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Leeds headteacher forced to apologise after saying Palestinian flag was seen as ‘call to arms’
The recent Middle East conflict has prompted a wave of pro-Palestine protests in British schools and controversy over the staff response, with pupils being accused of antisemitism and one headteacher describing the Palestinian flag as a “call to arms”.
Mike Roper, the headteacher of Allerton Grange high school in Leeds, was forced to apologise after he claimed in an assembly that some people saw the flag as a “symbol of antisemitism”.
Nadhim Zahawi, the vaccine deployment minister, is responding to a Commons urgent question.
He says average Covid deaths are now down to nine per day.
The conclusions of the report (pdf) into Islamophobia in the Conservative party as set out in the document itself (pages 59 to 61) are much stronger, and more interesting, than the conclusions as set out in the press notice from the inquiry. (See 10.50am.) Here are the key points.
Judging by the extent of complaints and findings of misconduct by the Party itself that relate to anti-Muslim words and conduct, anti-Muslim sentiment remains a problem within the party. This is damaging to the party, and alienates a significant section of society.
The Conservative and Unionist party of the United Kingdom has faced sustained allegations of discriminatory behaviours and practices against minority groups, with Islamophobia being the most prominent and damaging allegation in recent years. The perception that the party has a ‘Muslim problem’ is widespread, with numerous instances of party members and elected officials alleged to have behaved in a discriminatory manner.
We discovered some examples of discrimination and anti-Muslim sentiment, most of which were at local association level. We did not, however, find evidence of a party which systematically discriminated against any particular group as defined by the Equality Act 2010, or one in which the structure of the party itself disadvantaged any group, on a direct or indirect discriminatory basis.
While the party leadership claims a ‘zero tolerance approach’ to all forms of discrimination, our findings show that discriminatory behaviours occur, especially in relation to people of Islamic faith. The data collection of such incidents is weak and difficult to analyse, hampering early identification of problems and effective remedial action. The party needs to be explicit and specific about what ‘zero tolerance’ means in the context discrimination, both in policy and practice.
There are shortcomings in the codes of conduct, too, which are not adequate given the twenty-first century social media landscape and 24-hour rolling news cycle. As we have suggested, these should be strengthened and merged into a single code of conduct.
The Investigation recommends that all major political parties consider, in discussion with the EHRC, the creation of a cross-party, non-partisan, and independent mechanism for handling complaints of discrimination against their parties or party members on the basis of Protected Characteristics. This could be similar to the current Parliamentary Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme for Sexual Misconduct.
The investigation has chosen not to recommend or endorse any particular form of equality or diversity training. Our brief perusal of published literature confirms that few, if any, of the suggested training models have been proven to show any sustained change in behaviours or attitudes, while there is some evidence of potentially adverse consequences such as promoting divisions, fostering a ‘shame and blame’ culture and the training being perceived as patronising and infantilising. In healthcare, where cultural diversity training has been extensively used to reduce health inequalities, evidence for its effectiveness is lacking.
At least 15 states are trying to ban schools from teaching critical race theory and the 1619 Project. The reactionary movement stretches back to the 1920s and the KKK
On 25 May 2020, a man died after a “medical incident during police interaction” in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The man was suspected of forgery and “believed to be in his 40s”. He “physically resisted officers” and, after being handcuffed, “appeared to be suffering medical distress”. He was taken to the hospital “where he died a short time later”.
It is not difficult to imagine a version of reality where this, the first police account of George Floyd’s brutal death beneath the knee of an implacable police officer, remained the official narrative of what took place in Minneapolis one year ago. That version of reality unfolds every day. Police lies are accepted and endorsed by the press; press accounts are accepted and believed by the public.
Members of George Floyd’s family, and others who lost loved ones to police encounters, have joined crowds in Minneapolis for a march that was one of several events planned nationwide to mark the one-year anniversary of Floyd’s death.
Hundreds of people gathered on Sunday for the rally in front of the courthouse in downtown Minneapolis where a month ago former policeman Derek Chauvin was found guilty of murdering the black man by kneeling on his neck.
