racism – Faith Matters

Nadiya Hussain: Why I’m scared of calling out racism

Faith Matters — Mon, 31 Aug 2020 23:16:38 +0000

Nadiya Hussain says she has experienced more racism in the last five years than in her entire life and is “scared” to call it out.

The Great British Bake Off winner worries that her TV work will dry up if she is seen to be “complaining” about anything.

Hussain, 35, who is back on screen with BBC show Nadiya Bakes, told Radio Times magazine she had encountered “racism throughout my life…

“I now work in an industry that’s very much middle-aged, Caucasian, male, and there I am – a five foot one Muslim brown girl, and it’s not my world.

“We have to question why there aren’t more people of colour working in television, publishing, the hospitality industry.

“When I did this show I looked around and I thought, ‘Wow, there’s literally just me and the home economist, who’s Korean’.”

Speaking out is hard “because if I ever feel like I’m complaining about anything, I have this god-awful fear that nobody will want to work with me ever again. So I’m really scared,” she said.

“The times that I have called it out, I’ve met with some serious negativity.”

She called for more diversity in TV and publishing but said the situation had improved, adding that “now people say to me, ‘My daughter wants to do exactly what you’re doing’, and that is a lovely thing to hear”.

Hussain recounted the time she posted a Cornish pasty recipe on social media, replacing traditional swede with apple.

“I got so much abuse… What I constantly read was, ‘What gives you the right to make a Cornish pasty?’ And that really affected me,” she said.

“I’ve definitely experienced more racism in the last five years than I have in my whole life.

“People get away with being racist and if you say, ‘Well, that was racist’, then it’s ‘Take it on the chin’ or ‘Oh, she’s got a chip on her shoulder’.

“There’s definitely a sense that I should be grateful for what I do. I’ve had to learn to have a thicker skin over the last few years, but I’ve also learnt that it’s really important to voice things and not just hold back.”

Hussain says her mum still works six days a week, doing 12-hour shifts in a factory where she cleans hospital linen.

“I’m proud of what she does and the fact that she is one of the people keeping this country going,” the cookbook author and presenter said.

And the mother-of-three has not moved to a bigger house since finding fame because “I can’t see the value in constantly upgrading everything”.

Hussain recently told how she found lockdown difficult and had “struggled” to get out of bed.

She told the magazine that “lockdown caused a massive decline in my mental health” but she also has “really good days”.

“We know lots of people who have been diagnosed with Covid. We also know people who are not following the rules, so there’s this constant anxiety, which has been really tough,” she said.

“I have really big down days where it dawns on me that we could get to the end.

Harry urges the world to take action against systemic racism

Faith Matters — Mon, 10 Aug 2020 21:45:22 +0000

The Duke of Sussex said more action is needed to root out systemic racism in society, as he described current efforts as “bringing a bucket of water to a forest fire”.

He made the comments in an interview with Rashad Robinson, president of Colour of Change – a non-profit civil rights advocacy organisation in the US – on systemic racism, hate online and people with privilege.

In a short sneak peak video of the interview posted on the organisation’s Instagram page, Harry agreed with Mr Robinson that more action was needed to drive structural and systemic change of “the rules that have held people back”.

Harry said: “There’s so much that has happened for so long that once those problems exist, charity is so crucial in so many areas but it can’t fix the problem.

“The problems already exist by that point, the problems are already too big… It’s basically like bringing a bucket of water to a forest fire.

“So, we have to go to the root of the problem, to the source of the problem and actually fix it there… and it’s going to take every single one of us.

“This is not down to the black community, this is down to every single person that is on the planet right now.”

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been vocal supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement, with Harry previously outlining his personal commitment to tackling institutional racism in a surprise message to children and young adults during The Diana Awards ceremony in July.

His words came after Meghan, who became the first mixed race person to marry a senior royal, delivered an impassioned Black Lives Matter speech to her old high school following the death of George Floyd in the US, sharing her “absolute devastation” at racial divisions.

Speaking to Mr Robinson, Harry said the anti-racism movement was being led by mainly the younger generation, but more action was needed than words.

He continued: “You can’t just say ‘I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that’, it’s like well, you said it, now you’ve got to go through with it.”

