Five years after a white officer shot Walter Scott in the back, those associated with the case hope its memory will steer voters
Anthony Scott honours the memory of his brother Walter each time he casts a ballot.
“I’m not the sort of person to go and visit graves,” he said, sat at a bustling diner on the outskirts of Charleston. “I can memorialize better by making sure people never forget. Weighing up my vote, making sure the right person is put in the right place.”
Continue reading...As we head back to South Carolina, the state that fought to protect the white primary until the 1950s, it’s as if black voters don’t matter – again
In 1896, a moment marked by increased lynchings, violence and disfranchisement, South Carolina added to the woes and created the white primary. The law, which the rest of the one-party south would adopt throughout the Jim Crow era, said only white people could vote in the Democratic primary election.
White people, mostly men, would alone choose who would go on to the general election in November. Then, and only then could African Americans and others, who had managed to squeeze through the array of voter suppression tactics such as the poll tax and the literacy test, cast their meaningless ballots. But make no mistake, the real contest was in the primary, and whites had already determined the ultimate winner.
Continue reading...A man has killed nine people after opening fire at two shisha bars in Hanau, near Frankfurt. He then shot himself and his 72-year-old mother at home, according to police. Investigators believe a racist motive was behind the attack and some of those killed had Turkish backgrounds
Continue reading...House of Lords changes rules after warning BAME workers excluded from facilities for mostly white peers
Parliament has been accused of operating a form of apartheid after a report found that minority ethnic staff were asked to show their security passes more often than white counterparts.
Black and minority ethnic staff who responded to a survey carried out last year also complained that historic parliamentary rules meant that they were not allowed to eat or drink in the same rooms or even use the same toilets as the mostly white members of the House of Lords.
Continue reading...Andrew Sabisky says he is stepping down as ‘contractor’ to No 10 after fierce criticism across political spectrum
A controversial new adviser to Boris Johnson resigned on Monday night after MPs and experts accused No 10 of condoning his controversial claims that intelligence is linked to race.
Andrew Sabisky, who was brought into Downing Street by Johnson’s senior aide Dominic Cummings as part of his appeal for “misfits and weirdos”, became the subject of intense media scrutiny after details emerged of his views on subjects ranging from black people’s IQs to whether benefits claimants should be encouraged to have fewer children.
Continue reading...Jeremy Corbyn confronts Boris Johnson on drug use after deportation of ex-offenders
Jeremy Corbyn launched a scathing personal attack on Boris Johnson over the way black and white children connected to class A drugs are treated by the government in the wake of the deportation of ex-offenders to Jamaica.
Speaking in the Commons, the Labour leader called out the prime minister over allegations of Johnson’s own drug use, saying: “If there was a case of a young white boy with blond hair who later dabbled in class A drugs, and conspired with a friend to beat up a journalist, would he deport that boy?
Continue reading...Actor’s speech addressing issues of diversity and reputation meets with ‘uncomfortable silence’ – and much praise
Joaquin Phoenix’s powerful broadside against the body that awarded him the best actor prize on Sunday night has met with a chorus of praise across the film industry.
In his speech, Phoenix said he felt conflicted by his victory “because so many of my fellow actors who are deserving don’t have that same privilege”.
Continue reading...First he was a Turner prize-winning artist, then a Oscar-winning film director. Now, with a knighthood and a Tate Modern retrospective, he explains why he’s still angry – and still searching
Back in 2001, seven years before he directed his first feature film, Steve McQueen made 7th Nov, an installation that features in his forthcoming Tate Modern retrospective. Visually, it is his most minimalist work: a projection of a single still photograph of the crown of a reclining man’s head, which is bisected by a long, curving scar. And yet it possesses a visceral charge that unsettles more than any other piece that will be in the exhibition. That power rests in the accompanying monologue in which McQueen’s cousin, Marcus, recounts in brutally graphic detail the terrible events of the day he accidentally shot and killed his own brother.
7th Nov can be seen in retrospect as a signal of what was to come as McQueen made the transition from artist to director, creating acclaimed feature films that merged formal rigour with a narrative style that is often unflinching in its depiction of human endurance.
Continue reading...Associated Press says Vanessa Nakate was excised from image, which also featured Greta Thunberg, ‘purely on composition grounds’
Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate has called out racism in media after she was cropped out of a photo featuring prominent climate activists including Greta Thunberg, Loukina Tille, Luisa Neubauer and Isabelle Axelsson.
Nakate made the comment in a video which has since gone viral, adding that she now understood “the definition of the word racism” for the first time in her life.
Continue reading...London Breed, San Francisco’s first black female mayor, joins campaign following support from Stockton and San Jose mayors
There’s nothing surprising about a billionaire winning the support of the mayor of San Francisco, a city flush with tech wealth and new money.
But when the billionaire is Mike Bloomberg – and the endorsement is the latest from a string of California mayors he mentored and supported – the vow of support raises some eyebrows.
Continue reading...Brazil’s president made anti-indigenous joke on Facebook broadcast, the latest in a succession of discriminatory comments
Indigenous activists have vowed to sue Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, for racism after his latest bigoted outburst.
In one of his weekly Facebook broadcasts on Thursday, Bolsonaro declared: “Indians are undoubtedly changing … They are increasingly becoming human beings just like us.”
Continue reading...The white supremacist group the Base has been a target of FBI raids and its members accused of planning a race war. The Guardian can now reveal the identity of its secretive leader
The Guardian has learned the true identity of the leader and founder of the US-based neo-Nazi terror network the Base, which was recently the target of raids by the FBI after an investigation into domestic terrorism uncovered their plans to start a race war.
Members of the group stand accused of federal hate crimes, murder plots and firearms offenses, and have harbored international fugitives in recent months.
Continue reading...Latino writers say Jeanine Cummins’ novel uses stereotypes and exploits the suffering of Mexican immigrants
American Dirt, the third novel by Jeanine Cummins, begins with a group of assassins opening fire on a quinceañera cookout. We watch Lydia’s entire family get killed, one by one. Only Lydia and her eight-year-old survive.
The scene is one of many depictions of graphic violence in American Dirt and it has sparked an intense conversation about “pity porn” and writing about the Mexican immigrant experience.
Continue reading...Concerns persist despite MoD initiatives to tackle racism, Guardian call-out shows
Serving soldiers from BAME backgrounds who spoke to the Guardian about their experience of the armed forces say the days of daily abuse and overt name-calling are gone, but instead it has been replaced with “subtle racism”.
“Comments such as ‘people like you’, ‘you people from the colonies,’ or ‘passport seeking’ are still uttered in plain hearing,” said one veteran serviceman, who described his experience over more than a decade in the ranks as “nothing but traumatic”.
Continue reading...Statistics, which come from largest-ever dataset compiled about US police stops, lend support to minority groups who have long complained about biased policing
Black people in California were stopped by police officers much more frequently than other racial groups in 2018, and police were more likely to use force against them, new statistics from eight large law enforcement agencies in the state reveal.
Twenty eight per cent of all persons stopped by Los Angeles police officers during the last six months of 2018 were black, while black people account for just 9% of the city’s population, the data shows. In San Francisco, the black population has shrunk over several decades to just 5% of the city’s total population, but 26% of all stops carried out by the SFPD from July through December of 2018 were of black people – marking the widest racial disparity in police stops of the eight reporting agencies.
Continue reading...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”.
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