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We don't need anymore White saviours - Peter Olusoga

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We don't need anymore White saviours - Peter Olusoga

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'White' by Richard Dyer (1997)

In order to have Blackness or Brownness, we must have Whiteness

talking about racism puts the onus on the victim

without any inclination to discuss the system

it's easy to talk in the language of DiAngelo or McIntosh

that keeps it between people, not how White power has quashed

and undermined movements like the Black Panthers

and DiAngelo tells a clipped narrative that doesn't really answer

questions about history and we got to this

since White supremacy is fluid and adapts and disjoints itself to fit

cus terms like fragility and privilege tend to only flirt

at the frames of this problem, White supremacy is not an extrovert

and these books and texts are by no means quite useful

but they keep us focused on Whiteness as something purely individual

but white people live their lives thinking they're just people

they often can walk through the world relatively invisible

this is what it means to be seen as unraced

to not have to speak on behalf of your race

so when they get called "White" for the first time

I am met with performance, it's theatre and pantomime

these declarations of whiteness do not do anything

it did not stop George Zimmerman from killing Trayvon Martin

and it did not stop Black Tories from attacking Critical Race Theory

nor do declarations stop the historical continuity of slavery

it's time to ask questions, like "are police and prisons obsolete?"

and why Black kids are going from school to prison in fleets

why are Black children sent to pupil referral units in Ends

it's 1971 again and Bernard Coard's writing about ESNs

and how British Education made West Indian

children educationally subnormal in the school system

when that word Caucasian is used as a prefix

and by that I do not mean as in geographics

with the Caucasus region between the Caspian and Black sea

prefixing humanity with White is what I actually mean

but when they are called White people rather than Beth

it's as if they are overcome with grief and are now bereft

that whilst for POCs we have grown up being raced

for White people who are now faced

with the conceptualisation of being called White

they are now met with fight or flight

or as I much much much prefer, to love and learn

step into my office, we'll talk with wood to burn

for white people, white can be synonymous with human

that racism may look like doom and gloom in

many of my White friends tell me they were raised

to treat all people of all backgrounds the same

whilst that's great, I don't even know my family name

Ventour and Griffiths are nice to say

but Benjamin Ventour took the enslaved on the Fonteony Estate

Grenada, there lies White supremacy on my CV

Whiteness in print, in remnants of empire and slavery

because white supremacy is not extroverted

it can be subtle, silent and written in coded

language that sits in the strong arms of history

and to be White, mostly, it is easier to trace your genealogy

Charles Mills believes that it'd be useful to curb talks about white privilege

as it would be more useful to think in terms of white supremacy and images

of how this impacts issues like the normalisation of white European thought

and from, overpolicing of Black communities to the constructions of laws

the Murder of George Floyd penetrated me like a knife

but what killed him was a system that treats life as a synonym for white

whilst in Atlanta a White man killed six Asian women but anti-Asian

racism in the USA's history is as long as its arms in racist immigration

and the #NotAllMen brigade are scared that women will laugh at them

but women are afraid that men will murder them in tens

anti-Asian hate is not "un-American"

because it was there at these United States' formation

as we read about the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

that lasted until nineteen forty-three with World War Two

and it I didn't learn any of this history in school

legislation, the law and the legal system as tools

of institutional racism but more importantly institutional Whiteness

with the normalisation of anti-Asian racism like this

so when we talk about Whiteness, we need to talk about it

as something beyond individuals but also something systemic

cus you do not have to be a white supremacist to benefit

and our world is full of it, from film and TV to education and politics

because White supremacy is more than KKK and colonial statues

it's the implicit undertones of this obsession with British values

it's society's continuation of the hostile environment and the Windrush crisis

it's seeing Black and Brown children holed up in pupil referral units

it's how Boris opened up Britain for Christmas but not for Eid

and really it's how if you're POC, you are not afforded some British identities

Whiteness is the universalisation of viewing the world

it's how I can walk into a pub and feel it's not for me

the looks the stares; white faces, spaces, places, this is white supremacy

and this travels to our institutions, to our streets and neighbourhoods

and the fact the UK still ordains its chosen with MBEs and knighthoods

and once you see Whiteness, you can't unsee it

but with the help of White people we can dismantle it

whiteness isn't as simple as disparities in skin colour

yes, it's how people see how Black looks and Brown looks

and yes we can read about privilege in those reading books

but traditional views of racism is only part of it

declarations don't stop white saviour academics trying to SAVE Black students

it doesn't seek to unpack how 'race science' is still running truant

how these 'scientists' back in the day writing in Greek and Latin

made a hierarchy of races and also where the Irish were blackened

and how even amongst those stories of whitening

there is a hierarchy of who's outside whiteness and who's allowed in

the ideal white man: reasonable, logical, heroic, spirit of empire

healthy, dynamic, pragmatic, this is in the work of Richard Dyer

the ideal white woman: pure, passive, silent, obeys him every word

supports him, obeys him, again paraphrased from Ruth Frankenberg

Shannon Sullivan writes about how whiteness

is full of elegies to raced and classed behaviours

I see it in cricket and Victorian table etiquette as White saviours

and how some white people posed a threat

to the whiteness of the well-groomed and high-bred

that there are white people and thus people not white enough

"whiteness is neoliberal capitalism and its ethos"

it is not just whiteness as sameness but it is the generalising

universaling impulse to have power over life, ultimately

the controlling impulse, or so says Shona Hunter

to hold your finger to the pulse and say I discovered it

but some are 'whiter' than others, some not white enough

and how many 'lesser white people' are left in the rough

and think about the books you are being told to read

that whilst there is Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility

also try Frantz Fanon, Patricia Hill Collins and Angela Saini

Reni Eddo-Lodge, Akala, David Olusoga

and Angela Davis and the great bell hooks

because they have also subtly

and unsubtly written about whiteness

and it is possible to read about racism

without seeing white supremacy mentioned

and despite all good intentions

this conversation about white supremacy

is necessary otherwise we will pass it down family trees

embedded in vapour-like colonial epistemologies

and in the words of my colleague Annie (@aflo. The poet)

"the word unconscious is consciously adopted

to absolve responsibility" And she continues,

"all them white names weren't put there inconspicuously"

white supremacy is not all white hoods. It's being aware

that the statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square

is a message that white supremacy hangs in the air

the sun has not set on the British Empire

colonial underpinnings in the theorists on university degrees

like slave trader John Locke theorising childhood students in Y3

and his theorisation of his blank slate tabula rasa in the today

historical whiteness branded across childhood students' essays

William Edward Burghardt DuBois

one of the earliest writers of Whiteness

in Souls of White Folk

sermonising Whiteness like poetry

talking of economic oppression, enslavement

and how people were bought and sold

hearts of darkness and the ghost of King Leopold

and whilst I have decided to talk about education

we saw from last year this is across society

that white supremacy is known with notoriety

when Colin Kaepernick took a knee,

Audre Lorde's "rejection of difference" was plain to see

with over 10,000 OfCom complaints against Diversity's

dance performance as the whole world was listening

because as Chimamanda says, an artist is also a citizen

And if this is what it takes for Black people to be valued as people

why can't Black people also be seen as vulnerable

especially thinking about Black women

here, I'm thinking back to 2019 and 2020

back to the Black British female students I mentored

talking to me of "misogynoir", sprouted from the plantation

anti-Black misogyny stretching from the 17th century to higher education

white supremacy goes beyond you and me personally

it infests how the world is and it doesn't operate linearly

it distorts knowledge productions and how we view our history

the biases entrenched in how think about the climate crises

those who will be most impacted when the shit hits the fan

capitalism making corpses out the Black, Brown and tanned

we want to seek justice for Sarah Everard

a woman in the bloom of life, white and middle class

you know I see folks saying that it wasn't about race

but I sat thinking at least we know her name

and as an isolated incident it wasn't about race in this case

but Black and Brown women go missing always

and their names are swallowed up by the White gaze

that in thinking how many women go missing

this is when Kimberle Crenshaw's intersectional thinking comes in

and talking about women and ceilings made of glass

promotions at work, well at least white women can pass

through those panes, for women of colour it's made of concrete

that's how white supremacy is, laughing til it tastes sickly sweet

intersectionality gives a way to understanding a number of issues

like the climate crisis, workplace bullying and domestic abuse

and just like BAME there is no homogeneity in white communities

that in hierarchies we can see yes the three quarts of Britain

but we can see those like Irish travellers and Eastern Europeans,

Roma peoples and Jews and those come from afar

how in the 1920s Jews were forced to show identity cards

In this history, we can see how institutions splits white peoples apart

the Jews during the first war, the Irish as 'suspect' following the second

what was the Aliens Restriction Act of 1914

but the institution of whiteness doing what it was supposed to

what about the Immigration Act of 1962

the 1974 Prevention of Terrorism Act that donned the Irish as suspect

leading to that term sus laws that is now most linked to Black people, direct

Poles, Hungarians, Slovenians, Czechs,

Slavic people, Latvians and Lithuanians

in the context of the Workers Registration

and no recourse to public funds

terms like A8 migrants sitting on the rungs

of whiteness and not being white enough

institutional mechanisms whiteness as politics

whiteness that acts as class specific

whiteness as gendered and raced

Vicki Pollard or are we talking Bill Gates

In knowing this, we can educate communities

we can do the reading, and see how Whiteness

is multifaceted. It moves, it slips about

it's malleable and it adapts like armour

it moves into Breada Grey's "whitely scripts"

that whilst we can read about race from Akala

and the like, remember DuBois, Charles Mills,

Frant Fanon, Shannon Sullivan, Kimberle Crenshaw,

Patricia Hill Collins, there's writers galore

So when they say education is key to liberation

why are poor and / or Black and Brown children

being kept from the keys of theorisation

ancestors kidnapped by empire

and their descendants locked out by empire

education rewritten by empire

Whiteness walks into Buckingham Palace

treated Meghan with hate due her lack of whiteness and phallus

White supremacy is what forced Meghan to leave

a historical continuity within the firm of the Royal Family

Elizabeth I, a late Tudor investor in early human trafficking expeditions

and the acquisition of people just like Meghan, early colonial ambitions

Charles II a shareholder of the Royal African Company in the 1670s

the largest human trafficking company in Britain's slave trading history

and his brother James Duke of York, later James II was governor in those days

in the days when the Royals institutionalised enslavement and made it a craze

then George III who the ominous they call the Mad King delayed abolition

and William IV was pro-enslavement and wanted to hold on to his commission

So what happened to Meghan Markle by the firm

is white supremacy in action and that has been historically learned

So, what happened to her is in the blood quite literally

since if there was an institution as a case study, it's the Royal Family

So white supremacy, it's not always linear

Nor is it always an extrovert

And often it may not assert

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In order to have Blackness or Brownness, we must have Whiteness talking about racism puts the onus on the victim without any inclination to discuss the system it's easy to talk in the language of DiAngelo or McIntosh that keeps it between people, not how White power has quashed and

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Reference to Black police is towards the end of the first minute

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Understanding Africa Part II: From Colonialism to Neocolonialism - Fredrick Kasuku (2018)

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Understanding Africa Part II: From Colonialism to Neocolonialism - Fredrick Kasuku (2018)

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Written by Fredrick Kasuku (Young Socialists League, Kenya)
Edited by Dae-Han Song (Chief English Editor) and Stephanie Park (Editor)

(Part I:
https://www.goisc.org/englishblog/2018/04/26/understanding-africa-today-part-1)

There were two reactions to colonial rule in Africa: collaboration, and resistance. In the beginning, when European intentions were less clear, people sought to avoid death and destruction by cooperating with one set of Europeans as protection against other European aggressors. As most of these collaborators were betrayed and colonized, European intentions became clearer and collaboration changed to resistance. Years later, uprisings would defeat colonial rule only to usher in neocolonial rule and imperialism.

African collaboration with Europeans was carried out through diplomacy, adaptation and alliances, almost always in exchange for military support and wealth. Ultimately, however, most collaborators were betrayed and colonized. If we look at the example of my country, Kenya, in the western part, the King Nabongo Mumia of the Wanga community was easily swayed to support colonization through promises of political ascendancy. Before the Europeans came, the Luhya tribe (which King Mumia belonged to) traded in harmony with the Luos, Kabras and Ababukusu people. However, when the British fought to subdue the Luo, Kabras and Ababukusu, all of whom were resistant to colonization, King Mumia sent his warriors to fight alongside the British. The reason? The British had promised him the title of paramount chief of all the Luhya people in exchange for his loyalty. Of course, King Mumia never attained such title. In 1920, the British declared the Republic of Kenya a colony: the monarchy ruled Kenya, and there was no need for a paramount chief.

Countless versions of this story repeated throughout Africa during the early days of colonization. In modern day Kenya, Chief Waiyaki wa Hinga of the Agikuyu supplied food and water to European traders in exchange for continued self rule and greater wealth for his people. However, once the Agikuyu put down their guard, they were raided and colonized, and their leader was captured, imprisoned and killed. In modern day Zambia, Paramount Chief Lewanika of the Lozi people collaborated with the British to get protection from his enemies and learn from Western knowledge, hoping that knowledge would help his people and society. He signed treaties with the British without a clear knowledge of the conditions. Under the pretext of helping him establish a better model of government, the British set up a colonial administration ultimately stripping Lewanika of his powers.

When it became clear that collaboration would not stop colonization, Africans commonly used local movements to resist Europeans. In 1929, in Nigeria, Igbo women protested the Warrant Chiefs (native people appointed as representatives of the British) for restricting women's role in government, seizing property, imposing harsh local regulations, and imprisoning those who spoke out against them. Women would target a Warrant Chief by "sitting on" him, effectively harassing him into compliance. As a result of these protests, a new political system was put in place; warrant chiefs were replaced by "massed benches" where judges were elected by villagers. This inspired many other protests by the Igbo such as the Tax Protests of 1938, Oil Mill Protests of the 1940s, and the Tax revolt 1956. Few resistance movements were as successful as the Igbo, and those that achieved independence usually did so by establishing African proxies that ultimately betrayed the local movements and maintaining the colonial structures of administration.

Factors that lead to Independence
While social and political turmoil contributed to Africa's independence "from the inside," external factors also played a major role. One of the most important external factors was World War II. European colonizers used Africans to fight the Axis Powers. Those Africans that went to fight had been promised equality, justice and self determination. After the war, when these promises were not kept, they took up arms against the white colonists. In addition, war made the Europeans intensify their colonial exploitation in mining and agriculture to supply their soldiers. This furthered unrest in the colonies.

Another major factor was the emergence of the USSR as a global socialist force. Russia supported decolonization to popularise Socialism in the newly formed independent African countries. Many liberation movements were inspired by the Russian Revolution. For example, the Russian revolution inspired nationwide resistance in Egypt in 1919 that defeated the British occupation. In South Africa, the Russian Revolution inspired independence activists yearning for freedom and independence. Later, the Russian Revolution swept across other Sub-Saharan Africa, in part due to the diplomatic, financial and military aid of the Soviet Union, especially in French- and Portuguese-speaking colonies. The Marxist-Leninist People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) took power following Angola's independence from Portugal in 1975, with military support mostly from the USSR and its socialist allies.

The final major external factor was the rise of the USA. The United States had emerged relatively unscathed from both world wars. During the war, they had supplied the Europeans with war material through the Lend-Lease Act. After the war, the USA came up with its "open door trade policy" to export manufactured goods and to invest in high-opportunity markets worldwide. Their need to access Africa led to their support for the decolonization of Africa. Furthermore, decolonization allowed the USA to spread its capitalist ideology to counter the USSR's socialist influence.

Struggle for Independence - and Beyond
African nations acquired "independence" from Europe starting in 1957 with Ghana all the way until 1980, when Zimbabwe gained official independence. In some countries, African people educated in Europe returned to negotiate sovereignty while armed guerrillas fought from the forests. In others, political parties came into power lifted up by urban protests. Eventually, deals were signed between the Europeans and the national elites, disbanding all liberation movements. Instead of returning the land or redistributing wealth to the people, most of it was simply handed to the newly ascended domestic elite.

One striking example is the Mau Mau of Kenya, who rose up against the British in 1952. The Mau Mau had fought for the British in Burma under the Kings African Rifle during World War 2. When they returned to Kenya after their service to the British, the Mau Mau found their lands taken and occupied by white settlers. Fighting against other Europeans for the British had destroyed the idea that the white man was invincible, so the Mau Mau used the hilly terrains to attack the white settlers. The Mau Mau's return coincided with Jomo Kenyatta's return from the UK to become President of the Kenya African Union, an independence organization (which would became the Kenyan African National Union party), in 1947. Kenyatta visited the Mau Mau and proposed that the Mau Mau continue to fight from the forests and countryside while he negotiated with the colonizers in the urban areas. In exchange, he promised that after independence he would return the Mau Mau's land and grant top military positions for their generals.

The Mau Mau stole bullets and guns from the colonizers and used the British's own military knowledge against them. Kenya gained independence in 1963 and became a Republic in 1964, with Kenyatta as the first Prime minister and President. Immediately after achieving independence, Kenyatta betrayed the Mau Mau, ordering them to leave the forests telling them they now had to buy back their old lands. When the Mau Mau rejected this directive, they were hunted down, killed and declared an illegal sect, despite their role in attaining Kenya's independence.

In South Africa, in 1975, a series of urban protests sparked by students in Soweto brought down the Apartheid government. The uprising involved demonstrations and protests by black school children against the introduction of the dutch based Afrikaans language alongside English as the official language of instruction. 3000 to 10,000 students peacefully marched against the government's directive singing and waving placards rejecting the Afrikaan language and calling for use of the native Zulu language. The police barricaded and fired live bullets and tear gas at the unarmed peacefully demonstrating students, killing 700 and wounding a thousand. Protests continued until the next year with people across the country joining, ultimately bringing down the Apartheid Government. The uprising established the leading role of the African National Congress in the anti-apartheid struggle. Although the students wanted a complete expulsion of the oppressing white Afrikaner settlers, the ANC's "non-racialism" dominated the anti-apartheid movement and not only allowed white Afrikaners to remain but also allowed them to continue dominating South Africa's economy along with a newly risen Black bourgeoisie at the expense of poor Black natives.

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Understanding Africa Part II: From Colonialism to Neocolonialism - 국제전략센터/The International Strategy Center

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We seldom hear about modern Africa from an African perspective. As part of his second of three parts in "Understanding Africa," a Kenyan organizer writes about how a changing global order after World War II and African people's collaboration and resistance shaped modern Africa.

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Colonialism and Collaboration: Chinese Subjects and the Making of British Hong ... - JM Caroll (1997)

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Colonialism and Collaboration: Chinese Subjects and the Making of British Hong ... - JM Caroll (1997)

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British Administration and the Chiefs’ Tyranny in Early Colonial Kenya ... - Evanson Wamagatta (2009)

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British Administration and the Chiefs’ Tyranny in Early Colonial Kenya ... - Evanson Wamagatta (2009)

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“Collaborators” or “Resistors,” “Loyalists” versus “Rebels” - Nicholas Githuku (2018)

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“Collaborators” or “Resistors,” “Loyalists” versus “Rebels” - Nicholas Githuku (2018)

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JSTOR is a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources.

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Poetry: A School's Guide to Teaching Winston Churchill (2020) - Tré Ventour

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Poetry: A School's Guide to Teaching Winston Churchill (2020) - Tré Ventour

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Here, I give teachers and educators some "breadcrumbs" to follow in how they can teach Winston Churchill in the context of empire and World War Two

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Many of us grew up learning how Churchill saw

this country Britain, leading it to victory

against Hitler and fascism during the Second World War

but outside of his wartime "heroism"

you see his contempt for the common man

finding his love for violence in 1890s Afghanistan

saying " all who resist will be killed without quarter "

where Pashtuns must " recognise the superiority of race "

as colonial forces committed villages to the slaughter

where he jested about the settlements, he aided to devastate

he was proud of the terror he helped inflict

and he wa only too jovial and happy to be part of it

here, he was a young man, a mere twenty-three

but this is not taught on curricula of British school history

Next: it's safe to say he was concerned the tropical island of Cuba would become another Black republic

and by another he meant after the island of Haiti abolished

slavery, fighting for their independence against the French

in addition to defeating the navies Britain, France and Spain sent

to recapture and recolonise the island back into punishment collars

making more pounds and dollars for politicians and learned scholars

Screengrab from the UCL Legacies for British Slave-ownership in regards to slave compensation, the lists are endless and truly shows how entrenched the economics are in the system

in popular memory of Winston, there's no talk of the colonial

Afua Hirsch takes on Piers Morgan, showing that Churchill isn't infallible

but Good Morning Britain acts like challenging Blighty should be banned

in denial of the three dimensions of the five-pound man

no room in the public domain for debate or challenge

but for murder, torture and violence, this man had a talent

he was busy before the war, with an aptitude for devastation

for the lives of men, women and children, just pure derogation -

in 1944, Churchill greenlit a massacre

The bodies of unarmed protestors shot by the police and the British army in Athens on 3 December 1944. Photograph: Dmitri Kessel/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

on the streets of Athens, 28 protesters

were shot dead, a further 128 hurt

they were anti-Nazis... these are stories that need to be heard

on December the third, 200,000 took to the streets

this is when Winston Churchill

ordered the British Army to turn their guns on the Greeks,

he called the Greek People's Liberation Army

and the National Liberation Front, "miserable banditti"

but these were the same people that ran the Nazis out

his actions stemmed from a communist hate, and confident clout

shouldn't these hidden histories be taught in modern Britain

but you will not find these stories on your school history curriculum

things that we claim

were for the Indians, were for British service

like the railway that now India has repurposed

when the British arrived, India was one of

the richest on the planet and its share

of the world economy was 23%

when they left it had sunk lower than four

well that's according to Indian MP Shashi Tharoor

knowing Britain's track record I'm inclined to trust him

colonial violence may as well be penned by Brothers' Grimm

seldom do we talk about India's role in the First World War

1.5m Indians in WW1 and 2.5m in WW2

yet Churchill hated Indians -

and for many these are quite new stories narrating like how

the British authorities took Indian rice in fleets

when Bengalis had nothing to eat

Churchill said the famine was their fault for "breeding like rabbits"

refusing all aid to stop the famine

both from allies in Canada and the USA and he was swilling champagne

upto 4m bodies stockpiled outside the pearly gates

and when in partition, the British made Pakistan

more Indians died by the million

and it doesn't stop there,

"A prize from fairy land beyond our wildest dreams"

in June 1914, Churchill proposed a bill

that would see Britain profit off Iranian oil spills

when Iran's nationalist government

threatened Britain's interest,

Churchill was there before you could say yes

initiating a coup with the CIA in 1953

but in the "official history" we're leaders in liberty

why isn't this taught as part of our history

in Mesopotamia,

he supported use of poisonous gas

this is what's now modern-day Iraq

determined for colonialism on the cheap

he champion aviation, not soldiers on the streets

several times, Churchill

quelled rebellion in the 1920s

through bombing civilians

Iraqi death and blood aplenty

on Ireland, he said

"we have always found the Irish a bit odd.

They refuse to be English."

