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This padlet is a safe space for students (and staff) to voice their thoughts and feelings. 

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This padlet is a safe space for students (and staff) to voice their thoughts and feelings. 

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Please remember to remain professional and do not share explicit or triggering images/videos

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Racial inequality
The police brutality
The chilling cruelty
Where is the humanity?

The systemic disproportionality
The lack of equal opportunity
Unfair treatment towards the minority
Many experienced the hostility
Can’t believe this is happening in 2020

Silence is complicity
Stand up and fight against racial animosity
To bring about human unity

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It is important as a community to be allies and show solidarity with Black and minority students. 

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It is important as a community to be allies and show solidarity with Black and minority students. 

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Please share a message of support in the comments section below

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Please share useful resources so that peers can educate themselves about the #BLM movement, race and equality.

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https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jan.14469#.Xxf0lXGbBSp.email

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Being an ally: working document for scaffolding anti-racism resources.

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Being an ally: working document for scaffolding anti-racism resources.

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This working document created by Anna Stamborski, Nikki Zimmermann and Bailie Gregory (USA based). Invaluable resources to help with our own personal growth to become allies and eventually active accomplices for anti-racist work.

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Dear All,

I hope you are safe and well.

Since the murder of George Floyd in the USA, and the subsequent ripple effect across the world, I’m sure many of us have felt a whirlwind of emotions. Me and my colleagues in the midwifery department want to be very clear that we have a zero-tolerance policy for any form of racism and discrimination.

We understand that these events are unfortunately not new, and racism exists and persists in our societies. This is in addition to the health inequalities, as outlined in the MBRRACE-UK report and Public Health England’s Covid-19 review. It is important as midwives and future midwives to educate ourselves and each other. With the intention and action of education, we will be able to challenge bias, acknowledge lived experiences of racism, improve the care of women and families, and most importantly LISTEN.

We have created a safe environment in the form of a “padlet” for you all to be able to express your feelings, access information and feel supported. We hope this space will provide an opportunity for education, introspection and healing. Please keep in mind that any comments you post will be in the capacity as KCL students and professionals. The padlet will be monitored so any unprofessional or insensitive comments will be removed.

To our black students and staff, we see you, we hear you and we value you!

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A message from the Principal and KCLSU President

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A message from the Principal and KCLSU President

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02/06/20

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02 June 2020

The death of George Floyd in Minneapolis last week has shocked and saddened many in our community. Our sympathies are with his family and friends and those who have been impacted.

We state our commitment in our Vision 2029 to creating 'an inclusive environment where all individuals are valued and able to succeed'. At King's we have an obligation to condemn racism and have a zero tolerance to any form of racist or discriminatory behaviour. As a leading higher education institution we must continue to fight ignorance and intolerance to strengthen our approach to equality, diversity and inclusion to further embrace the true power that diversity represents and tackle any racism or discriminatory behaviour within our community.

An event such as the one we witnessed last week is naturally going to generate great upset and anxiety for many in our community. This message today is both one of compassion for anyone who has been a target of hate, based on their skin colour, sexual orientation, gender identity, ethnicity or religion, as well as one of speaking out against the apathy, indifference or silence that allows this hatred, prejudice and intolerance to grow.

At King's we deplore racism and it has been heartening to see the strength of feeling that has gathered people together in the protest action that has followed over the weekend. We understand that the level of passion among members of our community is high however we would encourage you to demonstrate your feelings digitally and not put yourself at greater risk, given the social distancing measures in place. We are aware that many are adding their names to an online petition which you may wish to do also. Colleagues at the Science Gallery London are in discussions with the team at Science Gallery Detroit to organise further support activities and colleagues at KCLSU are also organising similar activities.

During times such as this, the King's community is a comforting source of support and we urge you to look out for each other and speak to someone if you are feeling upset or concerned.

Our team of Chaplains are available to meet students of all faiths. The Chaplains are practised listeners and are experienced in supporting students through any challenges you may have. You can contact the Chaplaincy and Dean's office at chaplaincy@kcl.ac.uk and dean@kcl.ac.uk.

You can also contact our counselling service at counselling@kcl.ac.uk and your personal tutor is also able to offer support.

If you would like to take a moment of private reflection or prayer, you may wish to join one of our moments of calm which all members of our community are always welcome to attend.

With best wishes,

Ed Byrne
President & Principal

Shaswat Jain
KCLSU President

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George-Floyd | News Centre | King's College London

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The death of George Floyd in Minneapolis last week has shocked and saddened many in our community. Our sympathies are with his family and friends and those who have been impacted. We state our commitment in our Vision 2029 to creating 'an inclusive environment where all individuals are valued and able to succeed'.

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Let's brainstorm what actionable changes we can make and highlight any work that has been done so far

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Below are some external organisations that can be sources of support

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Here you can find college statements, policies and resources related to D&I

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religion or belief  and marriage and civil partnership.

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King's College London - Equality, Diversity & Inclusion at King's

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Diversity & Inclusion at King's - King's Diversity and Inclusion is responsible for ensuring that the university is compliant with the Equality Act 2010, which includes support for protected characteristics - age, race, sex, disability, gender reassignment, maternity and pregnancy, sexual orientation, religion or belief and marriage and civil partnership.

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by John O'Shea

Science Gallery London's communities are directly expressing pain and anger at the recent death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

"SILENCE = PROBLEM" was the subject line of an email I received over the weekend from one of Science Gallery London's Young Leaders, making the point that silence on the part of cultural institutions, and those in power, in a situation of injustice is simply not good enough.

As a gallery located in Southwark, South London, Science Gallery London celebrates the work of black artists, and works directly with young people from our local community to imagine a better world.

Science Gallery London totally rejects racism and all forms of violence against black people.

Galleries and museums are not neutral. The ideas and exhibits we choose to present, who we select to participate, and what kind of topics and issues we tackle - are all representative of our values, and have the power to influence the thinking of others.

As part of King's College London, Science Gallery London embodies the commitments in King's Vision 2029 to create 'an inclusive environment where all individuals are valued and able to succeed' this includes the student and staff community, our visitors, and the artists and scientists whose work contributes to our programme, irrespective of their skin colour, sexual orientation, gender identity, ethnicity or religion.

As such, we feel the anger and outrage, and wholeheartedly endorse that Black Lives Matter.

In our interconnected, complex world, we are duty-bound by our values not only to denounce hate, racist violence and discrimination in all its forms, but to work pro-actively to tackle any racism or discriminatory behaviour within our community.

In usual times, the exhibitions, events and experiments produced are an expression of the gallery's core values and purpose. Science Gallery London at Guy's Campus, in the heart of London, would have been a natural base to host discussion and to provide support to those organising in our community. While our doors may be closed temporarily, Science Gallery London still stands with our community.

In the immediate term, members of Science Gallery London's Young Leaders, and Mediators are in discussions with the teams at other Science Galleries across the world, (including Detroit and Atlanta, in the U.S.) to identify and organise support activities. Details of this initiative, and further resources will be shared here as they develop.

John O'Shea, Associate Director (Creative), Science Gallery London

#BlackLivesMatter #MuseumsAreNotNeutral

You can read a message from King's College London President and Principal Ed Byrne, and Student Union President Shaswat Jain here.

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Science Gallery London totally rejects racism and all forms of violence against black people. - Science Gallery London

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by John O'Shea Science Gallery London's communities are directly expressing pain and anger at the recent death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. "SILENCE = PROBLEM" was the subject line of an email I received over the weekend from one of Science Gallery London's Young Leaders, making the point that silence on the part of cultural institutions, and those in power, in a situation of injustice is simply not good enough.

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George Floyd, known as Floyd, or Big Floyd, by friends and family, was in Minneapolis on business, far from his family and community, when four Minneapolis police officers murdered him in broad daylight. It was, in effect, a modern day lynching as those police officers served as judge, jury, and executioner on an unarmed, non-violent, handcuffed Black man.

He was dragged from his car, pinned to the ground, and choked even as he begged for air by officers using unnecessary and deadly force.

Video of the incident clearly shows the officer, Derek Chauvin, employing a deadly chokehold as Floyd repeatedly states, "I can't breathe." He was non-violent, unarmed, and begging for mercy in broad daylight, yet both officers present at the scene continued to use illegal force until it was too late.

Though four Minneapolis officers involved in George's murder have since been fired and Derek Chauvin has now been arrested and charged with Floyd's murder, his family has yet to receive complete justice for the tragic loss they now face. The remaining officers responsible for this horrible killing must be tried and charged with the murder of George Floyd.

We need your help: join us in calling on County Attorney Michael Freeman-who has the power to arrest and charge these police officers-to hold them accountable for the murder of George Floyd.

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George Floyd, known as Floyd, or Big Floyd, by friends and family, was in Minneapolis on business, far from his family and community, when four Minneapolis police officers murdered him in broad daylight. It was, in effect, a modern day lynching as those police officers served as judge, jury, and executioner on an unarmed, non-violent, handcuffed Black man.

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Proudly King's Virtual Pride, in Support of the Exist Loudly Fund

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Proudly King's Virtual Pride, in Support of the Exist Loudly Fund

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A great line-up for KCL's Virtual Pride next Friday 26th June, from 6pm (Join the Proudly King's Virtual Pride), and supporting a great cause - The Exist Loudly Fund was set up by Tanya Compas as an official organisation and create programming for Queer Black Young People here in London, with the intention to explore how to support young queer Black people outside of London digitally.

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Alex Campbell (S2017 Midwifery) is fundraising for The Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust

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Alex Campbell (S2017 Midwifery) is fundraising for The Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust

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Alex will be running 18 miles on the 27th of June, passing 11 London Blue Plaques to commemorate Black people in history.

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Alex's Black Lives Matter- London Blue Plaques

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Alex Campbell is fundraising for The Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust. Donate on JustGiving

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King's College London - *A Moment of Calm*

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@KCL_REN on Twitter

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Race Equality Network

If you are troubled by the recent events and would like to leave a message of support and solidarity for your colleagues,
ou can post here

THE PURPOSE of King's Race Equality Network (REN) is to promote and advance race equality at King's! As a network we value the importance of building a community that embraces relational power, transparency, knowledge sharing, respect and equality. It seeks to provide networking opportunities and support both the personal and professional development of all members. As a network we aim to create a space for identifying and tackling cultural & diversity issues around university policies and practices through supporting the implementation of Kings Race Equality Action Plan.

To support with implementing the actions outlined within Kings Race Equality Action Plan

To promote and represent the interests of BME staff and students

Develop tangible and practical solutions for changing the way in which race is discussed at King's

Working collaboratively with internal and external stakeholders who share our ethos

To develop a thriving online space for members to connect and share resources

Celebrate the achievements and successes of those internally and externally fighting for race equality

Create a cultural shift within the university towards open and honest conversations about race

Core Network Team
Alexandria Mitchell - committee member

Mariama Ghorbannejad- committee member

Michael Bankole- committee member

Rebecca Brown - committee member

Zahra Khan - committee member

Olivia Timeyin - committee member

VJ Sidhu - co-chair

Jenny Agha Innamaa - co-chair

Whitney Robinson - former co-chair - Whitney has now left King's and is at UCL. She continues to be a valued supporter and friend of our network

In total there are 133 people in the wider Race Equality Network family. If you would like to join the network and you are a King's staff/PGR student, join our yammer group.
Contact? Email us at RaceEqualityNetwork@kcl.ac.uk Follow our new INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT

MARCH 2020
YOU WON'T WANT TO MISS THIS!
SIGN UP HERE

King's Race Equality Network are proud to present " Unpacking the Narrative: Women of Colour In the Workplace".

ABOUT THIS EVENT

"There's power in allowing yourself to be known and heard, in owning your unique story, in using your authentic voice. And there's grace in being willing to know and hear others".- Michelle Obama

Regardless of the sector or worker seniority, women are significantly more likely to face workplace discrimination in comparison to men. However, discrimination against women of colour doesn't always fit neatly into either "racism" or "sexism"-but is rather a combination of both.

In honour of International Women's Day, this event is dedicated to amplifying the authentic voices of women of colour, and unpacking the narratives behind phenomena such as the Imposter Syndrome, "Pet to Threat" and other day to day challenges that arise within the workplace.

This is a brave space to share challenges, understand each other's experiences, forge meaningful relationships and remove feelings of isolation in our struggles as we strive for equity and collective workplace advancement.

Join us on the 19th March for an evening of authentic narratives, networking & inspiration!

Programme

18.15-18.30: Introduction & performances

18:30-19:30: Panel Discussion

19:30-20:00: Audience Questions

20:00-20:45: Networking & Refreshments

FEBRUARY COMPETITION
500 words on colourism
WINNER WILL BE ANNOUNCED SOON

(This competition is open to King's College London staff and students only)
To kick off the new year, there is an opportunity to win a copy of Lupita Nyong'o new book on colourism: SULWE

It is such a beautiful, powerful and moving children's book but also one very much for adults.

If you love to write/have something to say on this topic and are interested in taking part in the competition, here's what you have to do:

1. WRITE 500 WORDS ON A PIECE ENTITLED: "TO WHAT EXTENT IS COLOURISM AN ISSUE IN MODERN BRITAIN"

2. Email a copy (to RaceEqualityNetwork@kcl.ac.uk) of what you have written by the 24th February 2020 (no later than 23:59).

The winner will get a copy of the book and we will also publish their written work on our website.

JANUARY & FEBRUARY 2020
LESSONS FROM HOLOCAUST & GENOCIDE SURVIVORS - Read about it here
AS PART OF THE HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY EVENTS, KING'S RACE EQUALITY NETWORK ORGANISED A SERIES OF LECTURES TO HONOUR THOSE WHO SURVIVED AND THOSE WHO WERE KILLED DURING THE HOLOCAUST.
MONDAY 27TH JANUARY 2020
Monday 27th January was Holocaust Memorial Day SPEAKERS:

Sarah Guerra, Director of Equality & Inclusion at King's, opened the event and introduced the speakers.

King's student Michaela Tranfield also delivered a talk and moderated the q&a session with Roxzann Baker and Dr Jonathan Leader Maynard

BELOW KING'S STUDENT MICHAELA TRANFIELD TAKES THE STAGE TO DELIVER A TALK AND THEN MODERATES THE AUDIENCE Q&A SESSION WITH ROXZANN BAKER AND DR JONATHAN LEADER MAYNARD

BELOW DR RENEE ROMEO ON THE LEFT CLOSES THE EVENT ; ROXZANN BAKER ; MICHAELA TRANFIELD; DR JONATHAN LEADER MAYNARD; SARAH GUERRA
All photographs were taken by King's student, photographer Jessica Okoro. More pictures will be made available soon. PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS EVENT WAS FILMED - THE FOOTAGE WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE HERE SOON. We are currently re-designing the website. PROFESSOR EVELYN WELCH
TUESDAY 28TH JANUARY 6.30PM
SPEAKER DR ANITA PELEG - SURVIVOR NAOMI BLAKE
Professor Evelyn Welch, Provost and Senior Vice President (Arts & Sciences), opened the event and introduced the speakers: Dr Anita Peleg, Ruth Barnet MBE as well as spoken word artist and King's College London student Abigail Oyedele

Dr Anita Pelegis a University Lecturer and National Teaching Fellow specialising in Business Ethics. She has also carried out significant research into the Nazi Holocaust and published two books about her mother, Naomi Blake, a sculptor and survivor of Auschwitz. She is a Trustee of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and is currently applying her 20 years of teaching experience to educate about the Holocaust, speaking at universities, schools and religious institutions

Dr Peleg is one of the founders of Generation 2 Generation (G2G)

G2G is an organisation that supports and encourages second and third generation descendants of Holocaust Survivors to retell the experiences of their parents or grandparents.

G2G aims to raise awareness of the Holocaust and to create empathy especially amongst young people. They "want to challenge all forms of discrimination and prejudice and create a greater understanding of the plight of refugees."

G2G wants "to combat Holocaust denial and promote greater tolerance of "the other."

"We must not lose sight of in our current political and social situation, in which antisemitism and other forms of racism are once again a threat - one that can be best combated in the long term by education." Generation 2 Generation

Naomi Blake (1924 - 2018), neé Zissi Dum, was born in Mukacevo, Czechoslovakia to a large Jewish family within a thriving Jewish population.

When Anita was nine years old her mother told her the appalling story of what had happened to her in Auschwitz.

Unsurprisingly, the memory of what she had been told had a lasting effect on the child and now Anita is one of the founder members of Generation 2 Generation (G2G)

Anita's work is "principally optimistic and positive. It stands determinedly to help keep alive the legacy of the six million slaughtered Jews, as well as promoting Naomi's vision for uniting faiths, building understanding between religions and her hopes for the future."

SPEAKER RUTH BARNETT MBE
Here is a link to Naomi Blake's sculptures: http://www.naomiblake.co.uk/

Ruth Barnett MBE came to the UK as part the Kindertransport rescue movement.came to King's to give a lecture about the Holocaust.
WEDNESDAY 5TH FEBRUARY 1.30PM
Dr Ruth Barnett came to England at age four on the Kindertransport in 1939. In her talk, she focused on and asked a.)"Why has Holocaust commemoration since 2001 and Holocaust education in the National Curriculum since 1991 failed so far a)to curb the repeated rise of Jew-hatred and racism and b) to bring genocide perpetrators to justice in the International Criminal Court

The event was filmed and we will soon share the footage on here as well as the many pictures. Please note that our website is currently being re-designed and we will soon be able to share all footage and pictures from our events.

Remembering and Understanding Genocide - speakers, including some survivors, of different genocides came to King's for this important lecture.

Michael Bankole chaired this event. More information to follow soon. ​​

The event was filmed and soon we will share the footage on here. Please note that our website is currently being re-designed and we will soon be able to share all footage and pictures from our events.

OCTOBER 2019
AMMA ASANTE Q&A AT BUSH HOUSE

AKALA GIVES A LECTURE AT KING'S

& WE LEARN ABOUT
THE 'BRITISH MARTIN LUTHER KING JR'

Read about here

AKALA AT KINGS 16TH OCTOBER 2019
Read all about it - click here

The School of Politics & Economics, the Department of HIstory and King's Race Equality Network teamed up to host a lecture by author, historian, Bafta and MOBO-award winning social scientist, Akala on the 16th October 2019.

Akala gave a lecture on Natives; Race & Class in the Ruins of Empire .

School of Politics & Economics PGR student Michael Bankole introduced Akala and moderated the q&a session after the lecture.

Students and staff from the Faculty of Arts & Humanities, Faculty of Social Science, Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine, Facullty of Natural and Mathematical Sciences, Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing & Midwifery, Dentristy, School of Law and the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychilogy & Neuroscience, all signed up for the event (over 1000 people tried to secure a place at this lecture, unfortunately we do not have an audotorium large enough for that number of people).

Everyone who attended was able to purchase copies of Akala's book and speak with him after the lecture.

Student engagament during the q&a session was high for this event.

Some of the topics Akala covered during his lecture and q&a session included: politics, history, race, representation, discrimination, immigration, education and youth engagement.

The lecture inspired King's student MICHAELA TRANFIELD'S blog:

"I never once thought that I would feel stupid speaking to him about some of the issues he raises in his book, even though he has a wealth of knowledge about them. The reason behind this is because Akala spoke in such a genuine and accessible way. He made huge theoretical frameworks and sociological theory become simple for everyone, from no matter what degree or social background they came from, so that they could understand it too. And this is why there was a wide range of people from different backgrounds in the audience; from first years who had just started of, to people studying sciences and others focusing their dissertation on the topics Akala raised"
TO READ THE FULL BLOG BY MICHAELA, CLICK HERE
WE WANT TO THANK

AKALA for coming to King's. It meant so much to so many students and staff across the many different departments here at King's. Students from every single department/institute/faculty signed up and we received so many messages from many, all saying how much this lecture meant to them and how much they have wanted a lecture like this at King's. Our network has not run an event that has had people sign up to it as quickly as this one. Thank you also so so much to Mariama.

STUDENTS - All the students who attended the event. Thank you for coming. We were so happy so many of you came to the event. We work very hard to put these events together and it is so great when people give up their evenings and join us and stay sometimes late into the evening. Thank you for also really engaging in the q&a session and being such great participants.

VOLUNTEERS - We also want to thank all the VOLUNTEERS that gave so many hours of their time to help us put on this event. They all have fulltime jobs and organising these events is like another fulltime job and it is really demanding. Volunteers don't really get the chance to sit and enjoy the events fully because they are so busy making everything happen. On the 16th October volunteers ran around all night setting up backstage, setting up the onstage requirements, ushering large numbers of audiences, sorting and confirming sign ups and allocating seats, responding to all the emails and all the queries, checking name lists, liaising with security, sorting all the unexpected technical problems and they did all this to ensure that students could enjoy the event and get the most out of it, that was their goal. These are staff members who care so much.
SO BIG BIG BIG THANK YOU TO:
Hakim Kahtan - Bush House Reception

Michael Bankole - PGR student & REN Committee Member

Chloe Humphreys - Student Experience Officer

Owen Etwaroo - Student Experience Officer

Michelle Campbell - Business Support Administrator

Charlotte Woodward - Programme Officer

Rebecca Brown - Events Officer & REN Committee Member

Carla Choppy - Engineer

Jermaine Edwards - Programme Officer

Afiya Williams - Senior Programme Officer

Julia Stepowska - Communications Officer

MENTORS, SUPPORTERS & COLLEAGUES - We also want to really thank all the people who supported this event/supported our network/mentored us/made time for us anytime we knocked on their doors:

Professor Jeremy Jennings

Professor Evelyn Welch

Professor Jonathan Grant

Jessica Cotton

Syreeta Allen

Sarah Mander

Alison Farr

Sarah Guerra

Lilian Andoh

Matt Perry

Giulia Scarantino

Tracy Douglas

Hannah Nevitt

Joanna Pauk

Cristina Martin Innamaa

King's Security Team

Kelvin Sang

Giulia Scarantino

Mathew Perry

Kyla Jardine

Leigh Harrison

Louise Owen
Thank you From Whitney Robinson (former co-chair) & Jenny Agha & VJ Sidhu
Race Equality Network Co-chairs

AMMA ASANTE FILM SCREENING
AND Q&A 17TH OCTOBER 2019
Read all about it - click here

King's Race Equality Network teamed up again with the School of Politics & Economics to host a screening of the film WHERE HANDS TOUCH followed by a q&a session with Bafta-winning Film Director & Writer Amma Asante MBE.