Major survey will explore evolution of black British identity
A major national survey, launched by Cambridge University, I-Cubed Ltd and the Voice Newspaper, will explore the evolution of black British identity, from the generations who lived through the 1970s and 1980s to the students leading the Black Lives Matter movement today.
At the launch of the Black British Voices Project, the Guardian asked three people, from different generations, what it means to them to be black British.
Shooting in Southwark, London came after numerous death threats, says her Taking the Initiative party
The Black Lives Matter activist Sasha Johnson is in a critical condition after sustaining a gunshot wound to her head in an incident in south London, her affiliated group, Taking the Initiative party, has announced on social media.
In a statement on the group’s Facebook page, the party said that the incident happened in the early hours of Sunday and followed “numerous death threats”.
Vancouver has experienced a 717% increase in anti-Asian hate crimes, reflecting a legacy of discrimination in a country seen as welcoming of newcomers
Steven Ngo had stopped at a traffic light in a residential neighbourhood in the eastern part of Vancouver when passengers in another car tossed garbage at him, shouting racial slurs as they sped off.
The lawyer, a lifelong resident of the city, was stunned – but not surprised.
Greene, 49, died after confrontation with officers in 2019
Louisiana police initially refused to release bodycam footage
Two years after Ronald Greene, a 49-year-old Black man, died after a confrontation with white police officers in May 2019, the Louisiana police department released footage of the incident.
Louisiana state police had refused to publicly release footage from the incident, which they claimed culminated in Greene dying from crashing into a tree and injuring his head.
The killing of Floyd by a white officer reflected a common history of violence against Black people that united protesters in a renewed global movement
George Floyd’s murder felt like everything was the same and nothing was the same, said Miski Noor, an activist in Minneapolis, where Floyd was killed by a white police officer a year ago on 25 May.
“How many times have we seen Black death go viral?” asked Noor, the co-founder of Black Visions, which advocates for abolition, an approach to public safety that does not involve the police.
Exclusive: commission’s finding follows number of protests over colonial legacy at Oriel College
A independent commission set up to examine the future of Oxford University’s controversial statue of British imperialist Cecil Rhodes has recommended its removal.
The commission was set up last June after Oxford University’s Oriel College voted in favour of removing its statue. The commission was asked to look into the issue after a statue of the slave trader Edward Colston was torn down in Bristol at the height of last summer’s Black Lives Matter protest.
A report, which included testimonials, found that 52% of Black shoppers would stop frequenting a store after being profiled
In a new survey, more than 90% of African American shoppers said they had experienced racial profiling while buying or browsing – a phenomenon sometimes known as “shopping while Black”.
The State of Racial Profiling in American Retail report, carried out by DealAid, surveyed 1,020 consumers who identified as Black or African American.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador will mark the killings of 303 Chinese people during the revolution that the city of Torreón has tried to forget
The first to die were Chinese agricultural workers, who were killed in the orchards and gardens surrounding the Mexican city of Torreón by advancing revolutionary forces in the early hours of 13 May 1911.
After skirmishes at the outskirts of the city, the outnumbered federal garrison abandoned their positions and slipped away under the cover of darkness.
The actor Lakeith Stanfield has spoken out amid controversy over his presence in a Clubhouse room where participants made antisemitic remarks, saying: “Any kind of hate speech, I vehemently reject.”
Amnesty International says private military firm in Cabo Delgado abandoned others to their fate
Survivors of a recent attack by Islamist insurgents in Mozambique have told Amnesty International that private military contractors prioritised white workers for evacuation as the extremists closed in during days of confused fighting.
An estimated 220 civilians sought refuge in the Amarula hotel in Palma, in the northern province of Cabo Delgado, during the attack in late March.
From running to the shops in Jamaica to wrapping himself in the Union Jack, the Olympian has had phenomenal highs and bruising lows. He looks back on an extraordinary life in athletics
Linford Christie’s Olympic training unwittingly began many years before he began to take over the world, 100 metres at a time. As a child, he spent seven formative years in Jamaica’s most populous parish, St Andrew, where his grandmother, Anita, would send him off to the shops with a cunning technique to ensure that hecame back promptly. “She’d spit on the floor and say: ‘Don’t let it dry before you come back,’” laughs Christie over Zoom. “She was most probably my first coach.” Christie has no recollection of ever getting in trouble upon his return, an indication that even in those days he ran like the wind.