Last week, the duke outlined his and his wife’s efforts to help the Stop Hate for Profit campaign, after he accused social media giants of stoking a “crisis of hate”.

Writing for US-based business magazine Fast Company, he revealed they had personally been calling on heads of major corporations, asking them to suspend their advertising revenue from social media sites that fail to tackle hate speech.

Lammy says Twitter must get ‘much faster at removing hate’ after racist abuse

Faith Matters — Mon, 03 Aug 2020 23:51:46 +0000

Labour MP David Lammy has told Twitter it must get “much faster at removing hate” after a delay to deleting racist abuse targeted at him.

The shadow justice secretary said on Monday that it took more than 13 hours for the social media giant to act before it suspended the perpetrator’s account.

Home Secretary Priti Patel said Twitter “must take decisive action against this sort of vile content much faster” following the “awful racist abuse”.

The latest criticism of Twitter comes after social networks were condemned for failing to act quickly enough over a series of anti-Semitic messages sent by grime artist Wiley.

Mr Lammy tweeted: “13+ hours later, the police are investigating and Mikolaos Nichaloliakos’ tweet calling me a ‘monkey boy’ and making threats about ‘hanging’ are still live.

“You (Twitter) need to get so much faster at removing hate.”

Scotland Yard said the tweet’s “contents are being assessed” after an allegation of malicious communication towards the MP on Sunday.

Twitter said: “Racist behaviour has no place on our service. We have policies in place that address abuse and harassment, violent threats, and hateful conduct.

“If we identify accounts that violate any of these rules, we’ll take enforcement action. This account in question has been suspended for violating our hateful conduct policy.”

Downing Street was among those to criticise Twitter and Instagram for not acting sooner over Wiley’s message, saying last week their response had “not been good enough”.

On Monday, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said: “Social media platforms must be quicker at taking action against hate.”

Emmanuel Macron condemns racism but rules out removal of contested statues

Faith Matters — Sun, 14 Jun 2020 22:50:59 +0000

French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to stand firm against racism but also praised police and insisted that France would not take down statues of controversial, colonial-era figures.

It was the first time Mr Macron has spoken on the issues since George Floyd’s death in the US unleashed protests around the world, including several in France, where demonstrators have expressed anger at racial injustice and police brutality, particularly toward minorities from France’s former colonies in Africa.

Unusually for a French leader, Mr Macron acknowledged that someone’s “address, name, colour of skin” can reduce their chances at succeeding in French society, and called for a fight to ensure that everyone can “find their place” regardless of ethnic origin or religion.

He promised to be “uncompromising in the face of racism, anti-Semitism and discrimination”.

However, he insisted that France will not take down statues of controversial, colonial-era figures as has happened in some other countries in recent weeks.

Amid calls for taking down statues tied to France’s slave trade or colonial wrongs, Mr Macron said “the republic will not erase any trace, or any name, from its history … it will not take down any statue”.

“We should look at all of our history together” including relations with Africa, with a goal of “truth” instead of “denying who we are”, Mr Macron said.

He did not address accusations of police violence but said forces of order deserve “the nation’s recognition”.

Mr Macron also announced that France will reopen nearly everything starting Monday after three months of virus confinement measures.

The president promised an internal audit into how his administration handled the virus, notably compared to other countries like Germany.

That was in addition to a parliamentary inquiry already under way.

Despite having one of the world’s best health care systems, France was dangerously short of all kinds of masks and testing capacity as coronavirus patients overwhelmed intensive care wards in March.

More than 80 lawsuits have been filed accusing his government of manslaughter, neglect or otherwise mishandling the virus crisis.

Mr Macron sent in the army to help and ordered strict lockdown measures that slowed the spread.

But nearly 30,000 people have died, about half of them in nursing homes, and more than 150,000 have been infected.

More than 200 new virus clusters have emerged since France started reopening May 11, according to the national health agency.

Meanwhile, his government is facing growing pressure to confront racism and police violence.

At least 15,000 people demonstrated in Paris on Saturday, the latest in a string of French protests galvanised by George Floyd’s death in the US and the Black Lives Matter movement, but increasingly focused on France’s own tensions between police and minorities.

In response, the government banned police chokeholds and vowed to stamp out racism among police — but that has now angered police unions, who say they’re being unfairly painted as white supremacists and staged protests of their own.