The Black and Tans were his brainchild

what today we would call terrorists

attacking civilians and civilian property

to repress a people, he described as "odd"

for their refusal "to be English"

didn't quench his blood-lust

puffing smoke into Ireland until he bit the dust

from air power against Sinn Fein

to advocating for partition

and conceiving the idea of forming

the Auxiliaries who

carried out the Croke Park Massacre

to him, it was just banter

and to think most people believe concentration camps a German invention no no no, English conception

in 1952, Britain declared a state of emergency

to protect its system of institutional racism in Kenya

where he thought fertile lands were no fit for Kenyan hands removing the local population -

that he called "Blackmores" - into concentration camps

schools were shut - "training grounds for rebellion" he called them

to capture the local people, tactics

like rape ensued, castration, barbaric electric shock practice

The Mau Mau Uprisings beginning in 1952, ending in 1960

people's grandparents are old enough to remember this history

Mau Mau detainees ( Photo Credit: Getty Images / Getty )

he was also in South Africa (from 1899)

during the Boer War as

Churchill summed up his time as

"it was great fun galloping about"

try telling that to the cries and shouts

of children in British concentration camps (again)

and his only "irritation" was

"Kaffirs shouldn't be allowed to fire on white men"

he went onto advocate for Afrikaan self-rule

whilst Blacks would be stripped of their voting tools
what passing bells for those who die as cattle only the monstrous anger of the guns
yet this concept of empire is one relegated to "over there"

but these stories don't sit in our throats, narratives of

colonial violence happened at home and abroad

and my own ancestors colonised at the end of a sword

we are taught how Churchill lead us through the war years

but not the stories behind Indian and Pakistani tears

we are told how he led the charge with Dunkirk

but not how Britain drained India and worse

we are told about his achievements during wartime

but not what he thought of the Arab peoples of Palestine

empire made careers for men like Winse

and Kitchener and Mountbatten in the tint

of the world wars as a battle ground

because fighting for freedom sounds more profound

than defeating Hitler to cling onto stolen regions

to hang on to African ivory and monsoon season

empire was a flag like a makeshift stretcher

of black-brown bodies bent like double beggars

when we try to challenge Winston in popular memory

I am met with tired yawns and war fatigue

of Piers Morgans not wanting to confront our history

we teach our children that slavery was wrong

but then sing Winston Churchill's song

statues to him in Toronto and Parliament Square

we tell a story that colonialism was a foreign affair

but it is the union jack, the world wars

and English England's heroes stitched in guilt

making films, Darkest Hour made for laughs

as the Mau Mau, Boer and Bengal stands like cenotaphs

Gary Oldman and that golden statue like a bus stop

as Indians split by partition in the sun were left to rot

we make these films like back-pats and flattery

colonial genocide whitewashed by Hollywood munitions factories

now Africans and Asians were lost in the wind of litany

during the world wars and then erased from British history

I wonder considering Black Lives Matter

if this new anti-racist UK

will hold more dead heroes to account today

not just the low-hanging fruits of the slave trade

but big fish like Sir Winston

whose crimes are all so well-evidenced

like an elephant in the room

as our prime minister sings Winston's tune

how many innocents had to die

so Winston could sing his lullaby

cradled in the womb of union jack

death to Afghans, Indians and Blacks

and Irish civilians and the working-class

in the footnotes of history, into the past

gone gaunt in Britain's denial and fragility

a refusal to learn about this country's history

the Tories will never put Churchill in the dock

not like how Edward Colston was on the block

and on the national school curriculum you're unlikely

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A School's Guide to Teaching Winston Churchill

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Many of us grew up learning how Churchill saw this country Britain, leading it to victory against Hitler and fascism during the Second World War but outside of his wartime "heroism" you see his contempt for the common man finding his love for violence in 1890s Afghanistan saying " all

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Poetry: Blackademia 101 (2020) - Tré Ventour

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Poetry: Blackademia 101 (2020) - Tré Ventour

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A poem all about race, representation, decolonisation and more

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Photo by Taylor Wright on Unsplash

I wasn't halfway through my primary reading list

before I challenged the subject leads on English

because that's what I studied at University

well, I read Creative Writing more specifically

but in my first year, half my modules were lit

and I don't actually mean lit, I'm saying books and shit

it was obvious why so few Black students studied it

because blinkered curriculum stemmed from the Eurocentric

I was one of two Black students and that

so when we graduated, there was no awarding gap

the department could breathe a sigh of relief

as they bludgeoned us with Shelley, Blake and John Keats

it's mad - as we studied H. Rider Haggard's She

with no discourse on Rhodes, DeBeers or colonial history

we went to school where the Henries are taught

but not about the African Tudors in Henry's court

at school they don't teach Christmas or Morant Bay

but they'll teach how William Wilberforce freed the slaves

Photo by Jessica Pamp on Unsplash

is it really surprising my course didn't speak to me

or why Black students don't apply to study History

when their stories are erased with consistency

that you can study History, at least in name

without being told about Olivette Otele or C. L. R James

that I studied "English" without the books

of Zadie Smith, E. R Braithwaite or bell hooks

yet my reading lists was dead white men and that

well, you had your token woman, the poet Sylvia Plath

but when it comes to rhythm and decolonised lines

where was Grace Nichols and Claude McKay's rhymes

I'm not calling the education system racist

and if I was, (which I'm not) curricula wouldn't be dominated by white faces

as schoolteachers teach racist texts to their pupils

fine b ut you can't teach them without acknowledging their scruples

Heart of Darkness, Doctor Moreau, Dracula and Kipling's "White Man's Burden"

whilst we just trade The N-Word for thug, violent or urban

this can't be absolved through unconscious bias training, on Google Chrome

because centuries of systemic racism has been sown

into the frame work of the UK, and this must all be up for criticism

so when it comes to decolonising education it is time to stand up and listen

Education says

we must teach "Tyger tyger burning bright"

classrooms like forests of the night

no decolonising, we weren't expecting this tonight

see this is the problem with education

thinking 'Why is my Curriculum White?'

#LiberateMyDegree and #DecoloniseHE

back in old days, battles were in the fields and valleys

of places like Bosworth and Towton

you could see the outcry more clearly

telling them it's in their head

institutions with their gaslighting tactics

telling university lecturers and researchers

that a 25% awarding gap is "good practice"

but decolonial thought is really about

producing knowledge outside white European clout

it's poetry by Africans with vigour and bite

raging against the machine of your parents like children in the night

not just childhood rhymes about green eggs and ham,

but stories and tales told by my parents and Gran

my grandmother who calls Grenada "back home"

as my mom and dad read to me that Cat in the Hat tome

Blackademia captures agency and dissidence

from Lewis Howard Latimer's carbon filament

to Black slave abolitionist and the sound of yells

these are the stories that we need to tell

decolonisation is going to be a victory hard won

through the annuls of empire and the rays of the sun

"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting" - Milan Kundera

but Black agency goes back thousands of years

learn this history by heart or by rote

it's only as alive as the air in your throat

one day you'll be in a room where

where'll you'll have to defend

inclusive education, (by God), to teachers and friends

decolonial thought is narratives of class, violence and pain

currently we focus on kings and queens, but not those without name

why aren't we including marginalised voices that aren't heard

like the Africans in Tudor Britain, there in parish records, do the research

and I'm sure if we taught the First World War

with the works of David Olusoga and Phil Vasili

there'd be more Black students applying to do History

in the stories of West Indians rebelling against conscription

because saving the colonies was Winston's primary mission

but universities just want to talk about BAME

without looking into culture, identity, and individual names

leadership teams want to talk about widening participation

without an idea of what it means to be Black British or British-Asian

looking at students as numbers, thinking economically

£9000-odd pounds a year rather than who is she

because if the only time we hear about bonds and shares

is in admission and not in relation to student welfare

there is something wrong psychologically with the mechanics

this goes deeper than seeing human beings as digits in mathematics

isn't this why Britain boasts about abolishing slavery in 1833

not to replace it with a system that uses student chattel on degrees

are universities simply schools of violence, not of thought

sonnets and litanies as business paid for and bought

can we reconstruct teaching methods, to inspire -

Akala does Shakespeare and students teaching students empire

through family stories, victims of colonial ambition

from South Africa to the Congo and Indian partition

the colloquial histories you won't find in a textbook

a radical shift from those that shook

the reading establishment of WH Smith's and Waterstone's

to oral traditions of storytelling, public bellows and tomes

the ivory towers looking over their shoulders

matches, strike, flame, smoke, smoulder stakeholders

I'm constantly inspired by the activism of students

Rhodes Must Fall, protest and decolonisation movements

yet, despite this talk of speaking truth to power

I know representation in academia is a dying flower

at the ground level of the forest trying to reach the sunlight

and the lack of positive role models just ain't right

leaving beautiful, Black minds unknowing to diversity

because it's true, that you don't know what you can't see

If the ominous "they" want to keep it British,

I can roll with this (for a time)

to the sound of Reni Eddo-Lodge,

Stormzy, Aunty Malorie, and George the Poet in the brine

of Dave, Afua Hirsch and Grace Nichols taking up space

but why do we have to keep it UK

Chimimanda Ngozi-Adichie coming in with her essays

not to forget The Danger of the Single Story

recentering Black psychologists and mathematicians

decolonise the camera, decolonise poetry

telling children's fairy tales in a different rendition

decolonise universities, decolonise society

implement the recommendations made by MacPherson

Lammy, Angiolini, Williams, McGregor-Smith and the rest

doing the right thing, should not be seen as a protest

my background is humanities and arts

I love watching old old films

with Bettie and Joan, Bogie and nice cars

the picture perfect of black and white

without the distractions of modern bright lights

a time where you had the pettiness of All About Eve

and these films are fingerprints to our history

I loved history at school

even the blinkered version

they teach children about white people

on English, that book lists gave me a fright

when curricula is exclusionary

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I wasn't halfway through my primary reading list before I challenged the subject leads on English because that's what I studied at University well, I read Creative Writing more specifically but in my first year, half my modules were lit and I don't actually mean lit, I'm saying books and

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Re: Enslavement, the Royal African Company and the Monarch

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Re: Enslavement, the Royal African Company and the Monarch

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Let us start in West Africa for, after all, that was the land destined to be most affected by the development of commercial links with Europe. For thousands of years, some agricultural communities living on the southern fringes of the Sahara had supplemented their income by exploiting deposits of an easily accessible mineral highly prized by the merchants who visited them from across the desert - gold. The trade was dominated by Berber and Arab entrepreneurs. Stories of wealthy African rulers (similar to those of El Dorado) spread by trans-Saharan traders, amazed those in Europe:

The king adorns himself like a woman with gold round his neck and forearms and he puts on a high cap decorated with gold. He sits in a domed pavilion around which stand ten horses covered with gold-embroidered material. Behind him stand ten pages holding shields and swords decorated with gold.

It was the lure of gold that drew the Portuguese and later other merchants to open up direct maritime links with the people of what they called the 'Gold Coast' from the late 15th century onwards. They established trading posts at places like El Mina and Cape Coast Castle.

The impact of new markets opening up for their produce (gold, ivory, dyewoods, hides and pepper) had complex results for the various chiefdoms; it drew competition, promoted war and it encouraged slave-raiding. These states had always been slave-based (though slaves traditionally had better lives and more rights than those who ended up in Muslim towns or Christian plantations) but now they discovered that prisoners of war were valuable 'trade goods'. Some Europeans would pay for them with guns, which bolstered the power of the chiefs and so fuelled yet more inter-state war. Rulers also discovered that selling human beings to foreigners was a lucrative way of getting rid of criminals and other undesirables. What did not happen (until centuries later) was imperial expansion in West Africa. The local rulers remained in control of inter-continental commerce and European agents had no power beyond their trading posts. One reason for this was the prevalence of diseases to which the visitors were prone, and as a result the Guinea Coast was known as the 'white man's graveyard'.

Apart from three slaving voyages led by John Hawkins in the 1560s, the English showed little interest in West Africa. Slaving was resumed by the Guinea Company (founded in 1618) after about 1640 to provide cheap labour for the new Barbados sugar plantations, but this venture always struggled and its assets were acquired in 1657 by the East India Company, which had little interest in the Gold Coast. There were two disincentives to trade in this area - piracy and the Dutch. As well as major commercial concerns backed by groups of merchants having written constitutions, the Atlantic was open to private traders from various nations. These shipmasters were not noted for recognising any 'rules of the sea'. Profit was their only concern and they did not hesitate to attack coastal depots, engage in African wars, capture prizes at sea or remove cargo from seized vessels before setting them on fire.
By 1650, the Dutch had come to dominate Atlantic and North Sea trade. They had the biggest mercantile fleet of any European power and the Dutch West India Company established several trading posts on the Gold Coast and, further east, the Slave Coast. Mercantile competition led to the First Anglo-Dutch War (1652-54), which was fought entirely at sea, was immensely costly in lives and ships and resolved nothing. The situation was still in a state of turbulence in 1660 when the English monarchy was restored by Charles II. Within months, it was decided to put trade with West Africa on a surer footing by forming a chartered company.

Part of the impetus for this initiative came from two swashbuckling royalist adventurers during the British Civil War, Prince Rupert of the Rhine and Sir Robert Holmes. The former was a cousin of Charles II, the latter came from an Anglo-Irish family. Both were mercenaries who thrived on military action. During their colourful military and naval careers they had served as royalist captains, seeking to bolster the funds of the king in exile by privateering raids. During a voyage to Gambia, Rupert had become enthralled by stories of the gold-rich kings of the interior and he used his influence with James, Duke of York, Charles's brother and future James II of England, to establish a company with the power and resources necessary to drive out the Dutch and establish favourable trading relations with the local rulers. Holmes was despatched with a naval expedition to clear the way for the company. When he arrived at Gorée, close to Cape Verde, he calmly informed the Dutch governor that the entire coast from there to the Cape of Good Hope was the preserve of the King of England. He then proceeded to establish his own posts on the Gambia and make trade connections. His return, ostentatiously flashing his wealth (much to the disgust of Samuel Pepys, who took objection to his 'gold laced suit'), gave the green light to merchants eager to participate in the new company. Thus in 1660, the Company Of Royal Adventurers Of England Trading Into Africa came into being. Its principal sponsors were Prince Rupert and James, Duke of York, who soon became the governor.

Three years later, a fresh charter was issued further defining the RAC's (Royal African Company) remit. The new concern was a joint stock company - i.e. investors purchased shares and enjoyed returns based on the value of those shares, which was established by the profits of each trading expedition. Several courtiers and merchants invested in the Royal African Company, which possessed three main attractions: it had the king's backing (Charles was a major shareholder); the company's ships and trading posts enjoyed the protection of the royal navy; and the stories of 'mountains' of Guinea gold promised spectacular returns.

The acquisition of gold was the company's principal concern and, in 1665, £200,000 of its annual revenue came from precious metal. By contrast, £100,000 was derived from trade in ivory, hides, dyewoods and pepper. However, the 1663 charter added slaves to the company's list of commodities, thus, as well as taking over the forts on the Gold Coast, the RAC extended its interests eastwards to the Slave Coast. There were both supply and demand reasons for this development. On the one hand, the rulers of expanding African states had an ongoing supply of war captives to dispose of. On the other, the West Indian plantations, and particularly Barbados, had an insatiable need for workers. In 1665, a quarter of the company's income (about £100,000) came from the slave trade but this proportion gradually increased. By 1690, the RAC was the main supplier of slaves to the New World, while Dutch merchants had the largest share of the gold trade.

Trade rivalry with the Dutch was both a cause and a result of the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665-67). Despite the king's reluctance, the Duke of York and his friends, frustrated by Dutch competition, were eager to gain a monopoly for the English company. At the end of 1663, a naval expedition was sent to West Africa led by none other than Sir Robert Holmes. He has been accused of starting the war and, though hostilities would have broken out anyway, he certainly threw petrol on the flames. He rampaged along the coast from the Gambia to the Volta estuaries, sinking some ships, taking others as prizes and capturing trading posts.

The Second Anglo-Dutch War was a total disaster for England, made worse by the plague visitation of 1665 and the Great Fire of London the following year. Most of the fighting took place in the North Sea, where a series of bruising naval battles proved immensely costly in ships and men to both sides, but culminated in a humiliating Dutch raid on the naval base at Chatham in June 1667. In the Caribbean, France joined with Holland in wresting prosperous tropical colonies from English control and, though the Dutch ceded New York to the English, at the time this was not regarded as an important concession.

Meanwhile, in West Africa, Holmes's audacious attack was revenged in spades. Admiral Michiel de Ruyter recaptured all the lost trading posts with the exception of Cape Coast Castle (which now became the Royal African Company's headquarters). The losses and the disruption of its mercantile activities bankrupted the company which, to all intents and purposes, ceased trading after 1665. The RAC maintained its technical rights but could only protect them by granting licences to private traders. In 1669, it relinquished its interest in the Gambia to a newly formed Company of Gambia Adventurers. By this time, the steady development of plantation agriculture in the West Indies had made the slave trade the most lucrative form of commercial activity. Ships from many nations jostled with each other for a slice of the action. The principal countries involved were England, Holland, France, Denmark, Sweden and Brandenburg. By the end of the century, on the Gold Coast alone there were 100 or so foreign depots within a 400-kilometre stretch of coast.

By 1672, the Royal African Company had sufficiently recovered to resume its place as a major commercial entity in the region. Recapitalised and with merchants, rather than courtiers taking up most of the stock, the RAC entered into a contract to supply 5,600 slaves per year to the Caribbean mainland and island plantations, and to Virginia.

However, the company's troubles were far from over and they were numerous. The very nature of the trade created problems. Slaves were a fragile cargo, and in the appallingly cramped and unsanitary shipboard conditions in which they were transported across the world, many got sick and died. At journey's end, captains found themselves dealing in a buyers' market. Plantation owners haggled over prices and were often slow in paying up, knowing that the traders could do nothing else with unused goods. Back on the African coast, vigorous, sometimes violent, competition was an irritant. A swarm of private vessels visited the coast, trading directly with the African suppliers or even striking deals with the company's own local agents. By increasing the supply to the plantations, these interlopers frequently spoiled the market. In the rough and tumble of maritime commerce, company ships were often beset by foreign privateers.

To add to these problems, the 1680s brought revolution and war. In 1685, James, Duke of York, succeeded his brother as king. His attempt to reintroduce Catholicism as the state religion provoked the 'Glorious Revolution', which saw his daughter, Mary and her Dutch husband, William of Orange, eventually placed on the throne. Independent merchants claimed that the company's royal charter was no longer valid and that they should have free access to the West African market. While this argument was going on, England went to war again, this time with France (1689-1697). During the hostilities, a quarter of the RAC's ships were captured by the French. The company also continued to suffer at the hands of the Dutch who, in this fresh conflict, were ostensibly England's allies.

The position of the RAC as a monopoly concern under royal charter was no longer viable. In 1698, the protection of its charter was removed and free trade was established for all English merchants. Private merchants rushed to share in the transatlantic trade and, by 1708, they were shipping four times as many slaves as the company. By 1730 the Royal African Company had ceased trading altogether and it existed only to maintain west coast depots for the benefit of English merchants.
Derek Wilson has written widely on the subject of Medieval and Early Modern Europe. His most recent books are Superstition and Science, 1450-1750: Mystics, Sceptics, Truth-seekers and Charlatans and Mrs Luther and Her Sisters: Women in the Reformation. For more on history's darker chapters, subscribe to All About History for as little as £26.
As for the iniquitous slave trade, it outlived the Royal African Company by 77 years.

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Boats and boating--Equipment and supplies

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Royal African Company: How the Stuarts Birthed Britain's Slave Trade | All About History

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Let us start in West Africa for, after all, that was the land destined to be most affected by the development of commercial links with Europe. For thousands of years, some agricultural communities living on the southern fringes of the Sahara had supplemented their income by exploiting deposits of an easily accessible mineral highly prized by the merchants who visited them from across the desert - gold.

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Duchess of Sussex: Royals, racism and speaking her truth

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Special focus: p140

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Missing white woman syndrome is a term used by social scientists and media commentators to refer to extensive media coverage, especially in television, of missing person cases involving young, white, upper-middle-class women or girls. The term is used to describe the Western media's[citation needed ] disproportionate focus on upper-middle-class white women who disappear, compared to coverage of missing women of color, women of lower social classes and missing men or boys. Although the term was coined in the context of missing person cases, it is sometimes used of coverage of other violent crimes. Instances have been cited in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and South Africa.

PBS news anchor Gwen Ifill is said to be the originator of the phrase. Charlton McIlwain defines the syndrome as white women occupying "a privileged role as violent crime victims in news media reporting", and concludes that missing white woman syndrome functions as a type of racial hierarchy in the cultural imagery of the West. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva categorizes the racial component of missing white woman syndrome as a form of racial grammar, through which white supremacy is normalized by implicit or even invisible standards.

Missing white woman syndrome has led to a number of right-wing tough on crime measures that were named for white women who disappeared and were subsequently found harmed. In addition to race and class, factors such as supposed attractiveness, body size and youthfulness function as unfair criteria in the determination of newsworthiness in coverage of missing women. News coverage of missing black women was more likely to focus on the victim's problems, such as abusive boyfriends or a troubled past, while coverage of white women tends to focus on their roles as mothers or daughters.

A study of news coverage of missing children found that African American missing children cases were significantly underrepresented when compared to national statistics. Female missing children were significantly underrepresented in national news reporting. The coverage of death cases for African American boys was significantly greater than expected. Coverage of non-African American female kidnapping cases was greater than expected. A subsequent study found that girls from minority groups were the most under-represented in these missing-children news reports by a very large margin.[citation needed ]

Zach Sommers, a sociologist at Northwestern University, noted that while there is a sizable body of research that shows that white people are more likely than people of color to appear in news coverage as victims of violent crime, there is relatively little when it comes to missing persons cases. In 2013, Sommers cross-referenced the missing persons coverage of four national and local media outlets against the FBI's missing persons database. Sommers found black people received disproportionately less coverage than whites and men received disproportionately less coverage than women; Sommers could not directly assess the number of missing white women in the FBI files due to how the data was structured but concluded that there was circumstantial-although not statistically conclusive-evidence that white women received disproportionate coverage. In the same study, professor Eduardo Bonilla-Silva theorised that the subtle standard of placing a premium on white lives in the news helps to maintain and reinforce a racial hierarchy with whites at the top. For example, black women are members of both a marginalized racial group and a marginalized gender group. Crucially, though, black women have an "intersectional experience [that] is greater than the sum of racism and sexism". In other words, like white women, black women are subject to sexism, but the form of that sexism differs for black women because of the compounding effects of racial discrimination; with missing white woman syndrome being a pertinent manifestation of this social phenomenon. Some sociologists have argued that the tone of media coverage for black female victims differs markedly from coverage of white female victims in that the former are more likely to be blamed for purportedly putting themselves in harm's way, either knowingly or unknowingly. Victim blaming in this context reinforces the notion that black female victims are not only less innocent, but also less worthy of rescue relative to white women. Other observers note the lack of publicity given to black female victims of police brutality in news coverage, attributing the silence to a tradition of "sexism and patriarchy" in American society.

A report that aired on CNN noted the differences between the level of media coverage given to Caucasian women like Laci Peterson and Natalee Holloway, who disappeared in 2002 and 2005 respectively, and LaToyia Figueroa, a pregnant Black Hispanic woman. Figueroa disappeared in Philadelphia the same year Holloway disappeared. Figueroa and her unborn daughter were found murdered. The San Francisco Chronicle published an article detailing the disparity between the coverage of the Peterson case and that of Evelyn Hernandez, a Hispanic woman who was nine months pregnant when she disappeared in 2002.

Kym Pasqualini, president of the National Center for Missing Adults, observed that media outlets tend to focus on " damsels in distress"-typically, affluent young white women and teenagers.

In a 2016 article about the disappearance of Tiffany Whitton, journalist Tom Junod observed that white women of lower social status such as Whitton, a 26-year-old unemployed drug addict who was on parole, do not get much media attention as "media outlets are ruthlessly selective, and they tend to prefer women who are white, pretty, and, above all, innocent." Whitton's mother stated that producers of shows like Nancy Grace told her they weren't interested in her daughter's case. Dr. Cory L. Armstrong wrote in The Washington Post, "the pattern of choosing only young, white, middle-class women for the full damsel treatment says a lot about a nation that likes to believe it has consigned race and class to irrelevance."

According to a study published in The Law and Society Association, aboriginal women who go missing in Canada receive 27 times less news coverage than white women; they also receive "dispassionate and less-detailed, headlines, articles, and images".

In January 2006, the London Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Ian Blair, accused the media of 'institutional racism' in its reporting of murders. He contrasted the reporting of the death of the male white lawyer Tom ap Rhys Price with the murder of the male Asian builders' merchant Balbir Matharu. He said 'murders in minority communities do not seem to interest the mainstream media'. He said that the death of Damilola Taylor (a 10-year-old black boy) was clearly an exception to this. He said he had been surprised at how much coverage the murders of two 10-year-old white girls in Soham had received. He did not mention any white women.