Students and staff were able to experience a high cinema-quality version of the film on a big screen (we were given a special format of the film so that everyone at King's could experience the film to the highest standards). The film tells the story of a 'biracial' German girl who lived in Germany when the Nazis occupied the country. The powerful story is inspired by the many true stories of 'biracial/mixed race/interracial' children (who had white European and Black African parents) living in Germany at the time.

With all our events we aim to give our talented students and colleagues, especially those who might not normally be given the opportunity to lead on events and projects, the chance to take centrestage. This way we end up discovering so much incredible talent in our very midst and we form valuable working relationships which allow us to put on meaningful events. First year, undergraduate student Michael Wilson, wrote and delivered the introduction for the q&a session with Amma Asante MBE, which Senior Lecturer in Political Economy Dr Christel Koop chaired.

The topics Amma covered included: gender, politics, history, race, representation, racism, sexism, discrimination and immigration to name but a few. We will share the amazing q&a session here soon. We have been redesigning our website and soon we will be able to share all the pictures and footage from our events.

WE WANT TO THANK

AMMA ASANTE MBE - We really want to THANK Amma Asante for taking time from her incredibly busy schedule to come to our university. She answered the very many questions our King's audience had for her and she gave our students and staff her full attention and the chance to engage in meaningful conversation. Students who attended enjoyed the opportunity of listening and talking to her and they reported the following: Amma is one of the most wise, inspirational, insightful, powerful, empowering, elegant and graceful teachers we have had the honour of learning from - Our network and King's family feels so priviledged and honoured that she made time for us. Thank you for making the powerful films you make.

CHARLIE HANSON - We also want to very much thank Charlie Hanson for giving us time from his incredibly busy schedule. We are so grateful to him for making the screening and q&a possible for us. Our students and staff were able to experience a high-quality version of the film thanks to him. It was such an honour meeting him.

DR CHRISTEL KOOP - We want to thank Dr Christel Koop for supporting not only this event but for supporting our network as a whole and what we are trying to accomplish. She is so busy but anytime we knock on her door, she makes all the time for us. We are so lucky to work with an academic of her calibre and accomplishments.

MICHAEL WILSON - We want to thankMichael Wilson, who is a first year undergraduate student and has blown us away with how amazing he has been in presenting at various events for us. We want to thank him for taking part in this event, working so hard on all the Black History Month projects and being such an inspirational student.

STUDENTS - We want to thank all the AMAZING students who attended this event. It was so great to see how many students participated and fully engaged in the q&a session. They made the event wonderful to be a part of. We are making the q&a session available on this webpage soon.

VOLUNTEERS - We also want to thank again all the volunteers who helped us put on this event and all the Black History Month events. You are so amazing so BIG THANK YOU again to:

Hakim Kahtan

Chloe Humphreys - Student Experience Officer

Owen Etwaroo - Student Experience Officer

Michelle Campbell - Business Support Administrator

Charlotte Woodward - Programme Officer

Rebecca Brown - Events Officer & REN Committee Member

Carla Choppy - Engineer

Jermaine Edwards - Programme Officer

Afiya Williams - Senior Programme Officer

OUR MENTORS, SUPPORTERS & COLLEAGUES - we also want to thank the following mentors, supporters and colleagues for all their support, guidance and time:

Professor Jeremy Jennings

Professor Evelyn Welch

Professor Jonathan Grant

Jessica Cotton

Syreeta Allen

Sarah Mander

Alison Farr

Sarah Guerra

Lilian Andoh

Matt Perry

Giulia Scarantino

Kelvin Sang

Tracy Douglas

Hannah Nevitt

Joanna Pauk

Cristina Martin Innamaa

King's Security Team

Kelvin Sang

Giulia Scarantino

Mathew Perry

Jennifer Allman

Kyla Jardine

Leigh Harrison

Louise Owen
Thank you From Whitney Robinson (former co-chair) & Jenny Agha & VJ Sidhu Race Equality Network Co-chairs

DR HAROLD MOODY
"Britain's Martin Luther King Jr"
23rd October 2019
click here

KING'S STUDENT ABIGAIL OYEDELE SPOKEN WORD PERFORMANCE

Harold Moody: A King's College Hidden History Reclaimed
The Peckham physician 'who ought to be thought of as Britain's Martin Luther King

On the 23rd October, King's Race Equality Network with anti-racism activist and BBC filmmaker, Marc Wadsworth presented an evening celebrating the previously hidden history of Great Black Briton Dr Harold Moody.

Dr Moody, a champion for race equality and founder and president of the League of Coloured Peoples, moved from his home in Kingston, Jamaica to London in 1904 to study medicine at King's, qualifying in 1910 and finishing top of his class.

The event was opened by Prof. Evelyn Welch, followed by a performance by King's student, Civic Leadership Academy Scholar and spoken word artist, Abigail Oyedele with her poem 'Double Vision', reminding the audience that 'Black history is history that has received the gift of sight'.

Emeritus Professor David Killingray, who is currently writing a biography of Dr Moody, then gave an overview of his life and achievements, underscoring his profound Christian faith as a Deacon, lay preacher and member of the London Missionary Society and its impact on his political activity and activism.

The League of Coloured Peoples was a major Black lobby and had a significant impact on the progress of civil rights in the UK in the 1930s and 40s, and had the stated objectives to "improve relations between races"; "to interest members in the welfare of coloured peoples in all parts of the world"; "to co-operate and affiliate with organisations sympathetic to coloured people"; and "to provide financial assistance to coloured people in distress as lies within our capacity".

In this capacity, Dr Moody employed all forms of lobbying of the government, sending many letter to the then home secretary, and to the secretary of state for colonies, as well as to the Prince of Wales, and The Times of London newspaper, a paper trail that Professor Killingray has been documenting for his forthcoming book next year.

As a doctor, Dr Moody worked all across London, regularly facing prejudice from those who would not be attended to by a black doctor. After many years of practive, he started his own clinic in Peckham in 1932. The house where Moody lived at 164 Queen's Road, Peckham, now has a blue plaque dedicated to him that was erected in 1995 by English Heritage, and in 1999 Dr Harold Moody Park was opened in Nunhead.

Marc Wadsworth then continued on from Professor Killingray, providing further detail into Moody's life. Born into a working-class family in Jamaica, his parents had bold ambitions for their children and sent Harold and his siblings to the UK to study. Harold's brother Ron also studied at King's, graduating in dentistry before becoming a sculptor. A bust of Harold made by Ron Moody sits in the National Portrait Gallery today.

We had the immense privilege of being joined by Dr Moody's granddaughter Jackie that evening, who gave some family reflections. Although he had already passed before she was born, Moody's faith, strength and passion for accessible healthcare has continued through the family. Jackie herself, has worked as a registered nurse for 40 years and has recently moved to management within the NHS.

Following the speakers, a panel including Marc Wadsworth, Sarah Guerra (Director of Diversity & Inclusion) and King's alumni, Sharon Akaka-Onokaye (BA History) and Tobi Esan (EMPD) spoke about black role models, the white-washing of education and particularly history, the preservation of black history, the intersections of race and class and what we can all do to promote the progress of race equality.

By Sarah Mander

WE WANT TO THANK
Dr Harold Moody's family
We also want to thank Professor Evelyn Welch for chairing this event

We also want to thank you all the panellists

Marc Wadsworth

Professor Evelyn Welch

Sarah Guerra

Sharon Akaka-Onokaye

Tobi Esan - for taking part in this

Abigail Oyedele - We also want to thank Abigail for her powerful spoken work performance

King's Diversity & Inclusion team

India Jordan

Sarah Mander
Thank you From Whitney Robinson (former co-chair) & Jenny Agha & VJ Sidhu
Race Equality Network Co-chairs

MORE INFORMATION COMING SOON - We are redesigning our website. Soon we will be able to share more information, photos and footage from our events.

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King's College London - Race Equality Network

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If you are troubled by the recent events and would like to leave a message of support and solidarity for your colleagues, THE PURPOSE of King's Race Equality Network (REN) is to promote and advance race equality at King's! As a network we value the importance of building a community that embraces relational power, transparency, knowledge sharing, respect and equality.

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Anti-Racism Resources & An Author Special with Candice Brathwaite (The Hi Low podcats)

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Anti-Racism Resources & An Author Special with Candice Brathwaite (The Hi Low podcats)

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This podcast is focused on the resources that can be accessed to get educated on racism. These lists are not exhaustive but may provide a starting point. There is also an interview with the creator of Make Motherhood Diverse, Candice Brathwaite, about her searing new book "I Am Not Your Baby Mother.

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This week's episode is focused on the resources we can access to educate ourselves on racism. These lists are not exhaustive but may provide a starting point. We also interview the creator of Make Motherhood Diverse, Candice Brathwaite, about her searing new book I Am Not Your Baby Mother.

thehighlowshow@gmail.com
Non-Fiction
Why I Am No Longer Talking To White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge

I Am Not Your Baby Mother by Candice Brathwaite

White Fragility by Robin Diangelo

Between The World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

How To Be Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi

The Good Immigrant compiled by Nikesh Shukla

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

Women Race and Class by Angela Davis

White Rage by Carol Anderson

Brit-ish by Afua Hirsch

My Name Is Why by Lemn Sissay

Slay In Your Lane by Elizabeth Uviebinené & Yomi Adegoke

A Burst of Light by Audre Lorde

Don't Touch My Hair by Emma Dabiri

Taking Up Space: The Black Girls Manifesto For Change by Chelsea Kwakye & Ore Ogunbiyi

Me and White Supremacy by Layla F Saad

Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall

Natives: Race & Class in the Ruins of Empire by Akala

Aint I a Woman: Black Women & Feminism by bell hooks

Why You Need To Stop Saying "All Lives Matter" by Rachel Elizabeth Cargle for Harper's Bazaar https://bit.ly/3gG8rgq

Ibram X. Kendi's reading list for The New York Times https://nyti.ms/3gKL8lH
Fiction
Beloved by Toni Morrison

The Colour Purple by Alice Walker

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi-Adichie

Such A Fun Age by Kiley Reid

Ordinary People by Diana Evans

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

On Beauty and White Teeth by Zadie Smith

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Citizen: An American Life by Claudia Rankine
Social media
@theconsciouskid

@taranaburke

@galdemzine

@tamikadmallory

@privtoprog

@blklivesmatter
Donate
George Floyd's Memorial Fund

Black Lives Matter

Black Protest Legal Support UK

Liberty

Stop Hate UK

The Stephen Lawrence Trust

The Innocence Project

Show Racism The Red Card

Black Visions Collective
Mentorship
Routes

Girls Out Loud

Fluid
Kids resources diversebooks.org
Raising White Kids by Jennifer Harvey

All Are Welcome by Alexandra Penfold

Brad Meltzer's Ordinary People Can Change The World series on Rosa Parks & Harriet Tubman

A Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats
Other links
Petition to update GCSE reading list https://bit.ly/2U6foOl

1619 podcast by The NY Times

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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Anti-Racism Resources & An Author Special with Candice Brathwaite | The High Low on acast

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This week's episode is focused on the resources we can access to educate ourselves on racism. These lists are not exhaustive but may provide a starting point. We also interview the creator of Make Motherhood Diverse, Candice Brathwaite, about her searing new book I Am Not Your Baby Mother.

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Reni narration: Welcome to About Race with Reni Eddo-Lodge.

In the aftermath of any kind of public conversation about racism, a question is born. It happens online and off. It happens between friends, and between strangers. Here's a couple of examples, from a quick browse of social media.
'As a white person, what can i do to help race relations?' 'What can i do as a white evangelical to help my brothers and sisters feel more accepted in a majority white church?'
Now My readers of colour are more concerned with how to cope, rather than what to do. But 'what can i do' is something my white readers ask me a lot.

It was a question put to me last year by self confessed posh podcasters Pandora Sykes and Dolly Alderton, on their wildly popular podcast, the High Low show.
High Low intro Pandora: It's now time for our first ever author special with Reni Eddo-Lodge who has now joined us in our studio Reni: Hello, thanks for having me. Dolly: I'm going to be one of those awful, earnest white people that you talk about in that final chapter, and ask the question that's probably been posed to you a million times, which is: whst can we do as white people to help end racism? Because i know something that you say in that final chapter that really struck a chord is you said there's no point, white people, wallowing in guilt and and self flagellation because that does absolutely nothing in terms of progression. So what would you say? What advice would you give? Reni: well, I don't know where you hold influence in your life. I don't know your friends, i don;t know the extent of your jobs, i don't know where you can assess where the institutional racism is really taking hold in your sector, what you as individuals can attempt to do to try and change that. I'm in no position to tell you how both of your lives can try and change the problem. I've spent many many years thinking about this, and fewer years writing about it, and i think i've done a decent job of assessing the problem. But in terms of where you hold influence in your lives? In order to attempt to overcome the problem, only you can diagnose that.
Reni narration: I know it comes from a good place, but I can't stand the what can we do question. I think the Queensland Aboriginal activists group put it best: "If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together."

It's all about solidarity.

Dolly: I've actually always been really annoyed at myself at how I phrased that question since we did the interview. It was in reference to a brilliant bit near the end of the book when Reni describes how earnest white people ask her that all the time, then gives some examples of how we can use our privilege to make change and call out racism - but I said it clumsily and seemed demanding/imperious. I learnt from my mistake and obviously it's important to highlight.

Reni narration: I don't think Dolly should be too hard on herself. I can understand why this question is asked. Taking on a huge global inequality is an intimidating prospect. Even just learning about it can be profoundly discomfiting. So what can we do? There has to be something more productive than just arguing with people on the internet, or wallowing in guilt.

I asked two people who have decided to DO something what they've learnt on their journeys. I don't think it's a coincidence that their work centres around one of the most urgent humanitarian failures of our time- the refugee crisis.

Ra'ed Khan's day job is in the music industry. He's also the founder an organisation named Road to Freedom. We chatted over Skype.

Ra'ed: Hello, Oh hi Reni sorry I can hear you now. How it started I guess was I just went into work like every other day. It was in September 2015 and I'm just reading like news articles and I just happened to come across this image, it was a very disturbing image, it's something that's never taken out of my head, it's always on my mind and I always think of it when I'm...even on a day to day basis. It was of a 3-year-old Syrian toddler names Aylan Kurdi and his body was washed up on a beach in Turkey. When I saw it I didn't think it was even real. I just thought maybe it was something like, you know it was a movie scene. Then I started thinking are they even allowed to show children like, like dead like that in movies and then when I started reading up about it I was like wow this is like real life, like and then immediately I just felt stupid like how can I not know that this is what's been happening. I ran out of the office, I rang my sister just and just burst out crying in tears and like what is going on. And then she started educating me further and this sort of things been happening since 2011 and telling me about the Arab Spring and people have been fleeing Syria, Iraq all over trying to get to Europe for safety and I just felt honestly like an idiot, I just felt so stupid I'd been in my music industry bubble and when there's real stuff actually happening out there in the world and I just asked her like how can we help? And then she told me that that there was a camp in France called The Jungle which I hate saying but it was referred to as The Jungle when it existed at the time and there were many many people from all over Africa and Asia and middle east who were just living in these dire conditions so we can help them and after she said that I literally started researching and put a GoFundMe link up for a thousand pounds to, to raise to get the aid and then once we hit the target we purchased food items, sat there in my living room for a few days making the food parcels and we head out to the camp and yeah distributed it amongst the refugees.

Just even growing up when you see images like that, like you just think, oh I can never help. And just finding out that there's actually a camp literally next door to us, like in France and like people can go there and give them aid and I was just thinking why not? Like why don't we, instead of just thinking, oh we can't really do anything to help these people, some people are just like that in the world. Why not just actually say I'm just gonna try and do something. And then going there and meeting them and being like oh my God, just seeing them, even just spending a few hours with them and giving them the aid and just seeing that how much it helps, it just, it just fuelled even further, I was like, I'm never going to stop helping them. I don't want this to be just a one off good deed. So that's when Road to Freedom came about.

Reni narration: I was curious to know how many people Road to Freedom has reached.

Ra'ed: I'm proud to say, not just me, but the whole entire team that we've from, from start for fundraising to actually making parcels to actually...I want to thank everyone because people we have reached it's in the thousands, and the countries we've visited like include like all of the Greek islands from mainland Greece, Athen[inaudible] to Serbia, Macedonia, Germany and yeah And now we've also started actually getting aid inside conflict zones in Somalia as well as Syria, um, through teaming up with other charities who are on the ground. It was overwhelming at first and the thing, even now I will always say I wish I did really understand the sort of, the magnitude of was entering at the time. I mean I don't regret it because although there's been some very disturbing things I've seen, I'm kind of glad that I'm really started to understand this is the reality of the world.

Reni narration: I asked Ra'ed what he'd seen.

Ra'ed: Things like just children with bullet wounds all over their bodies, scars, amputee kids. Just as, when the borders closed it was even harder because you had to stop the suicides from happening. Just, we, we met babies who are born on train tracks literally the day before when we, we were actually on the abandoned train tracks on the border of Greece and Macedonia, giving them aid. The elderly just like so ill, but still traveling through countries and this after a while you take each story back with you, when you get back home and you try to get on with your day to day job and it's it's very difficult to just adapt back to your first World problems where you just left literally a refugee camp the night before.

Reni narration: I was curious to know if he'd seen racism affect this kind of aid work.

Ra'ed: Yeah, I mean, the connotations of the jungle, yeah it's ridiculous and I'm I'm not sure even where the term came from, it was from like the the sort of the racists and the locals that were living in Calais or if it was the sort of even the racist politicians in Calais I'm not sure where it came from but I always refused to say it at the time but in terms of even like when I see it in the media people referred to it as that it just really bothers me that they used that word. So with the camp in Calais it was quite segregated in terms of what countries you're from. They would have like their own sort of like sections and with the flag of the country that they're from in there. And when we had started going there going towards like the African countries, first they would look at me sort of surprised that like, like why are you here? And I used to look back like why are they giving me a sort of surprised look and then I remember this man speaking to me he's like thank you for giving us the aid and I looked at him like don't say thank you at all like why? And he was like oh because many volunteers come over and they, from Europe and like America and they just want to help the Syrians or the Iraqis and it's like they choose who to give the aid to and that really was very unsettling to hear that. That they just get overlooked because and I don't know how...it's just, it's just disgusting that people could actually go there and choose and be selective of where the aid goes to and that' yeah, I mean that was really really, very very tough to see that was going on inside the camps.

Reni narration: Ra'ed is really passionate about respecting the humanity of those who have been displaced and he wants that to be evidenced in the donations given to him for aid.

Ra'ed: A weird donation or a crazy donation we've received in terms of like clothing, I mean like from stilettos to like certain toys which I won't mention on this podcast. I mean I guess it's a case some people do see it as a thing where it's like an opportunity to clean out the cupboard and then put it in a bag and hand over, although i really do appreciate the giving but at the same time it adds up more work for the volunteers as well as I wouldn't especially when it's like full of clothes with holes or stains on them I do put out there like please, we want to restore some dignity back to these people, please give them what you would wear yourself. I mean they were wearing better clothes than us before they fled their homes, they had even better lives than some of us so like let's not try like take that away from them and by just giving oh it's still clothes so they can wear it if it's got holes in them. I don't like that side of it.

I think this sort of stuff does require long term sort of commitment. I don't think me going there with like food parcels, although it's like needed at that time and there's more further like I realised after the first time doing it the long term support is really needed. Yeah and I'm grateful that the charity's in a position now that we can provide that. I do disagree that, I mean, it's great if you can make food parcels but don't just come to see what it's like for your own sort of like knowledge. It's it's just, they're not animals, it's not a zoo. They are humans and they're fighting for survival, like please respect that and let them as I said before restore some dignity back to them. When they queue up for food they're very very embarrassed, some don't even look you in the eye when they take the food parcels off you and they had beautiful lives before. They were doctors and nurses, they were dentists, they are very educated people so any sort of misconceptions people have about refugees it's like they're not true. They're exactly like you and me, there's no difference they're human.

Reni narration: So what does he think that we can do?

Ra'ed: I think a lot of people forget that this is actually happening in Europe. This is like getting like a Ryanair and Easyjet flight out to like Germany, which is like what, an hour and a half flight or to Greece, which of the three hour flight it's not that difficult and what I what I always would advise anyone else who wants to go out to help people like in fleeing wars is make contact with charities on the ground, work with them they know exactly the situation's always changing, the needs are always changing, there's not always the same. Especially it was very noticeable when the borders were open and then when Europe closed their borders. The situation changed drastically and even the needs. So in the beginning it was immediate aid but now it's more sort of long term. Like in terms of where they don't need accommodation they need like medical support, they need legal advice. So it's even the charities sort of adapted to the needs of the refugees.