Calls are also mounting to reassess France’s colonial legacy, causing division within Mr Macron’s own camp.

Over the past two days, the culture minister denounced the decision to cancel a Paris showing of Gone With The Wind, a film long criticised as romanticising slavery, as contrary to freedom of expression.

And he firmly condemned activists who tried to take a piece of African art from a Paris museum dedicated to artwork from former colonies.

But government minister Sibeth Ndiaye, a close Macron ally and the most prominent black figure in current French politics, wrote an unusually personal essay Saturday in Le Monde calling for France to rethink its colour-blind doctrine, which aims at encouraging equality by ignoring race altogether.

“We must not hesitate to name things, to say that a skin colour is not neutral,” she wrote.

She called on the French to “confront our memories” about their history and find a “shared narrative” with former colonies.

Mr Macron’s office firmly denied a report last week that he was considering resigning and calling a snap election, but the rumour reflected the gravity of the French mood.

A new forecast last week from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development showed France’s economy will suffer more than most from the coming recession — and is not expected to improve much by the next presidential election in 2022.

The economy is expected to shrink at least 11% percent this year, pushing many out of work and torpedoing Macron’s goals of bringing down unemployment, rehauling the retirement system and making France more globally competitive.

Pegida – A Snapshot into their Protectionist World of German Culture & Ardent Xenophobia

Faith Matters — Sun, 19 May 2019 18:49:13 +0000

In 2016, intelligence services estimated that there were just over 23,000 right-wing extremists in Germany. A myriad of groups networking covertly, utilizing social media to extreme effect, was sowing major social discord. Germany has in modern times been regarded by the rest as immune to the reach of the far-right, partly out of collective shame for Nazism. The country had seen where hate led and would not saunter down that path again.

DOWNLOAD THE PEGIDA REPORT HERE

Pegida – The Rise of the Far Right in Germany

But today, the country exists as a hotbed of far-right extremism. The proliferation of populist, racist movements has caught many within its political class off guard. One such group is Pegida.

The movement caught on fire in late 2014 through to early 2015, whipping up mass anger around immigration. The organisation threatened Germany’s long held social cohesion, fracturing it in the backwaters of east Germany where anti-immigration attitudes had been rapidly bubbling for a while. Pegida’s aim was to force into the national conversation the concept of a national cultural identity being threatened by refugees and asylum seekers. It was dangerous, but for a while, it was effective. The group came to influence the political system, and particularly, the part Alternative for Germany (AfD). This report will look into their tumultuous history, their peak moments, setbacks, controversies and structural reasons for why they were as popular as they were.

Church of England Votes to Tackle Racism Targeted at the Traveller Community

Faith Matters — Sat, 23 Feb 2019 17:42:08 +0000

The Church of England is to give more support to tackling racism and discrimination directed towards the travelling community, with a bishop declaring it is “still tolerated”.

The church’s governing body, the General Synod, voted in favour of a motion on Saturday to speak out publicly against racism and hate crimes directed against Gypsies, Irish Travellers and Roma.

The Synod voted overwhelmingly in favour of the motion, with 265 supporting it and one voting against.

The Bishop of Chelmsford, Stephen Cottrell – who put forward the motion, told the synod: “If one of us in any situation was to use racist language about some other person or group, it is very likely in today’s society that we would, and rightly so, be immediately called out.

“Racism against Travellers and Roma and Gypsies is still tolerated.

“The Equality and Human Rights Commission have found that discrimination and racism towards Gypsies and Travellers is common, frequently overt and seen as justified.

“The police have said that a prejudice against Gypsies and Travellers in endemic in our society, and often fuelled by stereotypes in the media.”

A report by Anglia Ruskin University was cited, which found that nine out of every 10 Traveller children had experienced racist abuse.

He then added: “Sorrowfully, we, the church of God are no exception, there are examples of the racist hostility and exclusion meted out by the church.

“Gypsy, Traveller and Roma people deserve particular support, hence the motions call to the leadership of the church to speak on these issues for every diocese to think about appointing a chaplain.”

The motion would call for each diocese to be encouraged to appoint a chaplain to Travellers, to help the potential for church growth, and work to combat racism in the church and wider community.