University of Leicester Criminology Professor Yvonne Jewkes cites the murder of Milly Dowler, the murder of Sarah Payne, and the Soham murders as examples of "eminently newsworthy stories" about girls from "respectable" middle-class families and backgrounds whose parents used the news media effectively. She writes that, in contrast, the killing of Damilola Taylor, a 10-year-old boy from Nigeria, initially received little news coverage, with reports initially concentrating upon street crime levels and community policing in London, and largely ignoring the victim. Even when Damilola's father flew into the UK from Nigeria to make press statements and television appearances, the level of public outcry did not, Jewkes asserts, reach "the near hysterical outpourings of anger and sadness that accompanied the deaths of Sarah, Milly, Holly, and Jessica". However, according to the BBC, the killing of Damilola Taylor had shocked the UK.

Two cases of missing white girl syndrome that have been given as contrasting examples: the murder of Hannah Williams and the murder of Danielle Jones (both were white). It was suggested that Jones received more coverage than Williams because Jones was a middle-class schoolgirl, whilst Williams was from a working-class background with a stud in her nose and estranged parents. Another explanation for the difference in the coverage has been given: the eroticisation of the victim by news reports about a sexual relationship between Jones and her murderer (who was her uncle).

Sandile Memela, chief director for social cohesion at South Africa's Department of Arts and Culture, noted amidst the Oscar Pistorius trial that there existed substantial differences between how media outlets reported on the murders of Reeva Steenkamp and Zanele Khumalo; two South African models, respectively white and black, who had been murdered by their boyfriends under nearly identical circumstances. Memela asserted that the discrepancy between the media coverage of the Steenkamp and Khumala murders amounted to " structural racism" within South African society, and stated: "As a country we seem to have chosen to ignore the agony, pain and suffering of the Khumalo family for no other reason than that they are black."

On September 11, 2014, the South African news network SABC3 aired an investigative report which raised concerns around the "Missing White Woman Syndrome"; where the death of Steenkamp was juxtaposed with the death of Zanele Khumalo.

Jessica Lynch

Social commentaries pointed to media bias in the coverage of soldier Jessica Lynch versus that of her fellow soldiers, Shoshana Johnson and Lori Piestewa. All three were ambushed in the same attack during the Iraq War on March 23, 2003, with Piestewa being killed and Lynch and Johnson being injured and taken prisoner. Lynch, a young, blonde, white woman, received far more media coverage than Johnson (a black woman and a single mother) and Piestewa (a Hopi from an impoverished background, and also a single mother), with media critics suggesting that the media gave more attention to the woman with whom audiences supposedly more readily identify.

Lynch herself leveled harsh criticism at this disproportionate coverage that focused only on her, stating in a congressional testimony before the United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform:

I am still confused as to why they chose to lie and tried to make me a legend when the real heroics of my fellow soldiers that day were, in fact, legendary. People like Lori Piestewa and First Sergeant Dowdy who picked up fellow soldiers in harm's way. Or people like Patrick Miller and Sergeant Donald Walters who actually fought until the very end. The bottom line is the American people are capable of determining their own ideals of heroes and they don't need to be told elaborate tales.

Presumed kidnapping of "blonde angel" in Greece

In October 2013, a girl estimated to be about 4 years of age was found in the custody of a Roma couple in Greece and was presumed to have been abducted. The story about the "blonde angel" and the search for her biological parents received international media coverage. A Romani rights activist commented on the case to say "imagine if the situation were reversed and the children were brown and the parents were white." The child was later identified as Maria Ruseva. Her biological mother was a Bulgarian Roma who gave Maria up for adoption.

Murder trial defendants

Critics have also cited excessive media coverage of murder trials where the defendant is female, white, young and attractive, and included them along with Missing White Woman Syndrome instances in an all-encompassing narrative nicknamed the "woman in jeopardy" or "damsel in distress" genre. In such cases, the media will focus on the accused, rather than the victim as in Missing White Woman Syndrome cases, and they will be more ambiguous about their guilt than in other criminal cases regardless of evidence. Cited examples include Amanda Knox, Jodi Arias and Casey Anthony.

The following missing person cases have been cited as instances of missing white woman syndrome; media commentators on the phenomenon regard them as garnering a disproportionate level of media coverage relative to contemporary cases involving missing girls or women of non-white ethnicities, and missing males of all ethnicities. The date of death or disappearance is given in parentheses.

February 27, 1992

Kimberly Pandelios

A 20-year-old woman who disappeared after leaving to respond to a model-wanted ad at the Angeles National Forest. The case was publicized in a 1995 episode of Unsolved Mysteries.

September 24, 1992

Dail Dinwiddie

A 23-year-old college student who disappeared after attending a U2 concert. She remains missing.

November 16, 1995

Linda Sobek

A 27-year-old model and former Los Angeles Raiders cheerleader who disappeared while on assignment. Salacious details of the case were printed in the national media. Her murderer was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.

June 23, 1997

Kristen Modafferi

An 18-year-old college student who disappeared from the San Francisco Bay Area and remains missing. Her disappearance, just 3 weeks after her 18th birthday, helped to establish Kristen's Law and the National Center for Missing Adults.

January 10, 2002

Rachel Cooke

A 19-year-old college student who disappeared while jogging. Her disappearance was publicized nationally, but she is still missing.

March 21, 2002

Amanda "Milly" Dowler

A 13-year-old girl who disappeared after school. Her remains were found after an extensive six-month search, and the case played a significant role in the News of the World phone-hacking scandal.

June 5, 2002

Elizabeth Smart

A 14-year-old girl, missing for 9 months after being in captivity. Her captor was sentenced to life in prison.

August 29, 2002

Audrey Herron

A 31-year-old woman and mother of three who disappeared after leaving work.

December 24, 2002

Laci Peterson

A 27-year-old pregnant woman murdered by her husband. The case led to the implementation of "Laci and Connor's Law", which defines violence against a pregnant woman as violence against two separate legal subjects (the mother and the unborn child).

March 23, 2003

Jessica Lynch

A 19-year-old Private First Class injured and taken prisoner at the Battle of Nasiriyah.

November 22, 2003

A 22-year-old student who was found murdered. Her murderer was convicted, and the case prompted the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Registry.

March 27, 2004

Audrey Seiler

A 20-year-old college student who was found alive after an extensive search; it was later revealed she had fabricated the incident.

July 19, 2004

Lori Hacking

A 27-year-old woman murdered by her husband.

May 30, 2005

Natalee Holloway

An 18-year-old high school senior who disappeared in Aruba and remains missing. She was declared legally dead on January 12, 2012.

May 3, 2007

Madeleine McCann

A 3-year-old girl who disappeared from her parents' hotel room during a family holiday in Portugal. Described by The Daily Telegraph as "the most heavily reported missing-person case in modern history".

February 9, 2009

Haleigh Cummings

A 5-year-old girl kidnapped from her father's trailer in Satsuma, Florida.

October 5, 2009

Aisling Symes

A 2-year-old girl who disappeared from her home in Auckland, New Zealand. She was feared abducted but her body was found in a drain near her home a week later, and it was determined that she was the victim of accidental drowning after wandering off from her mother's side while she was carrying out household chores. Tim Hulme, writing for The Sunday Star-Times, surmised that age was a much greater factor than race or class in the extensive media coverage the case garnered.

July 16, 2018

Mollie Tibbetts

20-year-old who disappeared while jogging near her home in Brooklyn, Iowa. Her body was discovered over a month later on August 21.

October 15, 2018

Jayme Closs

A 13-year-old girl was abducted from the Barron, Wisconsin home of her parents, both of whom were killed during the incident. She escaped her captor 88 days later.

December 1, 2018

Grace Millane

A 22-year-old British tourist from a wealthy family who disappeared while visiting New Zealand. Her body was discovered in a rural area of Auckland just over one week after she went missing. A man was subsequently convicted of her murder.

The following missing person cases have been expressly compared to contemporary missing person cases labeled as examples of "Missing White Woman Syndrome", in order to highlight differences in coverage between them. The date of death or disappearance is given in parentheses.

Name

Description

Case contrasted with

Source(s)

Unknown

Srey Nath

A 15-year-old Cambodian student lured to Thailand with a job offer and enslaved in a Malaysian brothel. After escaping with three other girls and reporting to police, she was jailed for a year for illegal immigration and subsequently deported to Thailand, where she was sold to another brothel.

Jaycee Dugard

1993 - ongoing

Female homicides in Ciudad Juárez

Over 800 violent deaths of women and girls in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juárez.

Natalee Holloway

April 1, 2001

Hannah Williams

A 14-year-old London working-class girl with a history of running away from home, who disappeared during a shopping trip. Her body was discovered a year later during the search for a middle-class missing girl, Danielle Jones, and most of the (scarce) coverage Williams received was early speculation about the possibility of her body being Jones's.

Danielle Jones

May 3, 2002

Alexis Patterson

A 7-year-old African-American girl who disappeared after being dropped off at her Milwaukee, Wisconsin elementary school, just one month before Elizabeth Smart was abducted in Utah; her case received only a small fraction of the media attention given to Smart's. No trace of Alexis has ever been found.

Elizabeth Smart

Alex Hernandez

March 23, 2003

Lori Piestewa

A 23-year-old United States Army soldier, of Hopi descent and a single mother, killed at the Battle of Nasiriyah.

Jessica Lynch

February 25, 2005

Donna Cooke

A 23-year-old prostitute found strangled in Lake Thonotosassa during the search for Jessica Lunsford. Coverage of the then unidentified woman was reduced to the Sheriff reassuring viewers, "it is not our girl" (meaning Lunsford), which was denounced as "dehumanizing" by critics. Cooke's murder remains unsolved.

Jessica Lunsford

July 18, 2005

Latoyia Figueroa

A 24-year-old, five months pregnant Afrolatina waitress (and already a single mother) who disappeared in Philadelphia after leaving a prenatal care session. Her remains were discovered in Chester, Pennsylvania one month later.

Natalee Holloway

January 8, 2009

Oscar Garcia-Calles

Two Salvadoran brothers aged 16 and 14 who disappeared while traveling to Green Brook, New Jersey. Possibly abducted by an unrelated adult male.

Danielle van Dam

Samuel Garcia-Calles

Jessica Lunsford

April 29, 2009

Shalomiel Solel

A 3-year-old African-American boy abducted by his non-custodial parents from Carson, California. Found undernourished and living on the streets with his parents in New Orleans, in March 2011.

Caylee Anthony

October 1, 2009

Srikanth Rayadurgam

A 23-year-old Indian student disappeared in Auckland, New Zealand. Rayadurgam's family denounced that a Wellington team originally assigned to investigate his disappearance was redirected in short notice to Henderson in order to assist on the search of 2-year-old Aisling Symes.

Aisling Symes

May 30, 2010

Stephany Flores

A 21-year-old Peruvian business student murdered in a hotel room by Joran van der Sloot, the main suspect of the Natalee Holloway case.

Natalee Holloway

July 5, 2016

Manuela Chavero

A 42-year-old woman who disappeared in the early morning from her home in Monesterio, Extremadura, Spain; she left the TV on, her cell phone in the kitchen, and her pants on the bed.

August 25, 2016

Iván Durán

A 30-year-old man from Baiona, Galicia, Spain disappeared 3 days after Diana Quer.

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Missing white woman syndrome is a term used by social scientists and media commentators to refer to extensive media coverage, especially in television, of missing person cases involving young, white, upper-middle-class women or girls.

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As a queer woman in love, sometimes it's hard to relate to what my straight sisters are going through. What used to make me want to hold rap stars accountable is now likely to pass my ears without so much as a raised eyebrow of concern from me. This is deeply disturbing and I don't know what to make of this shift. Is it age? A creeping conservative that has me running from my radical roots?

I honestly feel like I'm just so sick and tired of being sick and tired, I'd rather overlook the rampant misogyny and sexism on the airwaves to focus on what's compelling in the music. This is really troublesome because I wasn't this girl. In fact, there was a time when I abhorred people who gave conditional passes or tried to see the possibilities in a genre I thought was causing so many problems.

I feel like my ambivalence is in some ways a decision to opt out of the foolishness because honestly it's just too much to bear at times. The seemingly innocuous radio hit " BedRock " by Young Money has a line penned by the now incarcerated Wayne that I hadn't paid much attention to.

"I knock her lights out
but she still shine..."

Clever for sure, but violent as fuck. It really gave me pause because it's the type of lyric that washes over you, sandwiched between lyrics that are more or less memorable. This slightly veiled violence is often dismissed because it's said playfully and in the context of a medley that suggests a more amorous interpretation.

My reorientation to the misogynoir[1] ruling the radio took place when I tried to make the argument that " All the Way Turnt Up " was a great song because it didn't objectify women. This was something I could get behind; a song simply extolling the youthful value of keeping the bass bumping in your vehicle. That was until I read the lyrics and found the choice lyric "three dike bitches, and they all wanna swallow."

Only one line, one line out of 40 odd rather mundane lyrics (materialism, present controversy, and drug use notwithstanding). Is this a big deal? Should I be offended? I do feel disappointed. Even when things attempt to move away from the formula, MONEY+ CARS + HOES = hit record, they can't move that far; money+ cars+ hoes = hit record. A song about playing your music loud still has to call on the transformative power of Roscoe Dash, Travis Porter, et. al's masculinity to make lesbians want to suck a dick? Nice.

I wonder what it means that there are no songs on mainstream radio that challenge the status quo. And when artists do manage to break out, they look so out of place. Did you see the trippiness that was Erykah "On and On" Badu on 106 and park last year? Painfully awkward. I think folks still don't know what to do with her next to latest offering Jump Up in the Air, even with Wayne's ubiquitous co-signing.

So rather than deal with the persistent and pervasive assault on women in the music, I've cultivated a world that supports the age old adage in hip hop apologist vernacular that used to make my blood boil; "He's not talking about me." In my mostly queer academic class privileged world, I am pretty much immune to the direct fallout of lyrics like the ones I've mentioned. They are frustrating and disappointing but their utterance and repetition seem to have less and less direct effect on my movements or relationships with cis gendered black men.

I see my work in this life as trying to address these issues in the music as oppose to retreat from them but I find a fatigued ambivalence the most accurate articulation of where I am right now. I am trying to figure out what my evolving relationship to rap music will be and I welcome you along for the ride.

*update*

My feelings might be best expressed by this video (what's up w/ the (non) relationship between the single black girl dancer and the white girl ensemble?). Thanks @ Chaseology for the link.

LOOSEWORLD x Waverly Films: Reggie Watts in F_CK SH_T STACK from LOOSEWORLD on Vimeo.

[1] Word I made up to describe the particular brand of hatred directed at black women in American visual & popular culture.

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As a queer woman in love, sometimes it's hard to relate to what my straight sisters are going through. What used to make me want to hold rap stars accountable is now likely to pass my ears without so much as a raised eyebrow of concern from me.

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King Leopold's Ghost | Trailer | Available Now

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First Chapter

Everyone has a theory of human nature. Everyone has to anticipate the behavior of others, and that means we all need theories about what makes people tick. A tacit theory of human nature-that behavior is caused by thoughts and feelings-is embedded in the very way we think about people. We fill out this theory by introspecting on our own minds and assuming that our fellows are like ourselves, and by watching people's behavior and filing away generalizations. We absorb still other ideas from our intellectual climate: from the expertise of authorities and the conventional wisdom of the day.

Our theory of human nature is the wellspring of much in our lives. We consult it when we want to persuade or threaten, inform or deceive. It advises us on how to nurture our marriages, bring up our children, and control our own behavior. Its assumptions about learning drive our educational policy; its assumptions about motivation drive our policies on economics, law, and crime. And because it delineates what people can achieve easily, what they can achieve only with sacrifice or pain, and what they cannot achieve at all, it affects our values: what we believe we can reasonably strive for as individuals and as a society. Rival theories of human nature are entwined in different ways of life and different political systems, and have been a source of much conflict over the course of history.

For millennia, the major theories of human nature have come from religion. The Judeo-Christian tradition, for example, offers explanations for much of the subject matter now studied by biology and psychology. Humans are made in the image of God and are unrelated to animals. Women are derivative of men and destined to be ruled by them. The mind is an immaterial substance: it has powers possessed by no purely physical structure, and can continue to exist when the body dies. The mind is made up of several components, including a moral sense, an ability to love, a capacity for reason that recognizes whether an act conforms to ideals of goodness, and a decision faculty that chooses how to behave. Although the decision faculty is not bound by the laws of cause and effect, it has an innate tendency to choose sin. Our cognitive and perceptual faculties work accurately because God implanted ideals in them that correspond to reality and because he coordinates their functioning with the outside world. Mental health comes from recognizing God's purpose, choosing good and repenting sin, and loving God and one's fellow humans for God's sake.

The Judeo-Christian theory is based on events narrated in the Bible. We know that the human mind has nothing in common with the minds of animals because the Bible says that humans were created separately. We know that the design of women is based on the design of men because in the second telling of the creation of women Eve was fashioned from the rib of Adam. Human decisions cannot be the inevitable effects of some cause, we may surmise, because God held Adam and Eve responsible for eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge, implying that they could have chosen otherwise. Women are dominated by men as punishment for Eve's disobedience, and men and women inherit the sinfulness of the first couple.

The Judeo-Christian conception is still the most popular theory of human nature in the United States. According to recent polls, 76 percent of Americans believe in the biblical account of creation, 79 percent believe that the miracles in the Bible actually took place, 76 percent believe in angels, the devil, and other immaterial souls, 67 percent believe they will exist in some form after their death, and only 15 percent believe that Darwin's theory of evolution is the best explanation for the origin of human life on Earth. Politicians on the right embrace the religious theory explicitly, and no mainstream politician would dare contradict it in public. But the modern sciences of cosmology, geology, biology, and archaeology have made it impossible for a scientifically literate person to believe that the biblical story of creation actually took place. As a result, the Judeo-Christian theory of human nature is no longer explicitly avowed by most academics, journalists, social analysts, and other intellectually engaged people.

Nonetheless, every society must operate with a theory of human nature, and our intellectual mainstream is committed to another one. The theory is seldom articulated or overtly embraced, but it lies at the heart of a vast number of beliefs and policies. Bertrand Russell wrote, "Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day." For intellectuals today, many of those convictions are about psychology and social relations. I will refer to those convictions as the Blank Slate: the idea that the human mind has no inherent structure and can be inscribed at will by society or ourselves.

That theory of human nature-namely, that it barely exists-is the topic of this book. Just as religions contain a theory of human nature, so theories of human nature take on some of the functions of religion, and the Blank Slate has become the secular religion of modern intellectual life. It is seen as a source of values, so the fact that it is based on a miracle-a complex mind arising out of nothing-is not held against it. Challenges to the doctrine from skeptics and scientists have plunged some believers into a crisis of faith and have led others to mount the kinds of bitter attacks ordinarily aimed at heretics and infidels. And just as many religious traditions eventually reconciled themselves to apparent threats from science (such as the revolutions of Copernicus and Darwin), so, I argue, will our values survive the demise of the Blank Slate.

The chapters in this part of the book (Part I) are about the ascendance of the Blank Slate in modern intellectual life, and about the new view of human nature and culture that is beginning to challenge it. In succeeding parts we will witness the anxiety evoked by this challenge (Part II) and see how the anxiety may be assuaged (Part III). Then I will show how a richer conception of human nature can provide insight into language, thought, social life, and morality (Part IV) and how it can clarify controversies on politics, violence, gender, childrearing, and the arts (Part V). Finally I will show how the passing of the Blank Slate is less disquieting, and in some ways less revolutionary, than it first appears (Part VI).

The Official Theory

"Blank slate" is a loose translation of the medieval Latin term tabula rasa-literally, "scraped tablet." It is commonly attributed to the philosopher John Locke (1632-1704), though in fact he used a different metaphor. Here is the famous passage from An Essay Concerning Human Understanding :

Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper void of all characters, without any ideas. How comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from experience.

Locke was taking aim at theories of innate ideas in which people were thought to be born with mathematical ideals, eternal truths, and a notion of God. His alternative theory, empiricism, was intended both as a theory of psychology-how the mind works-and as a theory of epistemology-how we come to know the truth. Both goals helped motivate his political philosophy, often honored as the foundation of liberal democracy. Locke opposed dogmatic justifications for the political status quo, such as the authority of the church and the divine right of kings, which had been touted as self-evident truths. He argued that social arrangements should be reasoned out from scratch and agreed upon by mutual consent, based on knowledge that any person could acquire. Since ideas are grounded in experience, which varies from person to person, differences of opinion arise not because one mind is equipped to grasp the truth and another is defective, but because the two minds have had different histories. Those differences therefore ought to be tolerated rather than suppressed. Locke's notion of a blank slate also undermined a hereditary royalty and aristocracy, whose members could claim no innate wisdom or merit if their minds had started out as blank as everyone else's. It also spoke against the institution of slavery, because slaves could no longer be thought of as innately inferior or subservient.

During the past century the doctrine of the Blank Slate has set the agenda for much of the social sciences and humanities. As we shall see, psychology has sought to explain all thought, feeling, and behavior with a few simple mechanisms of learning. The social sciences have sought to explain all customs and social arrangements as a product of the socialization of children by the surrounding culture: a system of words, images, stereotypes, role models, and contingencies of reward and punishment. A long and growing list of concepts that would seem natural to the human way of thinking (emotions, kinship, the sexes, illness, nature, the world) are now said to have been "invented" or "socially constructed."

The Blank Slate has also served as a sacred scripture for political and ethical beliefs. According to the doctrine, any differences we see among races, ethnic groups, sexes, and individuals come not from differences in their innate constitution but from differences in their experiences. Change the experiences-by reforming parenting, education, the media, and social rewards-and you can change the person. Underachievement, poverty, and antisocial behavior can be ameliorated; indeed, it is irresponsible not to do so. And discrimination on the basis of purportedly inborn traits of a sex or ethnic group is simply irrational.

The Blank Slate is often accompanied by two other doctrines, which have also attained a sacred status in modern intellectual life. My label for the first of the two is commonly attributed to the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), though it really comes from John Dryden's The Conquest of Granada, published in 1670:

I am as free as Nature first made man,]BRK Ere the base laws of servitude began,]BRK When wild in woods the noble savage ran.

The concept of the noble savage was inspired by European colonists' discovery of indigenous peoples in the Americas, Africa, and (later) Oceania. It captures the belief that humans in their natural state are selfless, peaceable, and untroubled, and that blights such as greed, anxiety, and violence are the products of civilization. In 1755 Rousseau wrote:

So many authors have hastily concluded that man is naturally cruel, and requires a regular system of police to be reclaimed; whereas nothing can be more gentle than him in his primitive state, when placed by nature at an equal distance from the stupidity of brutes and the pernicious good sense of civilized man. . . .

The more we reflect on this state, the more convinced we shall be that it was the least subject of any to revolutions, the best for man, and that nothing could have drawn him out of it but some fatal accident, which, for the public good, should never have happened. The example of the savages, most of whom have been found in this condition, seems to confirm that mankind was formed ever to remain in it, that this condition is the real youth of the world, and that all ulterior improvements have been so many steps, in appearance towards the perfection of individuals, but in fact towards the decrepitness of the species.

First among the authors that Rousseau had in mind was Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), who had presented a very different picture:

Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man. . . .

In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Hobbes believed that people could escape this hellish existence only by surrendering their autonomy to a sovereign person or assembly. He called it a leviathan, the Hebrew word for a monstrous sea creature subdued by Yahweh at the dawn of creation.

Much depends on which of these armchair anthropologists is correct. If people are noble savages, then a domineering leviathan is unnecessary. Indeed, by forcing people to delineate private property for the state to recognize-property they might otherwise have shared-the leviathan creates the very greed and belligerence it is designed to control. A happy society would be our birthright; all we would need to do is eliminate the institutional barriers that keep it from us. If, in contrast, people are naturally nasty, the best we can hope for is an uneasy truce enforced by police and the army. The two theories have implications for private life as well. Every child is born a savage (that is, uncivilized), so if savages are naturally gentle, childrearing is a matter of providing children with opportunities to develop their potential, and evil people are products of a society that has corrupted them. If savages are naturally nasty, then childrearing is an arena of discipline and conflict, and evil people are showing a dark side that was insufficiently tamed.