I always say do your research like before you even if you if it involves heading out to places do your research before you go . Make contact with other people that are doing similar things there already or team up with people, there's strength in numbers always. Don't ever think that your voice is not strong enough like I, when I first started I genuinely, when I was crying at my desk after seeing the picture I had no clue that this was going to turn into something that would impact my entire life, my family, my friends life but even I'm going to continue to do this until the day that I die. I had no clue that even anyone else cared until I put it out there and everyone who came to help has helped and if you really believe in it it will happen and you can make a change.

Reni narration: I first came across Gabby Edlin's work via the feminist community. Her charity, Bloody Good Period, strikes at the intersection of feminism, migration, race, and injustice.

Gabby: Bloody Good Period collects periods supplies for asylum seekers and refugees and we distribute them to around 13 drop-in centres in London and Leeds.

Reni: It seems a bit niche, period suppliers. How did this come about?

Gabby: So I think the very reason because it seems niche is why is why I set it up. I was volunteering at an asylum seeker drop in center and it became apparent that they weren't collecting period supplies and I don't think it was through any sort of active discrimination or you know refusal to sort of look after women, but I think it was very much something that we just don't talk about and it just hadn't been considered 00:51 and so when I asked if that was something that we should be collecting, I was told, oh we do, but you know, we give them out in an emergency or we give them out when the women ask for them. Both of those scenarios just appalled me because I thought the first point is what does an emergency look like? Does someone have to bleed on the floor for you to take them seriously and give them a sanitary towel and the second one about it being, you know, women going up and asking for them. A woman might ask for once but she's not going to go every single month and say can I have another, sorry, can I have another pad? And in addition to that, a lot of asylum seekers, because of the trauma, they've been through report having really heavy periods or really irregular periods. So it's obviously something that is on people's minds constantly but isn't being something that's taken care of because I think we see the person who needs help or the sort of aid victim in inverted commas as a default male and I think that is how we've been operating at these drop-in centres. So I see periods suppliers as essential as food.

Reni narration: I asked Gabby why she took up this cause.

Gabby: As a Jewish woman, a lot of our community and ancestry is sort of rooted in asylum and people being moved around from place to place and so it's really important for me and for my friends and family to be making sure that the people who are going through this now get our support because we will have, you know, my grandparents, my great grandparents would have benefited from the support of Britain 02:44 I hope, you know, how much I don't know, but I feel like it's incredibly important. And also I believe in a right to safety and it doesn't even feel like a political belief it just feels like the right thing to do but I guess it is a political belief that I believe that everybody who is seeking asylum needs to be given a fair understanding and a way of living that is fair and considered and not as some sort of punished prisoner. And so the synagogue that I was helping out with the drop-in centre just felt like the right thing to do. And then obviously my real fundamental belief in gender equality and that there were just these women whose basic human rights were not being taken care of or not being considered maybe not taking care of but not being considered. They weren't receiving any extra money, you know, asylum seekers are on 37 pounds a week and that is it. They're not allowed anything else. There's no recourse to public funds. They're not allowed to work, their volunteering time is even limited. So to spend, you know, if you have a really heavy periods to spend around 10 pounds a month, if not more, probably more 20 pounds a month on pads it's just going to be something that just gets left to the bottom of the pile.

Reni: How did you go about in a practical way, setting up what has now become a Bloody Good Period?

Gabby: all I did, the initial thing was I put a post on facebook, not even a public post. It was literally, it's my friends and family saying I'm collecting pads for um, this asylum seeker drop in can anyone send me them. I set up an Amazon wish list and they just came flooding in. I expected to get, I mean my, my dad gave me a tenner to buy some. Like I thought that was what it was going to be like. I thought it was going to people like just a one off like, oh yeah, that sounds like a really lovely thing, you know, but it really just took off and like I had thousands of pads in my flat by the end of the month 09:13 and like that was sort of how it just continued. It was just a facebook post and then obviously I think I started to realise it was becoming something and that it could become something that could have an impact. So that's when I started branding it and really sort of thinking about like the core message that I wanted bloody good to have. It started up pretty rapidly, so it's been going for over a year and then this year we'll become a charity, properly, which is quite exciting.

Reni: Do you know like the number of women that you've provided period products to since then?

Gabby: I think it's around 2000, but then we also give to men as well. So we do provide toiletries as well, so that's probably another thousand. And then there's children too, so we'll do like children's toothbrushes and stuff. I think all in all we probably give to about 2,500 people a month.

Reni narration: I was interested in knowing how the charity avoids being patronising to the people they serve.

Gabby: we've been working on our constitution for the charity and we were sort of talking about how do we name the people who receive the products and we were like, well they're not beneficiaries because we don't get to say if they benefit, you know, in some of the drop-ins they're called clients, that's quite nice and it's also just so much more respectful than, i don't know like victims or something that I've, other types of things that I've heard before. Victims of period poverty. We just say the people we work with and it is very much where we listen to what they ask us.

It's a very much a case of you tell me what you want. We're going to do our best to get it. And actually the products that we've been receiving and purchasing now are almost completely different from a year ago. You know, even just with sanitary towels alone and people were sending, well meaningly, really cheap ones because you could get more. But actually the women then started as they felt more comfortable around just started saying that actually these are a bit rubbish. Like Oh, it's getting a rash from this one and you know, taking sort of the more established brands and saying like actually, you know, these are the ones I prefer.

Reni narration: I've noticed a kind of paternalistic attitude towards asylum seeking women from those of us with secure migration status. I asked Gabby what she's had to deal with in that area.

Gabby: So obviously menstrual cups are a really popular product with the community of people who donate. So obviously we...

Reni: Who's that community?

Gabby: A feminist community, a middle-class feminist community probably as well. And you know, that is where sort of the Menstrual Cup popularity lies. I use one myself, you know, I'm a fan of it, but it took me a long time to get used to it. And a lot of coaching from friends and family. And there's a sort of cup evangelist vibe with them that people really believe that they are the best thing you could possibly give. And so people started both sending them to me and emailing me quite aggressively saying, why haven't you just done this? Why don't you give these to the women that you work with are so much better for them they're so much cheaper. But I mean I just suddenly, you know, agent was trying very hard to be like, OK yeah, we'll try, we'll try and give them to them. But actually we have like one minute with the people at the drop in, you know, it's really quick and I don't think they appreciate me coming over to them and saying, listen, let's talk about this product that we think is better for you. It doesn't matter if it saves the money, if it makes them feel uncomfortable because we're expecting something of them that not all of us would even expect of ourselves. I don't think that's the right way to be. Actually our priority is making sure that they're comfortable and that they're happy with what they've got. And the worst situation would be for somebody to take home a cup out of feeling like they should and actually either just chucking it out or really struggling with it.

Reni: There's a few things that you need access to, to use a cup I think.

Gabby: Absolutely you need boiling water

Reni: you need privacy, you need clean running water

Gabby: a lockable toilet. You also need a really good relationship with your vagina and not everybody does and a lot of the women that we work with have had sexual trauma. Some of had FGM. It's not really fair for us to expect everybody to have the same sort of easy relationship with their genitals that we might have in a privileged world.

Reni: You need to be living somewhere where you can comfortably boil your menstrual cup in the kitchen.

Gabby: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I mean it's as simple as that.

Reni: Even people working lucrative 9 to 5 jobs are sometimes not in the position where they can be like, oh, hi everyone I'm just boiling my cup in the...

Gabby: Yeah

Reni: on the hob or putting it in the dishwasher.

Gabby: Yeah, Exactly. And that you need to be able to have...this is the bath bathroom is mine for an hour. You know, nobody's knocking on that door. Nobody's getting crossed with me you know you need to be like not afraid that if it spills you're like, your landlord is going to come in and tell you off for being unhygienic because you've got menstrual blood on the floor, you need to be very, very comfortable in all of these situations for it to be an option and I think that it's just really got to be something that people think about before they evangelise about the best thing for what the women are like actually chats the women find out. We say, what is it you like? Oh we want the thick pads. Great. That's what you're having. We're going to get you that. And that sort of all that really matters I think.

Reni narration: Another interesting side to this is that fact that Gabby isn't black, yet the vast majority of women she works with are.

Gabby: issues with shampoo have definitely come up and that's actually was a really quick and steep learning curve for me because as a white woman I had no clue that two in one shampoos do not work for Afro Hair.

Reni: So like the shampoo and conditioner all in one?

Gabby: Yeah

Reni: Right yeah

Gabby: And basically the ones that we could get off Amazon in bulk.

Reni: And this is a problem because the majority of the women who you're giving them products to are not white.

Gabby: No they're not. Yeah. Mostly I think it's about 70 percent are not white. You know, it didn't occur to me and I'm, you know, I'm embarrassed to admit that and I didn't even sort of asked my friends about it because I hadn't even thought about the fact that it wasn't, you know, it's actually just sort of a bit of a parallel to the sanitary towels because I just hadn't thought about it. So one of the women in the...after over a year that we'd been giving out these like pretty average shampoos, said to me, you know, we could do with their shea butter and I was just like, oh you idiot Gabby, like they've been taking it every month because they've been made to feel as asylum seekers that they don't get to ask for the things that they deserve and what's the point in giving someone something that's either just going to get chucked or it's just going to make them feel worse about themselves. So really quickly we started to implement much more demand for afro hair products and we're still sort of, there's nothing like a push back, but it's still, I think shifting people's perceptions of...whereas you might have sent us the pads that you like and the pads that you feel familiar with and that's something that you enjoy sending actually take a bit of time to check what the best products are. I mean people do send us half empty toiletries sometimes and I find that really, really upsetting.

Reni: Why do you think they're doing that?

Gabby: Because people are selfish occasionally? I should say, the amount of amazing donations we have is incredible and people are brilliant and I think everybody who already is familiar with bloody good will know that they're not that person that I'm talking about, but yeah, we get half empty toiletries because people think it's a dumping ground. I think there is still this white saviourism in many of us that thinks that whatever we give they will be grateful for and that is a really toxic way of thinking. You know, it still happens from really well, meaning people who really think the best thing for these women is this stuff that I use. The best thing for these women is this. I think it's better. I would rather they used these products and it just shows an utter lack of respect. You should not have to feel grateful for any of these things and sometimes we do get asked like, you know, what's the response from, you know, the people at your table, at your sanitary table as though it should be like, oh thank God you thought of me and it's not, and if it was ever like that, it would be embarrassing. It needs to be that you pick it up because that's what you do. That's what you do in boots. That's what you're do in Superdrug. You don't go crying to the till in superdrug saying, thank God you thought of me and I think that is something that we really need to start really trying to crush in this activism sector that especially in sort of aid and in charity, is that you, you're lucky if you're getting anything at all.

Reni narration: Gabby and Ra'ed might seem like exceptional individuals, but i think what they've done is actually very much within all of our reach. they've started small scale movements. Setting up something is a part of being something bigger. They're two ordinary people who incorporate an anti racist perspective into their wider work. Proving you that don't need loads of money and it doesnt need to be your full time job.

Joining an already existing group is a good idea if setting up something from scratch isn't an option for you. But the joining is easy. Ensuring a group is effective is another task altogether.

I spoke about this to Matthew Bolton, the deputy director of citizens UK.

Matthew: Basically I'm a campaigner and an organiser and a writer and I'm really all about trying to give people the tools so they've got some power to change the things that they feel angry about.

Reni: What's community organising?

Matthew: It's a social change method, it's like an approach to trying to make a difference. Barack Obama was probably like the person that made it most famous. He was an organiser before he trained to be a lawyer. But community organising has got a kind of heritage in the States and here. It's the method itself kind of comes from a combination of civil rights activist campaigning methods with trade union kind of migrant trade union organising. It's got a heritage which basically about how the people get together and take on decision makers and try and win the things that they want.

Reni narration: You might already be aware of the organisation's hugely successful living wage campaign. The ask is simple: it calls on employers to pay their staff enough to live on. When the campaign started in 2001, the national minimum wage was just £3.70 an hour. Since then, the campaign has won political support, changed legislation, and seen over 2,800 businesses commit to paying their staff a living wage.

Matthew: we've never made any progress without people who have a lot to lose. Stepping up and speaking out So whether that's the cleaner in the bank you know who challenges the chairman at the AGM and calls out the injustice of the pay or the cleaner who leaves on the desk of the secretary of state asking for a meeting. You know they're risking their jobs sometimes they're risking even more than that in terms of their family and rent and house and everything but they do it in the context of a collective so we're not just asking one person to speak out, although the newspaper story is of the one person because that's the heroic story of change. They do that in the context of a campaign that's going to back them up if they, if they get in trouble and has got the backing of like a community alliance that will fight for that issue.

Reni narration: Matthew wrote this little book about community organising, called How to Resist. There was one section of it that really resonated with me -- and i think a lot of us who who wonder 'what can I do' could do with considering it.

Reni: What is the iron rule?

Matthew: The iron rule is the hardest part of the community organising rule book. It's the only real thing that is supposed to be a rule because the rest of the method, you know you try and build power and make a difference, it's quite flexible when you apply it in different ways. But the iron rule basically says never do for others what they can do for themselves. And it's a counterbalance to that kind of do gooding paternalistic approach to trying to solve problems for people, you know. 02:44 And you can see it in so much of the charity sector and the political narrative where it's like oh you know look at these poor people with their needs and their deprived communities and us experts here are going to figure out what intricate tax credit solution will try and make their situation better. Whereas the justice response to that is to say well actually if these people had more power what is it that they could do for themselves and how do you equip them to make the change. And for example the Living Wage Campaign which isn't about some expert somewhere figuring out a better approach to tax credits is about saying people who work hard deserve to earn enough to live and not only that, they can fight for that change themselves. It's trying to stop that sense of like you know we're the experts and we're going to do it for you and actually turn it on its head and say How do people have the power and voice to actually make the change they want.

Reni: You called it the justice approach, can you expand on that?

Matthew: I mean I suppose justice as opposed to maybe kind of mercy and charity kind of experts and beneficiaries and clients and customers you know there's so much of that language used, the power imbalance is built into it. You know that you are the client or the customer or the service user or the beneficiary. And we're somehow the people who are going to help you. We did some work in the Calais, in the jungle camps with the refugee children and everybody wanted to donate things that they thought people would need. And sometimes they weren't even the right things because the baby clothes went out there but there were no babies. People wanting to donate things are going to help in that way but actually you know why were they there with them because they were fleeing from persecution and they desperately wanted to come and find safety here and just kind of giving them another blanket isn't actually going to solve the problem in the long time you know whereas in the case of this Safe Passage campaign it was about, basically we're taking the government to court right now over their failure to allow people in safety through the Dublin regulation. So there was actually a justice solution for their problem it's just that the people in power weren't allowing it to be used.

Reni: That's a really interesting example because that suggests to me some sort of critical analysis happened to work out what those child refugees couldn't do for themselves rather than responding to their immediate crisis situation.

Matthew: Yeah it wasn't from like a kind of policy research point of view either it was actually from simply asking them what they wanted as opposed to what we think they ought to ,they ought to want.

Reni: And also there's a flip in responsibility there I think, because you know of course my work is very very different and I've never been a child refugee but sometimes I feel in the what can I do question It is a tell me what to do so that I can absolve myself of responsibility from the situation.

Reni narration: Quick disclaimer here -- I think it's about absolving responsibility AND taking on responsibility. Asking me is the way to show sympathy, but also a way to deflect your own power to change things.

Matthew: Right. What they want to do and why do they want to do it? Where's it coming from? Why are they asking that question? It should really be the beginning of what they then do rather than you telling... I guess that's true yeah, who are you to tell loads of people what they ought to do. It's a strange...So what do you say when they ask?

Reni: I say, I always say I don't want to be prescriptive. I don't know you and your life. I don't know where you hold influence. I don't know your resources I don't know your skills. I can't tell you what to do. It's an awkward one I think. But I think if we care enough and we start doing the work around it then we can all feel empowered to do something.

Matthew: yeah and I think you're right about the individualisation of it. It's like what can they...If they're not part of something which is trying to make a difference on the things they care about they should probably join it. Individuals on their own can't make that much difference. I mean if they end up with a big platform and a lot of people kind of following them and listening to what they say they can but for most people the ability to make change comes from the fact that you're part of some collective, you've joined an organisation and I think you're right that there is a growing sense of this kind of individualisation and suspicion of organisations, Either that they are not effective or their motives or something but yeah I mean basically you need to join something.

Reni narration: Join something. Start something. What it might be, I don't. But I'm drawn, again, to this quote that I mentioned at the beginning of this episode.

"If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time.

But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together."

An interesting fact: This quote from the Queensland Aboriginal activists group is often attributed to the activist Lilla Watson. But she's since said that she's uncomfortable with the way it's been individualised. It wasn't just her that came up with this quote. It was a collective process.

I can't think of a better reason to keep working together.

This is the final episode of About Race with Reni Eddo-Lodge. Thank you for all your listens, downloads, and social media conversation. the support has been incredible.

If a Series two comes to be, the first place you'll hear about it will be on my social media pages. You can find me on twitter @renireni, my instagram is @renieddolodge, and my website is renieddolodge.co.uk

You can find full transcripts of every episode, as well as information on all of the books we've discussed on aboutracepodcast.com.

Oh, and the book that I wrote, the one that I've mentioning throughout this series, is Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race. You can find it in all good bookshops.

Special thanks to those who've made the podcast series what it is: Renay Richardson, Rez Marino, Kevin Morosky, Matsidiso and Isis Thompson.

Thank you all for listening.

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9. The Big Question - About Race with Reni Eddo-Lodge

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Reni narration: Welcome to About Race with Reni Eddo-Lodge. In the aftermath of any kind of public conversation about racism, a question is born. It happens online and off. It happens between friends, and between strangers. Here's a couple of examples, from a quick browse of social media.

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Glossary of frequently used terminology 

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Glossary of frequently used terminology 

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Glossary

About the Racial Equity Tools Glossary

Words and their multiple uses reflect the tremendous diversity that characterizes our society. Indeed, universally agreed upon language on issues relating to racism is nonexistent. We discovered that even the most frequently used words in any discussion on race can easily cause confusion, which leads to controversy and hostility. It is essential to achieve some degree of shared understanding, particularly when using the most common terms. In this way, the quality of dialogue and discourse on race can be enhanced.

There are two components to this page, the Racial Equity Tools Glossary below and information about Evaluation Terms ".

Language can be used deliberately to engage and support community anti-racism coalitions and initiatives, or to inflame and divide them. Discussing definitions can engage and support coalitions. However, it is important for groups to decide the extent to which they must have consensus and where it is okay for people to disagree. It is also helpful to keep in mind that the words people use to discuss power, privilege, racism and oppression hold different meanings for different people. For instance, people at different stages of developing an analysis tend to attach different meanings to words like discrimination, privilege and institutional racism. Furthermore, when people are talking about privilege or racism, the words they use often come with emotions and assumptions that are not spoken.

Many of the terms in this glossary have evolved over time. For example, given the changing demographic trends in the United States, the word "minority" no longer accurately reflects the four primary racial/ethnic groups. The terms "emerging majority" and "people of color" have become popular substitutes. Also, the terms used to refer to members of each community of color have changed over time. Whether to use the terms African American or Black, Hispanic American, Latinx or Latino, Native American or American Indian, and Pacific Islander or Asian American depends on a variety of conditions, including your intended audiences' geographic location, age, generation, and, sometimes, political orientation.;

The primary source for a definition is noted. Some definitions are paraphrased or updated.

You can download a pdf version of this glossary here: https://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/RET_Glossary_Updated_October_2019_.pdf.

Source: Project Change's "The Power of Words" Originally produced for Project Change Lessons Learned II, also included in A Community Builder's Toolkit - both produced by Project Change and The Center for Assessment and Policy Development with some modification Racial Equity Tools.org.

About Evaluation Terms

In the previous site, www.evaluationtoolsforracialequity.org, we included a glossary. For this site, we want to highlight glossaries focused on evaluation terms from various sites (below). Each covers at least some of the terms frequently used in evaluation.

One thing to note is many words that are used in evaluation have a very specific and technical meaning in that context, which may be different from their more general meaning in everyday speech. For example, in everyday speech, the words "impact" and "outcome" are both used as synonyms for "result." However, people doing or writing up evaluations may use "outcome" to describe a changed state of being (which could be the result of a program, intervention or activity) and the term "impact" to describe the amount of change that can definitely be ascribed to that particular program, intervention or activity (its net effect). Those are the more technical meanings of those terms in evaluation. Impact can usually only be determined from random assignment, because that is usually the only way to control for all the differences that cannot be directly measured. Mean, mode and median are other examples of terms sometimes interchanged in everyday speech (to mean average or typical), but which have specific and different definitions as statistical terms. These kinds of distinctions are helpful to know when describing an evaluation, and when reviewing its findings.

Please also see Tip Sheets: Reviewing Resources, and the tip sheets below for more detail about key evaluation terminology and concepts.

The evaluation glossaries can be found at:

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Words and their multiple uses reflect the tremendous diversity that characterizes our society. Indeed, universally agreed upon language on issues relating to racism is nonexistent. We discovered that even the most frequently used words in any discussion on race can easily cause confusion, which leads to controversy and hostility.

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Kimberly Seals Allers is an American author, journalist, and lactation/ parenting advocate. She has been speaking to the wide global audience about Infant feeding and inequalities. Kimberly was invited as a key speaker at the last BFI National Conference.
This last short vlog is post George's Floyd murder and is very emotive and powerful. Kimberly has presence on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.

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by Annah Psarros, Senior Policy Officer

In our new research, Mothers' Voices, Maternity Action explores the factors contributing to maternal and child health inequalities in Black and minority ethnic mothers and children from low income households. The report, based on focus groups and interviews with over a hundred women and voluntary sector workers, also examines the work of the voluntary sector to address these issues.

