Bishop of Dover, Rose Hudson-Wilkin, says damaging rhetoric has harmed society as a whole
The Church of England’s first black female bishop has said the debate around Brexit damaged society and contributed to the death of the MP Jo Cox.
Rose Hudson-Wilkin, the former chaplain to the Speaker of the House of Commons, said the arguments around Brexit had had a harmful effect both on parliamentarians and on society as a whole.
Continue reading...English football’s racism crisis took a new twist after it emerged that a Chelsea supporter was arrested for allegedly racially abusing Tottenham Hotspur’s Son Heung-min on Sunday– during the Premier League match that had to be paused because a monkey chant was aimed at Chelsea’s Antonio Rüdiger by members of the home crowd.
Anthony Taylor, the referee, stopped play after Rüdiger claimed he had heard racist taunts during the second half of Chelsea’s victory over their London rivals. An announcement on the public address system informed the crowd at the Tottenham stadium that “racist behaviour from spectators is interfering with the game”. The announcement was made on two further occasions, in line with Premier League protocols.
Continue reading...Nicola Williams urges MoD to do more to tackle ‘depressingly frequent’ racism
Incidents of racism in the armed forces are happening with “increasing and depressing frequency”, its official ombudsman has warned.
Nicola Williams, the service complaints ombudsman for the armed forces, called on the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to do more to tackle racism among service personnel.
Continue reading...Two of England’s most prestigious Premier League football clubs, both owned by US investors, have been confronted by international human rights abuses in recent days, and responded with starkly contrasting positions. Liverpool, who as European champions are competing in Qatar in Fifa’s Club World Cup, produced a carefully diplomatic statement which nevertheless managed to be forthright in supporting improved conditions for migrant workers labouring in the Gulf.
Campaigners had asked the club to consider using its reputational power to highlight the deaths of many young men working on construction projects in baking heat. Its chief executive, Peter Moore, challenged Qatar to seriously address the risks of heat stress for workers, reaching into Liverpool’s own heritage to say that any and all unexplained deaths should be investigated thoroughly and bereaved families should receive the justice they deserve. That call for accountability was woven into a more predictable corporate clarification: “We remain a sporting organisation and it is important that we are not drawn into global issues on the basis of where our involvement in various competitions dictates that our fixtures take place.”
Continue reading...Serie A has received widespread condemnation after artwork for an anti-racism campaign comprised three paintings of monkeys.
The three works were created by Simone Fugazzotto and will be on permanent display at the league’s headquarters in Milan. The league said the images are intended to “spread the values of integration, multiculturalism and brotherhood”.
Continue reading...Carnival of Aalst included parade float caricaturing Orthodox Jews
Unesco has removed an annual carnival in the Belgian city of Aalst from its heritage list over persistent charges of antisemitism.
In an unprecedented move, Unesco’s intergovernmental committee for the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage said it was withdrawing the carnival “over recurring repetition of racist and antisemitic representations” at the event.
Continue reading...Zwarte Piet or Black Pete has been a festive tradition in the Netherlands for generations – which sees thousands of people, who are often white, dress up as the character wearing afro-style wigs, red lipstick and full blackface makeup. There have been attempts to make the holiday character less controversial but the tradition is still widely practiced. We went to the festivities this year to find out if time is nearly up for the tradition
Symbols at University of Georgia and Georgia College & State University fuel renewed calls for hate crimes law
Swastika symbols on two Georgia university campuses have students and parents on edge.
Swastikas were drawn on message boards recently in Creswell and Russell halls at the University of Georgia, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
Continue reading...Giles Terera claims Ain’t Nothin’ But blues bar denied group of actors entry because they were black
A star of the hit musical Hamilton has accused a Soho bar of racial profiling, claiming that it denied a group of actors entry because they were black.
Giles Terera said the Ain’t Nothin’ But blues bar had allowed 10 white people next to them to enter, but that the group of eight black actors were turned away.
Continue reading...Joe Biden boasted about his support among African American voters during the fifth Democratic presidential debate in Atlanta on Wednesday. 'I come out of the black community in terms of my support,' Biden said and listed 'the only black African American woman who had ever been elected to the United States Senate' as one of his endorsements, at which the candidate and senator Kamala Harris threw her hands in the air, laughing: 'Nope. That's not true. The other one is here.'
Continue reading...City of Apeldoorn is hosting nationally televised arrival of St Nicholas and ‘Black Pete’
Antiracism campaigners are protesting in cities across the Netherlands as Dutch children anticipate the annual arrival of St Nicholas and a blackface character who traditionally accompanies him.