The actual writings of philosophers are always more complex than the theories they come to symbolize in the textbooks. In reality, the views of Hobbes and Rousseau are not that far apart. Rousseau, like Hobbes, believed (incorrectly) that savages were solitary, without ties of love or loyalty, and without any industry or art (and he may have out-Hobbes'd Hobbes in claiming they did not even have language). Hobbes envisioned-indeed, literally drew-his leviathan as an embodiment of the collective will, which was vested in it by a kind of social contract; Rousseau's most famous work is called The Social Contract , and in it he calls on people to subordinate their interests to a "general will."

Nonetheless, Hobbes and Rousseau limned contrasting pictures of the state of nature that have inspired thinkers in the centuries since. No one can fail to recognize the influence of the doctrine of the Noble Savage in contemporary consciousness. We see it in the current respect for all things natural (natural foods, natural medicines, natural childbirth) and the distrust of the man-made, the unfashionability of authoritarian styles of childrearing and education, and the understanding of social problems as repairable defects in our institutions rather than as tragedies inherent to the human condition.

The other sacred doctrine that often accompanies the Blank Slate is usually attributed to the scientist, mathematician, and philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650):

There is a great difference between mind and body, inasmuch as body is by nature always divisible, and the mind is entirely indivisible. . . . When I consider the mind, that is to say, myself inasmuch as I am only a thinking being, I cannot distinguish in myself any parts, but apprehend myself to be clearly one and entire; and though the whole mind seems to be united to the whole body, yet if a foot, or an arm, or some other part, is separated from the body, I am aware that nothing has been taken from my mind. And the faculties of willing, feeling, conceiving, etc. cannot be properly speaking said to be its parts, for it is one and the same mind which employs itself in willing and in feeling and understanding. But it is quite otherwise with corporeal or extended objects, for there is not one of them imaginable by me which my mind cannot easily divide into parts. . . . This would be sufficient to teach me that the mind or soul of man is entirely different from the body, if I had not already been apprised of it on other grounds.

A memorable name for this doctrine was given three centuries later by a detractor, the philosopher Gilbert Ryle (1900-1976):

There is a doctrine about the nature and place of minds which is so prevalent among theorists and even among laymen that it deserves to be described as the official theory. . . . The official doctrine, which hails chiefly from Descartes, is something like this. With the doubtful exception of idiots and infants in arms every human being has both a body and a mind. Some would prefer to say that every human being is both a body and a mind. His body and his mind are ordinarily harnessed together, but after the death of the body his mind may continue to exist and function. Human bodies are in space and are subject to mechanical laws which govern all other bodies in space. . . . But minds are not in space, nor are their operations subject to mechanical laws. . . . . . . Such in outline is the official theory. I shall often speak of it, with deliberate abusiveness, as "the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine."

The Ghost in the Machine, like the Noble Savage, arose in part as a reaction to Hobbes. Hobbes had argued that life and mind could be explained in mechanical terms. Light sets our nerves and brain in motion, and that is what it means to see. The motions may persist like the wake of a ship or the vibration of a plucked string, and that is what it means to imagine. "Quantities" get added or subtracted in the brain, and that is what it means to think.

Descartes rejected the idea that the mind could operate by physical principles. He thought that behavior, especially speech, was not caused by anything, but freely chosen. He observed that our consciousness, unlike our bodies and other physical objects, does not feel as if it is divisible into parts or laid out in space. He noted that we cannot doubt the existence of our minds-indeed, we cannot doubt that we are our minds-because the very act of thinking presupposes that our minds exist. But we can doubt the existence of our bodies, because we can imagine ourselves to be immaterial spirits who merely dream or hallucinate that we are incarnate.

Descartes also found a moral bonus in his dualism (the belief that the mind is a different kind of thing from the body): "There is none which is more effectual in leading feeble spirits from the straight path of virtue, than to imagine that the soul of the brute is of the same nature as our own, and that in consequence, after this life we have nothing to fear or to hope for, any more than the flies and the ants." Ryle explains Descartes's dilemma:

When Galileo showed that his methods of scientific discovery were competent to provide a mechanical theory which should cover every occupant of space, Descartes found in himself two conflicting motives. As a man of scientific genius he could not but endorse the claims of mechanics, yet as a religious and moral man he could not accept, as Hobbes accepted, the discouraging rider to those claims, namely that human nature differs only in degree of complexity from clockwork.

It can indeed be upsetting to think of ourselves as glorified gears and springs. Machines are insensate, built to be used, and disposable; humans are sentient, possessing of dignity and rights, and infinitely precious. A machine has some workaday purpose, such as grinding grain or sharpening pencils; a human being has higher purposes, such as love, worship, good works, and the creation of knowledge and beauty. The behavior of machines is determined by the ineluctable laws of physics and chemistry; the behavior of people is freely chosen. With choice comes freedom, and therefore optimism about our possibilities for the future. With choice also comes responsibility, which allows us to hold people accountable for their actions. And of course if the mind is separate from the body, it can continue to exist when the body breaks down, and our thoughts and pleasures will not someday be snuffed out forever.

As I mentioned, most Americans continue to believe in an immortal soul, made of some nonphysical substance, which can part company with the body. But even those who do not avow that belief in so many words still imagine that somehow there must be more to us than electrical and chemical activity in the brain. Choice, dignity, and responsibility are gifts that set off human beings from everything else in the universe, and seem incompatible with the idea that we are mere collections of molecules. Attempts to explain behavior in mechanistic terms are commonly denounced as "reductionist" or "determinist." The denouncers rarely know exactly what they mean by those words, but everyone knows they refer to something bad. The dichotomy between mind and body also pervades everyday speech, as when we say "Use your head," when we refer to "out-of-body experiences," and when we speak of "John's body," or for that matter "John's brain," which presupposes an owner, John, that is somehow separate from the brain it owns. Journalists sometimes speculate about "brain transplants" when they really should be calling them "body transplants," because, as the philosopher Dan Dennett has noted, this is the one transplant operation in which it is better to be the donor than the recipient.

The doctrines of the Blank Slate, the Noble Savage, and the Ghost in the Machine-or, as philosophers call them, empiricism, romanticism, and dualism-are logically independent, but in practice they are often found together. If the slate is blank, then strictly speaking it has neither injunctions to do good nor injunctions to do evil. But good and evil are asymmetrical: there are more ways to harm people than to help them, and harmful acts can hurt them to a greater degree than virtuous acts can make them better off. So a blank slate, compared with one filled with motives, is bound to impress us more by its inability to do harm than by its inability to do good. Rousseau did not literally believe in a blank slate, but he did believe that bad behavior is a product of learning and socialization. "Men are wicked," he wrote; "a sad and constant experience makes proof unnecessary." But this wickedness comes from society: "There is no original perversity in the human heart. There is not a single vice to be found in it of which it cannot be said how and whence it entered." If the metaphors in everyday speech are a clue, then all of us, like Rousseau, associate blankness with virtue rather than with nothingness. Think of the moral connotations of the adjectives clean, fair, immaculate, lily-white, pure, spotless, unmarred, and unsullied, and of the nouns blemish, blot, mark, stain, and taint.

The Blank Slate naturally coexists with the Ghost in the Machine, too, since a slate that is blank is a hospitable place for a ghost to haunt. If a ghost is to be at the controls, the factory can ship the device with a minimum of parts. The ghost can read the body's display panels and pull its levers, with no need for a high-tech executive program, guidance system, or CPU. The more not-clockwork there is controlling behavior, the less clockwork we need to posit. For similar reasons, the Ghost in the Machine happily accompanies the Noble Savage. If the machine behaves ignobly, we can blame the ghost, which freely chose to carry out the iniquitous acts; we need not probe for a defect in the machine's design.

Philosophy today gets no respect. Many scientists use the term as a synonym for effete speculation. When my colleague Ned Block told his father that he would major in the subject, his father's reply was "Luft!"-Yiddish for "air." And then there's the joke in which a young man told his mother he would become a Doctor of Philosophy and she said, "Wonderful! But what kind of disease is philosophy?"

But far from being idle or airy, the ideas of philosophers can have repercussions for centuries. The Blank Slate and its companion doctrines have infiltrated the conventional wisdom of our civilization and have repeatedly surfaced in unexpected places. William Godwin (1756-1835), one of the founders of liberal political philosophy, wrote that "children are a sort of raw material put into our hands," their minds "like a sheet of white paper." More sinisterly, we find Mao Zedong justifying his radical social engineering by saying, "It is on a blank page that the most beautiful poems are written." Even Walt Disney was inspired by the metaphor. "I think of a child's mind as a blank book," he wrote. "During the first years of his life, much will be written on the pages. The quality of that writing will affect his life profoundly."

Locke could not have imagined that his words would someday lead to Bambi (intended by Disney to teach self-reliance); nor could Rousseau have anticipated Pocahontas, the ultimate noble savage. Indeed, the soul of Rousseau seems to have been channeled by the writer of a recent Thanksgiving op-ed piece in the Boston Globe:

I would submit that the world native Americans knew was more stable, happier, and less barbaric than our society today. . . . there were no employment problems, community harmony was strong, substance abuse unknown, crime nearly nonexistent. What warfare there was between tribes was largely ritualistic and seldom resulted in indiscriminate or wholesale slaughter. While there were hard times, life was, for the most part, stable and predictable. . . . Because the native people respected what was around them, there was no loss of water or food resources because of pollution or extinction, no lack of materials for the daily essentials, such as baskets, canoes, shelter, or firewood.

(continues...)

Excerpted from The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker Copyright © 2002 by Steven Pinker

Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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First Chapter Everyone has a theory of human nature. Everyone has to anticipate the behavior of others, and that means we all need theories about what makes people tick. A tacit theory of human nature-that behavior is caused by thoughts and feelings-is embedded in the very way we think about people.

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Wake Up - AFLO the Poet and Priss Nash (2020)

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Wake Up - AFLO the Poet and Priss Nash (2020)

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Content warning: racism, police brutality, loss of Black life

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Black Lives Matter is a movement, not a moment. Told from the perspective of two Black women, WAKE UP fuses powerful spoken word poetry with unflinching glimpses of news clips and mobile phone footage. An impassioned and emotional journey through the peaks and troughs of hope and frustration that are felt when people finally start paying attention, only to lose focus once the hashtags have stopped trending.

WAKE UP - A POEM BY AFLO. the poet & PRISS NASH
https://readymag.com/u2987644781/toughcookie/5/

DIRECTORS NOTES ARTICLE
https://directorsnotes.com/2020/08/07/sam-parish-rookes-wake-up/

HOW YOU CAN HELP
https://linktr.ee/brighton.blm

DONATE 
AFLO & Priss are two young Black women working hard and juggling multiple other responsibilities alongside their poetry. If you feel like you’ve gained something from their work and are financially able, they welcome any donations(/reparations) via PayPal.
paypal.me/aflothepoet
paypal.me/prissnash

INQUEST
Every year INQUEST helps hundreds of families bereaved by state related deaths. They are independent of government, and entirely reliant on grants donations to continue their vital work. Donate to INQUEST here - https://www.inquest.org.uk/donate/make-donation/5/credit-card

THE BLACK AND MINORITY ETHNIC YOUNG PEOPLE PROJECT
BMEYPP work with young people aged 11 to 25, providing safe spaces where they can share their experiences, learn about Black histories and develop a positive sense of identities. Delivering a number of projects and activities to support their physical, spiritual and emotional development. Both AFLO. & Priss are working with the BMEYPP to raise funds to secure premises in order for them to carry out their much needed work. You can support BMEYPP here - https://www.givey.com/bmeypp

CREDITS
Written & Performed by AFLO. the poet & Priss Nash
Director & Editor - Sam Parish-Rookes
Producers - AFLO. the poet & Priss Nash
Director of Photography - Liam White
Colourist - Jessica Vile
Post-Production Sound - Shane Gravestock
Graphic Designer - Shannon Thomas
Carved In Mayhem Written & Performed by Luke Atencio, Courtesy of Musicbed
Special Thanks to Matt Hopkins, Sam Widdows, The Brighton Studio, The Progress Film Company, Reed Morano, Laura Parish, Toby Bennett, Julian Beresford, Kitty Wheeler Shaw & Jess Hislop

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'Decolonised Rhymes' by Aflo. the poet (2020)

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'Decolonised Rhymes' by Aflo. the poet (2020)

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@AFLO.thepoet (Instagram)

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=745267116226239

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How the Irish Became White - Noel Ignatiev (1995)

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How the Irish Became White - Noel Ignatiev (1995)

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How the Irish Became White a book by Noel Ignatiev.

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‘...from time to time a study comes along that truly can be called ‘path breaking,’ ‘seminal,’ ‘essential,’ a ‘must read.’ How the Irish Became White is such a study.′ John Bracey, W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies, University of Massachussetts, Amherst The Irish cam…

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The White Saviour Industrial Complex... - Brittany Aronson (2017)

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The White Saviour Industrial Complex... - Brittany Aronson (2017)

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This could probably just as well be applied to charity work abroad (think Stacey Dooley)

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Re: how white institutions co-opt Brown bodies

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Re: how white institutions co-opt Brown bodies

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'You will face justice': Priti Patel condemns minority of 'thugs' at UK anti-racism protests

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Teachers presenting white privilege as fact are breaking the law, warns minister

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Conservative Equalities Minister Crushes Critical Race Theory In Black History Month Debate

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The story of 12-year-old Kingsley, a victim of an unofficial segregation policy.

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Power, Politics and the Emotions... - Shona Hunter (2015)

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Power, Politics and the Emotions... - Shona Hunter (2015)

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Power, Politics and the Emotions: Impossible Governance? by Shona Hunter - PDF Drive

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How can we rethink ideas of policy failure to consider its paradoxes and contradictions as a starting point for more hopeful democratic encounters? Offering a provocative and innovative theorisation of governance as relational politics, the central argument of Power, Politics and the Emotions is tha

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Black Skin, White Masks Download ( 288 Pages | Free )

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Few modern voices have had as profound an impact on the black identity and critical race theory as Frantz Fanon, and Black Skin, White Masks represents some of his most important work.

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White people are not literally or symbolically white; nor are they uniquely virtuous and pure. Racial imagery and racial representation are central to the organisation of the contemporary world but, while there are many studies of images of black and Asian people, whiteness is an invisible racial po

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Letter to Progressive Labour by Noel Ignatiev 

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Letter to Progressive Labour by Noel Ignatiev 

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The Nonperformativity of Antiracism - Sara Ahmed (2006)

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The Nonperformativity of Antiracism - Sara Ahmed (2006)

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A Phenomology of Whiteness - Sara Ahmed (2007)

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A Phenomology of Whiteness - Sara Ahmed (2007)

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Black Reconstruction in America by WEB DuBois (1935)

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Black Reconstruction in America by WEB DuBois (1935)

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Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 - PDF Drive

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The pioneering work in the study of the role of Black Americans during Reconstruction by the most influential Black intellectual of his time.This pioneering work was the first full-length study of the role black Americans played in the crucial period after the Civil War, when the slaves had been fre

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The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848)

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The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848)

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Fewer than 1% of UK university professors are Black - The Guardian

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Fewer than 1% of UK university professors are Black - The Guardian

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Fewer than 1% of the professors employed at UK universities are black and few British universities employ more than one or two black professors, figures show.

The Higher Education Statistics Agency (Hesa) figures show UK universities continue to increase academic and non-academic staff numbers to record levels but progress on employing more staff from ethnic minorities remains sluggish.

Universities employed 217,000 academic staff and 223,000 non-academic staff in 2018-19, both up 5,000 compared with the previous year, with nearly one in three academic staff being non-UK nationals.

Only 140 academic staff at professorial level identified as black, equating to 0.7% out of a total of more than 21,000 professors. Nearly 18,000 or 85% identified as white, 1,360 as Asian, and more than 2,000 as unidentified or from other ethnic backgrounds.

The statistics suggest the vast majority of British universities employ between zero and two black professors. Oxford, Sussex, Manchester and Warwick were among the few to employ enough senior black academics to show up in the official statistics.

Male professors continue to outnumber females by three to one, or 15,700 to 5,700 in 2018-19. The number of female professors has increased by 1,200 in the five years since 2014-15, and the number of males by half that amount.

Previous research has found that UK universities employed just 25 black women as professors. Overall, black academics make up 2% of the total working at UK universities.

Hesa data published in January suggested that no black staff were employed at the most senior levels of leadership in British universities in 2018-19, which ministers described as "unacceptable".

The latest statistics show that just 75 people on university governing bodies identified as black, out of 3,600 governors in England, Wales and Scotland, including staff and non-staff.

Hesa also released figures showing that the dropout rate for first-year students continues to rise, which the Office for Students described as concerning.

England had the highest non-continuation rate, with 6.9% of first-years in 2017-18 failing to continue their studies the following year, up from 6.5% in 2014-15. In both Wales and Scotland the non-continuation rate was 6.1%, each lower than in 2014-15.

The non-continuation rate among mature students - those starting their studies over the age of 21 - also rose sharply in England, to 14%, continuing a trend that has troubled policymakers in recent years.

The breakdown by individual institutions showed that some alternative providers had very high dropout rates, including the UK College of Business and Computing based in London, which had 80 of its 165 undergraduates fail to continue after their first year.

Among mainstream universities, a number had non-continuation rates of between 15% and 26%, while the University of Bedfordshire and London Metropolitan University saw around 18% of their young undergraduates leave higher education. At the other end of the scale, the Courtauld Institute of Art had none of its 45 students drop out.

Michelle Donelan, the universities minister for England, said: "With high numbers of students continuing to drop out, this data shows progress is slow from some institutions to tackle the issue. I want universities to step up and take action as we cannot let these students down and let talent go to waste."

Nicola Dandridge, the chief executive of the Office for Students, said: "English higher education enjoys internationally high completion rates, but an increase in the proportion of students dropping out is a concern."

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Fewer than 1% of UK university professors are black, figures show

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Fewer than 1% of the professors employed at UK universities are black and few British universities employ more than one or two black professors, figures show. The Higher Education Statistics Agency (Hesa) figures show UK universities continue to increase academic and non-academic staff numbers to record levels but progress on employing more staff from ethnic minorities remains sluggish.

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White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo (2018)

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White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo (2018)

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WARNING: Approach Robin DiAngelo with caution. Whilst this text is useful, it treats Whiteness as a clipped narrative with no historical basis! Make sure DiAngelo isn't the only author you read!

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White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism ( 155 Pages )

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Groundbreaking book exploring the counterproductive reactions white people have when discussing racism that serve to protect their positions and maintain racial inequalityIn this groundbreaking and timely book, antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo deftly illuminates the phenomenon of white fragility.

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'Racial Exploitation and the Wages of Whiteness' by Charles Mills in 'What White Looks Like...' (2004) edited by George Yancy

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'Racial Exploitation and the Wages of Whiteness' by Charles Mills in 'What White Looks Like...' (2004) edited by George Yancy

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Here, Mills gives his articulation of white supremacy in six dimensions (worth reading)

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What White Looks Like_ African-American Philosophers on the Whiteness Question ( PDFDrive )

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White Women, Race Matters... - Ruth Frankenberg (1993)

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White Women, Race Matters... - Ruth Frankenberg (1993)

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White Women, Race Matters_ The Social Construction of Whiteness ( PDFDrive )

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Romania and Bulgaria had their A8 status [2004] reversed in 2007.

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Disgusted Subjects: The Making of Middle-Class Identities - Stephanie Lawler (2005)

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Disgusted Subjects: The Making of Middle-Class Identities - Stephanie Lawler (2005)

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Good companion to TV programmes Poldark, Peaky Blinders, Little Britain and the English Game.

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White v. Whiter

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The Worker Registration Scheme (WRS) was introduced in May 2004 to regulate access to the labour market of migrants from the Accession 8 countries (Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia) and to restrict their access to benefits.

Description

The WRS has been administered by the UK Border Agency (UKBA), the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and Communities and Local Government (CLG). The scheme was scheduled to terminate in April 2009 but has been extended until April 2011. A8 nationals are allowed to take up work with a UK employer but are required to register with the scheme and pay a registration fee to the Home Office; a new registration is required when an individual changes employment or is employed by more than one employer until 12 months of continuous employment have been reached. WRS data can be used to measure inflows of A8 citizens coming to work. Year of registration, nationality, date of birth, gender, occupation, industry, initial wage and location of the employer are routinely recorded.

Limitations

WRS data underestimate labour migration from A8 countries because not all A8 migrants register with the scheme - the registration fee is a disincentive and the self-employed are not required to register.

There is no requirement to de-register, so the dataset does not yield any information on the actual length of stay or the number of A8 migrants working in the UK at any point in time.

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Worker Registration Scheme - Migration Observatory

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The Worker Registration Scheme (WRS) was introduced in May 2004 to regulate access to the labour market of migrants from the Accession 8 countries (Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia) and to restrict their access to benefits.

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Has very specific implications in the context of Ireland and Irishness.

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The Prevention of Terrorism Acts were a series of Acts of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1974 to 1989 that conferred emergency powers upon police forces where they suspected terrorism.[citation needed ]

The direct ancestor of the bill was the Prevention of Violence Act 1939 (Temporary Provisions) which was brought into law in response to an Irish Republican Army (IRA) campaign of violence under the S-Plan. The Prevention of Violence Act was allowed to expire in 1953 and was repealed in 1973 to be reintroduced under the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1973.

In 2000, the Acts were replaced with the more permanent Terrorism Act 2000, which contained many of their powers, and then the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005. See also Terrorism (Northern Ireland) Act 2006.

Section 8 of the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1974 provided for temporary powers to examine of persons travelling between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, both within the UK and the Common Travel Area. Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 provides for similar powers that remains in force.

The Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1989 had seven parts:

Proscribed Organisations

Allowed for organisations to be made illegal, making membership an arrestable offence. It was also an offence to soliciting financial support for any listed group, display signs of public support, or attend a meeting supporting a listed group or addressed by a group member. The maximum penalty was ten years' imprisonment and an unlimited fine. The initial groups outlawed were the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) and numerous loyalist groups.

Exclusion Orders

Exclusion orders could be issued "as expedient" to prevent movement within the United Kingdom. Orders were issued against individuals to either prevent them entering or being in Great Britain, to exclude them from Northern Ireland, or to exclude them from the United Kingdom. It was an offence to breach an order or to aid another in effecting entry, the maximum sentence was five years' imprisonment and an unlimited fine.

Financial Assistance for Terrorism

As well as the provision under the first part of the Act, contributing, receiving or soliciting financial support for proscribed groups was an offence under this part also. Additionally, it was an offence to contribute any other resources; to assist in the retention or control of funds for proscribed groups or terrorist acts; or to fail to disclose to the police any suspicions notwithstanding any other restriction. The maximum penalty was fourteen years' imprisonment and an unlimited fine.

Arrest, Detention and Control of Entry

This part allowed for the arrest of individuals without a warrant and on reasonable suspicion that they were guilty of an offence under the Act or otherwise "concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism". The period of initial detention was up to 48 hours, this could be extended by a maximum of five additional days by the Home Secretary. The detainee was exempted from certain provisions of other Acts relating to the arrest procedure and the legal protection of those arrested. This part also allowed for streamlined search procedures of persons or property and checks under the Act on persons at port or other border controls.

The remaining parts of the Act ( Information, Proceedings and Interpretation, Further Provisions for Northern Ireland, and Supplementary) are largely technical, although the Northern Ireland provisions extend the right to search property, restricts remission for those convicted of statutory offences, and tightens control over the granting of licenses under the Explosives Act 1875 (new explosives factories and magazines).

In 1980, the BBC's Panorama filmed the IRA on patrol in Carrickmore. The footage was seized by police under the Prevention of Terrorism Acts following an outcry in parliament and the press. They were also used to convict Channel 4 and an independent production company over a Dispatches report in 1991 under new powers in the 1989 revision.

