The Rev Al Sharpton has addressed Donald Trump’s attack on the Maryland representative Elijah Cummings and his district of Baltimore. Speaking to reporters, the longtime activist said the president had attacked Cummings and his constituents ‘in the most bigoted and racist way’. Earlier on Monday Trump attacked Baltimore, the home city of Cummings, saying that it is ‘a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess’, adding that it was ‘the worst run and most dangerous [district] anywhere in the United States’
Continue reading...Category Archives: Race
Democrats and media condemn Trump’s racist Cummings attack
- Baltimore Sun: ‘Better to have some vermin than to be one’
- Mulvaney insists Trump not racist, just fighting back
- David Simon: Trump is a ‘simplistic, racist moron’
In its response to Donald Trump’s racist attack on congressman Elijah Cummings, the editorial board of the Baltimore Sun said it “would not sink to name-calling in the Trumpian manner”.
Related: 'Own up to reality': 2020 Democrats urged to confront US racial divide
Continue reading...‘Own up to reality’: 2020 Democrats urged to confront US racial divide
As the NAACP gathered in Detroit, leaders warned presidential hopefuls not to shy away as Trump fans the flames
In August 2016, Donald Trump stood before an overwhelmingly white crowd in Dimondale, Michigan, and asked black people for their votes.
Related: Trump 'rat-infested' attack on Elijah Cummings was racist, Pelosi says
Continue reading...‘You don’t have to look black to be black’: The complex racial identity of a tiny Ohio town – video
In the remote Ohio town of East Jackson, which sits in the Appalachian foothills, residents have for decades identified as black – despite the fact they appear white. Tom Silverstone and Francisco Navas visit a place where residents' racial lines have been blurred to invisibility
Continue reading...Black US lawmaker says white man told her to ‘go back where you came from’
State representative Erica Thomas says she was verbally attacked in supermarket while shopping with her nine-year-old daughter
A pregnant African American lawmaker in Georgia said she was verbally attacked in a supermarket Friday by a middle-aged white man who used profanity, called her vulgar names and told her to “go back where you came from” as her nine-year-old daughter looked on.
Erica Thomas, a Democrat and Georgia state representative from Austell, said the man was irate that she was in an express line with too many items. Thomas said she was in a line for customers with 10 items or less because she cannot stand for long periods of time.
Continue reading...Laquan McDonald: four fired for alleged cover up of white officer’s role in killing
Chicago Police Board finds the officers exaggerated the threat posed by the 17-year-old to justify his shooting
The Chicago Police Board on Thursday fired four police officers for allegedly covering up a white officer’s 2014 fatal shooting of black teenager Laquan McDonald.
The nine-member board found the officers exaggerated the threat posed by the 17-year-old McDonald to justify his shooting by Jason Van Dyke and voted unanimously for the dismissal of Sgt Stephen Franko and officers Janet Mondragon, Daphne Sebastian and Ricardo Viramontes.
Continue reading...Trump has made Ilhan Omar the face of his re-election strategy
In Omar, the president has at long last found a face to his stigmatization of Muslims – and so, too, have his allies
The chants of “send her back” reverberated across the rally of thousands on Wednesday as Donald Trump stood at the podium and attacked Representative Ilhan Omar, a naturalized US citizen who arrived in the country as a teenager after her family fled Somalia.
It was not the first time Trump had sought to vilify Omar, who in November became one of the first two Muslim women elected to the US Congress and has emerged as a key target of the president and Republicans.
Continue reading...Tech’s modern-day ‘Yellow Peril’ scare is just the same old racism | Frank H Wu
Claims by Peter Thiel of a Chinese fifth column within Google stoke paranoia against Asian Americans and threaten to ruin the economy – and our democracy
The billionaire investor Peter Thiel has accused Google of “treason” and called for a law enforcement investigation of the search engine’s parent company. He speculated that the Chinese government has invaded its employee ranks. A German immigrant via South Africa, Thiel is not alone; his remarks echo the repeated assertions of the rabble rouser Steve Bannon that there are too many Asian CEOs in Silicon Valley.
