The benefits of learning Jewish history
The other day I saw a tweet by Stephen Pollard, former editor of London’s Jewish Chronicle, columnist, TV personality and Zionist — no, not the one complaining about all the ads on dating websites...
Category: Racism
Racist thugs on the rampage
Last week, following the murder of three young girls in Southport, Merseyside, who attacked a number of other girls and their teachers at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class, gangs of racist hooligans have been...
The need for a representative academia
Last week the BBC’s File on 4 ran a feature on affirmative action, the American academic policy of taking aspects of an applicant’s background, including their race, into account when awarding university places. This...
Just how deep-rooted is antisemitism, really?
This week the Guardian published a cartoon (above) by its regular cartoonist Martin Rowson, depicting the resignation of the former BBC director-general Richard Sharp. The cartoon is entitled The Copros Touch (a pun on...
Diane Abbott and racism then and now
Today (Sunday) the Observer printed a letter from Diane Abbott, the Labour (well, now suspended from the party) MP for Hackney and Stoke Newington in inner east London, who is Black, opining that white...
NUS and antisemitism on and off campus
Last Friday the BBC published a report by Hazel Shearing, its education correspondent (inexplicably filed under “Young Reporter” (a term normally used of student reporters, which she isn’t), about antisemitism in and around universities...
Do Jews “not count”?
Last week, the 90s comedian David Baddiel recently presented a documentary on the place of Jews among Britain’s minorities and the question of why, as he sees it, Jews are left out by identity...
What is oppression? Who is oppressed?
The other day I saw a tweet quoted comparing the oppression of Black Americans versus that of women, in the context of Rachel Dolezal, who disguised herself as Black and (among other things) gained...
Azeem Rafiq, racism and redemption
Over the past few weeks the cricketer Azeem Rafiq revealed racist treatment he had received over many years when training and then playing at Yorkshire Cricket Club, a scandal which has resulted in the...
How we still let our learning disabled down
A couple of weeks ago there was a documentary on BBC1 that exposed how, in the 50s and 60s, young Black children were routinely sent to schools for the “educationally sub-normal” because of the...
Jewish white privilege is no myth
Jewish Privilege is a myth by Giles Fraser (from Unherd) In this article Giles Fraser, a London vicar married to an Israeli, complains that Jews are commonly left out of definitions of ‘BAME’ (Black,...
How should Muslims react to Holocaust education?
Someone on Facebook shared an article from Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper, on how immigrant (or immigrant-descended) Muslims in Germany react to Holocaust education efforts such as trips to concentration camps. The article notes that...
Tearing down statues of oppressors is not censorship
Murderers are not a section of society that is held in great respect in our society, much as in others. Until the 1960s if convicted they were hanged; since then they have been subject...
Use the justice that’s there
This morning it was revealed that the woman who was videoed making a malicious phonecall to New York police earlier this year after a Black bird-watcher videoed her with her dog off the leash...
How do we solve a problem like the police?
Since the killing by four Minneapolis police officers of George Floyd, a former work colleague of one of them, there have been worldwide street protests and a revival of the Black Lives Matter movement...
Nothing brave about Starmer’s cave-in
Today Keir Starmer, the Labour leader elected earlier this year, caved in to pressure from the Board of Deputies of British Jews to sack the shadow education secretary, Rebecca Long-Bailey, who had shared an...
Not our brothers’ keepers
Last week a young woman named Ellie Williams (right) from Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, posted a long message on Facebook describing having been kidnapped by a group of local Pakistani men and taken to an address...
Labour leadership, Antisemitism and Islamophobia
This past Monday the Board of Deputies of British Jews, a body elected by parts of the Jewish community (not all of it), launched their “ten pledges” campaign, a set of demands for candidates...
Prince Harry is just protecting his family
Two things have always fascinated me about attitudes to the British royal family. The first is how protective many people are about the monarchy as an institution and how vindictive many people are against...
On obscene generalisations
Last week a video circulated of a Canadian-based Somali imam making some ugly generalisations about African-American people, claiming that most of them were products of one-night stands and did not know who their fathers...