The first Act was enacted in 1974 following the IRA bombing campaigns of the early 1970s. The Act was introduced by Roy Jenkins, then Home Secretary, as a severe and emergency reaction to the Birmingham pub bombs. The apparent chronology was that there were pub bombings by the IRA in Birmingham on 21 November 1974. 21 people died and 184 were injured. There was a strong desire to respond to what was perceived as "the greatest threat [to the country] since the end of the Second World War." (H.C. Debs. Vol. 882 col. 743 28 November 1974, Mr. Lyons.) The conception of the Bill was announced on 25 November, when the Home Secretary warned that: "The powers... are Draconian. In combination they are unprecedented in peacetime." (Ibid. col. 35 25 November 1974, Mr. Jenkins). Parliament was supportive and had passed the Bill by 29 November, virtually without amendment or dissent. The Bill passed through the Commons on 28 and 29 November and passed through Lords on 29 November. In fact, much of the Bill had been drafted in secrecy during the previous year, as shown in the only full length television commentary on the legislation by Clive Walker.

The Philips commission on Criminal Procedure, published 1981, had a significant impact on the subsequent 1984 legislation.

It was rewritten in 1976, 1984 and again in 1989, but continued to stay as emergency 'temporary' powers, that had to be renewed each year. The first three Acts all contained final date clauses beyond the annual renewal, this provision was not included in the 1989 Act.

UK legislation

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Prevention of Terrorism Acts - Wikipedia

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The Prevention of Terrorism Acts were a series of Acts of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1974 to 1989 that conferred emergency powers upon police forces where they suspected terrorism.[citation needed ] The direct ancestor of the bill was the Prevention of Violence Act 1939 (Temporary Provisions) which was brought into law in response to an Irish Republican Army (IRA) campaign of violence under the S-Plan.

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There was a short period of just 11 years between 1962 and 1973 when free movement of people did not apply in the UK. Other than during that time, businesses and public services have had easy access to workers from other countries, writes Colin Yeo. Following Brexit, the UK will be embarking on a similar period. If the full force of UK immigration law is brought to bear on all foreign nationals, this will require major adjustments in economy and society. One wonders how long the interregnum might last this time.
Citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies: all equal

We often talk casually about "British citizens" but British citizenship is a relatively recent innovation. There has only been such a thing as a British citizen for just the last 34 years, since the British Nationality Act 1981 become law on 1 January 1983. Before that, there were Citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies, or CUKCs.

Born in Swindon in 1959? You would have been a Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies. Born in Swahililand in 1960? You would have been Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies.

Both had the same rights and entitlements and were allowed to live and work anywhere within the territories of the United Kingdom and Colonies. There was total freedom of movement. Not only that, but that right of free movement was extended to all citizens of the Commonwealth as well, a much larger area even than the colonies, particularly as more and more countries gained independence.

This citizenship status of "Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies" was created by British Nationality Act 1948, which came into force on 1 January 1949. It replaced the status of "British subject" which pre-dated it.

After the war, Commonwealth countries decided they had had enough of quite literally being British subjects and decided to establish their own citizenships. CUKC status was the British effort and it applied equally to all within the UK and colonies. But there remained an umbrella status of Commonwealth citizens who retained free movement rights.

In the postwar boom the UK needed immigrants. There was a Royal Commission on Population which reported in 1949 and which stated immigrants "of good stock" would be "welcomed without reserve".

And so they came, from all over. Irish immigration remained high under separate rules and many Europeans came to the UK in that period as well, as well as migrants from the Commonwealth. Famously working as bus drivers, manual labourers and nurses, these foreign nationals helped the UK rebuild after the trauma of the war.

Enoch Powell, health minister from 1960 to 1963 in the Macmillan government, famously invited Pakistani and Bangladeshi doctors and nurses to come to the UK because of a staffing shortage in the NHS. 18,000 are reported to have come. By 1971, 31% of all doctors in the NHS were born overseas.

But pressure to restrict immigration grew.

Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962: some are more equal than others

In 1962 a Conservative government passed the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962, which for the first time curtailed free movement for citizens of Commonwealth countries and the Colonies.

CUKCs all still had the same title, whether born in Swindon or Swahililand, but some had more rights than others. Those who retained the right to live and work in the UK were:

1. CUKCs born in the UK

2. CUKCs with a CUKC passport issued by the UK

Those who were subject to control were everyone else, namely:

1. CUKCs born in the colonies or independent Commonwealth countries or with CUKC passports issued by the colonial governments

2. Commonwealth citizens

A notable group remained exempt from control because they had CUKC passports issued by the UK government: the East African Asians, as they became known. They were residents of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania whose families were originally of Indian origin and who had made use of their rights of free movement as British subjects within the Empire to relocate, encouraged by the British and colonial governments.

The accepted norm was that when a country became independent, the citizens of the new country would lose the citizenship of the old country and gain the citizenship of the new country. The residents of these new, independent countries would no longer be CUKCs and would be subject to controls under the existing 1962 Act.

The problem was that some new countries excluded a whole swathe of residents from their new citizenships: the East African Asians. If CUKC status was removed from them, they would literally be stateless. If they were allowed to retain it, they might well move to the UK, as was their right, particularly given that the fact they were being excluded from citizenship in the new countries was a sign of worse to come.

Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962: an end to equality

UK started withdrawal from the Commonwealth free movement area in 1962 and finished the job in 1968.

This time it was a Labour government which introduced new controls. Under the new Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968, a CUKC could only live and work in the UK if they, or at least one of their parents or grandparents, had been born, adopted, registered or naturalised in the UK. This excluded almost all of the East African Asians, leaving them with the empty shell of a useless umbrella citizenship status, stranded in countries that would not given them local citizenship.

In short, the 1968 Act explicitly created a two tier system of citizenship rights based on parentage.

This was further codified in the Immigration Act 1971, which introduced the disturbing language of "patriality" to the right to live and work in the UK.

Into Europe

In 1973 the UK entered a huge new area of free movement of labour and people: what was then called the European Economic Community.

There was no "big bang" for immigration, though. The 1970s and then the early 1980s were a period of significant unemployment in the UK and economic contraction or very slow growth. There was no need for migrants, basically, and no-one would have wanted to come. This was long, long before Cool Britannia.

Inwards migration from the EU was a slow burn to begin with. We can see a gradual rise in immigration, but emigration broadly keeps pace. It is only from 2004 onwards we see significant net migration.

In legal terms, EU nationals were initially treated the same as other migrants under the same set of laws, but with specific immigration categories which only applied to them. A patchwork quilt of EU regulations and directives enabled specific but wide groups of EU citizens to move around the EU, including workers, the self employed, students and family members from within and without the EU.

When economic growth really got started, unsurprisingly we see significant rises in migration.

Before we move on, bear in mind that unemployment rates were historically very low indeed in the post war period until the mid 1970s, which was a clear indicator of a need for labour. The migrants who arrived had no problem finding work and there was no issue about them displacing native workers.

Back in the interregnum period of the 1960s and 1970s, before membership of the EEC started to take effect, the UK was considered the sick man of Europe. Post war unemployment was low and the economy grew, but at a slower rate than our closest neighbours. That started to change once we joined the EU and after the single market reforms of the 1980s.

Will that growth continue once we leave the EU?

What does full immigration control mean in practice?

In terms of what we are losing with Brexit, no-one has yet done a better job than the author of this letter to the Financial Times on 23 June 2016, the day after the referendum:

A quick note on the first three tragedies.

Firstly, it was the working classes who voted for us to leave because they were economically disregarded and it is they who will suffer the most in the short term from the dearth of jobs and investment. They have merely swapped one distant and unreachable elite for another one.

Secondly, the younger generation has lost the right to live and work in 27 other countries. We will never know the full extent of the lost opportunities, friendships, marriages and experiences we will be denied. Freedom of movement was taken away by our parents, uncles and grandparents in a parting blow to a generation that was already drowning in the debts of our predecessors.

Thirdly, and perhaps most significantly, we now live in a post-factual democracy. When he facts met the myths they were as useless as bullets bouncing off the bodies of clients in a HG Wells novel. When Michal Gove said "the British people are sick of experts" he was right. But can anyone tell me the last time a prevailing culture of anti-intellectualism has lead to anything other than bigotry?

Will it really be that bad? Will jobs and investment really dry up? Will opportunities, friendships and marriages really be lost? Won't EU citizens still want to come here because it is all so marvellous in this country?

It will be that bad. Trust me, I'm an immigration lawyer.

Free movement, whether Commonwealth or EU, is by its nature frictionless. A person can simply be employed as long as they hold the right passport, no further questions asked. The UK immigration rules are not frictionless. They have traction. They chaff. They rub. And they are supposed to, because they are intended to make migration to the UK difficult and to keep people out.

Family immigration

Let us think about a fairly common scenario - falling in love and wanting to live in the same country as your loved one.

At the moment, all an EU national need do is show their passport as they enter the country - that's it.

The cost of a spouse visa under the Immigration Rules is as follows:
Initial application £1464 Extension application £993 NHS surcharge £1000 Settlement £2297 Naturalisation £1163 TOTAL £6917
That is for this year. The fees are going up by around 20% per year at the moment and the Conservatives will triple the cost of the NHS surcharge after the election, so it will be much higher in future. And that is before legal costs; these days applications are so complex and require so much paperwork that lawyers are routinely needed.

There are other restrictions. The sponsor must earn at least £18,600 for a period of at least 6 months (a rule which separates families moving to the UK from abroad) and the spouse has to pass an English language test. That figure too will rise after the election.

In short, it will be a LOT harder for British citizens to have serious relationships with EU nationals in future.

Employing skilled workers

Another common scenario is to employ a foreign worker.

As with a spouse, at the moment all an EU national need do is show their passport as they enter the country - that's it.

The upfront cost to an employer of employing a foreign worker currently ranges between £2356 for a small business and £6476 for a large one. The cost to the employee is £6627 (for a full breakdown, see the original post at Freedom of Movement).

The Conservatives will double the Immigration Skills Charge by 2020, so those costs are going to increase yet further.

These fees omit several other elements of friction:

the fact that a skilled worker can only be recruited if the job has been advertised in a certain way and there were no suitable UK applicants

the reference to the hundreds of pages of so called "SOC codes", which impose a minimum salary for every conceivable job in the United Kingdom

the quota on skilled migrants

the fact the skilled worker will need to be sacked at the end of five years unless earning £35,000 (increasing to £36,200 by 2020)

the cost of onerous sponsor administrative and compliance duties imposed by the Home Office, which can be extremely time consuming but neglect of which leads to loss of the sponsorship licence and therefore current and future foreign workers.

So what will employers do when they need workers? For example, what will a farmer do who needs labour for crop picking? Will the farmer find British workers to do the work? They don't seem to want to and there is no pool of unemployed workers as unemployment is low (for now). Or will the farmer leave the crops to rot, grow different crops, or just stop growing crops and try to sell the farm?

How about the house building boom the politicians are always promising is just around the corner? Where will the workers come for that? If you are a construction company looking to make a profit building houses, where will you find the builders? There are insufficient trained UK builders and unemployment is low. Will you pay more and see your profits diminish or disappear but carry on regardless? Will you simply not build houses as it is not worth it? Will you somehow recruit young school leavers and train them up? Even if so, how will you build any houses in the meantime?

Or the nurses and doctors needed for the NHS?

When you look at what different ministers are saying, the minister for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs wants a sector based scheme for bringing in seasonal low skilled workers. The minister for housing wants a sector based scheme for builders. The Chancellor wants a sector based scheme for bankers. The minister for health wants to be able to retain and recruit doctors and nurses from the EU. Even Liam Fox, the disgraced and so far pointless minister for international trade, has recognised that immigration is part and parcel of any serious international trade deal.

Every minister seems to be realising that migrant workers are essential to their sector of economy and society.

Debate is needed on the cost of cutting immigration

The fact is that ending free movement and reducing net migration to tens of thousands per year would be disastrous for the UK economy and society. A detailed report published today by Global Future suggests net migration of 200,000 is necessary.

But politicians will not admit it. With no proper or meaningful debate, either immigration will be drastically reduced, causing huge damage and making everyone poorer, or immigration will remain high and the politicians will be accused of broken promises.

Neither outcome is a desirable one. We're always being told that we need a "debate" about immigration, usually a coded way of saying "voters don't want immigration, therefore we need to limit it". We do need a debate about immigration: about the need for immigration.
This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Brexit blog, nor the LSE. It was first published at the Freedom of Movement blog. Colin Yeo is a barrister at Garden Court Chambers who has been practising in immigration law for 17 years. His career began at two charities, the Immigration Advisory Service and Refugee Legal Centre.

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The interregnum: 11 years without free movement from 1962 to 1973

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There was a short period of just 11 years between 1962 and 1973 when free movement of people did not apply in the UK. Other than during that time, businesses and public services have had easy access to workers from other countries, writes Colin Yeo.

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I Lost 39 Members of My Family in the Holocaust, Jeremy Corbyn is No Antisemite | Andrew Feinstein (Double Down News, 2020)

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I Lost 39 Members of My Family in the Holocaust, Jeremy Corbyn is No Antisemite | Andrew Feinstein (Double Down News, 2020)

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I Lost 39 Members of My Family in the Holocaust, Jeremy Corbyn is No Antisemite | Andrew Feinstein

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The Weaponisation of Labour Antisemitism | David Graeber (Double Down News, 2020)

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The Weaponisation of Labour Antisemitism | David Graeber (Double Down News, 2020)

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The Weaponisation of Labour Antisemitism | David Graeber

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Meet The Wrong Type of Jew, The Media Doesn't Want You To Know Exists | Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi (Double Down News, 2020)

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Meet The Wrong Type of Jew, The Media Doesn't Want You To Know Exists | Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi (Double Down News, 2020)

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Meet The Wrong Type of Jew, The Media Doesn't Want You To Know Exists | Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi

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The origins of football in England is a prime example of this hierachy of Whiteness and some groups being whiter than others

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How the British Working Class Became White ... - Alastair Bonnett (1998)

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How the British Working Class Became White ... - Alastair Bonnett (1998)

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Available: BBC iPlayer

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An epic gangster drama set in the lawless streets of 1920s Birmingham.

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Available: Netflix/BritBox

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What's in store for Poldark?: Trailer - BBC One

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Good White People: The Problem with Middle-Class White Anti-Racism by Shannon Sullivan (2014)

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Good White People: The Problem with Middle-Class White Anti-Racism by Shannon Sullivan (2014)

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For "raced" and "classed" behaviours and "etiquettes"

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Good White People: The Problem with Middle-Class White Anti-Racism Download (226 Pages)

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Argues for the necessity of a new ethos for middle-class white anti-racism.Building on her book Revealing Whiteness, Shannon Sullivan identifies a constellation of attitudes common among well-meaning white liberals that she sums up as "white middle-class goodness," an orientation she critiques f

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University College London's Legacies for British Slave Ownership [LBS]

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University College London's Legacies for British Slave Ownership [LBS]

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A public resource that tracks the money that went out to people and institutions in the compensation pay-out following the abolition of enslavement

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Search | Legacies of British Slave-ownership

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Britain's Forgotten Slave Owners - David Olusoga

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Britain's Forgotten Slave Owners - David Olusoga

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See here for Wilberforce / Hibbert

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Documentary looking at the price of the abolition of slavery in Britain

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Slavery in the American and Caribbean context is what bell hooks would call "whiteness as terror"

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12 Years a Slave (2013) - Patsey Run Off Scene

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Postcolonialism: WTF? An Intro to Postcolonial Theory - Tom Nicholas (2018)

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Postcolonialism: WTF? An Intro to Postcolonial Theory - Tom Nicholas (2018)

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Postcolonialism: WTF? An Intro to Postcolonial Theory

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Colonialism: WTF? Introduction to colonialism and imperialism - Tom Nicholas (2018)

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Colonialism: WTF? Introduction to colonialism and imperialism - Tom Nicholas (2018)

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Colonialism: WTF? Introduction to colonialism and imperialism

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Follow the links in the article

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Our bodies have 3 billion genetic building blocks, or base pairs, that make us who we are.

A recent TED talk by physicist and entrepreneur Riccardo Sabatini demonstrated that a printed version of your entire genetic code would occupy some 262,000 pages, or 175 large books. Of those pages, just about 500 would be unique to us.

This is because large chunks of our genome perform similar functions across the animal kingdom.

Take a look at how genetically similar we are to everything around us:

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Our DNA is 99.9% the same as the person next to us -- and we're surprisingly similar to a lot of other living things

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Our bodies have 3 billion genetic building blocks, or base pairs, that make us who we are. A recent TED talk by physicist and entrepreneur Riccardo Sabatini demonstrated that a printed version of your entire genetic code would occupy some 262,000 pages, or 175 large books.

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White Spaces - Shona Hunter and colleagues (2009)

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White Spaces - Shona Hunter and colleagues (2009)

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R ichard Dyer in the first essay his classic book explains the power of whiteness in terms of the way that whiteness works as 'the' general universal, via its supposed non-remarkability in everyday culture for those positioned within it.

There is no more powerful position than that of being 'just' human. The claim to power is the claim to speak for the commonality of humanity. Raced people can't do that - they can only speak for their race. But non-raced people can, for they do not represent the interests of a race. The point of seeing the race of whites is to dislodge them/us from the position of power, with all the inequities, oppression, privileges and sufferings in its train, dislodging them/us by undercutting the authority with which they/we speak and act in and on the world.

When I was four, I asked my mum when I would turn white, because all the good people on TV were white, and all the villains were black and brown. I considered myself to be a good person, so I thought that I would turn white eventually. My mum still remembers the crestfallen look on my face when she told me the bad news.

Neutral is white. The default is white. Because we are born into an already written script that tells us what to expect from strangers due to their skin colour, accents and social status, the whole of humanity is coded as white. Blackness, however, is considered the 'other' and therefore to be suspected. Those who are coded as a threat in our collective representation of humanity are not white. These messages were so powerful for that four-year-old me had already recognised them, watching television, noticing that all the characters who looked like me were criminals at worst, and sassy sidekicks at best. (2017:85)

When I write about white people in this book, I don't mean every individual white person. I mean whiteness as a political ideology. A school of thought that favours whiteness at the expense of those who aren't. To me, its like yin and yang. Racism's legacy does not exist without purpose. It brings with it not just a disempowerment for those affected by it, but an empowerment for those who are not.

nderstood in this way whiteness operates as a normalising generalising code; a mythology, a mentality, a way of just being ['good'/ 'right'/ 'proper'] in the world which provides the hidden cultural and emotional structure to what we see as normal, usual behaviour. It is judged and understood against the particular, the supposedly unusual. This mythology is powerfully however, from the perspective of Blackness.

he public/private divide which frames mythologies of governance as rational rather than relational is fundamental to the operation of whiteness as a broader cultural mythology of the general which interconnects the thoughts, actions interactions and bodies that make up all of our worlds.

I explain this alignment between technical rationales and whiteness via the hidden cultural liberal politics in the first chapter of Power, Politics and the Emotions. (The empirically focussed chapters can be understood as deeper explorations into examples of the actual practices and processes through which this alignment occurs, is sustained and/or resisted.)

But this resistance to knowing the racialised Other, this fundamental ambivalence towards the Other's subjectivity, and therefore its humanity, is also a failure to know the whitened (neo)liberal self. I use the notion of whitened here specifically to draw attention to the way that whiteness is a fantasy position which comes to be through material, symbolic and affective work (Hunter, 2010). As such, whiteness takes on different meanings in different times and places; it is both elastic, bringing different groups of people (for example, the Irish, Jews, Eastern Europeans) into its purview, and also frustratingly fixed. But within modernity, whiteness operates as the metaphor for the dominant liberal norm. It is the unknown empty standardising ideal against which race can be seen. Whiteness is indescribable in its generality, its apparent everythingness; the dominant standard of humanity against which the (raced) particular is measured

This is the point at which liberalism and whiteness become fused in their claims to represent human generality. Whiteness becomes the euphemism for the general of humanity defined through liberal universalism. The everythingness of whiteness is the embodiment of liberal values, individualism, universalism, rational progress and equality. Whiteness and state making become synonymous. But, the more abstract whiteness becomes, the more it requires imposition through material, affective and symbolic work ( Knowles, 2003). Following ,

As an extension of this epistemic-ontological process neoliberal whiteness works biopolitically in the sense that , and have recognised following Foucault (1994). Neoliberal whiteness comes to be through its micromanagement of information, bodies; objects in general, via ever more complicated techniques for rendering the world of difference knowable in order to manage the threat to life (material, social and affective) that it presents. It works by the careful management and containment of difference, bringing difference into sameness; gathering allies as it does so. Therefore, an important consequence of the ability to define the world is the ability to bring difference inside to create inclusion. Normative (neo)liberal whiteness is extended through its silent benevolent outreach; through the very power to reach out and to offer inclusion to its excluded Others (women, older or queer subjects, for example); and thus through the power to make decisions about which groups come into its purview on the basis of which form of inclusionary/exclusionary bargains. Whiteness becomes civilisational and untouchable in its promotion of the general 'good'. Invitations to come into the human race operate as invitations into neoliberal whiteness.

W hat I am pointing to in this idea of whiteness then is that whiteness is the metaphor, the mythology for something larger than itself, of global [colonial] capitalism; that the ways this works through our everyday practices is via practices of whiteness. The idea of whiteness is therefore what holds together the philosophical ideas of structure and agency, it is what glues together ways of talking, categorising and knowing the wold - our epistemologies and our ontologies - our ways of being in the world. The idea of whiteness stands in for a host of other practices of power.

O ne of the examples I often use to explain this performative connection between intimacy of daily life and the worldliness of global capitalism is taken from a great paper by Benjamin Myers (2008) who on the relationship between the work of maintaining straight white teeth and whiteness.

Every time I brush my teeth, I enact a politics of whiteness. Every ounce of mouthwash that rinses over my teeth works to reinforce the hegemony of my white teeth. Every mint-flavoured strand of floss that wedges itself between my teeth is part of the ritualistic power structure that make my teeth white and make my whiteness desirable. My white teeth show that I have been educated on how to be hygienic. My white teeth demonstrate that I have the means to keep myself healthy. Every tube of Crest Toothpaste I buy is a cog in the wheel of the corporate machine of Proctor and Gamble that seeks to commodify whiteness.

I consider a range of these ideas on whiteness in I did for International Women's Day 2018 at the Royal Society of the Arts on the Steps at RSA House. Or in my interview with Colleen Cameron on her show .

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R ichard Dyer in the first essay his classic book explains the power of whiteness in terms of the way that whiteness works as 'the' general universal, via its supposed non-remarkability in everyday culture for those positioned within it. There is no more powerful position than that of being 'just' human.

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Me and White Supremacy: How to Recognise Your Privilege, Combat Racism and Change the World - Layla Saad (2020)

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Me and White Supremacy: How to Recognise Your Privilege, Combat Racism and Change the World - Layla Saad (2020)

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Me and White Supremacy: How to Recognise Your Privilege, Combat Racism and Change the World a book by Layla Saad.

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‘An indispensable resource for white people who want to challenge white supremacy but don’t know where to begin’ Robin DiAngelo, author of New York Times bestseller WHITE FRAGILITY ’It should be mandatory reading ... Buy the book, do the work and then push more copies into the hands o…

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How to be an Anti-Racist - Ibram X Kendi (2019)

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How to be an Anti-Racist - Ibram X Kendi (2019)

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Description

** SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER**

'C ould hardly be more relevant ... it feels like a light switch being flicked on' OWEN JONES

Not being racist is not enough. We have to be antiracist.

In this rousing and deeply empathetic book, Ibram X. Kendi, founding director of the Antiracism Research and Policy Center, shows that when it comes to racism, neutrality is not an option: until we become part of the solution, we can only be part of the problem.