The character of “Black Pete”, usually portrayed by white people in black face paint wearing frizzy wigs and prominent red lipstick, has provoked intense discussion, and sometimes violent clashes, in recent years.
Continue reading...Performance artist Dread Scott recreates the largely untold story of the 1811 slave rebellion in southern Louisiana. Winding through old plantation country, petrochemical plants and the city of New Orleans, the Guardian followed re-enactors along the route
Continue reading...The mosque attacks rocked New Zealand but good deeds and generosity will help keep us together
The day of 15 March 2019 will stay with me forever. I was working in my bedroom, listening to radio and drawing. The on-air chat and music was interrupted as news of a shooting at a mosque in Christchurch began to filter through. How could this possibly be happening in our quiet little island tucked away at the bottom of the world?
I brushed it off as some sort of mistake, until news of a shooting at a second mosque emerged minutes later. While witnesses and locals reported the horror that had just unfolded, I scrolled online looking for some sort of explanation, a way to make sense of it – and found everyone was lost for words as I was.
Continue reading...Leaked emails show the Trump aide promoting white nationalist websites and touting Calvin Coolidge’s segregation-era policies
When the congresswoman Ilhan Omar called Donald Trump’s top immigration adviser, Stephen Miller, a white nationalist in April, the chorus of outrage from Republicans could not have been louder.
Donald Trump Jr tweeted: “I see that the head of the Farrakhan Fan Club, @IlhanMN, took a short break from spewing her usual anti-semitic bigotry today to accuse a Jewish man of being a ‘white nationalist’ because she apparently has no shame.”
Continue reading...Encounter between police officer and man eating on Bart platform prompts protests and allegations of racism
The head of a San Francisco Bay Area commuter train system apologized to a black rider who was detained and cited by police for eating a breakfast sandwich on a train platform. The official promised an investigation after an outcry from people who assailed enforcement of a no-food rule as racist.
More than two dozen people staged an “eat-in” at a Bay Area Rapid Transit (Bart) station over the weekend and others continue to protest the 4 November encounter, which ended with a 31-year-old man who was headed to work in handcuffs and unable to leave until he had told Bart police his name.
Continue reading...A community is frustrated by the lack of empathy for the five victims shot at an event in an affluent San Francisco Bay area city
Five days after a mass shooting at an Airbnb in a small, wealthy community left five people dead, residents across California’s Bay Area are frustrated by the response from law enforcement and news media and their focus on Airbnb policies rather than the victims of the killing.
Continue reading...World victory in game that once symbolised apartheid brings unity to South African streets
The crowd swelled as the game went on. From scores to hundreds to a thousand or more, young and old, men and women, all gathered in front of the big screen in the square of Newtown Junction, in the very centre of Johannesburg.
No one spread the word that victory for the Springboks was possible, let alone imminent. No one needed to. By the middle of the second half, there were no more shoppers hunting for bargains. The gym in the mall was empty. The queues at KFC, the Indian takeaway and the grilled sausage stand had disappeared.
Continue reading...The MPs who condemned the press attacks on the Duchess of Sussex should be praised, but tiptoeing around the language only protects perpetrators
The silence surrounding the Duchess of Sussex’s treatment by the press has become a roar. More than 70 female MPs signed a letter this week in “solidarity” with Meghan after she spoke about her treatment by sections of the media. The letter outlined attempts “to cast aspersions” on her character. It also attempted to address the nature of these attacks: “We are calling out what can only be described as outdated, colonial undertones to some of these stories,” it read.
However, this treatment can be described as only one thing: racist. Not saying so explicitly is part of a growing trend – the word “racist” is now dodged with more fervour than racial slurs themselves.
Continue reading...After Kamala Harris pulled out of a South Carolina criminal justice forum because its organizer gave Donald Trump an award, the president duly lashed out.
Related: Springing the 'rat' trap: how Baltimore fought back against Trump's insults
Continue reading...Ismail Ahmed, boss of money transfer firm WorldRemit, tops list of star names and entrepreneurs
The grime artist Stormzy, the Duchess of Sussex and the footballer Raheem Sterling have been named among the most influential black people in Britain.
However, it was the founder of pioneering money transfer firm WorldRemit, Ismail Ahmed, who topped the Powerlist 2020, an annual list of the 100 most powerful people of African, African-Caribbean and African American heritage across Britain.
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