What he does remember is the warmth of life in Jamaica. The family home seemed to be vast, filled with sisters, his brother, cousins and aunties. The community was so tight that if he got up to any mischief, family friends would not hesitate to keep him in check. In Jamaica, his grandmother was in charge. “Growing up, she was everything,” he says. “She was the mother, the doctor, the dentist; you name it, my grandma covered it.”
Occasion overshadowed by disclosure that bones of children who died held for almost four decades by University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia on Thursday marks the city’s first official day of remembrance for the 1985 bombing of a Black liberation group in which 11 people, including five children, were killed and an entire African American neighborhood burned to ashes.
Boris Palmer posted comment online about former footballer Dennis Aogo
The leadership of Germany’s high-flying Green party is facing the first test of its authority ahead of national elections in September, after a prominent Green mayor posted a racial slur about a German national footballer on social media.
Regional leaders of the party voted at the weekend to expel Boris Palmer, the provocative mayor of Tübingen, over a Facebook post in which he referred to the former Germany international Dennis Aogo as an “awful racist”, in reference to an unsubstantiated anecdote on social media that the footballer, who has a Nigerian father and a German mother, had once bragged about the size of his penis, using the n-word.
The Moonlight director on how making his epic TV adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer prize-winning The Underground Railroad compelled him to fully confront the history of slavery, as well as his own damaged childhood
Barry Jenkins first heard the history of the Underground Railroad from a teacher when he was six or seven years old. The school lesson described the loose network of safe houses and abolitionists that helped enslaved people in the American south escape to free states in the north in the 19th century. Jenkins as a wide-eyed kid imagined an actual railroad, though, secret steam trains thundering under America, built by black superheroes in the dead of night. It was an image, he recalls, that made “anything feel possible”. “My grandfather was a longshoreman,” he says. “He came home every day, in his hard hat and his tool belt, and his thick boots. And I thought, ‘Oh, yes, people like my granddad, they built this underground railroad!’”
That childhood image returned to Jenkins, now 41, when he read an advance copy of Colson Whitehead’s novel about that history, which builds on that same seductive idea. That was in 2016. Both Jenkins and Whitehead were on the edge of career-defining breakthroughs: Jenkins’s film Moonlight was about to be released (and would go on to win the Oscar for best picture) and Whitehead’s book The Underground Railroad was about to be published (going on to receive the National Book Award and the Pulitzer prize). All this was to come, though, when the pair met. “I was familiar with Colson as an author,” Jenkins told me last week on a screen from his home in Los Angeles. “And once I read his book, I knew for sure I absolutely want this. And I’m not that guy. Usually I’ll read something and I go, well, that might make a great film, and then I’ll just leave it. But this one, it’s all hands on deck, we have to get this.”
Jerry Lawson led the invention of cartridges, Ed Smith made a hybrid console/PC, and designer Muriel Tramis won France’s highest honour for bringing history into play. How many more names are forgotten?
In the 1970s, in the fledgling days of the video games industry, an engineer named Gerald “Jerry” Lawson designed one of the earliest game consoles, the Channel F, and also led the team that invented the game cartridge, a defining innovation in how games were made and sold. His son, Andersen Lawson, recalls that he was often working on gaming projects in the garage of their family home in Santa Clara, California. “There have been conversations recently about the struggles he might have had that were related to his colour,” he says. “Was it difficult [for him]? Yes, I’m quite certain. But I never heard any grumblings from him. And I’m also certain that he earned his respect … My father was a person of colour and I think that would inspire young people today to jump in and help move the industry along.”
Black people, and especially black women, are still underrepresented in the video games industry. The Independent Game Developers’ Association records that only 2% of US game developers identify as black; in the UK, meanwhile, according to UKIE’s 2020 census of the entire industry, 10% of its workers are black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME). But black innovators such as Jerry Lawson have been present and influential since the earliest days of the video games industry – and there is not enough recognition for their achievements.