These claims, combined with similar charges of wrongdoing against students and professors of Chinese origin on campuses across the country, are as ominous as they are lurid. While Thiel presents no evidence, Bannon displays ample prejudice. They are inspiring paranoia about everyone of Chinese heritage.
Continue reading...Divided House votes to condemn Trump’s racist attack on congresswomen
Nancy Pelosi’s sharp rebuke of the president’s remarks prompted a challenge from Republicans who claimed rule violations
The House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a resolution condemning Donald Trump’s incendiary remarks telling four congresswomen of color to “go back” to where they “came from” as racist.
The measure, which formally rebuked the president’s comments, was approved on a mostly partisan-line vote of 240 to 187.
Continue reading...‘His only tool is racism’: why Trump’s bigoted tirade could be a vote winner
The president seems to regard divisive, nativist rhetoric as his best chance of staying in the White House. Analysts say he may be right
It was foul and repugnant. But was it a vote winner?
Donald Trump’s bigoted tirade against four congresswoman of colour, telling them to “go back” to the countries they came from, prompted widespread revulsion – the comments “drip with racism,” said the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer – and yet will not necessarily damage his chances of reelection.
Continue reading...Judge advises $14m in damages to Jewish woman targeted by neo-Nazi ‘troll storm’
Daily Stormer publisher incited his readers to contact Tanya Gersh, who received threatening emails, texts and voicemails
The publisher of a neo-Nazi website, who organized a “troll storm” to target a Jewish woman and her family with months of abusive messages, should have to pay more than $14m in damages and remove all posts that encouraged his readers to contact her, a US judge has recommended.
The US magistrate judge called the harassment campaign, launched by the Daily Stormer publisher Andrew Anglin a month before Donald Trump’s inauguration, “egregious and reprehensible”. Anglin targeted Tanya Gersh, a Jewish real estate agent in Whitefish, Montana, a town where the prominent white nationalist Richard Spencer and his family have sometimes lived.
Continue reading...‘Go back home’: Trump aims racist attack at Ocasio-Cortez and other congresswomen
- Tlaib responds: ‘He needs to be impeached’
- Pressley: ‘This is what racism looks like’
- Opinion: Pelosi attacks on AOC are dangerous
Donald Trump used racist language to attack “the Squad” on Sunday, saying four progressive Democrats who have clashed with party leaders should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came”.
Related: ‘Is Bernie going to come?’ Warren seizes on Sanders' Netroots absence
Continue reading...Women picking fruit for UK firms in Spain ‘victims of trafficking’
Lawyers say abuse claims by Moroccans must be investigated by Spanish authorities
Human-rights lawyers are warning that abuse claims by Moroccans picking fruit in Spain for UK supermarkets could amount to “state-sponsored human trafficking”.
The international lawyers say Spanish authorities have a legal duty to ensure the allegations by the women – that they have faced exploitation and abuse while harvesting strawberries – are properly investigated by the courts.
Continue reading...French online hate speech bill aims to wipe out racist trolling
Abuse on social networks pushes MP to draw up law that could be copied across Europe
France’s tough new law against online hatred aims to wipe out racist and homophobic trolling on social networks and could be replicated across Europe, according to the politician spearheading it as she faces daily racist abuse on Twitter.
Laetitia Avia, a business lawyer who grew up in the low-income Paris banlieue suburbs where discrimination is rife, was hailed as a symbol of French diversity when she entered parliament for Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party in 2017.
Continue reading...How apartheid killed Johannesburg’s cycling culture
Racial segregation meant cycling lost status in South Africa earlier and more intensely than in the rest of the western world
- Cycling Cities: the Johannesburg Experience is published by the Foundation for the History of Technology
“The writer counted, in the space of only four minutes, 93 native cyclists riding past the Astra theatre,” wrote a journalist for the Star newspaper in July 1940. Standing almost 80 years later on the same corner of Louis Botha Avenue at the same time and day of the week – 6.30pm on a Monday – it is hard to imagine. The theatre is long gone and not a single cyclist is to be seen on the car-choked thoroughfare.
