What was a ‘Bantustan’?
Last week it was revealed that the Australian politician Alexander Downer, who had been foreign secretary and high commissioner to the UK, had made a speech to an audience in Europe which advocated that...
Category: Racism
Romanticising the bad old days
The other day I saw a meme which consisted of a list of what British food was like in the 1950s, presumably when the author was young, and it claimed that much of the...
Equality feels like oppression
There is a saying in social justice circles that when you are used to privilege, equality feels like oppression. Earlier this week I saw a thread on Twitter which demonstrates this experience very nicely....
Review: The Left Behind
The Left Behind is an hour-long BBC Three drama in which a young man who is facing homelessness as a result of his family’s eviction and gets very rapidly groomed into racist violence, leading...
Anti-Semitism in context
There was a piece by Gordon Brown, the former chancellor of the Exchequer and prime minister, in the Guardian last Saturday demanding a “more radical” approach to the issue of anti-Semitism in the Labour...
Of mice, men, mockingbirds and caged birds
Today I saw a piece in the Globe and Mail, a Toronto-based newspaper, in which a professor at York University (the one in Toronto) called for schools to change the way they teach the...
My Jewish friend, your Asian friend
Yesterday I came across the outgoing edition of the Spectator at Smith’s and there were about four articles hymning Boris Johnson in anticipation of his crowning as prime minister, as was expected when it...
The sickening prospect of Boris Johnson as PM
Like many people following the Tory party leadership contest, I’ve been filled with a sense of dread that we are looking at Boris Johnson, the former mayor of London and the man who, as...
What do the anti-Corbynites even want?
So, last night there was a by-election in Peterborough following the recall of a Labour MP who spent time in prison after a conviction for lying about a speeding ticket, and it was widely...
Small towns, small islands, small minds
Yesterday this tweet was posted by the comedian and actor John Cleese, which (not for the first time I might add) gave rise to the widespread suspicion that Basil Fawlty, much as he may...
Does London need an official Holocaust memorial?
Last week the prime minister, Theresa May, joined her four living predecessors to make a video promoting a project to build a permanent Holocaust memorial and education centre in Victoria Tower Gardens, a small...
Why I defend Jeremy Corbyn on anti-Semitism
Two things happened last week which gave rise to a lot of opinionating on the current state and future of the Labour party. One was another ‘revelation’ about Jeremy Corbyn displaying anti-Semitism, in this...
More than one kind of hate
Last Wednesday there was a joint article by Mehdi Hasan and Jonathan Freedland, both well-known journalists and columnist (the latter a Guardian regular), on the “common enemy” Jews and Muslims both have in white...
And he wasn’t even Muslim
Last month a film-making group called “Error in Terror”, founded by a group of “highly-skilled film-makers” after the Westminster and Borough Market terrorist attacks in London to “create content which aims to tackle all...
Jon Snow should not have apologised
There is a slogan used by racists throughout recent history: “nothing wrong with being white” (or some variation on that theme). Any celebration of Black or Asian culture is presented as a slur on...
Policing the boundaries
During the launch of the Independent Group, while it was still a breakaway faction from the Labour party, there was an exchange on a morning TV show between Tom Bowers, the author of book...
New claims, scant evidence as FGM activists play whack-a-mole
Last week the number of successful prosecutions for female genital mutilation (FGM) in Britain went from zero in more than 30 years since a specific FGM law was passed, to one. A Ugandan woman...
What is racism, and what isn’t?
Recently I came across the podcast by In the Days of Noor, presented by sister Noor (right), an Islamic studies teacher from New Jersey (she also has a YouTube channel). In a recent episode...
Yes, he is a thug
There’s an image which has been circulated on Facebook which compares two articles about violent crimes in London. One refers to a ‘thug’ named Kersan Euell who kicked a female police officer into the...
Is it really so difficult to track down this rapist?
Earlier this week there was a story in the Daily Mail, among other places, about an autistic woman who contracted HIV while living in a care home in north-west London some time between 2006...