial inequalities and the legacy of empire, but also offered hope. It made the case for formally declaring the UK a multicultural society.
The newspapers tore it to pieces. The Daily Telegraph ran a front-page article: “Straw wants to rewrite our history: ‘British’ is a racist word, says report.” The Sun and the Daily Mail joined in. The line was clear – a clique of leftwing academics, in cahoots with the government, wanted to make ordinary people feel ashamed of their country. In the Telegraph, Boris Johnson, then editor of the Spectator magazine, wrote that the report represented “a war over culture, which our side could lose”. Spooked by the intensity of the reaction, Straw distanced himself from any further debate about Britishness, recommending in his speech at the report’s launch that the left swallow some patriotic tonic.
Continue reading...Tulsa race massacre: 19 bodies reinterred as protesters demand criminal investigation
- Bullet found with one set of remains that showed trauma
- Anthropologist tells crowd: ‘We are not done’
The bodies of 19 people exhumed from an Oklahoma cemetery during a search for victims of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre were reburied in a closed ceremony on Friday, despite objections from protesters outside the cemetery.
Continue reading...A failure at the top of police, and at the top of governments both Tory and Labour
Analysis: we have been here before with damning reports on race and policing, and we will almost certainly be here again
• MPs rebuke police for systemic failure to improve record on race
Race issues for the police – after the Macpherson report in 1999 – were seen as a problem mainly affecting the rank and file, which was dominated by the white working class. It was clear that policing would radically change only if government pressured it to do so. Promises were made and very basic targets for the recruitment of ethnic minority officers were set. So why are we still here?
The bitter truth is because those who have the power to do something do not care enough, or lack the will, or focus, or think what the police are doing on race is enough. Critics would say those in power are hampered by institutional racism. The other possibility is that every report on this topic that raised troubling findings has been wrong.
Continue reading...Sha’Carri Richardson’s look is over the top – that’s why it matters
She’s out of the Olympics, but the US sprinting star’s ‘extra’ style makes an important statement about black womanhood
Despite not being part of Team USA after a failed drugs test, Sha’Carri Richardson made a reappearance yesterday in an advert for Beats by Dre soundtracked by a new song from Kanye West. With her trademark long nails, long lashes and fire-cracker hair, Richardson has underlined the point that, Olympian or not, she is one of 2021’s most electrifying style icons.
Continue reading...They lost loved ones to gun violence. Then their grief was politicized
Bereaved families’ stories are being used to criticize the movement to defund police: ‘It compounds the trauma’
William Gude spends his days trying to hold the police accountable. As the creator and outspoken monitor behind @filmthepolicela, a Twitter account that’s attracted thousands of followers, he regularly critiques the LAPD by filming and tweeting about their activity – from traffic stops to confrontations with protestors.
But one night in June, his tweets got personal. That night he told his followers that his son, Marcelis William-Gude, had been shot. After hitting send, Gude drove to the hospital where a doctor told him that his 22-year-old son died after being shot multiple times in South Los Angeles.
Continue reading...‘Fashion can be very exploitative’ – Halima Aden on why she quit modelling
The industry’s first hijab-wearing model speaks about the ‘internal conflict’ that made her quit the catwalk
Halima Aden, the Muslim model who became a trailblazer for wearing her hijab on the catwalk and in photoshoots, has hit out at the fashion industry and its exploitation of young models.
Aden quit the industry in November 2020, citing compromised beliefs and feeling like a “minority within a minority”.
Continue reading...‘A lasting legacy of tolerance’: Marcus Rashford messages to be preserved
Notes left on defaced Manchester mural will be removed to protect from rain, amid plans for digital exhibition
Thousands of messages left on the mural of footballer Marcus Rashford in Manchester will be removed and preserved on Friday, to protect them from forecasted rain this weekend.
A team of archivists and conservators will detach the tributes so they are preserved for future generations to mark the national moment of solidarity that followed the mural being defaced and a torrent of racist abuse was targeted at the player on social media, as well as England teammates Bukayo Saka and Jadon Sancho.
Continue reading...‘I’m not Jeff Koons!’ – the endurance crawls, weird texts and guerrilla brilliance of Pope.L
Pope.L started out doing performance art because it was cheap, once crawling through a city in a Superman outfit. Now all the big museums want his often racially charged work. As a rare show opens in Britain, he looks back
For a long time, if anyone ever asked for his contact details, Pope.L would produce a business card proclaiming him to be “The Friendliest Black Artist in America”. Sure enough, when he pops up on a video call from his ramshackle studio in Chicago, the performance artist and painter is amenable and thoughtful. In trucker cap and checked shirt, he shifts between smiles and pensive frowns as we track his journey from “difficult” childhood to one of America’s foremost artists, whose work deals with race, economics and language.