Although maternal and child deaths and severe morbidity are thankfully rare in the UK, some women and babies experience a higher risk. Compared to their white peers, a Black mother is four times more likely to die as a direct result of pregnancy or childbirth and a baby from a Black ethnic group is more than twice as likely to be stillborn. Smaller ethnic groups also experience inequalities - women from the Gypsy and Traveller community are known to have much worse maternal and child outcomes, as well as a higher rate of stillbirth. Why should it be that a woman and baby from a minority ethnic group are at such disadvantage compared to their white counterparts? And what can be done about this?

Although no definitive answers to this question exist, we know that Black and minority ethnic women are more likely to experience factors that affect health negatively. As part of our research, we asked 81 women in England to tell us about these issues and how they affect their own health during pregnancy and early motherhood, as well as the health of their children.

We also spoke to 20 VCSE organisations from the voluntary and community sector to tell us about the support they provide to pregnant women and new mothers who are marginalised or vulnerable.

Here is some of what we found:
Past experiences and expectations of prejudice, discrimination and poor treatment
Many women and organisations supporting them talked about negative experiences of healthcare, leading to expectations of poor treatment. This was particularly prevalent among women with a first language other than English, who felt that the language barrier made them vulnerable to prejudice and discrimination. One woman, who was an asylum seeker, told us that when she was dispersed to another part of the country during her pregnancy, not only did she struggled to connect up with maternity care in the new area, she also felt apprehensive about opening up to yet another person about her past trauma, because she was expecting to be treated without kindness or compassion.
"It's not really nice, starting again, all over again. Not like talking to someone who already knows your story. You have to start explaining again. And the person you will meet - the person is not even going to be nice! They will treat you bad."
Some of the approaches from the voluntary and community sectors included bilingual one-to-one peer-support for vulnerable pregnant women, for example accompanying the mother to her maternity care appointments, translating for her and helping her to talk about difficult issues.
Trauma, mental health and accessing support
Women from BME backgrounds are more likely than white women to have mental health problems, but less likely to have treatment for this. Several focus group participants had traumatic experiences such as violent conflict or abuse. Many had also struggled with low moods in the perinatal period. Unfortunately, healthcare professionals' monitoring of perinatal anxiety and depression was considered by many to be inadequate - a 'tick-box exercise'. Women were also worried about stigma and possible negative effects of having a mental health diagnosis. This was also true about domestic violence - women felt that opening up to healthcare professionals about both of these issues could put them at risk of losing their children.
"If she's feeling like she can't cope, she is not going to say, 'I can't cope'. Because then she is going to think that social services are going to come in and take her baby away."
VCSE approaches to mental health included holistic support targeting a range of issues affecting mental health, by providing a place to meet friends in similar situations and socialise, learn self-advocacy, get legal advice and even access a food bank - all in one place. We also heard from culturally competent, locally embedded services that linked women in with mainstream mental health support, which they may otherwise have been unlikely to engage with.
Poverty and living conditions
We heard a lot about the effects of the benefit cap and how changes to housing benefit had put many families on the brink of eviction, waiting nervously to see what would happen to them. The majority of focus group participants told us they were in privately rented accommodation as they had no hope of getting council housing.
"There are lots of mice in London. There's always some, in every house. And it's really hard to get them to sort those problems out for you. My husband puts out traps... but we can't use any poison with the kids around. And it's pretty disgusting because they run over everything."
Mothers who were outside of the mainstream benefits system due to their migration status told us about the constant dilemma of choosing whether to buy food or another much-needed item, such as a second-hand winter coat for a small child.

VCSE approaches to support with poverty and housing included benefits advice and advice and casework services for migrants without access to the mainstream social safety net, helping them to apply for alternative support in order to get out of poverty and destitution.

This project was commissioned by Public Health England to feed into the prevention strand of the Maternity Transformation Programme and carried out as part of our work in the VCSE Health and Wellbeing Alliance.

You can read the report here.

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Mothers' Voices: New report on maternal health inequalities and how community organisations can help

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by Annah Psarros, Senior Policy Officer In our new research, Mothers' Voices, Maternity Action explores the factors contributing to maternal and child health inequalities in Black and minority ethnic mothers and children from low income households.

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To read or download this Journal in a magazine format on ISSUU, please click AIMS Journal, 2019, Vol 31, No 2 By Gemma McKenzie here
In November 2018 MBRRACE-UK published a report on how many women had died in childbirth in the UK and Ireland between 2014 and 2016. It is a well-researched and important document that not only provides the statistics, but also short summaries on the circumstances in which some of these women died and recommendations for how maternity care can be improved. It is a harrowing read, not only because behind each statistic is a real woman and a motherless child, but also because there are patterns in the statistics that suggest endemic problems in our maternity system and wider society.

What does the report say?
In the two-year period included in the study there were 2,301,628 pregnancies that resulted in birth (described as 'maternities' in the report). Out of that total, 225 women died from either direct or indirect causes of pregnancy or childbirth within the first year of their baby's life.

The two main direct causes are medical in nature. The first is thrombosis (blood clots in the circulatory system) and thromboembolism (a blood clot that becomes dislodged and clogs another vessel in e.g. the brain or lungs), and the second is haemorrhage. However, the third most frequent cause of maternal death is suicide. Between 2014 and 2016, sixteen women committed suicide within the first year of their baby's life. This appalling statistic raises serious questions not only about mental health services, but also about the support available for new mothers more generally in wider society.

The researchers also considered indirect causes of death and coincidental causes. Overwhelmingly, the main cause of indirect death was cardiac disease. Frighteningly, the main coincidental cause of death was cancer, of which 102 women died. The report notes that while some women with cancer received good care, there are still areas that need improvement. Women's cancer symptoms for example, were often mistakenly considered to be common pregnancy/lactation related issues, such as mastitis, meaning women did not always receive appropriate or timely care. A second issue highlighted in the report was that medical investigations that would be offered to non-pregnant people may have been withheld from pregnant women due to concerns about the unborn baby.

Equally disturbing is that between 2014 and 2016 ten women were murdered in the first six weeks after giving birth, with a total of 14 murdered in their baby's first year of life. All of these women were murdered by their partners. Again, this indicates potential failings not only in the maternity system for women experiencing domestic abuse, but also systemic failings in wider society. Continuity of Carer may enable midwives to become better attuned to domestic abuse in a woman's life and may encourage women to confide in their health carers in order to seek support. However, this has only limited impact if women are not appropriately supported to escape abusive relationships and the criminal justice system does not adequately deal with offenders.

Women from Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities
As already noted, one of the main findings of MBRRACE was that women from BAME communities were more likely than white women to die during birth or within the first year of their baby's life. In comparison to white women, black women were almost five times more likely to die from pregnancy and childbirth related causes, and Asian women were nearly twice as likely.

Although AIMS welcomes the MBRRACE report, as an activist organisation campaigning for improvements in the maternity system, it is important that we understand why the rates of maternal death for BAME women are higher than those for white women. Until that is pinpointed it becomes difficult to actively challenge the problem and improve BAME women's outcomes. While MBRRACE is thorough and provides a lot of useful information, the report also raises many questions for which there are no adequate answers provided.

Racism
Statistics suggesting rates of maternal deaths are higher in BAME women than their white counterparts raise one important subject: Racism. People do not like talking about racism; it is the elephant in the room. It can make people - especially white people - very uncomfortable. No one likes to think of themselves as racist or acknowledge that they may be unconsciously benefiting from a racist system. It is easier to believe that racism is something overt and direct - name calling or violence - than to believe it is something that can be structurally ingrained into an institution, a system or a society.

But when we see statistics like those provided by MBRRACE we cannot deny that this looks like evidence of racism. The questions that immediately arise therefore are: Who or what is responsible for this? Where is it coming from? And how do we tackle it?

What are the causes of death for BAME women?
This is a crucial question if we are to understand exactly what is going on here. Unfortunately, MBRRACE does not provide us with enough information to adequately make links and to dig deep enough to root out the issues. This limitation means that we cannot pinpoint whether the problems lie within the maternity system, the society we live in - or both. Consequently, tackling the causes of disproportionate BAME deaths becomes a case of shadowboxing.

Responsibility
One argument that may be raised to explain the higher rates of BAME deaths is that there are physiological differences in BAME women's bodies that make their births more difficult or complicated. It is AIMS' position that this is extremely dangerous territory and it is not a view that we accept or advocate. This is explored further in this Journal by Beth Whitehead, in her article, " Diverse, not defective ".

Although in the UK we use the term 'ethnic minority' to describe people who are not white, on a global level white people are in the minority. It therefore does not hold that there is some inherent physiological problem in BAME women's bodies that creates birthing complications. Further, to peddle the argument of physiological difference feeds the narrative that white bodies are the ideal and brown or black bodies are the defective version.

As highlighted in our article " Diverse, not defective ", we know that there are examples of this presumption within the maternity system. This is something that we need to radically move away from. Acts, decisions, policies and guidelines that support the idea of racial hierarchies - even if these are unintentional and the person involved is acting with the best of intentions - need to be challenged and dismantled.

Even if after numerous robust scientific studies there could be proof that there was some pregnancy related problem that certain ethnic groups were prone to, this raises further questions. First, is that condition something which is caused or exacerbated by the way a person lives, for example, poor diet or stress? If so, we would then need to consider whether structural inequalities are playing a role in a particular ethnic group developing that condition. Second, even if a condition is found to be inherently physiological, we would have to ask whether BAME women were receiving appropriate and adequate care for that condition, and if not, why not?

Accessing antenatal care
The rates of BAME women who accessed antenatal care is not given in the report. Consequently, it cannot be presumed that BAME women were less likely to access this care and that this has contributed to their deaths. Even if the statistics were revealed and they showed that BAME women did not attend antenatal appointments, this is a potential oversimplification of what the reality may be.

While MBRRACE frequently critiques the services provided to all women and offers recommendations for improvement, the emphasis of the report is often on the characteristics of the women themselves. There is less emphasis on the characteristics of the social world around them, and the staff, department, hospital, prison or other environment in which they died. Examples of relevant information would be the staffing levels within the departments in which the deaths occurred, or the experience of the attending health care practitioners.

Returning to the idea that a disproportionate number of BAME women may not be attending antenatal care, the same problem becomes apparent. There is no exploration of whether antenatal care was accessible to women based on the distance from their home to the clinic, their access to transport or the support services in place. There is also no exploration of whether antenatal services were home delivered, or whether appointments could be made to see healthcare providers outside of 9-5 working hours. A lack of this further exploration begins to shift blame away from the system and towards the women themselves. This is therefore an unfair presumption towards all of the women who died and does not adequately explain the higher rates of BAME deaths.

Looking behind the statistics
As already highlighted, MBRRACE provides detailed statistics on maternal deaths. But if we are to focus on the causes of BAME deaths in an attempt to tackle the disproportionate number, we begin to hit blind spots. This can be demonstrated by looking at some of the statistics.

The following table highlights the ethnicity of the women who died:

A second table highlights where the women who died were born:

This data begins to paint a picture of the patterns and trends in BAME women's deaths. It is not possible to analyse all of the ethnic groups in this short article so just one group will be used to highlight the blind spots that become apparent. In Table 1 for example, the data tells us that 10% of all of the maternal deaths were of women who described their ethnicity as Black African. However, Black African people only make up just under 2% of the population of England and Wales. The rates of maternal death are therefore much higher and totally disproportionate to what may be expected given the small percentage of Black African women living in this country.

We can also see that 21 out of the 23 Black African women who died were born in Africa. The report gives us a bit more detail on where some of these women came from. Seven were from Nigeria and three from Eritrea. However, we are not provided with information about the other eleven women.

Africa is a huge place - a whole continent - and each country has its own culture, language, ethnic groups and political and social history. Being born in a particular country only gives a snapshot of a person's connection to that place. A woman may have been born in Ghana but has spent her whole life until pregnancy living in London. In contrast, another woman may have only arrived in the UK from an African country a year before she gave birth. Her migrant status may also be relevant, for example if she was an asylum seeker. The point of this is that Black African women are not a homogenous group. In other words, they cannot all be bundled together and presumed to be the same. Doing so means that we cannot trace causes - simply knowing the rates of Black African women dying does not really explain very much at all.

On a similar note, all white people are grouped together even if they are recognised as a specific ethnic group in law, such as Gypsy and Travellers, who 20 years ago were believed to have "possibly the highest maternal death rate among all ethnic groups." In 2012, the government considered Gypsies and Travellers to be "the most disadvantaged ethnic group in the UK" with a "shorter life expectancy than the rest of the population." However, we cannot see them in the MBRRACE data. Perhaps this is because there were no maternal deaths in the Gypsy and Traveller community during this time. Or perhaps it is because they have been clumped together with white women or labelled 'other.' It is important that communities such as Gypsy and Travellers are not hidden within the datasets, or we may never be able to understand and dismantle structural inequalities or tackle racism.

Cross-referencing ethnic background with other factors
What MBRRACE also does not do is to cross reference how many BAME women died of which particular cause. Arguably this may be to maintain anonymity for the women and their families. However it becomes almost impossible to decipher whether the problems BAME women are facing lie within the maternity system, outside of it or in both. The exception to this is with regards to suicide. Data is provided that tells us that 86% of the women who committed suicide were white (61 women), 10% were 'black or other minority ethnic group' (7 women) and there was missing data on 4% (3 women). Unfortunately, a group entitled 'black or other minority ethnic group' again bundles a potentially wide range of women together. It does not provide enough information for us to even start to consider what role the infrastructure of the health service and/or society may be playing in the overall disproportionate number of BAME deaths.

Similarly, the report tells us that women from the most deprived backgrounds were three times more likely to die than those from the wealthiest. But it does not provide details on which ethnic groups appeared more frequently in which socio-economic backgrounds. Just being from a particular ethnic group does not automatically signal someone's wealth, income or lifestyle. However, if there were more BAME deaths in the most deprived groups, it may be that the most influential factor in the disproportionate mortality rates does not lie within the maternity system, but in structural inequalities within our society. In other words, is it the fabric of society that puts BAME women at higher risk when they enter the maternity system or is it something that is happening within the maternity system itself?

As already mentioned, there is no information provided on ethnicity with regards to the various causes of death. The report tells us that 96% of the women who died could speak English (although the level of proficiency is not given). What this suggests is that when in the maternity setting, an inability to communicate in English does not seem to be a factor in women's deaths. However, as we do not know which ethnic groups featured in each particular cause of death, we do not know whether other factors connected to a person's ethnicity played a role in the care that they received. For example, if BAME women were more likely to die from post-operative haemorrhage, this might mean that institutionalised racism is playing a role, i.e. BAME women are being left alone, or their concerns and pain are not being taken seriously. This is not something that we can conclude as we do not have the relevant information. The problem therefore is that we cannot trace the root of the problem and begin to tackle it.

A similar issue is with regards the standard of care provided to the women who died. Notably MBRRACE provides data on the number of cases in which care was good, and the number of cases in which improved care could have made a difference to the outcome. Frustratingly, even given the conclusions that were found in relation to the rates of BAME women's deaths, this is not broken down into ethnic groups. Consequently, we have no idea whether the women whose care could have been better, included a disproportionate number of BAME women.

Another gap in the data is the geographical spread of the deaths. Do BAME women have worse outcomes in various areas of the country? What about in particular NHS trusts? Are the deaths all in urban places, or are they in rural areas, or is there no pattern at all? Again, this type of information could have helped shed some light on what exactly is going on.

Conclusions - can we draw any?
It was never the MBRRACE researchers' aim to just focus on BAME deaths, which explains the lack of further investigation, but their report has uncovered an important problem. Given that the death rates for BAME women are shockingly high in comparison to white women, this is an issue that needs urgent attention. It is impossible to see those statistics and to not consider racism - in some form and somewhere, whether direct, structural or institutional - as playing a role in the poorer outcomes for BAME women. To think that this is all down to chance is unhelpful. And to think that this is all down to some fault of the women themselves is ignorant.

The MBRRACE team has the data that would put a better spotlight on what is happening to BAME women within the UK maternity system. AIMS would urge them to dig deeper into that data (e.g. coroners' reports, the birth place setting, medications and interventions used) so as to enable further causal connections to be made, and detailed conclusions to be drawn so that targeted action can be taken. One option would be to create a supplementary report that focuses specifically on the deaths of BAME women. This would enable organisations such as AIMS, those working in the maternity system and others in wider society to begin to tackle the root causes of what appears to be systemic inequality, disadvantage and racism.

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Published on 20th July 2019

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Why are so many BAME women dying and how can we tackle it? | AIMS

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Why are so many BAME women dying and how can we tackle it?

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I would just like to express that it is really important to talk about this within the workplace, also as black midwives as well as black women within maternity care settings have their own experiences of racial disparities and inequalities. I am myself as a  black student midwife have had my own experiences of subtle racism within the hospital setting. I would love for there to come a day where these inequalities no longer exist but whilst they do it is important that we are all aware and actively work towards changing that for the better care of black women within maternity. No more racism.

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Most pregnant women admitted 2 hospital with SARS-CoV-2 were in late 2nd or 3rd trimester.  233 (56%) were black or other ethnic minority. 281 (69%) overweight or obese, 175 (41%) 35yrs or >& 145, 34%had pre-existing comorbidities.

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Most pregnant women admitted 2 hospital with SARS-CoV-2 were in late 2nd or 3rd trimester.  233 (56%) were black or other ethnic minority. 281 (69%) overweight or obese, 175 (41%) 35yrs or >& 145, 34%had pre-existing comorbidities.

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Research BMJ 2020; 369 doi: Cite this as: BMJ 2020;369:m2107 https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m2107

on behalf of the UK Obstetric Surveillance System SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Pregnancy Collaborative Group

Correspondence to: M Knight marian.knight{at}npeu.ox.ac.uk (or @Marianfknight and @NPEU_UKOSS on Twitter)

Abstract

Objectives To describe a national cohort of pregnant women admitted to hospital with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection in the UK, identify factors associated with infection, and describe outcomes, including transmission of infection, for mothers and infants.

Design Prospective national population based cohort study using the UK Obstetric Surveillance System (UKOSS).

Setting All 194 obstetric units in the UK.

Participants 427 pregnant women admitted to hospital with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection between 1 March 2020 and 14 April 2020.

Main outcome measures Incidence of maternal hospital admission and infant infection. Rates of maternal death, level 3 critical care unit admission, fetal loss, caesarean birth, preterm birth, stillbirth, early neonatal death, and neonatal unit admission.

Results The estimated incidence of admission to hospital with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection in pregnancy was 4.9 (95% confidence interval 4.5 to 5.4) per 1000 maternities. 233 (56%) pregnant women admitted to hospital with SARS-CoV-2 infection in pregnancy were from black or other ethnic minority groups, 281 (69%) were overweight or obese, 175 (41%) were aged 35 or over, and 145 (34%) had pre-existing comorbidities. 266 (62%) women gave birth or had a pregnancy loss; 196 (73%) gave birth at term. Forty one (10%) women admitted to hospital needed respiratory support, and five (1%) women died. Twelve (5%) of 265 infants tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 RNA, six of them within the first 12 hours after birth.

Conclusions Most pregnant women admitted to hospital with SARS-CoV-2 infection were in the late second or third trimester, supporting guidance for continued social distancing measures in later pregnancy. Most had good outcomes, and transmission of SARS-CoV-2 to infants was uncommon. The high proportion of women from black or minority ethnic groups admitted with infection needs urgent investigation and explanation.

Study registration ISRCTN 40092247.

Introduction

The World Health Organization declared a global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in March 2020. 1 As the number of confirmed cases increases, evidence on the transmission, incidence, and effect of SARS-CoV-2 infection in mothers and their babies remains limited. Pregnant women are not thought to be more susceptible to the infection than the general population. 2 3 However, changes to the immune system mean that pregnant women may be more vulnerable to severe infection. 4 Evidence from other similar viral illnesses, such as influenza A/H1N1, 5 6 7 8 severe acute respiratory syndrome, 9 and Middle East respiratory syndrome, 10 11 suggest that pregnant women are at greater risk of severe maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality. Some evidence suggests that the risk of critical illness may be greatest in the later stages of pregnancy. 5 10 11

To the best of our knowledge, as of 12 May 2020 more than 90 scientific reports of SARS-CoV-2 infection in pregnancy had been published in English, 2 10 12 13 none of which was population based. Most reported cases occurred in the third trimester, and around half of women gave birth during the acute infection episode. Most women were delivered by caesarean section, predominantly for maternal indication, although at least three studies reported cases of fetal distress. 13 14 15 16 17 Most women developed mild or moderate symptoms including cough, fever, and breathlessness, and only a small number developed severe disease. 15 16 18 19 20 21 Risk factors are suggested to mirror those in the general population, with a high proportion of women with severe covid-19 having a raised body mass index or comorbidities such as pulmonary conditions (25%) or pre-existing cardiac disease (17%). 15 17

Evidence suggests that severe covid-19 in pregnancy is associated with iatrogenic preterm delivery (75%), predominantly for maternal indication and in the third trimester. 17 Most neonates born to mothers with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection were asymptomatic and discharged home well. A small number of neonates had symptoms, with a minority needing admission to neonatal specialist care 14 15; only in a few instances have neonates had positive tests for SARS-CoV-2 following delivery. 22 23 24 25 Three neonates had elevated serum IgM antibodies identified shortly after birth in umbilical blood, but SARS-CoV-2 was not identified in any of these infants in the neonatal period despite testing. 23 25 These three infants had no symptoms, so the significance of vertical transmission remains unknown.