The Synod then discussed instigating a commission on sites for Gypsies and Travellers to encourage the local and national church to make land available for new sites managed by Housing Associations.

Mary Durlacher, a parishioner in the north of Chelmsford diocese, spoke in opposition and said: “Being near to the A12, we found one day, that one of our two churches had a car park completely full of Travellers.

“Police advice was, don’t go there, let us deal with it, in the meantime it meant no services, and on a Friday of a bank holiday, the church was inaccessible.

“People wanting to visit their relatives or their families buried in the churchyard couldn’t, there was a lot of upset and there was fear because there is a link with a rise in petty crime – I don’t know the exact figures, but there is a correlation.

“They did leave, but they left on the Saturday, about three o’clock and we had quite a job.

“There was the issue of excrement and my husband and I got on our gloves because the smell was quite interesting. They hadn’t done too much damage but they might be back said the police”.

Opinion: Conspiracy Theories and the Pied Pipers of Hate

Faith Matters — Mon, 03 Sep 2018 14:06:41 +0000

The slide into a bizarre world of believing conspiracy theories and voicing openly toxic and bigoted views took place slowly over the last decade whilst many of us were not able to fathom how quickly and extensively social media had taken charge of our lives. As the Founder and previous Director of Tell MAMA, which supports victims of anti-Muslim hate, the world that I know of today, as someone reaching his fifties, is virtually unrecognisable to the one in which I worked just a decade ago and where there was real hope that levels of racism, prejudice and intolerance were finally on a downward slope.

Today’s world is also a far cry from that in which I grew up. As a refugee from Amin’s Uganda in 1972, and having fled a second time from Africa in 1983 because of military instability in Kenya, I suffered at first hand the openly racist abuse meted out to Asians and African-Caribbean communities in Kent where I was schooled. Throughout the ’80s and ’90s, that open racism existed, flourished and led to the murder of young black men such as Stephen Lawrence. Such open hatred impacted on many young men and women from BME communities, though the economic boom of that period helped to also temper some of the racist anger and bigotry. Anti-racism work, equality marches and work-based equal opportunity schemes seem to have turned the tide against division that many of us assumed would mean a country more at ease with its diversity.

Whilst the UK is in a far better place than the ’80s, the reality is that, as a country, we have slid backwards towards openly aggressive far-right marches rallying thousands of people, national political instability and a rising sense of mistrust which is acutely felt between BME communities and the two main parties. This, mixed with a recent economic crisis, has created the perfect storm for social insecurity and it is this insecurity that some have played upon in fomenting divisive and openly hostile views toward groups of people in our society. It is also within this environment of insecurity that people have sought comfort within narratives of division that blame others and which provide a sense of meaning to them, however twisted that may be.

For such individuals, conspiracy theories become reality since the world around them is unstable and frightening. Grasping onto something almost tangible, that explains the complexity of life in a simplistic fashion, fills the void that many of us currently feel in an increasingly frightening world. This is why, for example, conspiracy merchants who peddle views of an ‘Islamic takeover’ or of hordes of Muslims outbreeding other communities, manage to find a receptive audience. With less money in people’s pockets, communities aggressively vying for resources in austerity, and a sense of confusion as to where we are heading as a nation, you can see how easy it is for people to believe that there are hidden factors at play. The culprits, in their opinion, are more than likely Muslims, Jews or migrants.

Both Muslims and Jews have felt a sharp rise in hostility towards them and hate crime figures show such a rise over the last five years. Much of this is due to hate online and, furthermore, since 2012, when I founded Tell MAMA, it was clear to me that social media companies would not remove hateful and criminal material, nor would they take down far-right, neo-Nazi or Islamist extremist accounts. Their business model was based on getting traction for their technological revolutions through more accounts opening up. In doing so, they helped create the fog and smoke of disinformation and gave an amplified voice to extremist groups masquerading as ‘free speech’ martyrs. These companies, whilst levelling the playing field for more voices to be heard, also exposed people to views and opinions that would have been marginalised for a reason. Yet their platforms also legitimised toxic views by placing those views into a worldwide market of ideas where extremist groups were better equipped to promote them.