In 2019, he was given a retrospective that, in an exceptional move, spread across both the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum in New York. The exhibition showcased his 40 years of endurance crawls, guerrilla performances, sculpture and text paintings. Those text paintings are now the focus of Notations, Holes and Humour, a show that just opened at Modern Art in London, his first British exhibition in over a decade.
Continue reading...GB News turns to Nigel Farage as its saviour after ratings freefall
TV station also hit by internal dispute over its direction after Guto Harri dropped for ‘taking the knee’
Nigel Farage is to take centre stage at GB News in a victory for the rightwing faction at the beleaguered television channel. The former leader of Ukip is to host a nightly primetime show from Monday as part of a reboot of programming designed to attract more viewers.
The new channel is facing plummeting viewing figures and a split in management between those angling to keep broader-based regional news coverage and those planning to boost coverage of the “culture wars”.
Continue reading...Pregnant man and multiracial-handshake emojis approved for launch
Additional emojis will complete Unicode’s drive to offer more variety and gender-neutral options
A pregnant man, a multiracial handshake and a face that cannot bear to watch are some of the emojis that will hit devices over the next year, according to a draft list published by the Unicode Consortium, which approves icons for use.
Continue reading...Dee Rees on her debut film Pariah: ‘My favourite scene is the dildo scene, honestly!’
The film-maker’s first movie, about a Black lesbian teenager, has made it to the Criterion Collection, a catalogue of canonical films. She discusses her characters and the pleasure of this success
When Dee Rees was first approached by highbrow home entertainment company Criterion, it was Mudbound, her 2017 film, it wanted to discuss. Inclusion in the Criterion Collection on DVD and Blu-ray, with some titles streamed, is widely seen as confirmation of a film’s classic status. Mudbound is Rees’s most-watched film to date – approximately “20m hours of viewing”, according to Netflix – and it was up for several big awards, including the Oscar for best adapted screenplay (making Rees the first Black women nominated in a that category) and best cinematography for Rachel Morrison (the first – and, to date, only – woman to be so honoured).
Rees, though, had a different suggestion. “I was excited, but I was like: ‘It’d be really great if Pariah were there,” she says, via video call from her Harlem home. Thankfully, Criterion’s curation team agreed. “It was my first film and it just was such an important film for me, y’know? And it felt, at that time in the world, culturally important … I guess there’s nothing like your first.”
Continue reading...London casino let rich patrons racially abuse staff, tribunal hears
Ex-employee is suing Aspinalls in Mayfair for discrimination, alleging a ‘hostile and demeaning environment’
An exclusive London casino allowed wealthy patrons to racially abuse staff with impunity and “segregated” black employees from gamblers who insisted on white dealers, a tribunal has heard.
Semhar Tesfagiorgis, 41, is suing Crown London Aspinalls, in Mayfair, for race and sex discrimination, alleging there was a “hostile and demeaning environment” when she worked there.
Continue reading...Social networks’ anti-racism policies belied by users’ experience
Analysis: Twitter, Facebook and others condemn hateful speech, so why is it so easy to find on their sites?
The world’s biggest social networks say racism isn’t welcome on their platforms, but a combination of poor enforcement and weak rules have allowed hate to flourish.
In the hours after England’s loss to Italy in the European Football Championship, both Twitter and Facebook, which owns Instagram, issued statements condemning the swelling racist abuse.
Continue reading...‘An American riddle’: the black music trailblazer who died a white man
A fascinating new podcast delves into the life of Harry Pace, forgotten founder of the first black-owned record label in the US – and unlocks a shocking and prescient story about race
There are, according to the academic Emmett Price, “six degrees of Harry Pace”. He is referring to the man born in 1884 who founded America’s first black-owned major record label; desegregated part of Chicago; mentored the founder of Ebony and Jet magazines and spearheaded the career of blues singer Ethel Waters. Pace is a figure who is seemingly everywhere at once, yet his name has been suspiciously absent from the history books.
“This story encapsulates how progress comes about in America – and it is never in a straight line,” says Jad Abumrad. “It is often a cycle – one that contains hope and despair, smashed together.”
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