Tag: racism

BBC presenter says ‘overwhelmingly white’ workplace affects his mental health

BBC Radio 5 Live presenter Nihal Arthanayake has said an “overwhelmingly white” working environment is affecting his mental health.

The presenter told a journalism diversity conference on Wednesday: “It’s really affecting me that I walk in and all I see is white people.”

His colleagues’ response when he told them this was to reply defensively that they were not being racist, he claimed as he said that was missing the point.

Speaking at the Journalism Diversity Fund (JDF) conference at BBC Media City in Salford, he said: “I’ve seen a lot of people leave this building because they couldn’t deal with the culture.”

He also said others found they had to try to be a certain type of person to progress with the broadcaster, adding: “If you want journalists to progress, they have to be who they are.

“I don’t think there’s a single Muslim involved in the senior editorial processes” at BBC Radio 5 Live, he added.

He went on: “The hardest thing is to walk into a room, look around and nobody looks like you.”

The presenter made the comments in an on-stage interview with Jo Adetunji, editor of The Conversation, at the JDF’s annual equality, diversity and inclusion conference organised by the NCTJ, which trains new journalists.

The JDF awards bursaries to aspiring journalists from diverse backgrounds who do not have the financial means to support themselves through their training.

Mr Arthanayake added that he has noticed a difference since moving north after living in London for 20 years.

He said: “Since moving up here, being called the P-word – that didn’t happen in London.

“You’d get a slap for that in London, not even from me.”

Following the interview, Cheryl Varley, a BBC Radio 5 Live producer, said the organisation is committed to tackling the lack of diversity in its newsrooms.

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Louisville gunman wanted to ‘stop gun violence’ by taking out ‘upper-class white people’

The man who shot and killed five people at a bank earlier this year in Louisville, Kentucky, wanted to send a message — about the need for gun control.

Connor James Sturgeon, who died April 10 in a firefight with Louisville police, left behind a journal that laid out his motives for the deadly attack, including his belief that killing “upper-class white people” would prompt tougher laws on firearms access.

“I have decided to make an impact. These people did not deserve to die, but because I was depressed and able to buy ____ (guns?), they are gone,” Sturgeon said in an entry dated April 4.

“Perhaps this is the impetus for change — upper-class white people dying. I certainly would not have been able to do this, were it more difficult to get a gun,” he wrote.

His goals included “no more me” and “stop gun violence — send a message to politicians.”

The handwritten writings were part of a 64-page report released Tuesday by the Louisville Metro Police Department that included photocopied images of notebook pages as well as an April 5 selfie showing Sturgeon making a “Joker face.”

Detective Kevin Carillo, who wrote the report, said he “believes the journal entries left behind by Connor Sturgeon are direct information to the planning and his mindset in the days leading up to the shooting, with his possible motives for his actions including political issues surrounding corrupt politicians and lack of gun control.”

Sturgeon, 25, opened fire on his co-workers in a conference room at the Old National Bank, killing five and injuring eight.

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Museum claims black women ‘more likely to die of the plague’ in medieval London because of ‘premodern structural racism’

A museum has claimed black women were more likely to die of the plague in medieval London because of ‘premodern structural racism’.

The new study, which fails to put an estimate on how many black people were living in the capital during the period, examined the remains of just 145 individuals – from the time of a plague which killed nearly half of London’s 70,000-strong population. 

What is now often referred to as the Black Death killed millions of people across Europe and Asia between 1348 and 1350. 

The first recorded African resident in the capital was a man called Cornelius, who was in London in 1593. However, one of the researchers involved in the study claimed that the medieval capital of England was ‘a black London’. 

The remains that were studied by researchers from the Museum of London and academics in the US came from three London cemeteries, but only 49 of the sample actually died from the plague.  

The research found there were significantly higher proportions of people of colour and those of Black African descent in plague burials compared to non-plague burials.

Nine plague victims appeared to be of African heritage, while 40 seemed to have white European or Asian ancestry. Among the remains in non-plague burials, the figures were eight and 88 respectively.    

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Pittsburgh public schools approve measure to instruct teachers on ‘White supremacy’ in math classes

The Pittsburgh Public Schools Board has voted to hire a consulting group that educates teachers on how to replace “White supremacy culture practices” in math instruction with methods that center on the “wellness of students of color.”