The aim of this study was to describe, on a population basis, characteristics and outcomes of pregnant women admitted to hospital with SARS-CoV-2 in the UK, in order to inform ongoing guidance and management. This study was designed in 2012 and hibernated pending a pandemic; it was activated by the UK Department of Health and Social Care as an urgent public health study in response to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

Methods

We did a national prospective observational cohort study using the UK Obstetric Surveillance System (UKOSS). 26 UKOSS is a research platform that collects national population based information about specific severe complications of pregnancy from all 194 hospitals in the UK with a consultant led maternity unit. We asked nominated reporting clinicians to notify us of all pregnant women with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection admitted to their hospital, using a live reporting link specific to each individual reporter. For the purposes of this study, we defined confirmed maternal infection as detection of viral RNA on polymerase chain reaction testing of blood or a nasopharyngeal swab, respiratory compromise in the presence of characteristic radiographic changes of covid-19, or both. At the time covered by the study, women were tested only if they had symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 infection. We defined neonatal infection as detection of viral RNA on polymerase chain reaction testing of blood or a nasopharyngeal swab or aspirate. The process of data collection was enabled by research midwives and nurses from the UK's National Institute of Health Research Clinical Research Network following its adoption as an urgent public health priority study. 27 In addition, we sent nominated clinicians a reporting email at the end of the month to ensure that all cases had been reported and to confirm zero reports (active negative surveillance). After notification, we asked clinicians to complete an electronic data collection form containing details of each woman's characteristics, management, and outcomes. Reporters who had not returned data were contacted by email at weeks one, two, and three after notification. This analysis reports characteristics and outcomes of women who were notified as admitted to hospital between 1 March and 14 April 2020 and for whom complete data had been received by 29 April 2020.

We defined body mass index on the basis of the first recorded weight in pregnancy and gestational age according to the final estimated date of delivery based on ultrasound assessment. Ethnic group was based on women's self-report, as recorded in medical records. We cross checked data on maternal and perinatal deaths with data from the MBRRACE-UK collaboration, the organisation responsible for maternal and perinatal death surveillance in the UK. 28

Sample size and statistical analysis

In this national observational study, the study sample size was governed by the disease incidence, so we did no formal power calculation. We calculated the incidence of admission to hospital with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection in pregnancy and among population subgroups by using denominator estimates based on the most recently available (2018) national maternity data for the constituent countries of the UK and National Maternity and Perinatal Audit data from 2016-17 for body mass index groups. We present numbers, proportions, and risk ratios with 95% confidence intervals. Continuous data are summarised as medians with interquartile ranges. We did a sensitivity analysis excluding women from London, the West Midlands, and the North West of England to explore the proportion of women from black and minority ethnic groups admitted with SARS-CoV-2 in pregnancy outside of the major urban centres. We used Stata version 15 for statistical tabulation and analyses.

Patient and public involvement

Patients and the public were involved in the design of the study, and, as part of the UKOSS Steering Committee, in the conduct of the study and interpretation of the result.

Results

We received responses from all 194 hospitals with obstetric units in the UK. From 1 March to 14 April 2020, 630 women admitted to hospital with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection in pregnancy were notified in the UK, among an estimated 86 293 maternities. Data were returned for 579 (92%) women; 15 were duplicate cases, 35 were reported in error, 87 had the diagnosis made as outpatients and were not admitted overnight, nine had no positive polymerase chain reaction test and no evidence of pneumonitis on imaging, and six had no evidence of infection during pregnancy, leaving 427 pregnant women admitted to hospital with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 across the UK. This represents an estimated incidence of hospital admission of 4.9 (95% confidence interval 4.5 to 5.4) pregnant women per 1000 maternities.

Women had symptoms at a median of 34 (interquartile range 29-38) completed weeks' gestation, with most women admitted to hospital having symptoms in the third trimester of pregnancy or peripartum (342/424; 81%). The most common symptoms reported by women were fever, cough, and breathlessness ( fig 1). Table 1 shows the characteristics of the women. In the sensitivity analysis excluding women from London, the West Midlands, and the north west of England, 75 (46%) of 162 women admitted were from black and minority ethnic groups. The incidence of admission with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection in pregnancy seemed to vary according to women's ethnic group, age, and body mass index ( table 2).

Two hundred and sixty six (62%) women admitted to hospital gave birth or had a pregnancy loss; the remaining 161 (38%) women had ongoing pregnancies at the time of this analysis. Forty one (10%) women needed level 3 critical care; four of these women received extracorporeal membrane oxygenation ( table 3). Of the women who received critical care, 33 (80%) had been delivered, 27 (66%) of them owing to worsening respiratory condition; eight (20%) were still pregnant. All eight (100%) of the women who were still pregnant after their critical care admission had been discharged. Nineteen (58%) of the 33 postnatal women had been discharged at the time of this analysis; three women admitted to critical care had died, and 11 (33%) were still inpatients, of whom seven (64%) remained in critical care. Overall, five women who were admitted with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 died, a case fatality of 1.2% (95% confidence interval 0.4% to 2.7%) and a SARS-CoV-2 associated maternal mortality rate of 5.8 (1.9 to 13.5) per 100 000 maternities. Three women died as a direct result of complications of covid-19 and two from other causes. In total, 25 (6%) women, 7 (28%) antenatal and 18 (72%) postnatal, were still inpatients at the time of this analysis.

Nine (2%) women were treated with an antiviral agent. Eight of them were given oseltamivir, one of whom also received lopinavir/ritonavir. One woman was given remdesivir. All women managed with antivirals were discharged home. Sixty four (15%) women were given corticosteroids for fetal lung maturation, of whom 47 (73%) had given birth. Thirteen (20%) of these 64 women remained as inpatients, 12 (92%) of whom had given birth.

Four women (0.9% of those admitted; 4.6 (1.3 to 11.2) per 100 000 maternities) had a miscarriage, at a range of 10 to 19 weeks' gestation. Of the 262 women who had given birth, 196 (75%) gave birth at term ( table 4). Sixty six women gave birth preterm; 53 (80%) had iatrogenic preterm births, 32 (48%) due to maternal covid-19, nine (14%) due to fetal compromise, and 12 (18%) due to other obstetric conditions. Fifty nine per cent of women (n=156) had a caesarean delivery, but most of the caesarean births occurred for indications other than maternal compromise due to SARS-CoV-2 infection. Forty two women (27% of those who had a caesarean birth) had a caesarean birth for reasons of maternal compromise, 37 (24%) due to concerns about fetal compromise, 30 (19%) due to failure to progress in labour or failed induction of labour, 25 (16%) for other obstetric reasons, 16 (10%) because of previous caesarean birth, and 6 (4%) at maternal request. Twenty nine (19%) women had general anaesthesia for their caesarean birth; 18 (62%) of these women were intubated because of maternal respiratory compromise, and 11 (38%) were intubated to allow for urgent delivery.

Five babies died; three were stillborn and two died in the neonatal period. Three deaths were unrelated to SARS-CoV-2 infection and were due to obstetric conditions unrelated to SARS-CoV-2 infection and/or pre-existing fetal conditions; for two stillbirths, whether SARS-CoV-2 contributed to the death was unclear. Sixty seven (25%) of 265 liveborn infants were admitted to a neonatal unit, 50 (75%) of whom were preterm, including 23 (34%) who were less than 32 weeks' gestation ( table 5). One infant was diagnosed as having neonatal encephalopathy (grade 1) after a spontaneous vaginal birth at term. Twelve (5%) infants of women admitted to hospital with infection tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 RNA, six of them within the first 12 hours after birth. Two of the six infants with early onset SARS-CoV-2 infection were from unassisted vaginal births; four were born by caesarean, three of which were pre-labour. No viral analyses were performed on umbilical cord blood, placenta, or vaginal secretions. The six infants who developed later infection were born by pre-labour caesarean (n=4) and vaginal birth (n=2). Only one of the infants with an early positive test for SARS-CoV-2 RNA was admitted to a neonatal unit, compared with five infants with a later positive test.

Discussion

The clinical data from this national surveillance study show that one in 10 pregnant women admitted to hospital in the UK with SARS-CoV-2 infection needed respiratory support in a critical care setting, and one in 100 died. More than half of pregnant women admitted to hospital with SARS-CoV-2 infection in pregnancy were from black or other ethnic minority groups, 70% were overweight or obese, 40% were aged 35 or over, and a third had pre-existing comorbidities. More than half of all women admitted with SARS-CoV-2 infection had given birth at the time of the analysis; 12% were delivered preterm solely because of maternal respiratory compromise. Almost 60% of women gave birth by caesarean section; most caesarean births were for indications other than maternal compromise due to SARS-CoV-2 infection. One in 20 of the babies of mothers admitted to hospital subsequently had a positive test for SARS-CoV-2; half had infection diagnosed on samples taken at less than 12 hours after birth.

Strengths and limitations of study

A major strength of this study is the design using the population based UKOSS research platform and thus the identification of a comprehensive, national cohort of infected pregnant women with high case ascertainment across all obstetric units in the UK. However, this rapid report has been produced at a time when active transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is still occurring, with around 100 pregnant women admitted to hospital in the UK with infection each week, and the limitations of these data must therefore be recognised. We do not yet have complete pregnancy outcomes for women who were admitted but subsequently discharged well, and several women were still inpatients at the time of writing. The data collected for this rapid national cohort study were restricted to essential items, so we do not have daily indicators of women's clinical condition or results of blood and other tests. We sought to collect national, population based information on severe SARS-CoV-2 infection, defined as hospital admission, to capture the incidence and outcomes of severe disease in pregnancy. This study does not therefore provide any information about overall infection rates or the possibility of asymptomatic infection. Nevertheless, this study shows the strength of systems such as UKOSS, which can be rapidly activated to do comprehensive population based studies such as this in a public health emergency. UKOSS studies were activated for influenza A/H1N1 and Zika virus in pregnancy 29 30; countries in the International Network of Obstetric Survey Systems (INOSS) 31 are also doing similar national studies to allow for the unification of population based data across multiple countries and avoiding the biases of data collected through centre based registries. The National Institute for Health Research's Clinical Research Network, 32 with midwifery and obstetric leads coordinating networks of research staff, was another strength of this study, helping to ensure rapid and accurate collection of these valuable data even in the context of the pressurised health system in a pandemic. UKOSS is the only national research platform in the UK for conducting such studies, and it should be noted that all other reports of women admitted to hospital with SARS-CoV-2 in pregnancy in the UK will be subsets of UKOSS data.

Comparison with other studies

The addition of these national, population based data to existing reports provides clarity on the outcomes of infection in pregnant women. Previous published information has been largely based on case series from individual hospitals or cases identified across small series of hospitals but with a lack of clarity about the proportion of cases ascertained, with problems of overlap and duplicate reporting; population based data are essential to provide unbiased information on incidence and outcomes. During the period when these data were collected, around 90 000 women gave birth in the UK; 427 were notified as having been admitted with SARS-CoV-2 in pregnancy-fewer than one woman admitted for every 200 women giving birth. Approximately one woman per 2400 giving birth needed critical care admission. The overall maternal mortality rate with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection was around one in 18 000 women giving birth. The rates of critical care unit admission and mortality among pregnant women admitted to hospital with SARS-CoV-2 infection are comparable to the rates among the general population of women of reproductive age admitted to UK hospitals with infection, of whom 20-35% receive critical care and 1-4% die. 33

The high proportion of women from black and other minority ethnic groups admitted to hospital with SARS-CoV-2 in pregnancy is of concern and should be investigated further. Our sensitivity analysis suggests that this cannot simply be explained by a higher incidence in the main metropolitan areas with higher proportions of women from ethnic minority groups, as the high proportion remained when we excluded women from London, the West Midlands, and the north west of England. Ethnic disparities in incidence and outcomes have been noted among non-pregnant populations with SARS-CoV-2 infection, notably in the US, 34 and various possible reasons have been suggested for these observed disparities, including social behaviours, health behaviours, comorbidities, and potentially genetic influences. 35 It should be noted that over-representation of ethnic minority and other groups among the cohort of pregnant women admitted with SARS-CoV-2 infection may reflect a higher risk of infection, a higher risk of severe disease given infection among vulnerable subgroups, or both. Health system factors have been suggested to underlie the disparity in the US; the fact that these disparities exist in a country with a universal free to access healthcare system indicate that the health system cannot be the sole explanation.

In common with previous reports, most women admitted to hospital with SARS-CoV-2 infection in pregnancy were in the late second or third trimester, which replicates the pattern seen for other respiratory viruses with women in later pregnancy being more severely affected. This supports the current guidance for strict social distancing measures among pregnant women, particularly in their third trimester. 2 It should be noted, however, that higher hospital admission rates in the third trimester were also reported in the context of influenza, 36 and thought to be for precautionary reasons, rather than necessarily because of maternal compromise. Although case notification has been augmented through a link with the UK Early Pregnancy Surveillance System (UKEPSS), 37 the route of identification of the women included in this series, through UK obstetric units, could also have led to under-ascertainment of women admitted in the early stages of pregnancy.

Outcomes for infants are largely reassuring when considering potential effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection acquired before or during birth; the small number of early polymerase chain reaction positive infants of mothers with infection did not have evidence of severe illness. This observation of only mild disease has also been reflected in early case reports of infant infection in the perinatal period. 22 23 24 25 Nevertheless, 2% of infants did have evidence of viral RNA in a sample taken within 12 hours of birth, which suggests that mother-to-infant viral transmission may be occurring. We have no evidence as to whether IgM was raised in these infants or whether viral transmission occurred in utero, during delivery via an infected birth canal, or postpartum via respiratory droplets, skin-to-skin contact, or breast feeding, but three infants had a positive test for SARS-CoV-2 following pre-labour caesarean section. We do not have information on whether these infants were isolated from the mother immediately after delivery, nor whether skin-to-skin contact was permitted. Using a recently suggested classification system, 38 we therefore do not have sufficient evidence to suggest that these were congenitally acquired infections; they should be classified as possible neonatally acquired infections. During the study period, UK guidance for postnatal management of infants born to mothers with confirmed or suspected SARS-CoV-2 infection was to keep mother and infant together and to encourage breast feeding with consideration of using a fluid resistant surgical face mask for the mother. These findings emphasise the importance of infection control measures around the time of birth and support the advice given by WHO around precautions to take while breast feeding.

We did this study in a high resource setting with universal healthcare free at the point of access, and findings would therefore be generalisable to similar settings. The fact that most women experience mild infection would suggest that outcomes are likely to be good in settings with less well developed health systems. However, given the proportion of women admitted who needed critical care, the outcomes of severe infection will probably be poorer in the absence of such facilities.

Conclusions

In the context of the covid-19 pandemic, ongoing collection of data on the outcomes of infection during pregnancy will remain important. Unanswered questions remain about the extent and effect of asymptomatic or mild infection. Serological studies, as well as those using retrospective data to identify women with either confirmed or presumed mild infection in pregnancy, will be essential to fully assess potential effects such as congenital anomalies, miscarriage, or intrauterine fetal growth restriction. Nevertheless, these data suggest that most women do not have severe illness and that transmission of infection to infants of infected mothers can occur but is uncommon.

What is already known on this topic

Published evidence on transmission, incidence, and effect of SARS-CoV-2 infection in mothers and their babies remains limited mainly to reports of single cases or small case series

Evidence from other similar viral illnesses suggest that pregnant women are at greater risk of severe maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality

Cases of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 infection to the neonate have been reported, but how frequent this is on a population basis is unclear

What this study adds

More than half of pregnant women admitted to hospital with SARS-CoV-2 infection in pregnancy were from black or other ethnic minority groups

Most women did not have severe illness, and most were admitted in the third trimester of pregnancy

Transmission of infection to infants of infected mothers may occur but is uncommon

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the assistance of UKOSS and UKEPSS reporting clinicians, the UKOSS Steering Committee, the NIHR Clinical Research Networks, and UKEPSS leads at the University of Birmingham, without whose support this research would not have been possible. We acknowledge the help and support of the UKOSS administration team, Melanie O'Connor and Anna Balchan; the UKOSS programming team, Anshita Shrivastava and Alan Downs; and additional staff who assisted on a temporary basis: Madeleine Hurd, Victoria Stalker, Alessandra Morelli, Alison Stockford, and Rachel Williams. This manuscript has been deposited as a preprint on MedRxiv ( https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.08.20089268).

Footnotes

Contributors: MK wrote the first draft of the manuscript with contributions from NV and KB. KB and MK did the analyses. All authors edited and approved the final version of the article. MK, NS, EM, JJK, CG, MQ, POB, PB, and KB contributed to the development and conduct of the study. The corresponding author attests that all listed authors meet authorship criteria and that no others meeting the criteria have been omitted. MK is the guarantor.

Funding: The study was funded by the National Institute for Health Research HTA Programme (project number 11/46/12). MK is an NIHR senior investigator. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR, or the Department of Health and Social Care. The funder played no role in study design; in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; or in the decision to submit the paper for publication. The corresponding author (MK) had full access to all the data in the study and had final responsibility for the decision to submit for publication.

Competing interests: All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form at http://www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf and declare: MK, MQ, PB, POB, and JJK received grants from the NIHR in relation to the submitted work; EM is trustee and president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, trustee of the British Menopause Society, and chair of the Multiprofessional Advisory Committee, Baby Lifeline; no other relationships or activities that could appear to have influenced the submitted work.

Ethical approval: This study was approved by the HRA NRES Committee East Midlands - Nottingham 1 (reference 12/EM/0365).

Data sharing: Data from this study will be shared according to the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit Data Sharing Policy available at https://www.npeu.ox.ac.uk/downloads/files/npeu/policies/Data%20Sharing%20Policy.pdf

The lead author (the manuscript's guarantor) affirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study being reported; that no important aspects of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned (and, if relevant, registered) have been explained.

Dissemination to participants and related patient and public communities: Dissemination to participants is not possible as this study collected anonymous data only. Dissemination to women, families, and healthcare practitioners will be undertaken via social media and the programme website ( https://www.npeu.ox.ac.uk/ukoss/publications-ukoss) and through summary articles for professional and third sector organisations.

View Abstract

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Characteristics and outcomes of pregnant women admitted to hospital with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection in UK: national population based cohort study

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Objectives To describe a national cohort of pregnant women admitted to hospital with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection in the UK, identify factors associated with infection, and describe outcomes, including transmission of infection, for mothers and infants. Design Prospective national population based cohort study using the UK Obstetric Surveillance System (UKOSS).

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Hi everybody,
Here is a copy of the Pledge I propose we all take as a step forward for us together as future midwives ✊🏽🖤 A chance to stand, be active and make black lives matter in midwifery 🤱🏾🤰🏽👩🏿‍⚕️

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From AllBodiesHealth "OBGYN and community member Dr. Kameelah Phillips @drkameelahsays (pictured) has renamed the Sims Instrument, LUCY.
The Sims instrument (pictured) is a double-bladed surgical instrument used for examining the 🤬 and cervix.
"Sims" is from James Marion Sims "The Father of Gynecology" who invented it.
Why re-name it? From Dr Phillips, "Lucy is the name of one of the 3 slaves that Dr. Marion Sims operated on without consent or anesthesia in the development of his surgical instrument. The others were named Anarcha and Betsey. According to his own records, he operated on the 18 year old after she was noted to leak urine after having a baby. Records note he operated on her in front of other doctors for hours without anesthesia. She became so sick that it took her months to recover.
When I learned of the story(at some point in medical school) I promised myself that I would not use his name to request the instrument. As a woman of color, I would not allow him to hold space in my operating room, especially for an instrument created off the backs of women who look like me. His heinous treatment of them will not be forgotten. I share the story with medical student, residents, etc in honor of the named and unnamed black bodies that have contributed to our progression of science and medicine."

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Recent police killings have urgently renewed demands for racial justice and an end to police brutality, while highlighting the fact that racism fuels a range of systemic issues, such as poverty, unequal access to health care, and more. The United Nations calls on countries to combat racism, xenophobia, and bigotry, as well as to build peace, justice, and strong institutions. You can join us and take action here.
The murders of George Floyd, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and more have sparked protests far beyond the cities of Minneapolis, Tallahassee, Louisville, and Brunswick.

Millions of people are marching for racial justice globally, from Addis Ababa to Paris to Auckland to New York. The most recent cases of police killing Black people struck a nerve in communities worldwide because they reflect the systemic and far-reaching problem of racism that people of color must contend with every day.

Police violence - knees to necks, bullets to heads, tasers to chests - is one of the most gruesome and familiar manifestations of systemic racism. The protest chant "No Justice, No Peace," heard throughout streets across the world, speaks to profound flaws in the administration of justice - from cash bail systems to the lack of legal representation to the criminalization of poverty.

"The origin story of policing in the United States of America starts with slave patrols and social control, where human property of enslavers was 'protected' with violence and impunity against people of African descent," a group of 30 independent UN human rights experts said in a statement Friday. "In the US, this legacy of racial terror remains evident in modern-day policing."

But racial injustice extends beyond policing, courts, and jails.

In a country like the United States, founded on white supremacy, racism is wound into every facet of society: health care, education, water, air quality, housing, food and hunger, environmental integrity. People of color face microaggressions and more overt forms of racism throughout their lives. As the writer and activist Scott Woods wrote, "It's like being born into air: you take [racism] in as soon as you breathe."

Racism, racial injustice, and xenophobia occur in every country in the world, and they help to explain many of the international development challenges facing the humanitarian community.

When specific groups of people are systematically marginalized and denied equal rights, it's impossible to achieve the Global Goals, the United Nations' framework to end extreme poverty, tackle climate change, and reduce inequality by 2030.