What happened to Johannesburg’s once vibrant commuter cycling culture? The dominance of the automobile marginalised the bicycle in many cities around the world through the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s but that process was accelerated in South Africa by apartheid. When policies of spatial segregation forcibly moved black people to faraway townships at the periphery of the city, the distance between work and home increased dramatically and cycling collapsed as an everyday practice.
Continue reading...Charlottesville white supremacist who killed protester asks judge for mercy
- Attorneys for James Alex Fields Jr seek less than life sentence
- Prosecutors: life term will help deter ‘acts of domestic terrorism’
The self-avowed white supremacist who plowed his car into counter-protesters opposing a white nationalist rally in Virginia two years ago, killing one and injuring dozens, has asked a judge for mercy and a sentence shorter than life in prison.
Lawyers for James Alex Fields Jr, 22, said in a sentencing memo submitted in court documents on Friday the defendant should not spend his entire life in prison because of his age, a traumatic childhood and a history of mental illness.
Continue reading...Biden clashes with 2020 rivals over his work with segregationist senators
Former vice-president defies calls for apology after highlighting his relationships with lawmakers known for racist views
The Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden responded with defiance after a day of sharp criticism from fellow Democrats, after he named two southern segregationist senators as people he had managed to work with during his career.
In comments at a Wall Street fundraising event on Monday, Biden said that, despite major disagreements, he had worked with the senators with “some civility”. When reporters asked Biden late on Wednesday if he would apologize for his comments, the former vice-president responded, dismissively: “Apologize for what?”
Continue reading...‘Is white supremacy not a global issue?’ Ocasio-Cortez dissects FBI’s terrorism definition – video
The US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has questioned the FBI over a potential double standard for perpetrators of violent extremism. She said Muslim mass killers tended to be charged with terrorism while massacres by white supremacists were considered only to be hate crimes. ‘Doesn’t it seem that because the perpetrator was Muslim that the designation would say it’s a foreign organisation?’ Ocasio-Cortez asked the assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division Michael McGarrity, to which he responded: 'That’s not correct.' Ocasio-Cortez then asked him if white supremacy was not a global issue. 'It is a global issue,' the FBI official responded. 'So why are they not charged with foreign terror?'
Continue reading...Sephora to shut US stores for diversity training after SZA racial profiling claim
R&B singer SZA, who is black, said in April she was racially profiled at a Sephora store in Calabasas
The Sephora beauty chain will close all its US stores, distribution centers and corporate offices on Wednesday to conduct diversity training for employees, after a racial incident involving a Grammy-nominated singer.
R&B singer SZA, who is black, said in April she was racially profiled at a Sephora store in Calabasas, California.
Continue reading...The Guardian view on German responses to antisemitism: frankness and honesty | Editorial
The rise of anti-Jewish actions in Germany is profoundly worrying, but Angela Merkel’s fightback sets an example of moral seriousness and rigour
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has spoken openly about the spectre of antisemitism in Germany. She told CNN that “We have always had a certain amount of antisemites among us ... Unfortunately there is to this day not a single synagogue, not a single day care centre for Jewish children, not a single school for Jewish children that does not need to be guarded by German policemen.” Her remarks came a week after the country’s ombudsman for antisemitism, Felix Klein, suggested that observant Jews would be wise not to wear kippahs (skullcaps) in public. Taken together, these developments might suggest that Germany is sliding back into its dreadful past. In fact, they are signs of a determination that this must not happen. The crime figures do not suggest there is a crisis under way – though crime statistics do not measure fear.
The Jews of Germany are alarmed. It is not just the success of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in recent elections that contributes to their feeling of unease. A short-lived campaign to ban circumcision in 2012 was the first alarm bell; large demonstrations against the Gaza war in 2014, in which hostility to Israel often seemed indistinguishable from antisemitism, was another. And they are aware of the rising currents of antisemitism around Europe, even if it takes different forms in different countries.
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