Let me explain. Marginalised, divisive and racist groups by their very nature had to be far more energetic and driven to try to win supporters. Before the advent of social media these people had to host events, print leaflets and remain active at a street level. That all took time and money and, to make it worse, they also looked pretty scary. However, such groups were always driven; they had to be to survive.

Now post their divisive messages on social media with a ‘friendly face’, remove the racist insignia and blame migrants, Muslims and foreigners, and strangely there was a more receptive audience as people’s fears and insecurities rose over the last decade. Additionally, as many of us played catch-up to try to challenge extremist and divisive views, these individuals and groups already had a head start since they were naturally driven and could see the power of the new platforms. It was a toxic, heady mix that was to have a severe impact on our society, as we are now seeing today.

This is why we must mobilise and defend the social values we enjoy in our country, and which are under threat. It is not just those, as this paper has highlighted, who try and divide local communities, who we must challenge; it is also those beyond our shores, who support extremist groups and seek to destabilise our democracy by fomenting instability, whom we must remain vigilant against. If we take our eye off the ball in these crucial years, it is not only our values which may change – it could be our very understanding of reality. Now that truly is frightening.

Australia: Politicians condemn call for ‘final solution’ to Muslim immigration

Faith Matters — Wed, 15 Aug 2018 09:29:43 +0000

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and all major political parties on Wednesday condemned a speech by a minor senator who used the term “final solution” in calling for a revival of a “White Australia” restrictive immigration policy.

In one of the most divisive speeches seen in parliament since 1996 when far-right politician Pauline Hanson declared incorrectly that Australia was being swamped by Asians, Senator Fraser Anning on Tuesday called for a national vote on whether to ban Muslim migration.

Anning said Muslims were responsible for acts of terror and crime and were dependant on welfare. Muslims account for less than three per cent of Australia’s population, census data shows.

Amid national outrage Turnbull, who will head to the polls within nine months, quickly condemned Anning.

“We reject, we condemn racism in any form, and the remarks by Senator Anning are justly condemned and rejected by us all,” Turnbull told Australia’s parliament.

Opposition Labor party leader Bill Shorten told parliament on Wednesday: “You have to be pretty outrageous to be condemned by everybody in the Australian parliament, but Senator Anning has managed to do just this”.

Australians will return to the polls by May 2019, and recent polls show the majority of the electorate back multiculturalism, but far-right politicians are expected to pose a challenge to the mainstream parties.

“Turnbull can and must bat this away,” said Haydon Manning, a political science professor at Flinders University in South Australia.

Anning, who has been in parliament for less than a year has entered into a loose alliance with several conservative independent lawmakers that has boosted his otherwise inconsequential role in Australia’s upper house.

Anning split from Hanson’s One Nation party shortly after being sworn in, though his speech had many of the hallmarks of his former leader who has called for cuts to Asian and Muslim immigration.

“The final solution to the immigration problem, of course, is a popular vote,” Anning told parliament in his maiden speech.

The Final Solution or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question was a Nazi plan for the genocide or extermination of the Jews during World War Two. Anning has since said he did not know the history of the phrase.

Hanson joined the condemnation, telling the Senate she was appalled by Anning’s speech.

“We are a multi-racial society and I have always advocated you do not have to be white to be Australian,” she said.

Under what was commonly called a “White Australia” policy Australia restricted non-European immigration from 1901 until the late 1960s using various laws.

Spike Lee hopes Trump watches KKK film ‘BlacKkKlansman’

Faith Matters — Fri, 10 Aug 2018 10:50:44 +0000

Director Spike Lee says he wants U.S. President Donald Trump to see his new movie “BlacKkKlansman,” an impassioned, tense but often funny movie about race relations in the United States across the decades.

“BlacKkKlansman,” based on the true story of an African-American police detective in the 1970s who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan, arrives in movie theaters on Friday.

Lee has said the movie is specifically timed to mark the anniversary this weekend of last year’s violent clashes between white nationalists and anti-racist protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, in which one woman died.

Trump last year drew broad criticism for blaming both sides for the violence and news footage of the protests is included in the film.

“I want the guy in the White House to see it too. I don’t say his name though,” Lee told Reuters Television at a Beverly Hills premiere of the film on Wednesday.

