Police recorded almost 24,000 far-right crimes last year – the highest level since records began
Germany’s interior minister has said that a dramatic rise in rightwing extremist crime demonstrates a “brutalisation” of society and poses the biggest threat to the country’s stability.
Horst Seehofer said politically motivated crime in general was a growing problem, pledging more police surveillance of protest groups as a result.
Continue reading...Being urged to retouch then re-retouch the singer’s photo left Justine Cullen shaken. In this extract from her new book she recalls the ‘cookie cutter’ cycle her industry was trapped in
I stood and knocked tentatively on my publisher’s office door, holding a printout of my latest cover gingerly in my fingertips. The cover I held in my sweaty hands this time was Beyoncé, and she looked … well, she looked like Beyoncé. She looked perfect.
The publisher held the cover in her hands and looked at it approvingly. “It’s wonderful,” she said, nodding. I gave a relieved little sigh and turned to leave the room. But, just as I got to the door, she glanced back up from her computer screen and piped up, nonchalantly, as though having an afterthought: “Are you going to make her skin a little lighter?”
Continue reading...In her early days with the girl band, Pinnock felt invisible and couldn’t understand why. Then the role of race became clear
Leigh-Anne Pinnock has been living the pop star dream ever since she was 19 and stepped on to a stage to audition for The X Factor, singing Rihanna’s Only Girl (In the World). She has now spent almost a decade in one of the UK’s biggest girl groups. But she had a difficult start with Little Mix, and not because she didn’t get on with her bandmates. She felt “invisible”, and would regularly cry in front of her manager. “I just couldn’t seem to find my place, and didn’t know why,” she said in a magazine interview in 2018. “I didn’t feel like I had as many fans as the other girls. It was a strange feeling.” She had, at that point, finally realised what the trouble was. “I know there are girls of colour out there who have felt the same as me,” she said. “We have a massive problem with racism, which is built into our society.”
If she expected the interview to change anything, she was disappointed. “I really did feel as if it fell on closed ears,” she says today, speaking from the Surrey mansion she shares with her footballer fiance, Andre Gray. “It was almost like people just weren’t ready to talk about race then.”
Continue reading...A New Jersey high school teacher was suspended with pay for making profanity-laced comments to students about George Floyd.
Related: Teargas, flash-bangs: the devastating toll of police tactics on Minnesota children
Continue reading...Prof David Richardson cites systemic issues that disproportionately affect black and minority ethnic students
UK universities are institutionally racist and must do more to support students of colour, a leading vice-chancellor has said.
Prof David Richardson, chair of Universities UK’s advisory group on stamping out racial harassment on campuses and vice-chancellor of University of East Anglia, said there was evidence of systemic issues that disproportionally affect students from black and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds.
Continue reading...Against a backdrop of Covid, a striking number of musicians, from hard rock to jazz, made music rich with positivity. In the first of a two-part series, they tell their stories
I had really given up on music after my mom passed away [in 2014], and then of course the record that I saw as my death rattle [2017’s Soft Sounds from Another Planet] got picked up in a big way. It was a very bittersweet moment where all these great things were happening in the wake of loss. I didn’t allow myself to feel that for a long time. Now I feel ready to embrace feeling.
Continue reading...In devastating report, human rights experts call on International Criminal Court prosecutor to open an immediate investigation
The systematic killing and maiming of unarmed African Americans by police amount to crimes against humanity that should be investigated and prosecuted under international law, an inquiry into US police brutality by leading human rights lawyers from around the globe has found.
A week after the former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murder in George Floyd’s death, the unabated epidemic of police killings of Black men and women in the US has now attracted scorching international attention.
Continue reading...Biden’s solution to the myriad crises is an ambitious economic agenda that promises to ‘own the future’ by expanding the role of government in American life
On the 50th day of his presidency, Joe Biden marched into the Oval Office and took a seat behind the Resolute desk, where the massive, 628-page American Rescue Plan awaited his signature. Across the room hung a portrait of Franklin D Roosevelt, a nod to the transformative presidency Biden envisions for a nation tormented by disease, strife and division.
Related: Biden presidency: return to ‘normal’ belies an audacious agenda
Continue reading...Val Demings, a Democratic congresswoman and a former police chief, said on Sunday the officer who fatally shot teenager Ma’Khia Bryant in Ohio this week “responded as he was trained to do”.
Related: Derek Chauvin was found guilty – how typical is that of US police who kill?
Continue reading...Companies may seek to dismantle prejudice among their employees – but psychologists question whether these courses effect lasting change
Here’s a fact that cannot be disputed: if your name is James or Emily, you will find it easier to get a job than someone called Tariq or Adeola. Between November 2016 and December 2017, researchers sent out fake CVs and cover letters for 3,200 positions. Despite demonstrating exactly the same qualifications and experience, the “applicants” with common Pakistani or Nigerian names needed to send out 60% more applications to receive the same number of callbacks as applicants with more stereotypically British names.