A protester waves a city of Chicago flag emblazoned with the acronym BLM for Black Lives Matter, outside the Batavia, Ill., City Hall during a protest over the death of George Floyd, on June 3, 2020.
Image: Nam Y. Huh/AP

People of color are imprisoned at higher rates in the US, Australia, and the United Kingdom. They're more likely to be impacted by climate change, live in poverty, experience hunger, and die from vaccine-preventable diseases.

Black women in the US and UK are up to four times more likely than white women to die during childbirth, while the highest rates of maternal mortality in the world occur in sub-Saharan Africa.

In Brazil, Black people earn 44% less than their white counterparts. In South Africa, white people make up 7.8% of the population yet hold 90% of the country's wealth.

Modern inequalities like these can be traced back hundreds of years, when colonizing countries began to subjugate Black and brown populations and cemented racial hierarchies.

Refusing to see this state of affairs requires historical amnesia and undermines the well-being of everyone.

"White supremacy is this idea that everything that stems from the process of colonization is accurate and just," Alicia Boatswain-Kyte, assistant professor in the School of Social Work at McGill University, told Global Citizen.

"You can't talk about systemic racism without recognizing that it's a structural form of discrimination that's inherent in our policies, institutions, and laws that have been operated, constructed, and understood through colonization," she said.

Related Stories Why Global Citizen Won't Stay Silent in the Face of Racial Inequality

Fighting racism and dismantling white supremacy with concrete policies is key to progress toward the United Nations' Global Goals. For poverty to be eradicated in all its forms, the economic divide between the Global North and South has to be closed, as do the racial inequalities within every country.

The ways in which COVID-19 has disproportionately affected people of color further highlight the urgency of this mission.

"Like COVID-19, racism and xenophobia are contagious killers," Michele Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, recently said.

"Indeed, throughout the world - and regardless of whether they are descendants of victims of enslavement, or recent migrants - people of African descent endure intolerable discrimination and constitute some of the poorest and most marginalized groups," she said.

Because racism is so deeply embedded in daily life, it requires more than mere performative solidarity to overcome.

The only way we can stop future police brutality and other forms of racial injustice is to confront racism head-on, disentangle it from the fabric of society, understand the historical roots of racism, and interrogate the racism within each of us. Many activists at the forefront of racial justice say that rather than reform around the edges, we need to demilitarize and defund the police in order to fund programs that empower communities, as well as build new forms of community altogether and develop new ways of imagining the world.

Protesters rally at Washington Square Park before marching, June 3, 2020, in the Manhattan borough of New York.
Image: John Minchillo/AP

"Community is our pillar," Boatswain-Kyte said. "The more we can increase the numbers, the more we can come together, the more we can fight for change and advocate for change."

All global citizens have to practice anti-racism on a personal level, and advocate anti-racism on institutional and societal levels. We can actively seek out anti-racist resources, help others commit to anti-racism, embrace international solidarity, and vote for candidates that center anti-racist causes, policies, and solutions.

"This work of liberation requires an extremely uncomfortable examination within, a requestioning of your worldview," Boatswain-Kyte said.

"Unless we're deliberate, calculated, and explicit, then we're going to keep reproducing forms of systemic racism because we're not infiltrating the root cause, which is that the system was built to operate in a way that advantaged the dominant culture at the time, white people," she said.

Anti-racism is about changing this system to ensure that Black lives matter, universal human rights are achieved, and the future is liberated from the oppressive forces of the present moment. The deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and everyone murdered by police compel us to delay no more.

Related Stories New Zealand's PM Called for a Global Fight Against Racism. What Would That Look Like?

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Why Anti-Racism Must Be a Cornerstone of Being a Global Citizen

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Recent police killings have urgently renewed demands for racial justice and an end to police brutality, while highlighting the fact that racism fuels a range of systemic issues, such as poverty, unequal access to health care, and more. The United Nations calls on countries to combat racism, xenophobia, and bigotry, as well as to build peace, justice, and strong institutions.

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Improve Maternal Mortality Rates and Health Care for Black Women in the U.K.

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Improve Maternal Mortality Rates and Health Care for Black Women in the U.K.

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Petitions - UK Government and Parliament

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Black Women in the U.K. are 5 times more likely to die during pregnancy and after childbirth compared to White Women (MBRRACE, 2019). We need more research done into why this is happening and recommendations to improve health care for Black Women as urgent action is needed to address this disparity.

More details

The Government must commit to funding the changes necessary to eradicate these statistics and improve maternal health care outcomes for Black Women.

Between 2015-2017 the chance of death for Black Women was 38 out of 100,000 however it was 7 out of 100,000 for White Women according to the Confidential Enquiry into Maternal Deaths and Morbidity.

An urgent explanation and tangible action needs to be done by the Government to stop this number increasing and putting Black Women's lives in danger.

Sign this petition

At 10,000 signatures...

At 10,000 signatures, government will respond to this petition

At 100,000 signatures...

At 100,000 signatures, this petition will be considered for debate in Parliament

Share this petition

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Petition: Improve Maternal Mortality Rates and Health Care for Black Women in the U.K.

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Black Women in the U.K. are 5 times more likely to die during pregnancy and after childbirth compared to White Women (MBRRACE, 2019). We need more research done into why this is happening and recommendations to improve health care for Black Women as urgent action is needed to address this disparity.

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How will the school respond?

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0 have signed. Let's get to 5,000!

Change the name of King's College London's campus site named 'Guy's Campus' situated in London Bridge because of how it is named after Thomas Guy, a man who made his fortune (£42,000 in 1720, roughly a massive £400 million today) through his large shares in the South Sea Company. This was a company which would barter slaves to the Spanish colonies in harrowing conditions. Yet he is hailed by history as a philanthropist with one of the most prestigious institutions in the world naming a site after him, disregarding his dark involvement with the systematic dehumanisation of black people.
King's College London on their website itself do not acknowledge this at all. On their website here: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/aboutkings/principal/dean/chaplaincy/prayeratkings/guys/chapelofthomasguy under the section 'Who was Thomas Guy?', he is described as a man of 'extraordinary generosity' - with his prominence in the South Sea Company completely omitted. This portrays a totally false narrative by hailing an 'eccentric...philanthropist' as a worthy figure to admire. Additionally, there is a statue of Thomas Guy in the campus and we would appeal for the removal of this.

We are a couple of first-year undergraduates at King's studying on Guy's Campus. We've loved spending our first year not only surrounded by international academic excellence, but also making friends on campus with people from all different nationalities, ethnicities, backgrounds and identities. Thus, this is what inspired our petition.

The Black Lives Matter movement has meant a huge amount to all of us. We've seen protests across the country demanding for justice with crowds in their thousands. There is such pain and injustice behind the horrific crimes committed against Black people, and one of the focal points of this is the disgusting manner in which they were enslaved for centuries. On Sunday 7th June 2020, a statue of Edward Colston was torn down in Bristol because of his influence in transporting 80,000 Africans to the Americas for the purpose of enslavement by anti-racism protesters. In response to this, Sadiq Khan has set up a commission to reassess all of London's landmarks to ensure they reflect cultural diversity. Despite London being one of the most multi-cultural cities in the world, unfortunately many plaques, street names and indeed institution names glorify and remember historical figures who perpetuated the slave trade. We want this to be changed.

We would urge the council of KCL to reassess the name of this site in order to reflect their commitment to creating an 'inclusive environment that promotes equality' as stated in their Equality and Diversity policy, as we strongly feel the naming of this site runs incredibly counter to the said commitment.

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0 have signed. Let's get to 5,000! Change the name of King's College London's campus site named 'Guy's Campus' situated in London Bridge because of how it is named after Thomas Guy, a man who made his fortune (£42,000 in 1720, roughly a massive £400 million today) through his large shares in the South Sea Company.

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Learning about your own bias.

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On the next page you'll be asked to select an Implicit Association Test (IAT) from a list of possible topics . We will also ask you (optionally) to report your attitudes or beliefs about these topics and provide some information about yourself.

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A statement from the Senior Leadership Team at King's

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A statement from the Senior Leadership Team at King's

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12/06/2020

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Dear Colleagues and Students,

As a world leading university dedicated to academic, educational and investigative excellence, addressing issues of race, fighting racism and racial inequality are central to our mission of serving society and making the world a better place. However, we can only do this if we continue to examine and challenge ourselves with a critical eye at all times. I, along with the Provosts, SVPs, and VPs of King's have pledged to make this happen.

The killing of George Floyd in the USA and the subsequent justifiable public outcry, are not comfortable to acknowledge. At the same time the disproportionate impact of the current Coronavirus pandemic on Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic individuals means that many of our friends, colleagues and family are facing very challenging times in terms of health, wellbeing and financially.

We, like our peers in the higher education sector, must fight against racism and the ignorance, intolerance and apathy that allows it to grow. In reflecting on what inequality means for us and our institution, we recognise that we need to do much more within the King's community to combat racism and its consequences - here at King's.

Yesterday, we joined with other Senior Leaders across the university to hear testimony of the structural racism that impacts on all of us at King's College London. We heard stories of progress and stories of continued injustices, both large and small.

Many of you have been in touch with us to raise questions about what this actually means. You rightly want to know what we are doing to challenge discrimination and to address inequality at King's. Racism and racial discrimination has no place at King's. We recognise that it is not enough just to state our position, we have to point to our next real steps towards a more just and equitable university. We have worked with the Race Equality Network to develop this note, but we take full responsibility for our past actions, this communication and for delivering on our promises.

Talking about race

In the past few days, we have met with our colleagues leading our Race Equality Network and listened to staff and students, sharing and giving testament to the death of George Floyd that has affected so many of us in profound and personally distressing ways.

We fully accept that if we do not recognise the distress and anxiety felt by those in the King's Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic community, change will never occur. Conversations about race and racial discrimination are often uncomfortable, but this does not mean we should ignore or shy away from them. We are acutely aware from the complaints, petitions, open letters, calls to action and testimonies from members of the Race Equality Network, of the need to listen to and engage our Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities. We cannot improve if we do not listen to and learn from those in our community.

Combating racism and inequality

Our actions need to ensure that every member of our community is entitled to equality and equity of opportunity in their workplace and education regardless of their race or ethnicity. Over 50% of our undergraduates at King's are Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic but with just 24% of our colleagues identifying as Black, Asian and ethnic minority, the diversity among our students is not reflected among our staff. The Race Equality Action Plan that we are submitting in July has identified four stubborn issues for King's which underpin our ongoing work to combat racism, discrimination and inequality. We have clear problems that we need to address in terms of:

Increasing the ethnic diversity of our senior leaders

Supporting staff and students to sensitively discuss race and racism

Supporting staff and students to identify and report racial microaggressions

Continuing to close King's BME attainment gaps and to develop inclusive curricula

We are not complacent but we can point to a number of programmes that are designed to tackle these stubborn issues while recognising that a change in culture and mindset is central to this:

launching the King's Race Equality Network in June 2019 and working more closely with them to inform our decision making at the highest levels & establishing the first King's Race Equality Board to govern our progress towards race equality

working with Guy's and St Thomas's Charity, who own the statue of Thomas Guy, to find ways to reflect and represent its complex history appropriately

creating a ring-fenced fund to support the development and progression of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic talent, including a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship to work with students and our community to explore King's historical links to the colonialism and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade & commissioning research on King's history with race and racism as well as uncovering hidden and erased contributions of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people to our institution and disciplines such as Dr Harold Moody.

implementing a series of recommendations outlined in the Bush House review

ongoing work through Curriculum 2029, which sees programme content and teaching as a key driver of culture change and achieving inclusive education.

ensuring our Honorary degree holders, Honorary Fellows and Visiting Honorary Lecturers and Professors include men and women of colour.

Many other activities are also happening at Faculty, School and departmental level. But whilst this outlines a clear commitment and set of actions, we also recognise that there is more to do to ensure our behaviours, structures and processes consistently meet the expectations and values we have set for ourselves as a community.

As a University at the heart of some of London's most diverse communities we will continue to work with our local partners to co-create knowledge and contribute directly to our neighbours. We are proud that we are a university committed to promoting a tolerant, diverse and inclusive environment and we stand in support of all our Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic students and staff across the globe and fully accept that we must demonstrate this fully and consistently in our ways of working.

Eradicating racial prejudice and discrimination cannot be achieved overnight. But the pace of change is too slow. As a university, we want to stand together to work in solidarity towards racial liberation and we also want to do what we can to provide resources to centre these issues for our students. By working together at King's and with other universities, we can as a sector advance change to ensure that no individual is disadvantaged when joining university, studying and leaving to go into employment, based on their skin colour, race or ethnicity.

With best wishes,

Professor Edward Byrne AC President & Principal

Professor Evelyn Welch Provost/Senior Vice President (Arts & Sciences)

Professor Sir Robert Lechler Provost/Senior Vice President (Health)

Chris Mottershead Senior Vice President (Quality, Strategy and Innovation)

Professor 'Funmi Olonisakin Vice President & Vice Principal (International)

Professor Reza Razavi Vice President & Vice Principal (Research)

Professor Nicola Phillips Vice President & Vice Principal (Education)

Baroness Deborah Bull Vice President & Vice Principal (London)

Professor Jonathan Grant Vice President & Vice Principal (Service)

Stephen Large Senior Vice President (Operations)

Annie Kent Interim Vice President (Finance)/CFO

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Dear Colleagues and Students, As a world leading university dedicated to academic, educational and investigative excellence, addressing issues of race, fighting racism and racial inequality are central to our mission of serving society and making the world a better place.

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This is not about political correctness  

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This is not about political correctness  

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This not about taking sides

It is tackling your unconscious bias

It's all about equal chances justice and fairness

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please check  on twitter #BlackintheIvory

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please check  on twitter #BlackintheIvory

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Professor David Olusoga has a range of programme's currently on BBC iPlayer and BB2 looking at Britain's past slavery history and being British and black- check it out: 

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Professor David Olusoga has a range of programme's currently on BBC iPlayer and BB2 looking at Britain's past slavery history and being British and black- check it out: 

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Documentary about the abolition of slavery. Huge sums of money were paid out in compensation, not to slaves, but to slave owners.

In 1834 Britain abolished slavery, a defining and celebrated moment in our national history. What has been largely forgotten is that abolition came at a price. The government of the day took the extraordinary step of compensating the slave owners for loss of their 'property', as Britain's slave owners were paid £17bn in today's money, whilst the slaves received nothing.

For nearly 200 years, the meticulous records that detail this story have lain in the archives virtually unexamined - until now. In an exclusive partnership with University College London, historian David Olusoga uncovers Britain's forgotten slave owners. Forensically examining the compensation records, he discovers the range of people who owned slaves and the scale of the slavery business.

What the records reveal is that the slave owners were not just the super-rich. They were widows, clergymen and shopkeepers - ordinary members of the middle-classes who exploited slave labour in distant lands. Yet many of them never looked a slave in the eye or experienced the brutal realities of plantation life.

In Barbados, David traces how Britain's slave economy emerged in the 17th century from just a few pioneering plantation owners. As David explores the systemic violence of slavery, in Jamaica he is introduced to some of the brutal tools used to terrorise the slaves and reads from the sadistic diaries of a notorious British slave owner. Elsewhere, on a visit to the spectacularly opulent Harewood House in Yorkshire, he glimpses how the slave owners' wealth seeped into every corner of Britain.

Finally, amongst the vast slave registers that record all 800,000 men, women and children in British hands at the point of abolition, David counts the tragic human cost of this chapter in our nation's history.

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BBC Two - Britain's Forgotten Slave Owners, Profit and Loss

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Documentary about the abolition of slavery. Huge sums of money were paid out in compensation, not to slaves, but to slave owners. In 1834 Britain abolished slavery, a defining and celebrated moment in our national history. What has been largely forgotten is that abolition came at a price.

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Really interesting article from Professor David Olusoga of Public History at University of Manchester

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Really interesting article from Professor David Olusoga of Public History at University of Manchester

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What was invisible yesterday is today suddenly clear and obvious. In the space of just two weeks, forms of structural racism that black people and their allies had, for years, struggled to draw attention to or even get acknowledged have become seemingly irrefutable. If the toppling of the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol was the most unexpected and astonishing event of recent days, perhaps second has been the sheer scale of the online discussions about racism and black history that have begun to take shape across the world.

Books on both of those subjects have by now largely sold out online. Today printing presses across the country are whirring away, busily printing new copies of books on black topics written by black authors. This great surge in interest and engagement has, like much else in our culture, been boosted by the power of celebrity. Actors and singers have shared lists of the books they are reading as they grapple with the ideas and chapters of the past that have been brought to the surface by the global Black Lives Matter protests.

British Vogue, perhaps in part because its editor-in-chief Edward Enninful is of African heritage, issued its own listof recommended books. Given the fashion industry's recent record on race (remember Gucci's "blackface" turtleneck sweater and Prada's "minstrel" figurines) this feels like a particularly significant intervention. Meanwhile, lockdown and social distancing means that more people have more time than ever to read and expand their understanding of an issue they might previously have cared about but never found the time to properly investigate or engage with.

Our education system has, for decades, rejected requests for black history to be made a core part of the curriculum

The pandemic has demonstrated that social problems, such as street homelessness, which, only yesterday, were (conveniently) regarded as intractable can be addressed if the will is there. And this great wave of demonstrations has achieved something comparable when it comes to race and racism. It has created, or perhaps uncovered, a previously unknown willingness on the part of millions to at least try to better understand the issues and engage in a process of self-education.

Organisations as well as individuals are undergoing this transition. Institutions that had dismissed notions of structural racism or rejected forms of black protest suddenly recognise them as legitimate. Since 2016, the US National Football League had refused to allow black players to protest against police brutality and endemic racism in the US by taking a knee. A simple, peaceful act of protest and solidarity. Then, at the end of last week, the league reversed its policy. The reason given for this by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is as significant as the decision itself. "We were wrong" he admitted, "for not listening to NFL players earlier".
UK Black Lives Matter protests live: Oxford demo to target Rhodes statue
At the heart of this astonishing moment is a newfound capacity of both individuals and institutions to engage in these two key activities: listening and learning. Both are on the minds of the mainly young Black Lives Matter protesters who are taking to the streets here in the UK. While more people than ever are willing to listen to their message, we in Britain will have a harder time when it comes to the learning part. This is because we start from such a low base as our education system has, for decades, rejected pleas and requests made by two generations of black British people for black history to be made a core part of the national curriculum. As a result it is a national blind spot, a gap in our collective knowledge that affects us all - black and white.

I went to school in the 70s and the 80s, and the last thing I expected of my schools back then was that they would be the places in which I would be taught about black history. In my school, racism was ubiquitous and unrelenting, and not just from the pupils. For a year I was terrorised by one of my teachers. A man who drank his tea from a mug emblazoned with one of the National Front's slogans. A man who, one night on a camping trip, beat and punched me, when no one was looking, leaving me too fearful to tell anyone, even my mother, for months. A teacher who entertained my classmates by calling me "wog" in the playground. The idea that this environment was one in which I might be gifted with knowledge of a history that would make sense of my identity as a black British person was, under the circumstances, preposterous. My expectations of my school were as low as they could be. Appropriate, given that my teachers, with one blessed exception, had dismally low expectations of me and presumed I would get nowhere in life.

At school I was terrorised by one of my teachers who entertained my classmates by calling me 'wog' in the playground

At that school, and the next one, there was no such thing as black history. The history of the British empire, the chapter of our national story that would have explained to my classmates why a child born in Nigeria was sat among them, was similarly missing from the curriculum. When I came to do A-levels the history course had two modules: British and European. The rest of the world, the history of the other 90.22% of humanity, was largely absent. The empire was touched on now and then. There were vague mentions of the commodities that flowed back to Britain and of the bits of Africa that were passed back and forth between the European powers in peace treaties like chips at a casino.

Since I began presenting programmes about black history my life has become a constant impromptu focus group. I am stopped in the street by people who want to talk about the histories those documentaries explore. Most of those people are young, and a great many, but not all, are black or mixed race. This is the generation who have led the Black Lives Matter protests and they, quite rightly, expect more from their schools than I did from mine.

They are frustrated at the absence of lessons on black history and, critically, they have sources of information that my generation did not. As well as the internet they have books by writers such as Akala, Afua Hirsch and Reni Eddo-Lodge. They read and research, and then compare and contrast what they learn with what they are offered by the national curriculum. Consequently, they are acutely aware of what they are not being taught, what is being missed out. In my experience this is a generation with a low tolerance for half-truths and half-stories. What they tell me is that they know they are being taught a whitewashed, sanitised version of the British past. One in which their stories, those that make sense of who they are and how they and their families came to be here and how they came to be British, have been largely omitted.

The lucky ones have teachers who, like the many I have met, either face to face or online, go out of their way to change the paradigm and better serve the children in their care. Such teachers do the best they can to teach the black history modules that now do exist within the national curriculum. But the problem is that these modules are optional rather than compulsory, meaning teachers have to find the time to teach them with limited resources and in a packed timetable. Some teachers dedicated to this cause have created their own teaching resources and bought text books with their own money. They come together online to offer support to one another and to ask for help from black British historians. But there aren't enough of them.

There have long been calls for the national curriculum to properly incorporate black British history. The latest come from an initiative called the Black Curriculum, which was begun in 2019 by Lavinya Stennett, a graduate of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. This week she launched a new campaign in which members of the public are being asked to sign an open letter to the education secretary, Gavin Williamson, requesting that black history be made compulsory, in order to help "build a sense of identity in every young person in the UK", Stennett says. Williamson has been asked to reply to the letter by the symbolically significant date of 22 June; Windrush Day.