On October 25, the board approved a measure to give Quetzal Education Consulting $50,000 to dismantle racism in math classes.

As reported by The Center Square, the consulting group states that its workshops teach “antiracist math” and will help equip teachers with tools to “identify, disrupt and replace” practices that perpetuate White supremacy.

Ebony Pugh, the Director of Public Relations and Media Content for Pittsburgh Public Schools, confirmed to Fox News Digital that the Board of Directors of the School District of Pittsburgh authorized its offices to enter a contract with Quetzal.

The move will provide the school with “additional foundational knowledge of antiracist math pedagogy and tangible learning experiences that can be implemented with students.”

Quetzal will provide support through introductory workshops for math teachers and a leadership series for administrators.

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More Than A Hundred Bird Species About To Be Renamed Because … Racism

More than a hundred bird species are about to be renamed because their monikers have been deemed “offensive” and “exclusionary” by some due to their connection to the “racist” pasts of the people who the birds were named after.

The American Ornithological Society, an organization responsible for standardizing English bird names across the Americas, announced on Wednesday that dozens of birds in U.S. and Canada will be renamed because birds who were named in honor of people can be upsetting to some, The New York Times reported.

“There is power in a name, and some English bird names have associations with the past that continue to be exclusionary and harmful today,” Colleen Handel, the society’s president and a research wildlife biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Alaska, said.

“We need a much more inclusive and engaging scientific process that focuses attention on the unique features and beauty of the birds themselves,” she added. “Everyone who loves and cares about birds should be able to enjoy and study them freely—and birds need our help now more than ever.”

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They told a famous story about being abducted by space aliens. A new book says it’s really about racism

There is the sound of fear in a voice: a sudden gasp, a stutter or a suppressed scream. And then there is the sound of stark terror: an adult losing all control, blubbering and gasping for breath like a kid facing their worst nightmare.

That sound of unimaginable terror is what a psychiatrist recorded when he put a man named Barney Hill under hypnosis in his office one day in 1964. Hill was a World War II vet, a big guy with a Darth Vader baritone voice and an IQ of 140.

But when the psychiatrist asked him to relive a fateful night three years earlier, he broke down in hysterical sobbing. He said he and his wife, Betty, were tracked by a mysterious light on an isolated highway in the New Hampshire mountains one night and abducted by humanoid creatures in a UFO who forced them to undergo medical examinations.

The story Hill told would become arguably the most famous UFO abductee story ever. One historian said the Hills were the “Adam and Eve of alien abduction” stories. The couple’s tale was turned into a best-selling book and a movie starring James Earl Jones, and it has provided the template for nearly every depiction of an alien encounter in pop culture since.

A new book, however, claims that the story isn’t so much about aliens as it is about race. The Hills, an interracial couple who were also civil rights activists, told a story that reflected their growing disenchantment with the slow progress of the civil rights movement, says the historian Matthew Bowman in “The Abduction of Betty and Barney Hill: Alien Encounters, Civil Rights, and the New Age in America.”

As America prepares to celebrate Halloween, Bowman’s book offers an unexpected racial dimension to the famous story. He, and others, have recast it as one of the spookiest stories about racism in American history.

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Stanford Lecturer Suspended After Separating Jewish Students, Labeling Them As ‘Colonizers’

A lecturer at Stanford University has been suspended after he allegedly forced Jewish students to stand in a corner while labeling them as “colonizers.” He also praised and justified the recent terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas, referring to the jihadist group as “freedom fighters.”

Students told the San Francisco Chronicle that the professor, who has been identified as Ameer Hasan Loggins, opened two classes on Tuesday by stating that the day’s lesson would focus on “colonialism.” He then proceeded to blame the current conflict on “Zionists” and justified last weekend’s terrorist attacks that left more than 1,300 Israelis and at least 27 Americans dead, stating that they were a necessary part of “the resistance.”

The teacher then asked Jewish students to identify themselves before ordering them to stand in a corner, stating that this is what they were doing to Palestinians, said Nourya Cohen, a co-president of Stanford’s Israeli Student Association. “He asked how many Jews died in the Holocaust,” Cohen said. When one student said six million, the professor said, “Yes. Only six million.”