“When I saw the horrific act of domestic, American homegrown terrorism, I knew right away I wanted to do this,” Lee said of the events in Charlottesville.

Topher Grace, who plays 1970s Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, said the cast and crew were struck by the movie’s contemporary relevance while filming.

“It gets more and more timely with every second that passes, sadly. This film shouldn’t be more timely now than when it takes place, but unfortunately it is,” Grace said.

“BlacKkKlansman,” also starring Adam Driver and John David Washington, has won warm reviews, scoring a rare 100 percent approval from top critics on aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. Several critics have called it Lee’s best film in years.

The New York Times called it “a furious, funny, blunt and brilliant confrontation with the truth. It’s an alarm clock ringing in the midst of a historical nightmare.”

Janusz Korwin-Mikke – Speaking in London. The Worrying Trend of Entryism into Polish Communities

Faith Matters — Tue, 22 May 2018 01:22:09 +0000

This Sunday, Janusz Korwin-Mikke will be speaking in London in Hyde Park. Previously a member of the European Parliament, he is no stranger to controversy. Korwin-Mikke has previously stated that Hitler knew nothing about the Holocaust.

Korwin-Mikke will be returning to speak in London again on the 8th of July with one Stanislaw Michalkiewicz. Michalkiewicz has previously stated on Catholic Radio Marja that, “(Poland was) being outmanoeuvred by Judeans (Jews) who are trying to force our government to pay extortion money disguised as compensation”

This is another turn in the worrying trend of speakers from Poland who are entering into the UK with such views. Faith Matters has raised concerns before, since people with such comments are not assisting integration or supporting cohesive communities in the UK. Their past history and their comments simply cause divisions and there is a real attempt to inject these views into the UK context and sphere where there are between 700,000 to 800,000 people of Polish heritage in the UK.

Some of Korwin-Mikke’s statements are breath-taking. He states that the best way to deal with Muslims in Europe is to keep them out and ban them from building mosques and “if need be, oppose them militarily”. Commenting on the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack in France, he said that the terrorists “exaggerated” (their response), as they should have only given the Charlie Hebdo ‘blasphemers’, a few lashes instead of killing them. Had they done that, “half of Europe would have applauded them”. In the same tweet he added, “It’s the same thing fighting against anti-Semitism. The Jews exaggerate and then they are surprised anti-Semitism is on the rise. And as usual, it will end with pogroms”.

His view of Muslims is also demonstrated in the following comment, where he stated that, “our enemy is not in Moscow. Our enemies are in mosques. In the mosques of Paris, in the mosques of Marseilles.” He has also gone onto say that,

“I have no doubts that your daughters and grand-daughters will end up in harems. Muslims despise us, we are doormats to them. Why? Because in modern Europe, life is the highest value. I don’t understand it. To be honest, Muslim civilisation is closer to me than the European Union which is just savage. When the Muslims come, at least they will abolish the VAT tax. They might chop some heads off, but at least they won’t allow any gay parades”.

Korwin Mikke’s has also suggested that Germany should introduce religious apartheid as a solution to problems caused by Muslims.

Racism

It is not just Muslims or Jews who are at the brunt end of Korwin Mikke’s statements. He has stated that,

“The world is collapsing. 150 years ago, we white people, ruled the world. Today, we are being colonised…….We colonised Africa, it wasn’t the Negroes who colonised Europe. It’s something to be proud of. I am proud of my civilisation”.

During a debate on youth unemployment in the EU Parliament, Korwin-Mikke referred to black people on several occasions as “niggers”, stating that the “minimum wage should be destroyed as we would be treating 20 million young Europeans like niggers”.

Talking about racial segregation, he stated,

“It’s just like when women can’t enter a male toilet. What’s wrong with black people not being allowed to enter a toilet for whites?”

These are just the array of comments associated with the former EU Parliamentarian. Yet it brings to light again how such people are being invited to speak in the UK and to possibly normalise these views into settled communities of Polish heritage.

Faith Matters has highlighted the issue of entryism into settled communities of Polish heritage in the UK. What we are seeing is a co-ordinated effort by groups and speakers to enter into the UK and poison the minds of people. This is not just unacceptable, it is time that the Her Majesty’s Government seriously look at this issue and the various groups and speakers we have highlighted.