In some circles what happened on Sunday in Bristol is being discussed solely as a public order issue, yet the events of the weekend are intimately connected to issues of education, self-education and the failures of the national curriculum. Some have denounced the toppling of the Edward Colston statue as wanton destruction. Unquestionably it was a destructive act, but if this was simply an outpouring of incoherent rage, why did the crowd of young protesters, people of all races, specifically target the memorial to a 17th-century slave trader. Why not attack and loot the nearby shops?

If, as we are told from some quarters, the protesters were mere "thugs" - a term dripping in dog-whistle tabloid racism - then how do we account for the lucid, fluent and persuasive interviews that many of them gave to the local news and online platforms? Listen to them. Hear how much they know about Colston, the Royal African Company, the Triangular Trade, the Middle Passage and the rest of it.

Little about the actions of the young people who pulled Colston from his pedestal and those who cheered him on his descent to the bottom of Bristol harbour, was random. Much of it was emblematic of a generation of young black Britons and their white friends and classmates who have educated themselves on the realities of the slave trade and slavery just as they have on the structural nature of racism.

They know that they cannot rely on the national curriculum to provide the history that we all need, no matter our race or ethnicity. They know how urgently we need a new curriculum that makes sense of our history, with all its dark chapters included. It is those stories, the ones we find uncomfortable as well as the ones we celebrate, that have created the nation we have become. This, along with much else, is what has to change.
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Britain can no longer ignore its darkest chapters - we must teach black history | David Olusoga

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hat was invisible yesterday is today suddenly clear and obvious. In the space of just two weeks, forms of structural racism that black people and their allies had, for years, struggled to draw attention to or even get acknowledged have become seemingly irrefutable.

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Black Lives Matter At School is excited to announce our new, free, downloadable coloring book for young children and all those young at heart. To download the coloring book, visit: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1OLYjlPEAyVN8BEMHL82B6LfUmp2juC05

This coloring book is designed to help teachers, students, parents and community members in their conversations about race and the core values of Black Lives Matter. This book was created as part of the Black Lives Matter At School movement by educators to bring these ideas to the classroom in an age appropriate way to young children.

This book allows kids to colorfully and creatively relate the 13 principles of Black Lives Matter to their own lives and is an excellent classroom activity for our week of action, from Feb. 4-8, 2019.

So sharpen that crayon-and your mind-and make BLM@School week beautiful!

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The Black Lives Matter At School Coloring Book-Make this year's week of action beautiful!

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Black Lives Matter At School is excited to announce our new, free, downloadable coloring book for young children and all those young at heart. To download the coloring book, visit: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1OLYjlPEAyVN8BEMHL82B6LfUmp2juC05 This coloring book is designed to help teachers, students, parents and community members in their conversations about race and the core values of Black...

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The School That Tried to End Racism - Channel 4

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The School That Tried to End Racism - Channel 4

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The School That Tried to End Racism: The School That Tried to End Racism - On Demand

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A British school helps its students uncover and eradicate hidden racial biases

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inc. mental health support, petitions, donations and educational books/films

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In recent weeks, protests have erupted across the globe in response to the killing of George Floyd by four police officers in Minneapolis, USA. The death of Floyd acted as a tipping point for centuries of pent-up anger at systemic injustice and racism to boil over, not just in America but across the world.

FutureLearn stands with our black colleagues and learners. We are striving to make ourselves more inclusive and diverse, as well as to host more courses on black liberation, and improve black access to education. Read our CEO Simon Nelson's statement.

For black people globally, this has been yet another emotional and traumatic time - both due to systemic oppression finally being surfaced and seeing institutions and colleagues trying (and often failing) to belatedly grapple with the issue.

There are resources out there that can help black learners feel supported - and non-black learners to become better allies. We've collected some of the most useful below.

Support your mental health

According to the Mental Health Foundation , black people are more likely to suffer mental health issues than their white counterparts, and also more likely to face discrimination in mental health services .

This is largely due to a legacy of institutional racism and oppression that leaves many black people not only locked out of economic systems - but also adequate healthcare.

Donate

Donating to causes fighting to help improve the lives of black people in the community - as well as in the penal system - is a good way to contribute.

Sign petitions

If you're unable to donate, signing a petition might be the next best thing. We've highlighted petitions calling for justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor (murdered by a police officer in her sleep in Louisville), and Belly Mujinga, a transport worker who died of COVID-19 after being spat at in London.

Black Lives Matter also collect new petitions on their site . Read the BLM statement on George Floyd and why black people have a right to not live in fear.

Educate yourself

Whether you want to learn more about the rich history and culture of black people, or you're looking to learn more about the history of oppression black people have suffered - and the inspirational opposition to it through the ages - there's a wealth of books, films, and courses that can expand your understanding.

Books

This book on the reality of structural racism in Britain has shot to the top of the best-seller charts - making Eddo-Lodge the first black author to top the charts in the UK.

Musician, activist, and academic Akala charts the historical legacy of British racism and colonial oppression.

Author Coates explores American racism in the form of a letter to his 14-year-old son.

A groundbreaking exploration of the intersection of related oppressions - how the system works to keep down women, blacks, and workers, all at once.

Exploring the history of black liberation back to the Haitian Revolution, Carruthers appeals to her readers to make black liberation more queer, more feminist, and more radical.

Films

In this documentary, director DuVernay contends that slavery in the United States was replaced by systemic oppression of black people - through the prison system, the war on drugs, and longstanding police and public violence.

A collection of news footage - shot in the late 1960s and early 70s by Swedish national television - that acts as a unique portrait of the black activists at the forefront of the radical civil rights movement. Featuring interviews with Angela Davis, Stokely Carmichael, and Huey P. Newton.

This documentary collects author James Baldwin's observations on American history and racial injustice, including his thoughts on civil rights leaders Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr.

Courses

Unconscious bias is as much a factor in discrimination as overt racism. On this course, you can learn to tackle ethnocentric mindsets and create inclusive environments.

This course explores the importance of racial and cultural diversity in shaping the identity of a thriving city.

The University of Exeter's short, free course examines the British Empire, including how it exploited race, religion, and propaganda to hold sway over a third of the Earth's population.

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Black Lives Matter - Resources - FutureLearn

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In recent weeks, protests have erupted across the globe in response to the killing of George Floyd by four police officers in Minneapolis, USA. The death of Floyd acted as a tipping point for centuries of pent-up anger at systemic injustice and racism to boil over, not just in America but across the world.

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https://www.blackmindsmatteruk.com/

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Black Nurses (and Midwives): The Women Who Saved the NHS

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Black Nurses (and Midwives): The Women Who Saved the NHS

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black nurses: the women who saved the nhs

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Black Nurses: The Women Who Saved the NHS

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How Caribbean and African women came to the UK to save the then ailing health service.

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How a learning culture helps organisations address major issues including the pandemic and racism

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The 7 A’s of Authentic Allyship – Yvonne Coghill, Director, Workforce Race Equality, NHS London

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The 7 A’s of Authentic Allyship – Yvonne Coghill, Director, Workforce Race Equality, NHS London

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Thank you to Anon for the original post. I'm re-posting so the image is legible.

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"There is nothing but a benefit to understanding our own privileges, white and otherwise"

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John: We've been engaged in a global conversation about race and racism. You've probably had discussions at home, at school or at work, and in those conversations you've probably heard the term white privilege. You maybe even had this term used in a way that felt like an insult or an accusation. Others will have told you that it's all just made up to make white people feel bad... and none of this is right.

Privilege is a hard concept for people to understand, because normally when we talk of privilege we imagine immediate unearned riches and tangible benefits for anyone who has it. But white privilege and indeed all privilege is actually more about the absence of inconvenience, the absence of an impediment or challenge, and as such when you have it, you really don't notice it, but when it's absent, it affects everything you do.

There are lots of types of privilege out there, the privilege of being born into a wealthy family versus a poor family is kind of obvious, but then there's the privilege of being able-bodied versus having or acquiring a disability that most of us take for granted. I have two very close friends who are wheelchair users and I'll be honest, when I first met them I was completely ignorant about the everyday ways their lives are made harder through no fault of their own. Some of these ways are simply thoughtless, but some of them are just the way we live, just the way we build infrastructure, just the way everything works that just makes their life harder than mine. That's just one of the ways that I am privileged and understanding that, embracing that, doesn't make me a bad person, but ignoring it raises the chance that my friends will be excluded in ways that are not obvious to me and as their friend I can't allow that.

There's a good chance, as a white person watching this, your life is already hard. Every day you have to overcome some difficulty or challenge just to get by, but you can still have white privilege. White privilege doesn't mean you haven't worked hard or you don't deserve the success you've had. It doesn't mean that your life isn't hard or that you've never suffered. It simply means that your skin colour has not been the cause of your hardship or suffering.

There is nothing but a benefit to understanding our own privileges, white and otherwise. It brings us closer to those who are different. It helps us be vigilant about the ways we treat others different than us. It helps us make a society that is fairer and more equal. Having white privilege doesn't make your life easy, but understanding it can help you realise why some people's lives are harder than they should be.

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Psychologist John Amaechi talks about white privilege.

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TPM Journal - Free September Access Focusing On Race and Equality

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TPM Journal - Free September Access Focusing On Race and Equality

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Dear Contributor

TPM authors: We are very happy that you have prepared a contribution ("Contribution") for The Practising Midwife (the "Work"), edited by Claire Feeley ("Editor-In-Chief"), to be published by All4Holdings Limited ("Publisher").

TSM authors: We are very happy that you have prepared a contribution ("Contribution") for The Student Midwife (the "Work"), edited by Hannah Tizard ("Editor-In-Chief"), to be published by All4Holdings Limited ("Publisher").

If your Contribution incorporates any material from third parties, you will have procured, prior to the date of manuscript delivery, permission in writing from each copyright holder of such material to use and reprint in any media such material in the Contribution and the Work, including revisions, derivatives and ancillaries.

All previously published material shall be fully acknowledged. If such permissions are not obtained in a timely manner, you will identify substitute references and revise the Contribution accordingly. If relevant, you will obtain medical patient releases from patients if information about them or illustrations of them are used in the Contribution.

After receipt of the manuscript the Publisher will take reasonable care but shall not be held liable for accidental loss or damage thereof while the same is in the course of production. You will retain a complete copy of the manuscript and all other material supplied to the Publisher.

You hereby grant, transfer and assign to the Publisher each and every right in and to the Contribution and any revision throughout the world for any media (including the Internet and electronic media) to exploit, sell, license and otherwise distribute the Contribution, for the full term of copyright, including, without limitation,

the copyright therein. This exclusive grant of rights means that you have no independent right to assign or license the Contribution in whole or in part to third parties or to directly exploit the Contribution. You may, however, draw upon and refer to material contained in the Contribution in preparing articles for publication
in scholarly or professional journals, in contributions to symposia, in a single chapter in a book, for teaching purposes (and may use and make copies of excerpts from the Contribution for this purpose), and for presentations or lectures at professional meetings, provided that the Publisher and the Work are appropriately identified. You understand and agree that the Publisher may, but is under no obligation to, use your services in any manner or form without additional compensation than expressly provided in this Agreement, and without further credit.

You warrant that you (and any co-authors) are the author(s) and owner(s) of the Contribution and, except for those excerpts comprising third-party material which is either public domain or for which permission has been obtained, your Contribution is original and previously unpublished; that you have the full right, power and authority to enter into this Agreement; that your Contribution contains no libelous, unlawful or otherwise actionable matter and does not infringe any copyright or violate any other intellectual property or privacy right of any person or entity; and that to the best of your knowledge, no drug dosage or other information in your Contribution is inaccurate, that the material would not cause injury if accurately used or followed, and that your Contribution includes appropriate warnings.

You may not assign this Agreement without the prior written consent of Publisher.

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The Practising Midwife - September 2020 | All4Maternity

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Dear Contributor TPM authors: We are very happy that you have prepared a contribution ("Contribution") for The Practising Midwife (the "Work"), edited by Claire Feeley ("Editor-In-Chief"), to be published by All4Holdings Limited ("Publisher"). TSM authors: We are very happy that you have prepared a contribution ("Contribution") for The Student Midwife (the "Work"), edited by Hannah Tizard ("Editor-In-Chief"), to be published by All4Holdings Limited ("Publisher").

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UK’s first annual awareness week to highlight Black women's  maternal health outcomes

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UK’s first annual awareness week to highlight Black women's  maternal health outcomes

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16 – 22 September 2020

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Mind the Gap: A handbook of clinical signs in Black and Brown skin

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Mind the Gap: A handbook of clinical signs in Black and Brown skin

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Free E-Book

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Professor David Williams from Harvard University

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HM: Helen McKenna
DW: Professor David Williams

HM: Hello, and welcome to The King's Fund podcast where we talk about the big issues and ideas in health and care. I'm Helen McKenna, a senior fellow here at The King's Fund, and I'm going to be your host for this episode. Today I'm honoured to be sat with a guest who has been described as one of the world's most influential scientific minds and who has flown in this morning all the way from the United States to be with us here today and that guest is Professor David Williams, who is the Florence and Laura Norman Professor of Public Health and Chair of the Department of Social and Behaviour Sciences at Harvard University and who is internationally recognised for his research looking at the impact of social influences on health. David, welcome to the podcast.

DW: Thank you. It's good to be here with you.

HM: So, can you tell our listeners a little bit about who you are and what you do?

DW: I am a sociologist with training in public health and I have worked for the last 30 years as a researcher at three of America's best universities. I began my career as a faculty at Yale University and after I got promoted there after six years I then went back to University of Michigan, I say back to University of Michigan that's where I did my doctorial work, and then was a faculty there for fourteen years and I've been a faculty at Harvard since 2006. So I have conducted research, most of it in the United States but I've also led a major research project in South Africa and so I've been to South Africa about 18 times and I have collaborated with researchers especially in recent years looking at racial inequalities in health in Brazil and in Australia and other countries. Chile I'm currently collaborating with the research, looking at indigenous mental health in Chile.

HM: Okay, so hugely international and a long and illustrious academic career and we're fascinated by your work on the impact of racial discrimination on health -

DW: Sure.

HM: - and health outcomes and I want to just start by understanding how you began with this work. Can you talk us through what led you to start in this space? DW: I began to do work documenting, as many others had before, that there were large racial ethnic differences in health and most people thought that they were largely a function of socioeconomic inequality. There were racial differences in income and education and those drove the racial inequalities in health. So that if you looked at for example blacks and whites at the same level of income and education race wouldn't matter. When we began to look at that we found the patterns were more complex. No, there was still racial ethnic differences at every level of income and education and although in general the socioeconomic gaps in health were larger than the racial ones, but at every level of income and education race still matters. So there was something else -

HM: Going on.

DW: - about race that mattered and many researchers who studied racial inequalities in health talked about racism and that racism was a factor that played a role, but I was somewhat dissatisfied with simply the assertion that racism mattered without clear even articulating what the mechanisms might be and what the pathways might be and how it mattered and in the absence of any empirical evidence that racism was actually making a contribution. I remember in 1993 or thereabouts speaking at a conference and I was on the final panel and we were supposed to reflect on the last two days of presentations and think of where the field should go and I articulated that one of the priorities was to document a role for racism in health and really make that a priority and I recall one gentleman in the audience said, he agreed with me that racism was important but that what I was asking to do was impossible because racism could not be measured and I recall saying to him, "If we measure self-esteem why couldn't we measure racism if we put our minds to it?" and I think I put my mind to it and have been part of a team of researchers who do a lot of work on racism and health and I think it's a global phenomenon now.

HM: So you started by knowing that there was a disparity and saying, "Let's actually get the evidence - DW: Yes. HM: - and measure it," - DW: Exactly. HM: - and you pursued that and it's now widely recognised -

DW: Sure. HM: - and acknowledged, yes.

DW: Exactly.

HM: Fantastic, thank you. So you've done a lot of research looking at the health effects of different types of discrimination and how they can impact on people's health, can you explain the different types of discrimination you've looked at and the impact that they can have?

DW: So I have developed measures that capture three aspects of interpersonal discrimination and then I've also done work, empirical work, on one dimension of institutional discrimination, so let me just talk quickly.

HM: Great.

DW: In terms of interpersonal discrimination I've developed a scale that captures what I would call major experiences of discrimination. It's being unfairly fired, unfairly not hired for a job or being unfairly physically stopped, threatened or abused by the police. So it captures big events of discrimination. Probably my most famous scale is the everyday discrimination scale. It doesn't capture the big things it captures little indignities, being treated with less courtesy or respect than others, receiving poorer service than others at restaurants or stores, people acting as if they think you are not smart or if they are afraid of you. It's just little day to day things and...

HM: But they add up.

DW: They add up because the findings for that scale in general are even stronger than the findings the major experiences of discrimination. Both matter but everyday discrimination scale has been powerfully predictive of biological function across a broad range of indicators in multiple countries and it documents that just how we relate and treat each other on a day to day basis may not just matter for how they make the person feel or how their mental health responds, but it's literally leading to pathogenic processes within the body and people were adapting and were making changes in their life based on the reality that they thought they could be a victim. So I developed a scale called the Heightened Vigilance Scale. We ask people in dealing with these experiences how often you try to prepare for them before you leave home? How often are you careful about what you say and how you say it? How often are you careful about where you go? Basically it was trying to capture the steps that people were taking to minimise the occurrence of incidents of discrimination. What the research has found is that exposure to discrimination is linked to worse health but the threat of discrimination, vigilance about discrimination predicts health independent of the actual exposures. So it's both the actual exposure that matters but the threat of exposure also matters.

HM: Can you talk a bit about the disparity and the differences in health outcomes that we're talking about?

DW: So I'll give an example of one researcher, Dr Tanya Lewis, and she's done a lot of research in multiple studies looking at everyday discrimination and its effects on health. In one study she finds that greater exposure to everyday discrimination is associated with more rapid development of heart disease as measured sub clinically in the arteries as the development of heart disease over a five year window. Another study finds persons who report higher levels of everyday discrimination have higher levels of inflammation as measured by C-reactive protein. High levels of inflammation puts you at increased risk for most chronic diseases. Another study of pregnant women who report everyday discrimination they give birth to lower birth weight infants. A study of adults followed over time high levels of everyday discrimination is an independent predictor of premature mortality. Literally it raises the risk of death. Another study of elderly followed over time higher levels of everyday discrimination predicts more rapid declines in cognitive function over time. A study of black and white women high levels of everyday discrimination manifest what we call a dose response relationship between the exposure to discrimination and visceral fat. Visceral fat is the abdominal fat, the deep abdominal fat in between the internal organs that predicts elevated risks of cardiovascular disease and other chronic diseases. So just an example of the broad range of outcomes that we find everyday discrimination matters for.

HM: I know that while you're based in the US obviously you said you've done a lot of work internationally, you've also done a bit of work looking at these issues in a UK context, so I wanted to ask you about some of it as it applies here and in 2018, it's called the Embrace UK Report on the UK and Ireland confidential enquiries into maternal deaths and morbidities, sorry long name, found that compared to their white peers a black mother is five times more likely to die as a direct result of pregnancy or childbirth and I just wanted to ask, does that surprise you or is it simply in line with what you've seen in your research?

DW: It is completely in line. I have a slide in the talk that I give that shows a slide for the US and a slide for the UK, we see the same pattern. We see the same pattern with racial ethnic differences and infant mortality for the UK and the US. So yes, there's more similarity across context than differences and so, no, it is not surprising and we know that there are multiple factors that contribute to the pattern. One of them is racial ethnic differences in the quality and intensity of care, but it's not just about care there are racial ethnic differences in what I would call all of the opportunities to be healthy. So from the living and working conditions and exposure to at first influences in those contexts and then there are also differences in treatment and equality of intensity of care. In the UK context there is less evidence of racial ethnic differences in the treatment in quality and intensity of care but primarily because racial ethnic status is not routinely available in the medical records. So the studies that we could easily do in the US that documented this pattern in a very overwhelming fashion it's not readily possible to do them in the UK - HM: So actually ... DW: - but there's no reason to think that the pattern is different.

HM: So the data is limited here.

DW: Exactly. HM: There's no reason to assume -

DW: Yes.

HM: - it would be any different.

DW: Correct. HM: You mentioned about differences in opportunities to be healthy there -

DW: Yes.

HM: - you've spoken previously about the impact the environment where someone lives has upon their health -

DW: Absolutely.

HM: - and that something we're interested in in our work her at the Fund. What's the relationship between people's health and where they live?

DW: In the US public health researchers today like to say that your postal code is a stronger predictor of how well and how long you will live than your genetic code and it's just one way of trying to highlight the fact that health varies dramatically by place. I have been part of a research project, I haven't been the driver of the maps, but part of a project that drew maps for different cities in the United States and showed how the life expectancy varied by which part of the city you lived in, which neighbourhood you lived in and one of the first maps was for Washington DC and we looked at the train system, the subway system, and looked at how life expectancy varied by which station you boarded a train and there have been maps for London that have been done like that.

HM: Yes, I think I've seen one for the Jubilee line -

DW: That's ... exactly. HM: - and it shows, yes -

DW: Exactly, that's right. HM: - by each stop you're losing a year.

DW: Your stop matters for health. So there's a lot of evidence that the opportunities to be healthy, the access to high quality education, to jobs, the quality of neighbourhood and housing environments, the levels of stress exposure are all varied by place. So that place is a driver of just the opportunities for individuals to be healthy, all of these things shape health in profound ways and the evidence is that our bodies keep a record of all that we've been exposed to over our lifetime and so that what we have for many people in disadvantaged contexts is the accumulation of negative exposures over the life course that adds up in powerful ways to shape health.

HM: And in a physical way that just can't be forgotten.