Some of the people who had unfairly rejected Tariq or Adeola will have been overtly racist, and so deliberately screened people based on their ethnicity. According to a large body of psychological research, however, many will have also reacted with an implicit bias, without even being aware of the assumptions they were making.
Continue reading...Professionals and teams from top English leagues will log off Twitter, Facebook and Instagram for the whole of next weekend
The world of English professional football will unite for an unprecedented four-day boycott of social media next weekend to protest at the continued abuse and racism aimed at players.
Clubs in the English Premier League, English Football League, Women’s Super League and Women’s Championship will switch off their Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts in response to “the ongoing and sustained discriminatory abuse” of footballers, and their despair over a lack of action from the tech companies.
Continue reading...Family of 42-year-old said they met with Elizabeth City sheriff but were not shown body-camera footage of his death
After seven North Carolina deputies were placed on leave over the death of Andrew Brown Jr, an African American man shot during the serving of a drug-related warrant, authorities in Elizabeth City added to calls for body camera footage to be released.
Related: Andrew Brown shooting: family describe him as a loving father with a sense of humor
Continue reading...Bones of children who died in 1985 police bombing used in anthropology course – but some bones now appear to be missing
Two Ivy League institutions, the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton, are facing mounting demands to apologise and make restitution for their handling over decades of the bones of African American children killed by Philadelphia police in 1985.
Related: Bones of Black children killed in police bombing used in Ivy League anthropology course
Continue reading...A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Cambodia to Peru
Glenda Brown Thomas has paid tribute to her nephew, Andrew Brown, a day after the 42-year-old was shot dead by police in North Carolina. “He had a good laugh, a nice smile. And he had good dimples ... He did not finish school, but he did encourage his children to get a good education," she said.
Brown, from Elizabeth City, was shot and killed on Wednesday by a deputy sheriff trying to serve a search warrant. An witness said Brown tried to drive away, but was shot dead in his car
Remains of those killed in 1985 Move bombing in Philadelphia serve as ‘case study’ in Princeton-backed course
The bones of Black children who died in 1985 after their home was bombed by Philadelphia police in a confrontation with the Black liberation group which was raising them are being used as a “case study” in an online forensic anthropology course presented by an Ivy League professor.
It has emerged that the physical remains of one, or possibly two, of the children who were killed in the aerial bombing of the Move organization in May 1985 have been guarded over the past 36 years in the anthropological collections of the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton.
Continue reading...Readers respond to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s report into the unequal commemoration of soldiers in the first world war
It is gratifying that the Commonwealth War Graves Commission will finally apologise, after 100 years, for denying black African soldiers and labourers war graves for their service to the British empire in the first world war (UK inquiry blames ‘pervasive racism’ for unequal commemoration of troops, 21 April). Many people in Britain and Europe will have seen headstones in cemeteries to colonial servicemen from the British West Indies Regiment, the South African Native Labour Corps, the Chinese Labour Corps, and Indians, alongside others, and will wonder what the fuss is. These troops were considered Christian and given the privilege of a headstone by the commission.
But on the African continent, where there was fighting in east and west Africa, you will not see any native African soldiers from the King’s African Rifles, the West Africa Frontier Force and the Carrier Corps given a headstone, as they were considered “heathen” and “uncivilised”. There should be at least 200,000 war graves to these men. It is important that the commission creates new headstones so that the racist construct that the war was a “white man’s war”, where only white soldiers paid the ultimate price, can finally be laid to rest.
John Siblon
London
Joe Biden was briefed on Wednesday on the “tragic” fatal police shooting of a 16-year-old Black girl in Columbus, Ohio, White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced.
Related: Ohio county where girl, 16, was killed is state’s deadliest for police shootings
Continue reading...How a 2019 documentary helped spark an inquiry into missing war graves of soldiers from the British empire
A crackly audio recording made in the 1980s is one of the few direct links left to the African soldiers and auxiliaries who served Britain in the first world war. It provides a chilling insight into their experience, which saw an estimated 50,000 Africans in labour units die from disease and other causes.
The recording contains the voice of a former porter who was working alongside the King’s African Rifles in east Africa. He described how his job was to carry boxes of bullets and as they walked, there were dead bodies lying on the road. Exhausted, he decided to rest but he was found by a superior, punished and beaten. He later escaped and lived to tell recount his experience.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Commonwealth War Graves Commission expected to apologise for commemorating British empire’s black and Asian first world war dead ‘unequally’
Hundreds of thousands of predominantly black and Asian service personnel who died fighting for the British Empire have not been formally commemorated in the same way as their white comrades because of decisions underpinned by “pervasive racism”, an investigation has concluded.
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission is expected to issue a formal apology on Thursday after it discovered that at least 116,000 – but potentially up to 350,000 – predominantly African and Middle Eastern first world war casualties may not be commemorated by name, or at all.
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