Using his extraordinary gifts as a teacher and story-teller, Kendi helps us recognise that everyone is, at times, complicit in racism whether they realise it or not, and by describing with moving humility his own journey from racism to antiracism, he shows us how instead to be a force for good. Along the way, Kendi punctures all the myths and taboos that so often cloud our understanding, from arguments about what race is and whether racial differences exist to the complications that arise when race intersects with ethnicity, class, gender and sexuality.

In the process he demolishes the myth of the post-racial society and builds from the ground up a vital new understanding of racism - what it is, where it is hidden, how to identify it and what to do about it.

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SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER** 'C ould hardly be more relevant ... it feels like a light switch being flicked on' OWEN JONES Not being racist is not enough. We have to be antiracist. In this rousing and deeply empathetic book, Ibram X.

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Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race - Reni Eddo-Lodge (2017)

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Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race - Reni Eddo-Lodge (2017)

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Why I'm No Longer Talking (to White People) About Race ( 158 Pages )

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Media coverage of Naomi Hersi's death is a disgrace (Stonewall)

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Media coverage of Naomi Hersi's death is a disgrace (Stonewall)

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Last week a trans woman of colour was murdered in London.

Naomi Hersi, just 36, was found with knife injuries in Hounslow last Sunday. She died at the scene. This horrible crime, and the way that many sections of the media have reported it, brings to light a series of deeply troubling issues about how our society views trans people - and particularly trans women of colour.

The way that many sections of the media have reported it brings to light a series of deeply troubling issues about how our society views trans people - and particularly trans women of colour.

Trans people currently face epidemic levels of discrimination and for some, this means that they feel unsafe to go about their daily lives.

Two in five trans people (41 per cent) have experienced a hate crime or incident because of their gender identity in the last 12 months.

Trans people experience abuse in places that many would presume were safe, such as at work: our research shows that one in eight trans employees (12 per cent) have been physically attacked by a colleague or customer in the last year.

Reporting of hate crime against trans people is also woefully low, and for understandable reasons. Most trans people - four in five (79 per cent) - don't report hate crimes to the police. Some trans people don't feel supported by the police and some experience even further discrimination if they do report a crime.

As Angus, 24 from Scotland, told us: 'I was raped. Police kept referring to me as 'she' and female' and using my birth name. The doctor they brought to examine me, made me uncomfortable and continued to call me female.'

This is the context that surrounds Naomi's death - a situation that we all need to recognise needs urgent action from politicians, institutions and individuals.

The media's role in changing this culture needs to be a key one. How the media treat hate crimes and violence against trans people is no doubt a contributing factor to how willing trans people are to talk about the violence they face.

But the murder of trans people often receives little coverage. If the victim is black, or from another ethnic minority group, their death is also less likely to be reported by mainstream titles.

Where the media do write about trans people affected by violence, the depressing truth is that the coverage is likely to be harmful and offensive.

Where the media do write about trans people affected by violence, the depressing truth is that the coverage is likely to be harmful and offensive.

The way the media have covered Naomi Hersi's death encapsulates all these issues.

Her death was reported three days after the incident. It was only picked up by a small number of the mainstream press titles. Some of the media reports talked about her death in the context of other knife violence in London, with all the other victims discussed being men - ignoring the specific issues that are likely to have contributed to the attack on Naomi.

Much of the reporting of her tragic death not only referred to her by the wrong name, it repeatedly misgendered her. One report didn't misgender: they just didn't gender her at all. Throughout the report they referred to her as 'the victim' or 'the 36-year-old'. It was a completely dehumanising account of a woman who neighbours described as 'lovely fun person'.

From what we've seen, the only title to actually cover Naomi's death in a dignified way was Pink News, an LGBT title and an increasingly fierce advocate for trans equality.

If this sad case shows anything, it's that - now more than ever - there is a need for us to form coalitions that are prepared to Come Out For Trans Equality and advocate respect and dignity in how we talk about trans issues.

We need people from every sector of society to show their support for trans equality and to join the fight for acceptance without exception for all trans people.

Further information

If you've seen something offensive in the media about trans people, you can report it to Ipso. They've written specifically about how you can act to help improve media representation.
Read the guidance

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Media coverage of Naomi Hersi's death is a disgrace

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Last week a trans woman of colour was murdered in London. Naomi Hersi, just 36, was found with knife injuries in Hounslow last Sunday. She died at the scene. This horrible crime, and the way that many sections of the media have reported it, brings to light a series of deeply troubling...

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Young, British and Black - Aamna Mohdin (2020)

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Young, British and Black - Aamna Mohdin (2020)

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24 * Northampton * Writer and race equality activist

I remember when Mark Duggan was killed by police. It was my generation's Stephen Lawrence moment

An event that I had a first visceral connection to was the London riots of 2011, when Mark Duggan was killed by police. It was probably my generation's Stephen Lawrence moment. Black people in this country are given the talk. I was eight years old when my parents gave me that talk; that one day, I might be stopped by the police. I might not have done anything wrong, I just happen to be black in this country and that's a mandate for suspicion. I don't know a black person who hasn't been stopped by the police. The London riots had an impact because I sort of linked it to when my parents gave me the talk. Being stopped by the police can result in someone's death. There are many that have lost their lives in police custody. I encountered racism day in and day out, and some of it was from my teachers. People called me savage, asked if my family lived in huts in Africa. Being black at private schools was very difficult, but if I can deal with racism there, I can deal with it anywhere. Middle-class and upper-class people talk in a certain way, where they could be saying the most horrible things about you but because they say it in such a way, with their accent and their pronunciation of words, how they were taught to speak the Queen's English, that when they do stuff like that, it sort of pads it down a little bit. When Boris Johnson goes on about Muslim women being letterboxes or black people with watermelon smiles, because he says it in that vernacular that is tied to the English private school system, it comes across in such a way that is less threatening than Tommy Robinson. Nothing like this has ever happened in my lifetime. When we protest in Northampton, we're lucky to get 10 people to turn up and we had 1,000 people attend the first Black Lives Matter protest. Northampton is a famously white town. The protest was led by young people. If I didn't go, I would feel guilty. I don't think you can be black in this country and not support the protests. People say that British racism is very subtle and covert. But nothing about the Windrush scandal was covert; it was very open, very honest. Grenfell as well.

18 * Birmingham * Singer and student

If I have to fight every day for the rest of my life, I will

The UK is not innocent and never has been innocent. I remember walking in town with my friends when I was 12, and two white girls were fighting and the police started threatening and ragging up all the black kids that happened to be there, while the white girls continued to fight. We ran home because we knew we would get arrested, even though we weren't part of it. I was flabbergasted. I thought, why just us? To be black in the UK is beautiful, especially now with so many black entertainers. I want to become a music mentor, but first I need to become a performer. I don't really fit the look you see on TV. I'm thick-bodied, thick-lipped, I've got big nostrils and my hair is curly. I have friends who are musicians and they're all slimmer, they have straighter hair, they even act a certain way. But I will always just be myself. I'm not sad that I'm black and I won't pretend to be something I'm not. Casting agencies and judges tell me I don't really "fit the criteria" or they don't think I'd be able to do this part because of "the way you look". They would never say anything about my talent and I'd think, why aren't you judging me based on my talent? When I saw the hurt on my brother's face over George Floyd, or, as he put it "the world", I thought, I'm going to London [to protest]. This can't carry on, we can't not go: this is my fight. The next day, I went to one in Birmingham, then London the week after. We cannot stop - if I have to fight every day for the rest of my life, I will. The energy that day was fire; that day my mentality changed to: "No justice, no peace". I realised I was fighting for me, for my brothers, for my parents, for my ancestors. I want to be able to tell my children: "I fought for you, I fought for your children. I went for us".

21 * London * Student

Being black, especially a black woman, is a political statement in this country

School in the UK was really difficult. I've tried to suppress and put in the back of my mind the traumatic experiences that come down to racism. I was experiencing racism at the age of eight. I was aware that I was being treated differently to other people. It was the end of the day and I really needed to go to the toilet. There was about 10 or 15 minutes of me having my hand up and you could tell I was really distressed. I was crying like I really needed to get to the toilet and then I wet myself. It just makes me really upset that I had to go through such a traumatic experience at such a young age because a fully grown adult didn't like the colour of my skin. I would never want anyone to feel one-tenth of what I felt when I was going to school. You have so much self-hate and you just don't really know how to deal with it. Looking at myself now, I couldn't have imagined when I was younger that I would have turned into this person. We went to France when I was in year 9. The teacher didn't know I was in the lift, I was at the back, and she said: "Oh, my God, all these black people are so annoying". Everybody in the lift turned around and looked at me and I just didn't really know what I was supposed to do. No one defended me. No one said anything, and you know from a really early age that you're on your own. My life has changed drastically within the last six weeks, since Aima and I first put that tweet out and organised the protest in London with All Black Lives. I didn't expect it to change me in the way that it has. Now, I wake up every day and I have purpose and I have something to fight for, and something that I know I can put my full self into that's changing people's lives. Being black in this country, especially a black woman, is a political statement. You've seen just within the past six weeks, how much more confident black people have been, how much more outspoken - they realise their opinions are valid.

19 * Shetland Islands * Student

I remember hearing black people with Scottish accents for the first time and thinking I'm not the only one!

The very first political event I can remember was Obama being elected as the first black president. I was seven or eight at the time. We were in Cuba, so me and my Cuban family, who are all black, were sitting on the couch watching it happen. School was hard. I was bullied mercilessly in primary school and it took me years to realise that actually happened. Just young kids not knowing that people have different skin colours and that is an OK and normal thing. There was a lot of being picked on and being grouped together with other brown-skinned girls or boys when we weren't even the same race. I think we have 1% of ethnic minorities here in Shetland. In primary school, I remember being the only black or mixed-race person and there were three Asian kids. Because I didn't realise I was being bullied, I never thought to talk to my teachers about it. I never sought the support I needed. But when issues did come to light, for the most part I was supported by my teachers. The earliest experience I have, and the worst one probably, is being in the playground and me and a Pakistani boy from my class were pushed together. All the other kids were standing in a circle around us, pointing and laughing, and saying that we were boyfriend and girlfriend just because we had the same skin colour. I went to the protest because somebody has to be the voice for black people in Shetland. Because it's so white-populated, it's hard to find somebody who is going to have the strength and courage to stand up and be that voice. So I thought if I don't do it, who is going to do it? It was really incredible seeing the amount of support. It's the biggest turnout for protests that we've ever had. It was really amazing seeing just how many people came out to support the movement. It was heartening to see. Growing up as a black person in Shetland was hard but it's definitely strengthened my character as a young woman today. I don't really identify with the Scottish side of my family; I would consider myself British more than I would Scottish. And I definitely much more identify with the Cuban side of my family. So amalgamating my black and Scottish sides is something I've not quite done yet. But it's definitely interesting. I can remember hearing black people with Scottish accents for the first time and thinking I'm not the only one!

21 * London * Student

In year 6, my teacher told me, 'When you're older, please don't join a gang'

I would say the first event I was actually politically inclined and knowledgeable about would be over the death of Mark Duggan. It was the first one that hit home. The anger and frustration that was happening within the black community, and just how the media painted him out to be this barbaric guy, when really, he was a human being just like me, who looked like me and my friends. School in the UK was probably the worst experience I've had in my life. The school system didn't understand me or cater to my needs. I got sent to boarding school in Uganda for a few years to study there instead because I felt so out of place in Britain. In year 6, my main teacher approached me and my friend, who was black, and said: "When you're older, please don't join a gang". I replied: "We're not going to join a gang", but it wasn't until I started growing up that I began thinking to myself, what did she actually mean by that remark? Why would she select two black males and differentiate them from their peers? The protests are about the injustices that we face here as the black community, especially with deaths in custody. Black people are twice as likely to die in police custody than any other race in this country. When it comes to disparities in the criminal justice system, it is one of the reasons why I felt I also had to take a stand and move with my brothers and sisters to forge a movement here. I remember the first time I got stopped and searched. It was a section 60 in the Stoke Newington area of London and I was 18. I was walking and a police car pulled up. An officer asked where I was going and I said: 'I'm going to eat'. I put out my hand and he handcuffed me. It was very shocking and traumatising. It fragments people like me from society, it makes us feel like we're not British. Being black in the UK is trying to fit in areas that you know aren't really built in your favour. But when it comes to black culture, everyone wants to copy it and not call it black. I love my culture, I love my heritage, I love what my community has to bring to civil society.

25 * Edinburgh * Student

Teachers refused to test me for dyslexia and instead told my parents to stop speaking other languages at home

I'm dyslexic and I've only just found out at the age of 25, while I was at university struggling. When I was in school, I had the same struggles that I'm going through now with my work, but the teachers refused to test me and told my parents to stop speaking other languages at home. My parents told them there was not a language barrier. My school was very problematic. I remember I got into a fight because this girl hacked into my social media. She made everything about slavery, claiming my family were slaves and put all the pictures as slaves in shackles. I didn't even see it until I got to school, and I remember everyone being really weird to me. I got pulled aside by the headteacher and a police officer into this meeting room. They told me something's happened on your social media and we talked about it. Then they took my phone off me. Afterwards, I had a PE lesson with the girl who did it. I'd never been so angry in my life. I remember blacking out and I went for her and we had a fight. We got sent home and a couple of days later we returned with our parents for a big meeting about it. I remember sitting there with my mum and dad, who said to the teachers: "What are you guys going to do? This can't keep happening to our kids." They were trying to exclude me for being violent. And my parents were like, 'That's not fair. She's obviously at a point where she can't take it anymore. Someone was racist to her.' It was a bullshit conversation. They didn't know what they were doing, but they were trying to do their best. And then halfway through the conversation the girl's parents used the comparison of their daughter being bullied for being ginger as the equivalent to racism. My mum and dad got up and left. I was in a team of people that were organising the protest in Edinburgh. It was overwhelming. I've been in Edinburgh for almost 20 years now and I didn't know there were this many black people here. As bad as the experiences black people have had, I feel like we have a uniqueness that we can laugh so much and we can always find happiness and peace within, despite the damage that goes on. There are things to celebrate in being black and being British, because there are not all bad things about British culture. I like a cup of tea and dipping my biscuits in it. Yes, we are more commonly first-generation migrants but be proud of us for adapting.

21 * Bristol * Student

Blackness means innovation. It means resistance. It means persistence

There were a lot of black and brown people at my school, which was great. I was able to find a group of black girls that I felt that I could find comfort in, friendship and solidarity. But that didn't stop us from facing racism in school. I think one of the difficult things was seeing a lot of kids being put in isolation, being taken out of lessons, being harshly graded, and not being given the same patience as the white students. We do have systemic racism here, and the police are violent towards black bodies. We have a history here, especially in Bristol, of a deep involvement with the transatlantic slave trade. When people say the UK is not innocent, this is what we mean. It's about being stopped and searched, it's about how you feel like there's going to be some kind of altercation every time you leave your house. If you see a police van, even if you've done nothing wrong, you risk the violence of being shot with a Taser stun gun and the violence of being hit with batons. I think it's amazing that there's such a strong black British culture. I love that there's so much influence from the Caribbean community - from the music people listen to, to the slang people use. There's such a heavy influence of blackness across the UK, which can be frustrating when we see that we're not being respected. It gives me a sense of pride because I feel that black people, wherever we go, are so innovative. And especially here in Britain, I think blackness means innovation. It means resistance. It means persistence. I'm from South Sudan and everybody there is very dark-skinned. As a black person, being dark-skinned kind of comes with its own issues that's specific to communities of colour, specifically the black community. I think it will be an obstacle moving forward, and that's paired with being a woman as well. I think it sets up a lot of things against me. But at the same time, I really wouldn't want to be anything else. I feel like being a black woman is the best thing that's ever happened to me.

17 * London * Student

I realised it's not because you're annoying, it's not because you're ugly, it's because you don't look like them

I just remember hating myself because I've always been in school with only white people. It gave me body dysmorphia. I remember feeling ugly as a child. I look back at pictures of myself as a child and I wonder why I felt that way. I had teachers who were racist and I was bullied. Teachers used to belittle me. I never found groups of friends, because they were all white, that I felt that I could slot into. I never felt like I could fit in. It was a traumatic experience and it just leaves you feeling quite socially homeless. I used to get left out and I would wonder to myself, why is this happening? When I was in lockdown, more and more the pieces started to fit together. I'm one of the only ones like this. I'm one of the only ones that are around these people. So then I realised, it's not because you're annoying, it's not because you're ugly, it's not because of this or that, it's because you don't look like them. I think that racism in the UK is so dangerous, more dangerous than people realise. I think for America, if someone doesn't like you because you're black, they'll say it to your face or they'll do it in ways that make it easy to identify. But in the UK, it's so subtle. And it's still systemic. It was my first response to go to the protest to be part of the movement here. It was exhilarating. Seeing streets full of people that look like me and were there for the same reason as me, it made me feel so warm inside. When you go on the train and someone sees your sign and they do the fist, that was stuff I had never experienced before. It made me very emotional. Being black in the UK means you have a very close connection to the cultures that you come from. But it also means you have to go through struggles that people pretend not to see or understand and don't want to fix.

20 * Buckinghamshire * Student

Somebody would cross the road because of coronavirus, but that's an everyday thing for black people

I think my school was very micro-aggressive. People would be like, "Oh, can I touch your hair?" I got a detention once because somebody stuck a pencil in my hair. I had an afro and people thought it was interesting and wanted to run their hands through it, but I'm not an animal. I'm just normal, but because you're unfamiliar with the texture of my hair, you think it's interesting enough that you want to pet me. I look back and I think, wow, I actually tolerated that and allowed that to happen, but it's because I didn't understand what it was. People don't know what Britain has done because we don't get taught it. We've been taught about Henry VIII and his six wives. Who cares? I don't want to know how he manipulated the Christian church so that he could get away with divorce. That's got nothing to do with me. I want to know about what Britain's been up to colonising the whole world; imperialism and the effects of it. I think it's important that we protest. I think there are issues in the UK. It's so important that we also take on America as well. It's interesting that you have people like Boris Johnson, who will happily sit up and say, 'What's going on in America only concerns America', but then what have we been doing in the Middle East for all these years? Coronavirus has given an insight into racism in the UK because when you're walking down the street now, somebody will cross the road because they think you've got coronavirus. But if you're black in the UK that's an everyday thing. It's me walking to school and a white lady walking towards me, clutching her bag, and crossing the road because she's scared about what I'm going to do. I'm going to school! That happens two or three times a year. Being black in the UK gives you a sense of belonging. There's a level of respect the black community gives each other. When you're walking down the street, it's like a nod or a smile. It's so encouraging to see that from whatever generation, whether it's old or young. We all kind of have that caring nature towards each other because we need to have it.

20 * London and Oxford * Student

At secondary school, the world is screaming very loudly that you're not wanted

I think going to school in the UK is one of the hardest things. I was recently talking to my friends about it, because the George Floyd protests have made people begin to re-analyse experiences at school. I think every black woman has had an experience that's jarring, of feeling like you're not pretty. I used to get told, 'You're like so blick', which is slang for being very dark. It has a profound impact. As you grow up, you go through a phase of forcefully trying to love yourself. But in secondary school, the world is definitely screaming very loudly that you are being rejected and that you're not wanted. It was really hard. The UK constantly points the finger at America and there's a complete misconception that the UK isn't racist. At one protest I attended in Oxford, one American woman stood up and spoke about what was going on in America, but then she went on to say that her family were really happy that she moved to the UK because this isn't a racist country. Everyone was outraged. I think our lived experience as black people is overlooked in the UK. As a result, it means the government doesn't have to do anything. My mum migrated from Ghana to England and I'm the first generation of my family to be born here. If you ask people who have just migrated, they identify with the country they just moved from. I don't think my mum identifies as being black British as much as I do. I love Ghana and my Ghanian heritage, but I think I feel more of a sense of belonging here. They came here at a time when Britain was still so racist, where pubs had the sign 'No blacks, no Irish, no dogs', and that would make you want to hold on to your culture more. With our generations, being black British is a mix of your heritage and a mix of being British. We've created a whole new identity. Look at Stormzy, Burna Boy, and Kojo Funds. Artists like NSG have these beats that are like Ghana highlife, a type of music in Ghana, and grime energy mixed into one. Music is a perfect example of what being black British is like, regardless if you're first generation or if you're fourth generation. It's a beautiful mix and fusion of different identities.

20 * Monmouth * Student

I could sense this was perhaps the biggest moment I've felt for black people during my 20 years of life

I remember the 2008 US presidential campaign for Barack Obama. It was good to see a man of a similar colour running for one of the biggest jobs in the world. Although I was comfortable going to school with people who were predominantly white, it was still reassuring when another black boy joined in year 6, and we're still really good friends. Hair was a big thing for me. I didn't understand certain people constantly wanting to touch my hair. It's just one of those things I let happen for a while, but when this other black boy joined, he just wouldn't have it. So I thought I should just be saying no. I then wouldn't let people do it. I felt privileged as well as I got to go to a good private school here. I think when looking at the problems to do with race, we should also be looking at class as well, because a lot of the issues come hand in hand. I could sense this was perhaps the biggest moment I've felt for black people during my 20 years of life. I hadn't been to a protest before so I asked my mum, who lived in Zimbabwe when it was Rhodesia, what they could achieve. I thought it was quite important because I knew a lot of people in Monmouth. It's quite a small community. I think it's got a population of 10,000. I felt very privileged in the fact that I was lucky enough to speak and convey my message. I did get quite upset at one point. I thought If I were lucky enough to have grandchildren, I wouldn't want to have to have the same conversations that my mum is having to have with me. So that's one thing that I think would break my heart. My parents have always told me to be proud of who I am and where I come from and never to forget that. There's a sense of togetherness in the community a lot of the time. I love going to Zimbabwean functions because you know you're always guaranteed good food, lots of singing, lots of dancing. I remember when the Dave song Black came out. It just resonated with me. I think the song was for those who weren't in the black community to see what it can be like to be black and British.

18 * Sunderland * Student

Being black is to be strong. But it's not an option, you have to be

The north-east is typically not a very diverse place, so school was difficult for me. I've had racial abuse from peers and stuff like people touching my hair and calling me names. After school I went to college to do music and I just didn't really fit in with anybody. It sounds ridiculous but it's a bit intimidating walking into a room and no one looks like you or has the same history as you, and just automatically being different wherever you go. The history curriculum is kind of ridiculous. They just teach you, 'Oh well there was slavery for a little bit and it was really bad but then the slaves got freed and that was that'. Martin Luther King did a speech and racism was over. A lot of it is very whitewashed. They try to make people like Winston Churchill a hero when he's not. It's only from reading material by black authors that opened my eyes and made me realise how much of my own history I was shielded from. I heard about the protest in Newcastle but it got cancelled and moved online after a backlash because of the pandemic. I was pretty outraged by that, so I started my own. It was kind of my first opportunity to speak about my struggles and the struggles of black people in the UK. It was like a moment of relief for me because I thought people were finally doing something about it. It's hard to succeed when you don't have confidence in who you are. How am I supposed to have confidence in who I am when there are people who literally hate me and want to see me down and think they're more superior than me because of the colour of my skin? Being black in the UK means to be different. It means to be silenced. However, hopefully in future generations to come, being black in the UK will be something to be celebrated by everyone. In the meantime, I'm always going to celebrate where I come from. I think black people should be proud. As a race, they've come so far in life and had so much success, even though they've repeatedly been squashed and dragged down by oppressors. I think being black is to be strong. But it's not an option, you have to be.

18 * London * Student

I just did not feel comfortable speaking about race in my school

I was absolutely disgusted, angry, but not shocked by George Floyd's death. I've seen this happen so much ever since I was a little girl. I've been so desensitised to it that I'm not shocked when it happens anymore. It's just like a normal daily thing. I was talking to my friend Natasha, who helped organise the London protest with me, and said: "We need to do something. We can't just be silent". This doesn't only happen in America, but also happens here. We posted tweets about the London protests and it just skyrocketed everywhere. I was just in shock that so many people came out in support. I remember we were walking out of the US embassy and one of the police officers came up to us and said there were more than 9,000 people still there, and another 10,000 coming to join the march. The amount of systemic racism in the UK is disgusting; and how normalised racism is, in this country, is just terrible. The UK needs to take ownership for what it has done in the past. I never learned about colonisation in the UK. I remember so clearly in year 7, I was in hi

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Young, British & Black: the voices behind the UK's anti-racism protests

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I remember when Mark Duggan was killed by police. It was my generation's Stephen Lawrence moment An event that I had a first visceral connection to was the London riots of 2011, when Mark Duggan was killed by police. It was probably my generation's Stephen Lawrence moment.