DW: In a physical way that cannot be forgotten. In the United States there's a term that's being used called accelerated aging or premature aging or biological weathering. It's capturing evidence that suggests that disadvantaged racial ethnic populations like blacks in the US are literally biologically aging more rapidly than whites and we have good scientific evidence looking at a measure of telomere length for example which is capturing biological aging at a level of every cell of your body and we find if you look at blacks and whites at the same chronological age but the blacks biologically are seven and a half years older -

HM: Wow!

DW: - and it's other evidence documenting this pattern. So right, so it's again the cumulative, it's not one thing -

HM: No. DW: - but it's the accumulation and the clustering of social groups.

HM: And, as you say, with the accrual, so the stuff starts right from the off -

DW: Exactly.

HM: - and then it's a lifetime.

DW: That's right, it's a lifetime.

HM: Here in the UK we've got organisations like Public Health England and the Department of Health, Health and Wellbeing Alliance who are undertaking work to try and tackle health inequalities by race. In terms of what you've seen from your experience in the US, what are the main actions that we in the UK need to be looking at?

DW: I think the first and most important thing I would emphasise is to start early. These effects become evident very early in life. We have overwhelming scientific evidence that the exposures and stressors that children experience in the first few months and years of life can have lifelong negative consequences. We also have good examples of effective interventions that can be implemented early in life that leads not only to better academic performance for their lifetime and better job skills for their lifetime, but better health and we have high quality scientific evidence that shows that these work and not only that they work but they literally save society money; that investment in early childhood interventions has a large return to society in terms of the greater productivity of the individuals who benefit from it and less dependent on the social service system and less involvement with the criminal justice system. So it's a win win that helps the next generation. What do we do for the current generation? We have high quality scientific evidence as well that interventions that improve economic wellbeing, that provide additional income to struggling families that improves neighbourhood and housing conditions lead to improvement in health even in the absence of any health intervention. Those interventions are more challenging in that it takes a commitment of economic resources, but there's evidence that it can be done and they will work and they do have positive effects. When I think of the challenge of inequalities, I think the biggest challenge we face in our world today is the political will - HM: Yes. DW: - to make the changes.

HM: And you talk about the political will, why is it not there yet?

DW: I think there is research that suggests that there are many dominant frameworks that individuals have of making sense of social inequalities in health and why some disadvantaged populations are not doing well that leads them to blame the individuals or blame the groups that maybe it's not our responsibility if we think that people are doing badly because of their own choices because they haven't bought into the right set of values and that's what's the driver of the inequalities. There's also a very sobering body of research suggesting that there's what the scientists call an empathy gap, that for most people on the planet we tend to feel greater empathy, greater identity with the suffering of what happens to someone of own group as opposed to someone of a different group. There's research from both Europe and the US that shows that how we feel about a group drives our policy preferences towards a group and so one of the things I think we need to do as advocates is how do we tell the story of the challenges the disadvantaged populations face in ways that resonate with the general public and in ways that connect with them emotionally so that they feel empathy, because when we feel empathy we respond and we take action?

HM: Yes. So relating to your other groups in an empathetic way -

DW: Yes.

HM: - and in a human way and what do you think is needed to bring about a step change so we can really make headway in tackling the level of inequality that we have?

DW: I think there are many ways in which we have made progress and there are many ways in which we take two steps forward and one step backwards. So I think that we are in an era of increasing hostility. Research that I and other have done finds that the policy and the larger hostility in the environment also directly adversely impacts health. We have a number of studies in the US context that shows the climate created by the last presidential election has led to worsening health of vulnerable populations, increases in preterm birth in the Hispanic population nationally in the US. We've looked at the impact of immigration raids on the community in which they occur and lead into worsening health for those populations, we have done work published in Lancet documenting that the police shooting of an unarmed black man leads to worsening health for the entire black population in the state in which it occurred for the next three months. So what I'm saying is all of the events, the political and social events in our communities that are so tension filled and hostility filled is literally harming health in ways that many people are unaware of or don't think about.

HM: And it's making this work harder.

DW: It's making the work harder, it's making the political context of getting values driven investments harder because other groups instead of seeing our common humanity and seeing our destinies being tied to each other because we're all part of the web of the society.

HM: Now I know that you've done some work with NHS England's workforce race equality team and the work of that team focuses on race equality and fair treatment for the black and minority ethnic staff that work in the NHS, they've developed the workforce race equality standard which seeks to better understand and measure what's going on for BME staff and encourages action to try to address those issues. However, the NHS still has a problem and the latest data from 2018 shows that 15% of black, Asian and minority ethnic staff reported experiencing discrimination at work in the last twelve months, and that's compared to 6.6% of white staff. I just wanted to ask what is your take on those findings?

DW: Not surprising (laughter). HM: Yes. DW: A 2017 survey in the US found that 60% of physicians in the United States reported discrimination at work based on their gender, their race, ethnicity, their religion, their sexual orientation. So across the board. It's a problem, it's not widely recognised by the leaders of many of our health care systems and so we are not implementing interventions that would be effective. I can give an example from Canada where they have implemented interventions to reduce incivility at work and they found that those interventions they are effective in reducing incivility and discrimination in the workplace and they lead to greater commitments of individuals to workplace, greater productivity, fewer missed days from work and we have scientific evidence of the kinds of things that could be done that would make a difference. It's the commitment, the recognition of how large and serious the problem is because if we don't take care of our employees within the NHS or any other workplace their ability to care for their patients is adversely impacted. Ensuring workers that are fulfilled and are not harassed and discriminated against in the work context is in the best interests of the NHS being successful in doing the job it wants to do of delivering high quality care to every person who comes to the NHS.

HM: Absolutely, including its staff.

DW: Exactly. HM: Presumably from the research you've done to understand the impact of this type of discrimination on health you'd expect to see this data and the level of discrimination taking its toll on the health of NHS staff and those staff - DW: Yes. HM: - impacted.

DW: The research in the UK has shown that it adversely impacts its staff but there's also very strikingly a link between the level of discrimination staff experience and the staff in a particular NHS Trust experience and the outcomes from the patients who have been treated in that facility and how satisfied they were with their care. So when staff are not well cared for it impacts the care they're able to provide to others.

HM: And it's just to me a huge obviously tragic irony that our health service is making our own staff ill. So I wanted to talk a little bit about leadership and your journey, so we've talked about your research into the relationship between racism and discrimination and health, and in the context of wider conversations around race particularly in the US, what's been the response to your research and has that response changed over time?

DW: I mean in many ways there are very positive responses. I'm heartened by the number of young students I encounter today and who are interested in the topic, who would like to learn more, who are completely dissatisfied with what the evidence says and feel we can build a better future. So it's on the one hand it's great that we have more people aware, more people interested, more organisations interested, more demands to come and talk about the topic so that's good. At the same time, as I mention, there are other trends in our society that are leading to increasing hostility and leading to the public expression and celebration of views that have been rejected in all societies for a long time. It's the best of times and it's the worst of times is the way to think of it.

HM: Just listening to you some of the stuff that you've said in our discussion around the strength of the evidence, also the strength of the evidence base for the interventions that work and some of the actions we already know we could take to sort this stuff out, it feels immensely frustrating to be where we are now despite all of that and I guess I wanted to ask you how frustrating it is from your perspective to be doing this when progress is so slow.

DW: Yes, so I think I tend to be an optimist and I tend to see the glass as half full not half empty. I'll give you one simple example, I teach a course at Harvard University and Harvard College, it's an undergraduate course, it's called poverty, race and health. It deals with social inequalities by socioeconomic status, by race, ethnicity, what we can do about it and interventions and I would say for ten years before the last presidential election my class has had 20 to 35 students every year that I teach it. I've taught it three times since the election, my enrolment jumped from 20 to 35 students to 79 students, to 105 students and I'm teaching it now 166 students.

HM: Wow!

DW: So for me that in and of itself is a sign. I haven't changed the way I taught the course it's the same course I have taught for years, but there is so much more student interest in understanding these issues with the commitment to making America a better place and my student ... my class is very diverse in terms of the racial ethnic background of the students who are there. So just even that is an example of a sign of progress in a way that more people are interested, more people are concerned, more people want to dig deeper and try to understand these issues. So, yes, there are reasons to be concerned but there are reasons to be hopeful.

HM: And do you think that's symptomatic that yes while it's the debate and the environment has become so much more polarised actually previously there may have been some complacency and there's actually a fight back and a resistance?

DW: Yes, it does reflect that. I think again we have seen the efforts in both directions that there is a push back, there is a resistance that has been mobilised, at the same time there are many people who are emboldened and are more aggressively pursuing an agenda that only fosters hostility of other groups that are not valued.

HM: So final question from me, I've got in front of me a quote from a talk you gave back in 2016 where you said, "I'm standing on the shoulders of those who have sacrificed even their lives to open the doors that I've walked through. I want to ensure that those doors remain open and that everyone can walk through those doors." I just wanted to ask you if you could tell us a bit about this quote and what it means.

DW: Yes. It is in part what motivates me, America has had a very painful history, I'm an immigrant to the United States, grew up in a British colony and I have benefitted from doors of opportunity that have been opened in the United States and I think by any measure I have done better than I could have ever dreamed I would have done on the one hand, at the same time the problems still exist and in some ways while we've made some improvements in other ways some problems are getting worse and I think that to whom much is given, much is required. So I do see myself, I see my life as to be lived with a sense of responsibility, I need to treasure the memory, the commitment that others have made and I can honour them by continuing their legacy of working to provide dignity and best outcomes to every child of humanity regardless of where they're from or what their beliefs are or what their sexual orientation is or what their gender is. It's just everyone to me, that's what life is about and that's what all of us are called to do. So, yes, I do take ... I do think I'm blessed but I think with it comes responsibility that I have to lead and so that means I need to be involved in training the next generation and one of the challenges we face especially in the US context is many of our institutions are trying to get the best and the brightest from disadvantaged backgrounds but not investing in what it takes to expand access to opportunities very early in life so that we can have much larger cohorts of people prepared to take advantage of the opportunities society offers.

HM: Thank you. Thank you so much for the time that you've given us today.

DW: You're very welcome.

HM: Professor David Williams.

DW: Good talking to you.

HM: Thank you. Well that's it from us, you can find the show notes for this episode and all our previous episodes at www.kingsfund.org.uk/podcast. I'm Helen Mckenna and thanks as always to our producers Ian Ford and Sarah Murphy and also a huge thanks to Professor David Williams. If you enjoyed this episode why not subscribe to The King's Fund podcast and get the latest episode downloaded straight to your device. Thank you for listening, hope you can join us next time.

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Professor David Williams on racism, discrimination and the impact they have on health

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HM: Helen McKenna DW: Professor David Williams HM: Hello, and welcome to The King's Fund podcast where we talk about the big issues and ideas in health and care. I'm Helen McKenna, a senior fellow here at The King's Fund, and I'm going to be your host for this episode.

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its #BHM and TPM have devoted the October edition to BAME, maternity and midwifery.

Natalie Goodyear  - our student in Sept 2018 cohort and chair of the Midwifery society has a publication included in this edition!!

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Dear Contributor

TPM authors: We are very happy that you have prepared a contribution ("Contribution") for The Practising Midwife (the "Work"), edited by Claire Feeley ("Editor-In-Chief"), to be published by All4Holdings Limited ("Publisher").

TSM authors: We are very happy that you have prepared a contribution ("Contribution") for The Student Midwife (the "Work"), edited by Hannah Tizard ("Editor-In-Chief"), to be published by All4Holdings Limited ("Publisher").

If your Contribution incorporates any material from third parties, you will have procured, prior to the date of manuscript delivery, permission in writing from each copyright holder of such material to use and reprint in any media such material in the Contribution and the Work, including revisions, derivatives and ancillaries.

All previously published material shall be fully acknowledged. If such permissions are not obtained in a timely manner, you will identify substitute references and revise the Contribution accordingly. If relevant, you will obtain medical patient releases from patients if information about them or illustrations of them are used in the Contribution.

After receipt of the manuscript the Publisher will take reasonable care but shall not be held liable for accidental loss or damage thereof while the same is in the course of production. You will retain a complete copy of the manuscript and all other material supplied to the Publisher.

You hereby grant, transfer and assign to the Publisher each and every right in and to the Contribution and any revision throughout the world for any media (including the Internet and electronic media) to exploit, sell, license and otherwise distribute the Contribution, for the full term of copyright, including, without limitation,

the copyright therein. This exclusive grant of rights means that you have no independent right to assign or license the Contribution in whole or in part to third parties or to directly exploit the Contribution. You may, however, draw upon and refer to material contained in the Contribution in preparing articles for publication
in scholarly or professional journals, in contributions to symposia, in a single chapter in a book, for teaching purposes (and may use and make copies of excerpts from the Contribution for this purpose), and for presentations or lectures at professional meetings, provided that the Publisher and the Work are appropriately identified. You understand and agree that the Publisher may, but is under no obligation to, use your services in any manner or form without additional compensation than expressly provided in this Agreement, and without further credit.

You warrant that you (and any co-authors) are the author(s) and owner(s) of the Contribution and, except for those excerpts comprising third-party material which is either public domain or for which permission has been obtained, your Contribution is original and previously unpublished; that you have the full right, power and authority to enter into this Agreement; that your Contribution contains no libelous, unlawful or otherwise actionable matter and does not infringe any copyright or violate any other intellectual property or privacy right of any person or entity; and that to the best of your knowledge, no drug dosage or other information in your Contribution is inaccurate, that the material would not cause injury if accurately used or followed, and that your Contribution includes appropriate warnings.

You may not assign this Agreement without the prior written consent of Publisher.

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The Student Midwife - October 2020 | All4Maternity

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Dear Contributor TPM authors: We are very happy that you have prepared a contribution ("Contribution") for The Practising Midwife (the "Work"), edited by Claire Feeley ("Editor-In-Chief"), to be published by All4Holdings Limited ("Publisher"). TSM authors: We are very happy that you have prepared a contribution ("Contribution") for The Student Midwife (the "Work"), edited by Hannah Tizard ("Editor-In-Chief"), to be published by All4Holdings Limited ("Publisher").

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In Conversation with Angela Saini at King's College London

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In Conversation with Angela Saini at King's College London

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7/10/20 at 11:00

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in conversation with angela saini at king's college london

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in conversation with angela saini at king's college london tickets

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In Conversation with Angela Saini at King's College London

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Eventbrite - IoPPN Diversity & Inclusion presents In Conversation with Angela Saini at King's College London - Wednesday, 7 October 2020 - Find event and ticket information.

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RCN Event Online

15 Oct 2020 09:30 - 14:30

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Although the global COVID-19 pandemic prevents us from meeting in person, we are delighted to invite you to our virtual Black History Month 2020 event.

It will celebrate, empower and embrace the talents of the black, Asian and minority ethnic workforce in health and social care across the North West. We will also be presenting a series of awards to those who have made an outstanding contribution to the equality, diversity and inclusion agenda and the experience of BAME service users and/or staff. The event will be hosted by radio presenter Mike Shaft, We will be hearing from eminent female leaders from the BAME community including:

Lord Mayor of Liverpool, Anna Rothery,

Director of Nursing at Clatterbridge Cancer Centre, Sheila Lloyd

Chief Nursing Officer's Black and Minority Ethnic Strategic Advisory Group (North West), Michelle Cox

There will also be a discussion among the University of Salford Nursing BAME Staff Group, music and a virtual cookalong.

Please note, joining instructions will be sent closer to the time of the meeting to those who have registered to attend.

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Power, Voice and Influence - Royal College of Nursing | Royal College of Nursing

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Although the global COVID-19 pandemic prevents us from meeting in person, we are delighted to invite you to our virtual Black History Month 2020 event. It will celebrate, empower and embrace the talents of the black, Asian and minority ethnic workforce in health and social care across the North West.

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RCN Event Online

30 Oct 2020 17:00 - 18:00

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30 Oct 2020 17:00 - 18:00

Online,

FREE

Register

For Black History Month 2020 we explore BAME leaders in nursing, past and present.

"Prominent People Protest the Colour Bar!" trumpeted the Newcastle Evening Chronicle in February 1938, reporting the protests of senior nurses against discrimination in nursing. While Birmingham General Hospital and some London hospital training schools admitted Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic candidates at this time many others did not. Those who were able to qualify faced barriers against progressing in the profession. In the decades since, countless Black nurses have shaped healthcare in Britain; today, one in five NHS nurses, midwives and health visitors is from a BAME background.

But who were the BAME nurses earlier in the twentieth century who led the way for future generations? To close Black History Month, join us for a public event celebrating the lives of BAME leaders past and present. Chaired by Estephanie Dunn, RCN North West Regional Director, we will hear from historian of nursing Claire Chatterton about the history of BAME nurses in the UK, and Yvonne Coghill CBE, head of the NHS Workforce Race Equality Standard programme, on the legacy of this history today. Whether your nursing experience is as a healthcare worker, family member or patient, we invite you to consider the question - is history still with us ?

This event is open to all, and will take place online. Please sign up to attend and the link to join will be circulated in advance.

For any queries about this event please contact

RCN Libraries rcn.library@rcn.org.uk 0345 337 3368

Page last updated - 24/09/2020

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Nursing Whilst Black | Library | Royal College of Nursing

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Online, FREE Register For Black History Month 2020 we explore BAME leaders in nursing, past and present. "Prominent People Protest the Colour Bar!" trumpeted the Newcastle Evening Chronicle in February 1938, reporting the protests of senior nurses against discrimination in nursing.

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Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow, 2012
Carol Anderson, White Rage, 2016 Syreeta Allen, 'Racial Justice at Work, from Gestures to Action', 2020
Khiara Bridges, Reproducing Race, 2011

Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me, 2015
Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility, 2019
Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop, 2017
Reni Eddo Lodge, Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People about Race, 2017 Dr Deborah Gabriel and Prof Shirley Anne Tate, Inside the Ivory Tower: Narratives of Women of Colour Surviving and Thriving in British Academia, 2017
Pauls J. Giddings, When and Where I Enter, 2007
Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing, 2017 Binna Kandola, Racism at Work: The Danger of Indifference, 2018 Andrea Levy, Back to My Own Country, 2014
Mia Liyanage, Miseducation: decolonising curricula, culture and pedagogy in UK universities, 2020
Ijeoma Olou, So You Want to Talk About Race, 2018
Kerry Patterson, Crucial Conversations, 2011

Understanding Race, Ethnicity, Power, Elaine Pinderhughes, 1989
Layla F Saad, Me and White Supremacy, 2020
Nikesh Shukla, The Good Immigrant,
Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, 2019
Beverley Daniel Tatum, Why are all the Black kids sitting together at the Cafeteria, 2017

Alex S Vitale, The End of Policing, 2017

Harriet A. Washington, Medical Apartheid, 2008

Books by Toni Morrison

Books by Zadie Smith

Books by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Books by Barack Obama

Books by Afua Hirsch

Books and writing by James Baldwin

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King's College London - Anti-Racism Resources

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Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow, 2012 Carol Anderson, White Rage, 2016 Syreeta Allen, 'Racial Justice at Work, from Gestures to Action', 2020 Khiara Bridges, Reproducing Race , 2011 Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me , 2015 Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility, 2019 Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop, 2017 Reni Eddo Lodge, Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People about Race, 2017 Dr Deborah Gabriel and Prof Shirley Anne Tate, Inside the Ivory Tower: Narratives of Women of Colour Surviving and Thriving in British Academia, 2017 Pauls J.

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Reproductive Rights as Human Rights: Women of Color and the Fight for Reproductive Justice by Zakiya Luna

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Reproductive Rights as Human Rights: Women of Color and the Fight for Reproductive Justice by Zakiya Luna

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Women of Color and the Fight for Reproductive Justice

by Zakiya Luna

Published by: NYU Press

Imprint: NYU Press

312 Pages, 6.00 x 9.00 in, 0 4 b/w illustrations

Hardcover

9781479852024

Published: September 2020

$99.00

BUY

Paperback

9781479831296

Published: September 2020

$35.00

BUY

eBook

9781479804146

Published: September 2020

Request Exam or Desk Copy

Reveals both the promise and the pitfalls associated with a human rights approach to the women of color-focused reproductive rights activism of SisterSong

How did reproductive justice-defined as the right to have children, to not have children, and to parent-become recognized as a human rights issue? In Reproductive Rights as Human Rights, Zakiya Luna highlights the often-forgotten activism of women of color who are largely responsible for creating what we now know as the modern-day reproductive justice movement.

Focusing on SisterSong, an intersectional reproductive justice organization, Luna shows how, and why, women of color mobilized around reproductive rights in the domestic arena. She examines their key role in re-framing reproductive rights as human rights, raising this set of issues as a priority in the United States, a country hostile to the concept of human rights at home.

An indispensable read, Reproductive Rights as Human Rights provides a much-needed intersectional perspective on the modern-day reproductive justice movement.

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by Zakiya Luna Published by: NYU Press Imprint: NYU Press 312 Pages, 6.00 x 9.00 in, 0 4 b/w illustrations Hardcover 9781479852024 Published: September 2020 $99.00 BUY Paperback 9781479831296 Published: September 2020 $35.00 BUY eBook 9781479804146 Published: September 2020 Request Exam or Desk Copy Reveals both the promise and the pitfalls associated with a human rights approach to the women of color-focused reproductive rights activism of SisterSong How did reproductive justice-defined as the right to have children, to not have children, and to parent-become recognized as a human rights issue?

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Race & Medical Experiments: What's the Truth?

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Race & Medical Experiments: What's the Truth?

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Race & Medical Experiments: What’s the Truth? - All 4

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A look at Covid vaccine hesitancy and the toxic history of racially charged experiments