“Colonizers killed more than 6 million. Israel is a colonizer,” the lecturer reportedly said.

Rabbi Dov Greenberg, director of the Chabad Stanford Jewish Center, spoke to three students from the class and told the Jewish news outlet Forward that they were afraid to speak out over fears of repercussions. “He said, ‘Hamas is a legitimate representation of the Palestinian people,’” Greenberg told the outlet. “‘They are not a terrorist group. They are freedom fighters. Their actions are legitimate.’”

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Canadian Govt Funds $5,000 Bonuses for Employers to Hire Anyone Other Than Straight White Men

A new Canadian government-funded program is offering $5,000 bonuses to British Columbia construction companies to hire apprentices who identify as anything other than a straight white male.

From Western Investor, “B.C. employers get $5,000 more if apprentices ‘self-identify’ “:

B.C. construction companies which hire trade apprentices who self-identify as other than a straight, white male with no disability will receive double a new government incentive, pushing it to $10,000 for the first year of employment.

The $10 million Apprenticeship Services program, being offered by the B.C. Construction Association (BCCA) and announced September 27, provides cash incentives to small and medium-sized construction employers who hire and register first-year apprentices in up to 39 Red Seal trades.

Funding for what the BCCA calls the “most far-reaching construction trade apprenticeship drive ever undertaken in British Columbia” is under the federal government’s Canadian Apprenticeship Strategy, which launched in September 2022.

Since then the project has issued financial incentives for the hiring and registering of 1,329 apprentices and sent payments to more than 700 employers.

The BCCA will pay employers $5,000 for each first-year apprentice they register in any eligible Red Seal trades. However, if an applicant self-identifies as a woman, person with disabilities, Indigenous, racialized Canadian or from the 2SLGBTQI+ community, the incentive doubles to $10,000.

[…] So far, 51 per cent of the project apprentices have declared themselves to be a member of one of an “equity deserving group,” according to a BCCA release.

This takes “train your replacement” to a whole new level!

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Banning Criminal Background Checks Will Lead To More Housing Discrimination, Not Less

America needs more housing. Pressure for reform is only growing as available homes get less and less affordable. Unfortunately, rather than addressing the root cause of high housing prices—an epidemic of local overregulation that prevents enough homes from being built—some legislators continue to flirt with social experiments that can harm both landlords and renters.

For example, some states and localities have implemented well-meaning “fair chance” laws banning criminal history on background checks for prospective tenants. Progressive Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D–Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (D–Mich.) recently introduced the idea as federal legislation. In a statement, Pressley said, “It’s time we remove the systemic obstacles that have exacerbated the prison-to-homelessness pipeline.”

We do indeed have an overcriminalization and overincarceration problem in this country, so on its face, this seems like a good idea. According to the Department of Justice, more than 650,0000 ex-offenders are released from prison every year, not counting the nearly 6.9 million people on probation, on parole, or still in jail or prison at any one time. Far too many face undeserved challenges when trying to re-acclimate into society and not reoffend.

That’s partly because relatively few landlords want to rent to people with criminal records. Landlords minimize the risk of delinquent or destructive tenants by selecting the best applicants on a given margin. From this perspective, avoiding people with criminal records seems like an easy choice, even though it means some potentially great tenants are rejected. The best reforms would correct the real problems of overcriminalization and overincarceration. That’s politically difficult and may take a long time. Equally important would be removing all artificial barriers to building more homes.

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North Korea Deports US Soldier Who Tried To Defect Over ‘Racism’

North Korea on Wednesday deported the American soldier who tried to defect by bolting across the demilitarized zone from South Korea earlier this year. 23-year old US Army soldier Travis King was among a group of tourists when he ran across the border and was immediately taken into North Korean custody in the July incident.

King, who had actually been facing Army disciplinary action after spending two months in a South Korean jail on assault charges, claimed he was running from “inhuman maltreatment and racial discrimination” in the US Army.

King’s statement to the North Koreans also said he was “disillusioned about the unequal U.S. society.” It seems he was trying to gain sympathy by playing into Pyongyang’s standard propaganda narrative about the West. Two US officials have confirmed to the Associated Press that King is now back in American custody.

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