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Police brutality against Black trans woman

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Police brutality against Black trans woman

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Content warning: racism, transphobia, misogyny, police brutality

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Friends and community members in Reading, Pennsylvania gathered on Sunday to honor 29-year-old Roxanne Moore, a Black transgender woman who was shot by police officers last week. They joined together to show support for Moore, who remains in the hospital with injuries as a result of the altercation.

During the event, supporters wore Black Trans Lives Matter buttons and T-shirts embroidered with the rainbow-colored hashtag #RoxyStrong.

Members of Moore's family spoke during the event to express their love for her and their desire to see justice served. "I just want my sister to know I love her," her brother reportedly said, according to the local newspaper Reading Eagle. "That's all."

But despite that show of support and solidarity, the three law enforcement officials involved in her shooting will soon be able to return to work - without receiving any form of punishment. The announcement was made on Thursday after Berks County District Attorney John Adams claimed the shooting was justified, as Harrisburg CBS affiliate WHP-TV previously reported.

The individuals, whose names have not been released to press, were placed on administrative leave following the incident. A date for their return has not been set.

The shooting took place on the morning of September 13 after officers responded to an incident involving Moore, who was in possession of a gun at the time. After being asked to drop the weapon, officers fired 16 shots, injuring her. Authorities later found that the gun Moore was wielding - although fully loaded - was inoperable due to a safety mechanism that wouldn't allow it to be fired.

Prior to the incident, Moore had been experiencing mental distress following an argument in her apartment. She grabbed a firearm and fled, injuring someone in the process.

Moore's family and friends criticized the Reading Police Department's handling of the incident, asking why law enforcement officials didn't employ deescalation tactics or crisis intervention. They claimed someone who was experiencing visible trauma should have been met with "patience and compassion" rather than "not violence, felony charges, and hospitalization," as the Reading Eagle reported.

Moore's grandmother added that she just wanted her to get the help she needs, saying that her mental health issues "should have been recognized long ago."

According to the Philadelphia CBS affiliate KYW-TV, the district attorney admitted that Moore's mental health issues were known to police prior to the standoff, as well as her alleged struggles with substance abuse. Whether she was under the influence at the time of the shooting remains unclear.

Among those who have spoken out against the Reading Police Department is Jane Palmer, executive director of the progressive group Berks Stands Up.

"We see in their treatment centuries of racism and homophobia, and we have had enough," she said at Sunday's rally. "Do Black people ever get the benefit of the doubt in a situation involving the police? Add trans or gender-nonconforming on top of that, and you're in real trouble."

"We're here today for Roxanne, who is, at this very moment, still in the hospital in critical condition because of who she is: a Black trans woman," Palmer continued, in comments cited by local press. "Any one of those things, being Black, being trans, being a woman, would make her vulnerable, but she lives at the intersection of all three."

Reading Police Chief Richard Tornielli, however, held that the officers acted appropriately and said they will return to work once they've "completed the appropriate evaluations."

"Based on the evidence that we saw initially when we responded to the incident, and then what was turned over to the district attorney's office, we felt very confident that he would make that ruling that the shooting was justified," Tornielli said, according to the outlet WHP-TV.

Surveillance images from the incident were released to the public, but bodycam footage has been withheld due to an ongoing investigation.

Moore's shooting comes four months after the death of Tony McDade, a Black trans man who was fatally shot by the Tallahassee Police Department. The circumstances around McDade's death are somewhat unclear, and the city of Tallahassee will not reveal the identity of the officer involved in the shooting due to efforts by the Police Benevolent Association.

The police union claims the officer is protected under Marsy's Law, a constitutional amendment passed in 2018 that allows crime victims to keep their names confidential.

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Police Shot a Black Trans Woman 16 Times. The D.A. Says It Was "Justifiable"

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Friends and community members in Reading, Pennsylvania gathered on Sunday to honor 29-year-old Roxanne Moore, a Black transgender woman who was shot by police officers last week. They joined together to show support for Moore, who remains in the hospital with injuries as a result of the altercation.

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Violence against Black trans people - Vox

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Violence against Black trans people - Vox

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Content warning: police brutality, transphobia, racism

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When 27-year-old trans woman Layleen Xtravaganza Cubilette-Polanco lay lifeless in her cell last June, correctional officers at New York City's Rikers Island stood outside her cell laughing, according to recently released security footage. She had just had an epileptic seizure, but prison staff had failed to conduct the 15-minute-interval health check-ins that are required for prisoners held in solitary confinement. Staff told investigators that they thought she was sleeping.

It was her third seizure in custody.

Earlier this month, an investigation by the Bronx District Attorney's office cleared prison staff of any wrongdoing in Polanco's death, even though the DA report also indicated that correctional officers had left her alone for up to 47 minutes, contravening jail regulations.

"The video is the last piece of the puzzle," David Shanies, an attorney for Polanco's family in a wrongful death lawsuit against the city of New York and several Rikers staff members, told NBC News. "It's the last bit of indifference to her life that we saw and recklessness to a person who obviously needed help."

But Polanco's death is not just a story about the prison system's neglect of trans people, especially trans women of color. Hers is a story of how the criminal justice system ensnares trans people and ultimately enacts violence against them.

To understand why this happens,though, you have to know how she ended up in solitary at Rikers in the first place.

According to the NBC News report, Polanco was placed in punitive confinement for assaulting an officer, but solitary is also frequently used as a way to protect trans women from the threat of male prisoners. This threat exists because trans women are often housed in men's jails. She was in jail because she wasn't able to make her $500 bail. She was arrestedbecause she missed court dates as part of an alternative-to-incarceration program after a previous arrest for sex work. Sex work can be a vital mode of economic survival for trans women.

"It really was like a culmination of a million different factors," Mateo de la Torre, director of policy and advocacy at Black and Pink, which offers aid and support to LGBTQ prisoners of color, told Vox. "That's why this system doesn't work and it is not meant to produce safety."

A lack of employment and housing protections throughout most of the country contributes to financial insecurity for BIPOC trans women. According to a 2017 survey by New York City's Anti-Violence Project, transgender New Yorkers were more likely to have a college degree than the general population, but just 45 percent of them have full-time jobs. Overall, transgender workers are more likely to be unemployed compared to their cisgender counterparts, and 34 percent of Black trans women face housing insecurity compared to just 9 percent of non-Black trans people.

With astronomically high costs for transition-related surgeries added to an economic system stacked against them, many trans women end up turning to sex work in order to survive. Sex workers, particularly trans sex workers of color, face a disproportionately high risk of violence, including murder. And much of that violence ends up happening at the hands of police.

According to a 2013 report by the Anti-Violence Project, trans people are 3.7 times more likely to experience police violence and 7 times more likely to experience physical violence when interacting with police than cisgender victims and survivors.

"There's notions that we're not supposed to exist," Bamby Salcedo, founder of the Trans Latina Coalition, told Vox. "The police have also internalized all of that and perpetrate that [violence]. So because we have to survive in some type of way, because we're not supposed to exist in this world, we're criminalized simply because of who we are."

The trans man's death at the hands of police that sparked mass awareness

Tony McDade was a 38-year-old trans man from Tallahassee, Florida, with a history of mental illness. In and out of the justice system for years, McDade wrote to Judge Mark Walker in October 2009 begging for mental health treatment instead of another incarceration after a robbery charge. "I have an anger problem and always fought behind my anger," McDade wrote, pleading to be sent to Florida State Hospital in Chattahoochee for treatment. "I NEED HELP PLEASE SIR. I have a mental problem."

But around that time, he was indicted and subsequently convicted on federal gun charges and sent to prison in New York.

On Tuesday, May 26, McDade was beaten by a group of men near his home in Tallahassee while onlookers cheered, an attack that was caught on cellphone video. The following morning, McDade was shot to death by a police officer after allegedly stabbing 21-year-old Malik Jackson, who reportedly took part in the earlier beating, in the parking lot of the Holton Street and Leon Arms apartment buildings.

While a police department representative said McDade was shot after threatening an officer with a gun, that account has been disputed by residents of the apartments who witnessed the incident, according to a Tallahassee Democrat newspaper report (which deadnamed and misgendered McDade).

Clifford Butler, a resident of the Leon Arms apartments, told local news that a white police officer, whose identity has not been disclosed because Florida law dictates that officers involved in a shooting incident are classified as victims and are due anonymity, did not warn McDade before opening fire.

Another resident recounted on Facebook Live, as reported by Rolling Stone, that the officer said, "Stop moving," called McDade a racial slur, and then shot McDade after he stopped moving.

"What people need to understand is that when you're talking about Black and brown communities, immigrant communities, communities experiencing poverty, and then you layer that with folks who are LGBTQ, specifically trans and gender nonconforming, [systemic policing] issues aren't necessarily very different, they're just amplified," said de la Torre.

According to de la Torre, that amplification means an increased number of contacts with police and an increased risk of being profiled by police for being Black and visibly gender-nonconforming.

"When you exist as a person who is poor and maybe an immigrant and trans, then your chances of engaging with law enforcement skyrocket, and most if not all of those interactions end up being negative or resulting in some form of violence or harassment," he said.

Last year, an NYPD officer testified at a deposition that he would drive down the street looking for women with Adam's apples to stop on suspicion of solicitation. Under the law in New York and many other states, discovery of a condom in a purse is sufficient evidence to arrest a trans woman on prostitution charges. A Black trans activist in Arizona was infamously arrested in this fashion in 2014, while another Black trans woman traveling through Iowa was arrested after hotel staff called the police suspecting that she was a sex worker.

It's not surprising, then, that 21 percent of Black trans women will face incarceration at least once in their lifetimes, a rate significantly higher than the general population. Additionally, there have been reports of police sexually assaulting trans women going back decades.

"If we're walking down the street, trying to get milk, for instance, but we live in a neighborhood that is high risk, then we get harassed and we get arrested, oftentimes because we are not supposed to be in those neighborhoods," said Salcedo.

While the death of McDade may have been the incident that finally brought mass attention to the police violence faced by trans people, it's by no means an isolated incident. In February 2016, trans man Kayden Clarke was shot and killed by police in Mesa, Arizona, during a wellness check. Clarke had Asperger syndrome.

In a video dated a month earlier, Clarke complained that doctors had refused to prescribe him testosterone until his Asperger's could be cured. Except there is no cure for Asperger's, leaving Clarke stuck. "You can't cure neurological disorders!" he said on the video.

It is because of reasons like poverty, homelessness, illness, and mental health issues that many activists are asking to defund police budgets and reallocate resources to social workers for check-ins on mental health and homelessness. Marginalized people have the most interactions with police, meaning there are more chances for these interactions to turn deadly.

As with McDade, initial police and media reports about Clarke deadnamed and misgendered him in what is a common experience for trans victims of violence.

It can even be dangerous for trans women to protest against police violence

Protesting against unjust police violence is practically baked into the LGBTQ rights movement. Stonewall, after all, was a revolt against repeated raids by police, who targeted the inn to arrest queer and trans people for violating laws against cross-dressing and homosexual behavior. And three years before Stonewall, Black and brown drag queens and sex workers in San Francisco revolted against police violence in the Compton cafeteria riot.

The main thing that's seemingly changed between then and now is that cisgender, heterosexual people have begun to take notice and protest it themselves.

With the nation turning out for mass protests against police violence after George Floyd's death at the hands of police, McDade's name has also become a rallying cry against police injustice. His death, along with the killings of two Black trans women in the past two weeks, Riah Milton in Ohio and Dominique "Rem'mie" Fells in Pennsylvania, has really put a focus on the unique violence faced by Black trans people as the nation grapples with racist and violent institutions.

In Brooklyn on June 14, approximately 15,000 people showed up for a Black Trans Lives Matter rally that featured speeches from activists such as writer and editor Raquel Willis and Polanco's sister, Melania Brown.

"Communities are waking up to the reality that police departments in their communities aren't keeping everyone in their community safe and they're serving a very specific purpose of breaking communities, and to some degree that's intentional," said de la Torre.

But even with massive protests against police violence directed at trans people, it can be unsafe for trans people to protest for their own basic civil rights and protections.

Joan Fochs, a 23-year-old white trans woman, attended a Seattle protest against police violence toward Black people like McDade and Floyd. But after getting arrested while protesting, Fochs was sent to a men's jail by the King County Correctional Facility staff after disclosing that she's transgender. While there, Fochs's cell was positioned opposite a man who kept exposing his genitals to her; she also suffered verbal sexual harassment from other prisoners. Despite repeated protests, she said, guards mostly ignored her while she sobbed in the corner of her cell.

She told Vox that at some point, staff let the man out of his cell, at which point he pounded on her door for 15 or 20 minutes, making sexually explicit comments. Eventually, after repeated requests, prison staff removed the man from the cell opposite Fochs.

"It felt like everything was going wrong and I had no recourse and had no idea what was even really happening," said Fochs, who also emphasized that her two-day incarceration was a light experience compared to other trans people who are locked up for years at a time.

According to Salcedo, much of the violence experienced by trans people in the prison system has to do with the way cisgender prison officials organize detention spaces. "We live in a binary system and everything is obviously depending on what you have between your legs, but that also is part of the issue. That definitely contributes to the violence that we experienced," she said.

Since Fochs's release, she said she's heard from countless trans women, especially trans women of color, who have told her that her experience is exactly why they're afraid to protest. The risk of a humiliating or terrifying stay in a men's jail is enough to dissuade some from protesting for their basic protection from police violence.

However, after having her story told by a local Patch reporter, Fochs's experience has also caught the eye of city and state officials who are investigating the incident and pledging to make changes to the way King County evaluates who gets assigned to which gendered prison facility.

Fochs attributes the rush to fix the system to her being a white, cis-passing trans woman. "One of the reasons my story has had such response is because I look like somebody who wouldn't instigate anything and nothing should happen to," said Fochs. "I look like a privileged individual, and it's that privilege that makes people pay attention."

In 2018, a 52-year-old trans woman in Massachusetts named Angelina Resto sued the state prison system after she was housed in a men's prison facility after being convicted of a nonviolent crime. Resto had transitioned more than four decades before her conviction, and yet the prison system housed her with men; she claimed she was repeatedly sexually harassed and assaulted by other prisoners as well as prison staff.

In September 2018, Resto won her suit and became the first trans woman in the country to be transferred from a men's prison to a women's facility, according to attorneys at GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders. Several similar lawsuits have been brought since.

But some reforms seem to be finally making headway as the country rises up against police violence. Trans and sex worker rights advocates have been working for years to change the laws that leave Black trans people vulnerable to abuse. While decriminalization of sex work would lower the number of contacts between police and trans people, there are other reforms that have made significant progress as well.

Last week, legislators in the New York State Assembly announced that they had enough support to pursue repealing the "walking while trans" law, which gives police leeway to target trans women of color, and would be undertaking the repeal shortly. In California, Salcedo pointed to Senate Bill 132, which would allow trans people to choose the prison facility they would feel safest in, to avoid situations like Fochs's.

"Even though trans people are going to continue to be criminalized for who we are, when that happens we're going to have a little bit of agency for us to choose where we are going to feel the most safe," said Salcedo.
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Why police often single out trans people for violence

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When 27-year-old trans woman Layleen Xtravaganza Cubilette-Polanco lay lifeless in her cell last June, correctional officers at New York City's Rikers Island stood outside her cell laughing, according to recently released security footage. She had just had an epileptic seizure, but prison staff had failed to conduct the 15-minute-interval health check-ins that are required for prisoners held in solitary confinement.

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Graeme Burke was five when his mother died after police bound her head with tape. Now he and his grandmother want justice

It was early morning when five men and women burst into five-year-old Graeme Burke's home. They cornered and grabbed his mother, crashing through the furniture, forcing her face down on to the floor. They sat on her body, they bound her hands to her side with a leather belt and manacles, they strapped her legs together and wound yards of surgical tape round her head. At some stage, one officer took the boy into another room - but he could still hear his mother's cries. He never saw her alive again.

Graeme Burke is the son of Joy Gardner, the 40-year-old Jamaican woman who died six years ago when police officers came to deport her. Despite repeated demands from her family, campaigners and Amnesty International, there has been no inquest and no public inquiry into her death. Three years ago, three police officers from the Alien Deportation Group were tried for manslaughter. They were acquitted after telling a jury that Joy Gardner was the most violent woman they had ever dealt with and that the treatment she received was standard practice.

Graeme, now aged 11, lives in north London with Joy's mother, Myrna Simpson. He is suing the Home Office and Metropolitan Police Commissioner Paul Condon for unlawful assault, use of excessive force, and abuse of authority - or rather, Myrna Simpson is suing them on his behalf. Graeme has not been told about the legal action in his name, since they never speak about his mother's death. 'It is too, too sad to go back deep inside,' his grandmother told me. 'It hurts so much. We try to blank it out.'

In the weeks and months after his mother's death, Graeme re-enacted the disturbing events. He suffered nightmares and flashbacks, he became fearful, agitated and angry. And he developed severe anxiety at being separated from those he trusted. Despite six years of counselling and treatment from the children's trauma clinic at the Royal Free Hospital in London, he is still suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Mrs Simpson, who lives in a neat maisonette in Wood Green, north London, said: 'Graeme used to blame himself, you know, that he wasn't strong enough to save his mother. He saw what happened. Can you imagine how terrifying it must have been for a five-year-old to see his mother like that, the woman he loved and looked to for everything?'

Although Graeme, a bright, slim and handsome child, is doing well at school, he is recovering only slowly from his psychological injury and remains vulnerable. 'At first he wouldn't believe that Joy was dead,' his grandmother recalls, quietly. 'He thought they would give her some medicine at the hospital to make her better. It was his therapist who had to tell him that she would never be coming back.'

Mrs Simpson arrived in Britain in 1961 and, like many immigrants at the time, left her child, Joy, with her grandmother until she could provide for her in England. They kept in close and regular contact. But it was not until 1987, when Joy was an adult, that she came on a six-month visit and tried to stay, seeking leave on compassionate grounds. The Home Office would have none of it. Even though Graeme had been born in Britain, they decided to deport her. Two days later she was dead.

The police came armed with specially designed restraining belts, made of thick leather, with a buckle at the back and two manacles at the front to pinion the arms. 'When they arrived at her house with those things,' Myrna Simpson says, 'those body belts, the tape - they weren't looking to find a human being, because you do not do that to a fellow human being. You would not do that to your dog.' These were medieval tools that one would have believed had disappeared with the abolition of slavery; the similarity is not lost on Mrs Simpson.

'Paul Condon said it was not about race. Well, I say, how many white women have they done that to?' she says. 'Look at Rose West and look at what she did. But they still treated her as a human being. They didn't go into her house, truss her up and kill her. What they did to Joy was terrible, terrible. I just keep asking why? Why? Why?'

After the trial, the officers involved were reinstated and not disciplined. The Police Complaints Commission investigation file remains a secret.

The civil action aside, the family and their lawyers still believe the best way to find out what went wrong is a public inquiry. Not just into Joy's death, but into a number of others - including that of Shiji Lapite, who died of a crushed voice box after he was held in an armlock by police; Ibrahim Sey, who died after being sprayed in the face with CS gas; Brian Douglas, who died after being struck with a police baton; and Roger Sylvester, who died in January after he was called to a disturbance at his house and restrained by up to eight officers.

Next month, Mrs Simpson and some of the other families, along with representatives of the organisation Inquest which examines deaths in custody, are to meet Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, to press their case. Last year, when a similar incident led to the death of a young Nigerian deportee in Belgium, Straw's counterpart, Louis Tobback, resigned after two days of public protest.

'There the public said, "No",' says Mrs Simpson. 'Here they have allowed these cases to be swept under the carpet.'

She will not be asking Straw to resign, simply to give her the same public hearing of grievances afforded the family of Stephen Lawrence. 'I didn't need the Lawrence inquiry to tell me the police were racist. But if the Government is serious about change after Lawrence, then they will have to look at these cases. People are still dying. How many more Joy Gardners will there be?'

A photograph of a smiling Joy Gardner hangs on the living-room wall under another of Princess Diana. 'Diana's death brought home to me all the agony of Joy's,' Mrs Simpson explains. 'Two women with everything to live for, with their lovely children and just robbed of their lives. I just want to know why? I need to know why to tell Graeme when he is older.

'He doesn't say, but I know he feels it so badly, when there are parents' evenings at school and everyone else turns up with their young mums and dads - and he has his old nan.'

And then Mrs Simpson, who has been so strong and composed as she has talked about her family, breaks into tears. 'I feel so bad. You don't know how bad. Joy was my firstborn. I came here to get a better life and to bring her over. She did the same and look what happened. I had so little time with Joy and then she had so little time with Graeme.

'They may want us to forget what happened. But we won't. I will fight for justice till the day I die.'

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Graeme Burke was five when his mother died after police bound her head with tape. Now he and his grandmother want justice It was early morning when five men and women burst into five-year-old Graeme Burke's home. They cornered and grabbed his mother, crashing through the furniture, forcing her face down on to the floor.

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The urgency of Intersectionality - Prof. Kimberlé Crenshaw

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The urgency of Intersectionality - Prof. Kimberlé Crenshaw

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The urgency of intersectionality | Kimberlé Crenshaw | TED

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Stephen Lawrence - What happened? What went wrong?

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Stephen Lawrence - What happened? What went wrong?

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Stephen Lawrence - What happened? What went wrong? | BBC

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Stephen Lawrence Inquiry (1999) - William Macpherson

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Stephen Lawrence Inquiry (1999) - William Macpherson

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What do Hillsborough, Bloody Sunday and Stephen Lawrence have in common with COVID-19? (Double Down News)

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What do Hillsborough, Bloody Sunday and Stephen Lawrence have in common with COVID-19? (Double Down News)

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What do Hillsborough, Bloody Sunday & the Murder of Stephen Lawrence have in common with Covid-19?

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Murder of George Nchenko (police violence in Ireland)

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Murder of George Nchenko (police violence in Ireland)

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Around 200 people gathered outside Blanchardstown Garda Station on Thursday morning calling for "justice" following the shooting of George Nkencho outside his home in Clonee in West Dublin on Wednesday.

The 27-year-old was shot at least three times by members of the Blanchardstown Garda Armed Support Unit (ASU) while allegedly brandishing a knife and threatening gardaí. A video shot by a passerby, which showed a man in a blue jumper surrounded by ASU members, captured the sound of one initial gunshot followed by four more shots.

The man appears to stumble before falling to the ground on the fifth shot. At least three of the shots hit Mr Nkencho who received first aid at the scene and was taken by ambulance to James Connolly memorial hospital where he was later pronounced dead.

Chants of "justice for George" echoed around Blanchardstown station on Thursday as a number of speakers took to a makeshift stage calling for "transparency" from the Garda Ombudsman Commission (Gsoc) investigation into the shooting. Attendees also committed to continuing their protest outside the Blanchardstown station for the next 14 days. Thursday's protest was mainly peaceful aside from a small scuffle which broke out outside the station's entrance during the speeches.

Emmanuel Nkencho, Mr Nkencho's younger brother who briefly spoke to the crowd, told The Irish Times his family was "traumatised" by the shooting. "The past 24 hours have been hell," said Mr Nkencho, who watched the incident unfold from inside his home.

"I have no brother now, he was the eldest in the family. I have to take care of my mum now. I just want justice for my brother."

Protestors gathered at Blanchardstown Garda Station on THursday morning after the shooting dead by gardaí of George Nkencho (27). Photograph Nick Bradshaw

He said his bother had a "kind heart" but had "suffered from mental health issues" in recent years. "He didn't really go outside, just to the shop and back. He has his little friend group and that's it. My brother never bothered anybody, he just got on with his own life."

Mr Nkencho said he would like to speak directly to gardaí to ask them questions about Wednesday's shooting. "Why couldn't more than 15 gardaí disarm one man?," he asked. "Until I know why, I will not be at peace."

Princess Toyin Ogunwusi, a family friend, said Mr Nkencho's mother Blessing was doing "horribly" and still would not accept the news of her son's death. "The shock is too much for her. The shooting happened right in the family's presence, they actually have a recording of it. It will be in their memories for the rest of their lives."

Israel Ibanu, who played soccer with George at the Insaka Glentoran Football Academy for four years, described his friend as a "quiet and reserved" young man who was "dedicated to football". He said Mr Nkencho started to drift from his football group after his close friend Toyosi Shittabey was stabbed to death in 2010. "There were no supports for him and he started to fade away from our group. He didn't have anyone to speak to about what he saw happen to his friend."

Mr Ibanu described the news of Mr Nkencho's death as "surreal". "It was the last thing I would imagine would happen to George, that he would be shot by a garda.

"It feels impossible that this happened in Ireland. We see the shootings in America and say thank god for this peaceful country that we live in, that would never happen here. But now it's happened and it's the worst feeling."

Obi Odemena, leader of the Igbo union of Dublin, said the local community was struggling to come to terms with the shooting. "We just can't make sense of what happened yesterday. I've been in this country more than 21 years and this is the first time we've had an incidence of one of our people being killed at the hands of the police. When people heard about the shooting their first reaction was 'in Ireland'?"

Young people affected by George's death should be given time and space to grieve, he said. "We know nothing can be achieved through violence and we will be calling on the youth ensure everything is done peacefully towards obtaining justice for George."

Sunny Okague, a member of Clonee's Irish-Nigerian community and whose sons live in the same estate as the Nkencho family, said he echoed the protest's calls for the "immediate suspension" of the Garda who led Wednesday's operation and the Garda who carried out the shooting. "We would also like transparency in the investigation and for the community to be carried alone," he added.

Taser guns

On Wednesday, the Garda said in a statement it implemented "a graduated policing response" after being threatened with a knife. It is understood this involved the use of pepper spray followed by the firing of two Taser guns. Gardaí also verbally ordered the deceased to drop the knife several times before using force, one source said.

The incident began just after midday when, according to eyewitnesses, Mr Nkencho entered the Eurospar supermarket in Hartstown were he punched a manager in the face, injuring the victim's nose. Mr Nkencho then produced a large knife from his pocket and brandished it towards staff.

He then walked into the post office section of the supermarket as unarmed gardaí began to arrive. The supermarket manager was taken to hospital for treatment.

At least 12 unarmed gardaí followed Mr Nkencho out of the shop and through several housing estates while instructing him to drop the knife.

By the time Mr Nkencho arrived in his front garden at 12.30pm, the ASU had arrived from Blanchardstown Garda station and took over the operation. This is when the fatal shots were fired.

Gardaí have obtained a video taken of the shooting which will be passed on to investigators from the Garda Ombudsman Commission (Gsoc).

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George Nkencho death: 'I just want justice for my brother'

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Around 200 people gathered outside Blanchardstown Garda Station on Thursday morning calling for "justice" following the shooting of George Nkencho outside his home in Clonee in West Dublin on Wednesday. The 27-year-old was shot at least three times by members of the Blanchardstown Garda Armed Support Unit (ASU) while allegedly brandishing a knife and threatening gardaí.

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Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack - Peggy McIntosh (1989)

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Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack - Peggy McIntosh (1989)

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White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
Downloadable PDF © 1989 Peggy McIntosh "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" first appeared in Peace and Freedom Magazine, July/August, 1989, pp. 10-12, a For use in a bound volume there will be a copyright fee. McIntosh's lists must not be taken out of their autobiographical contexts. These articles may not be electronically posted except by the National SEED Project. publication of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Philadelphia, PA.
I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group.

Through work to bring materials from Women's Studies into the rest of the curriculum, I have often noticed men's unwillingness to grant that they are over-privileged, even though they may grant that women are disadvantaged. They may say they will work to improve women's status, in the society, the university, or the curriculum, but they can't or won't support the idea of lessening men's. Denials which amount to taboos surround the subject of advantages which men gain from women's disadvantages. These denials protect male privilege from being fully acknowledged, lessened or ended.

Thinking through unacknowledged male privilege as a phenomenon, I realized that, since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there was most likely a phenomenon of white privilege that was similarly denied and protected. As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage.

I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was "meant" to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks.

Describing white privilege makes one newly accountable. As we in Women's Studies work to reveal male privilege and ask men to give up some of their power, so one who writes about white privilege must ask, "Having described it, what will I do to lessen or end it?"

After I realized the extent to which men work from a base of unacknowledged privilege, I understood that much of their oppressiveness was unconscious. Then I remembered the frequent charges from women of color that white women whom they encounter are oppressive.

I began to understand why we are justly seen as oppressive, even when we don't see ourselves that way. I began to count the ways in which I enjoy unearned skin privilege and have been conditioned into oblivion about its existence.

My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture. I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will. My schooling followed the pattern my colleague Elizabeth Minnich has pointed out: whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work which will allow "them" to be more like "us."

I decided to try to work on myself at least by identifying some of the daily effects of white privilege in my life. I have chosen those conditions which I think in my case attach somewhat more to skin-color privilege than to class, religion, ethnic status, or geographic location, though of course all these other factors are intricately intertwined. As far as I can see, my African American co-workers, friends, and acquaintances with whom I come into daily or frequent contact in this particular time, place and line of work cannot count on most of these conditions.

1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.

2. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.

3. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.

4. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.

5. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.

6. When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.

7. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.

8. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.

9. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods that fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser's shop and find someone who can cut my hair.

10. Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.

11. I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.

12. I can swear, or dress in second-hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race.

13. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.

14. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.

15. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.

16. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world's majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.

17. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.

18. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to "the person in charge," I will be facing a person of my race.

19. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven't been singled out because of my race.

20. I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children's magazines featuring people of my race.

21. I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance, or feared.

22. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of race.

23. I can choose public accommodations without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.

24. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.

25. If my day, week, or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has racial overtones.

26. I can choose blemish cover or bandages in "flesh" color and have them more less match my skin.

I repeatedly forgot each of the realizations on this list until I wrote it down. For me, white privilege has turned out to be an elusive and fugitive subject. The pressure to avoid it is great, for in facing it I must give up the myth of meritocracy. If these things are true, this is not such a free country; one's life is not what one makes it; many doors open for certain people through no virtues of their own.

In unpacking this invisible knapsack of white privilege, I have listed conditions of daily experience that I once took for granted. Nor did I think of any of these perquisites as bad for the holder. I now think that we need a more finely differentiated taxonomy of privilege, for some of these varieties are only what one would want for everyone in a just society, and others give license to be ignorant, oblivious, arrogant and destructive.

I see a pattern running through the matrix of white privilege, a pattern of assumptions that were passed on to me as a white person. There was one main piece of cultural turf; it was my own turf, and I was among those who could control the turf. My skin color was an asset for any move I was educated to want to make. I could think of myself as belonging in major ways and of making social systems work for me. I could freely disparage, fear, neglect, or be oblivious to anything outside of the dominant cultural forms. Being of the main culture, I could also criticize it fairly freely.

In proportion as my racial group was being made confident, comfortable, and oblivious, other groups were likely being made inconfident, uncomfortable, and alienated. Whiteness protected me from many kinds of hostility, distress and violence, which I was being subtly trained to visit, in turn, upon people of color.

For this reason, the word "privilege" now seems to me misleading. We usually think of privilege as being a favored state, whether earned or conferred by birth or luck. Yet some of the conditions I have described here work systematically to overempower certain groups. Such privilege simply confers dominance because of one's race or sex.

I want, then, to distinguish between earned strength and unearned power conferred systemically. Power from unearned privilege can look like strength when it is in fact permission to escape or to dominate. But not all of the privileges on my list are inevitably damaging. Some, like the expectation that neighbors will be decent to you, or that your race will not count against you in court, should be the norm in a just society. Others, like the privilege to ignore less powerful people, distort the humanity of the holders as well as the ignored groups.

We might at least start by distinguishing between positive advantages, which we can work to spread, and negative types of advantage, which unless rejected will always reinforce our present hierarchies. For example, the feeling that one belongs within the human circle, as Native Americans say, should not be seen as privilege for a few. Ideally it is an unearned entitlement. At present, since only a few have it, it is an unearned advantage for them. This paper results from a process of coming to see that some of the power that I originally saw as attendant on being a human being in the United States consisted in unearned advantage and conferred dominance.

The question is: "Having described white privilege, what will I do to end it?

I have met very few men who are truly distressed about systemic, unearned male advantage and conferred dominance. And so one question for me and others like me is whether we will be like them, or whether we will get truly distressed, even outraged, about unearned race advantage and conferred dominance, and, if so, what will we do to lessen them. In any case, we need to do more work in identifying how they actually affect our daily lives. Many, perhaps most, of our white students in the U.S. think that racism doesn't affect them because they are not people of color, they do not see "whiteness" as a racial identity. In addition, since race and sex are not the only advantaging systems at work, we need similarly to examine the daily experience of having age advantage, or ethnic advantage, or physical ability, or advantage related to nationality, religion, or sexual orientation.

Difficulties and dangers surrounding the task of finding parallels are many. Since racism, sexism, and heterosexism are not the same, the advantages associated with them should not be seen as the same. In addition, it is hard to disentangle aspects of unearned advantage which rest more on social class, economic class, race, religion, sex, and ethnic identity than on other factors. Still, all of the oppressions are interlocking, as the Combahee River Collective Statement of 1977 continues to remind us eloquently.

One factor seems clear about all of the interlocking oppressions. They take both active forms, which we can see, and embedded forms, which as a member of the dominant group one is taught not to see. In my class and place, I did not see myself as a racist because I was taught to recognize racism only in individual acts of meanness by members of my group, never in invisible systems conferring unsought racial dominance on my group from birth.

Disapproving of the systems won't be enough to change them. I was taught to think that racism could end if white individuals changed their attitudes. But a "white" skin in the United States opens many doors for whites whether or not we approve of the way dominance has been conferred on us. Individual acts can palliate, but cannot end, these problems.

To redesign social systems, we need first to acknowledge their colossal unseen dimensions. The silences and denials surrounding privilege are the key political tool here. They keep the thinking about equality or equity incomplete, protecting unearned advantage and conferred dominance by making these taboo subjects. Most talk by whites about equal opportunity seems to me now to be about equal opportunity to try to get into a position of dominance while denying that systems of dominance exist.

It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage, like obliviousness about male advantage, is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all. Keeping most people unaware that freedom of confident action is there for just a small number of people props up those in power and serves to keep power in the hands of the same groups that have most of it already.

Although systemic change takes many decades, there are pressing questions for me and I imagine for some others like me if we raise our daily consciousness on the perquisites of being light-skinned. What will we do with such knowledge? As we know from watching men, it is an open question whether we will choose to use unearned advantage to weaken hidden systems of advantage, and whether we will use any of our arbitrarily awarded power to try to reconstruct power systems on a broader base.

*This is an authorized excerpt of McIntosh's original white privilege article, "White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women's Studies," Working Paper 189 (1988), Wellesley Centers for Women, Wellesley College, MA, 02481.
© 2010, Peggy McIntosh - Wellesley Centers for Women, Wellesley, MA
Some Notes for Facilitators on Presenting My White Privilege Papers

1. My work is not about blame, shame, guilt, or whether one is a "nice person." It's about observing, realizing, thinking systemically and personally. It is about seeing privilege, the "up-side" of oppression and discrimination. It is about unearned advantage, which can also be described as exemption from discrimination.

2. Please do not generalize from my papers. They are about my experience, not about the experiences of all white people in all times and places and circumstances. The paragraph in each paper before the list begins says this, and also allays fears of white people that a paper on white privilege will call them racist.

3. Keep "the lists" in their autobiographical contexts. It is a matter of scholarly integrity and accuracy not to claim more than I did. I compared my own circumstances with some of those of African American women I worked with. Being clear about this will actually increase your effectiveness as a facilitator. You can say, "This is from just one white woman coming to see she's white in her time and place and workspace. . . .She's writing about herself, not you."

4. The work goes best when you draw on participants' own personal experiences, not their opinions. Opinions invite argumentation. Telling about experience invites listening. Opinions tend to bring on conflict, whereas shared experiences tend to elicit curiosity and empathy. When participants move from experiential testimony to opinion, bring them back, knowing that most schooling discourages testimony.

5. When exploring privilege, it is useful to use "Serial Testimony," a disciplined mode in which each participant gets to respond in turn, uninterrupted, for, say, one minute, timed. I call this "the autocratic administration of time in the service of democratic distribution of time."

6. But without rigorous use of a watch or timer, Serial Testimony can be as undemocratic as any other form of discussion.

7. Understand that every participant has an intricate "politics of location" (Adrienne Rich) within the systems of social power. For example, all people in a workshop or class will have a lifetime of experiences of both advantage and disadvantage, empowerment and disempowerment, overwhelming or subtle, within many different systems of power.

8. Recognize that all people are both located in systems and also uniquely individual.

9. Co-presentations and panels of people speaking about their experiences one after another can be very effective. I do not usually arrange for "dialogues," since I feel they are often a veiled form of debating and fighting, rather than listening and learning. I discourage "crosstalk" after panels unless it further clarifies and respects what the panelists have said. This is what Peter Elbow called playing the "The Believing Game."

10. My lists of the unearned privileges I have relative to my colleagues are not "check lists" or "questionnaires." They are not "confessional readings."

11. Please draw attention to the specificity of "my sample." I compared my circumstances only with what I knew of the circumstances of my African-American female colleagues in the same building and line of work. This sample is very specific with regard to race, sex, region, location, workplace, vocation and nation.

12. Behind and within my examples are institutions that bear on my experience such as schools, the police, the IRS, the media, the law, medicine, business.

13. Do not get trapped in definitions of privilege and power. They lack nuances and flexibility.

14. Invite people to make their own autobiographical lists of privilege, for example, about:

15. Beware of gym-exercises which position people in only one aspect of their identities, asking them to step forward or backward from a baseline at a given prompt.

16. Urge participants to avoid self righteousness and preaching to family and friends about privilege, especially if it is something they have just discovered themselves. Explain the word "systemic." Help participants or students to think about what it is to see society systemically, and structurally, rather than only in terms of individuals making individual choices.

17. Think about why U.S. people, especially White people, have trouble seeing systemically. Explain the myth of meritocracy: that the unit of society is the individual and that whatever one ends up with must be whatever that individual wanted, worked for, earned, and deserved. Why do you think this myth survives so successfully, suppressing knowledge of systemic oppression and especially of its "up-side,"systemic privilege?

18. Help participants to strengthen three intellectual muscles: a) the ability to see in terms of systems as well as in terms of individuals; b) the ability to see how systemic discrimination , the downside, is matched by systemic privilege, the upside; c) the ability to see many different kinds of privilege systems.

19. You can argue that work on privilege in schools and universities makes people smarter, not necessarily better. Academic institutions do not claim that making us better is their primary goal, but accurate thinking is a goal they claim to foster.

20. When I present, or co-present with a person of color, on Privilege Systems, whether or not I am the first to speak, I usually:

tell how I came to see men's privilege and their obliviousness to it, which made me see laterally to my own race privilege and my obliviousness to it;

read some examples from my white privilege list, and sometimes read some of my heterosexual privilege list, class privilege list, Christian privilege list, and lists of privilege relative to Asian Americans, Indigenous people, Latino/as, etc.;

analyze some of the different misreadings of my paper by white people and people of color;

raise the question of how I can use unearned advantage to weaken systems of unearned advantage, and why I would want to.

The co-presenter and I take equal time to testify about how we came to see privilege systems in and around us. After this, we use Serial Testimony. We form either small circles of people, or pairs, to respond, in turn, uninterrupted, for one minute each, to the following prompts:
Round one: What are one or more ways in which you've had unearned disadvantage in your life?
Round two: What are one or more ways in which you've had unearned advantage in your life?
Round three: What is it like for you to sit here and talk about and hear about these experiences of unearned advantage and disadvantage?

Round three is like a debrief in itself. Any further debrief should be only on new learnings from the exercise. Random discussion of the exercise usually leads away from experience to generalizations and repetitions of the same opinions people came into the session with.

Some people "get" the idea of systemic privilege and ask "But what can I do?" My answer is, you can use unearned advantage to weaken systems of unearned advantage. I see white privilege as a bank account that I did not ask for, but that I can choose to spend. People with privilege have far more power than we have been taught to realize, within the myth of meritocracy. Participants can brainstorm about how to use unearned assets to share power; these may include time, money, energy, literacy, mobility, leisure, connections, spaces, housing, travel opportunities. Using these assets may lead to key changes in other behaviors as well, such as paying attention, making associations, intervening, speaking up, asserting and deferring, being alert, taking initiative, doing ally and advocacy work, lobbying, campaigning, protesting, organizing, and recognizing and acting against both the external and internalized forms of oppression and privilege.

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"White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" and "Some Notes for Facilitators" - National SEED Project

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White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack Downloadable PDF © 1989 Peggy McIntosh 'White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack' first appeared in P...

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Superior: The Return of Race Science (2019) - Angela Saini

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Superior: The Return of Race Science (2019) - Angela Saini

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Description

Financial Times Book of the Year Telegraph Top 50 Books of the Year Guardian Book of the Year New Statesman Book of the Year

'Roundly debunks racism's core lie - that inequality is to do with genetics, rather than political power' Reni Eddo-Lodge

Where did the idea of race come from, and what does it mean? In an age of identity politics, DNA ancestry testing and the rise of the far-right, a belief in biological differences between populations is experiencing a resurgence. The truth is: race is a social construct. Our problem is we find this hard to believe.

In Superior , award-winning author Angela Saini investigates the concept of race, from its origins to the present day. Engaging with geneticists, anthropologists, historians and social scientists from across the globe, Superior is a rigorous, much needed examination of the insidious and destructive nature of the belief that race is real, and that some groups of people are superior to others.

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Financial Times Book of the Year Telegraph Top 50 Books of the Year Guardian Book of the Year New Statesman Book of the Year 'Roundly debunks racism's core lie - that inequality is to do with genetics, rather than political power' Reni Eddo-Lodge Where did the idea of race come from, and what does it mean?

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Available: Netflix

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The Talk of the Ton: Free, White and 21 - Tré Ventour

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The Talk of the Ton: Free, White and 21 - Tré Ventour

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It's safe to say that I have been a fan of period dramas since I watched the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice many years ago. As a staple of this genre at large, Jane Austen is not the only party guilty of inherent Whiteness as a pillar of achievement. With its number of Black characters, Bridgerton (Netflix, 2020), is being celebrated for its colour-blind casting as an achievement of racial diversity but, even so, it is clear that, under scrutiny, it is still possible for diversity to reproduce and emphasise Whiteness. The resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement last year provoked some institutions to start taking racism seriously, even while it pushed Black members of the Conversative Party to threaten schoolteachers with the strong arm of the law for teaching White privilege, and then went on to call critical race theory a contested political ideology.

With all the hype around diverse casting, I'm by no means saying these characters are as dangerous as a multiracial Conservative Party, however, I am suggesting that these characters are written to prop up White structures (families) and agency. For all its talk of historical fantasy, through the lens of race there is an eerie biographical non-fictional slant to it. There is no real emphasis on race in the context of a racialised other (much), except for a monologue by Lady Danbury (Adjoa Andoh) to Simon Basset (Regé-Jean Page) - You know the one I mean - and references to Will's father, an enslaved man. What the Netflix series does is comment on Whiteness without talking about it. White never has to be explicitly stated because White is the invisible race. Assumed. We rarely think what it means to be White. White is the default setting. Whiteness is the absence of race. Simon, Will, and Marina have a race, the Bridgertons do not. This is the simple version.

Following the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others last year, it has forced a lot of White people to acknowledge their own invisibility in the world. Watching Bridgerton, it brings me back to Whiteness and how race is ever present in a show even where nobody really openly talks about it. For the Bridgertons and many of their colleagues and friends, their Whiteness is invisible because they inhabit it. If you're Black or not racialised as White, you will see Whiteness more clearly because you do not inhabit it (on the surface). There are still people of colour that act as agents of Whiteness, like these Black characters holding up the structures of White families; like the accomplices to the Murder of George Floyd; like the Black members of the Conservative Party. In order to have a conversation about Whiteness, we need to understand how race as a social construct in the Global North was primarily created through colonialism. Certainly, human beings have different skin complexions but it is estimated on a genetic basis that as human beings we share 99% of DNA with each other. The scientific justifications made that underpinned enslavement were empirical, observational - to put some people on lower rungs to White people - based on opinion, not facts.

An early indicator of the Whiteness within Bridgerton is Daphne. The embodiment of the ' free, White and 21' trope from Old Hollywood, she is the epitome of every privileged, White girl in the Golden Age - from Scarlet O'Hara in Gone with the Wind to Barbara Hemingway in Dames and Anne Baxter in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's All About Eve. Daphne Bridgerton is the embodiment of Regency White womanhood and is given a free-pass for her behaviour because she's 'free, White, and 21' (sort of), as well as 'young' and 'pure.' Well, before she rapes Simon, bringing on his childhood stutter that he hadn't had in years. White violence in the bedroom followed by a White woman's tears when she continues to play the victim. Despite the show's decision to not really talk about race, this is an unequal encounter, with a Black man's body co-opted by a White woman. White supremacy through sexual violence, something that happened to countless Black women during colonialism and Jim Crow at the hands of White men but this history in the context of Black men and White women is absent.

In the 21 st century it is still possible for White women to weaponise their emotions to the detriment of Black men and women of colour. Even more worrying is the number of viewers that may have related to Daphne, whilst also ignoring how Whiteness operates in society - whether we're talking about Regency England, White fragility in the workplace, or the Murder of George Floyd. Although we are constantly being reminded that Bridgerton is a historical fantasy, it could be argued that the fantasy relies upon Black people being used as props - Simon to give Daphne a baby; Marina Thompson as the Black best friend; Lady Danbury and Queen Charlotte as examples of Black exceptionalism; Genevieve to satisfy the desires of Benedict Bridgerton; Black men putting money in the pockets of White businessmen through prizefighting.

There is a lot to enjoy about Bridgerton but there are other period dramas with Black and Brown leads and co-leads, including World on Fire and the first season of The Spanish Princess, that are more enjoyable for this viewer and, while we are bound to return to the 'Ton' for a second season, I hope that the trauma of Black men at the hands of White women will be addressed. I also hope that there will be dark-skinned women that actually talk and dark-skinned men that are not violent. Even though I enjoyed the show, you really have to ask why did Bridgerton not milk this alternative history for all it's worth, rather than play into some of the same tired old stereotypes of Black people?

Tré Ventour is a British writer, poet and curator whose work has predominantly revolved around arts, Black history, race and social justice. Tré has been an advocate for race equity and social justice in his community for many years. A proud Northamptonian, with articles at the and The Nenequirer, his voice is known in his vicinity, with bylines also at the University of Northampton's criminology blog, and Wonkhe. In light of 2020's anti-racism resurgence, he has also been featured by The Guardian and the BBC. As a freelance educator in race and Black history, he has taught in schools, universities, prisons and more. Now, he is studying for his masters degree in Race, Education and Decolonial Thought. Tré's social media profile @treventoured can be found on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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THE TALK OF THE TON: FREE, WHITE AND 21 by Tré Ventour

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It's safe to say that I have been a fan of period dramas since I watched the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice many years ago. As a staple of this genre at large, Jane Austen is not the only party guilty of inherent Whiteness as a pillar of achievement.

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Whiteness: WTF? White Privilege and the Invisible Race - Tom Nicholas

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Whiteness: WTF? White Privilege and the Invisible Race - Tom Nicholas

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Whiteness: WTF? White Privilege and the Invisible Race