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Tag: Race issues

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I am the woman in the ‘racist Dove ad’. I am not a victim

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When Dove offered me the chance to be the face of a new body wash campaign, I jumped. I had no idea I would become the unwitting poster child for racist advertising From a very young age, Ive been told, Youre so pretty for a dark-skinned girl. I am a Nigerian woman, born in London and raised in Atlanta. Ive grown up very aware of societys opinion that dark-skinned people, especially women, would look better if our skin were lighter. I know that the beauty industry has fueled this opinion…

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Did Russia fake black activism on Facebook to sow division in the US?

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The popular Blacktivist account claimed to be a force for community organizing. Now it looks to have been part of Russias effort to influence politics When longtime Baltimore activists first saw a Facebook account called Blacktivist organizing a local police brutality march, they were immediately suspicious. The page honoring died in police custody a year earlier, quickly acquired a sizable following, but no one knew who was running it. Heber Brown III, a pastor and community organizer, messaged Blacktivist asking if the person lived in Baltimore. No, replied Blacktivist on…

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‘America has done a terrible job of telling the truth about racism’

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Montgomery was a vital artifice of the domestic slave trade throughout the 19th century, a fact that often gets overlooked If one set out to crown a symbolic epicenter for the 400-odd year odyssey of white supremacy in the US, they would be hard-pressed to do better than Montgomery, Alabama. It was at the statehouse in Montgomery that Jefferson Davis was first inaugurated as the president of the Confederacy in a bid to preserve the institution of slavery and in defense of the inferiority of the black race. It was…

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Take away Aung San Suu Kyis Nobel peace prize. She no longer deserves it | George Monbiot

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Once she was an inspiration. Now, silent on the plight of the Rohingya, she is complicit in crimes against humanity, writes the Guardian columnist George Monbiot Few of us expect much from political leaders: to do otherwise is to invite despair. But to Aung San Suu Kyi we entrusted our hopes. To mention her name was to invoke patience and resilience in the face of suffering, courage and determination in the unyielding struggle for freedom. She was an inspiration to us all. Friends of mine devoted their working lives to…

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Why are white people expats when the rest of us are immigrants?

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Surely any person going to work outside their country is an expatriate? But no, the word exclusively applies to white people In the lexicon of human migration there are still hierarchical words, created with the purpose of putting white people above everyone else. One of those remnants is the word expat. What is an expat? And who is an expat? According to Wikipedia, an expatriate (often shortened to expat) is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country other than that of the persons upbringing. The word comes from…

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Charlottesville: far-right crowd with torches encircles counter-protest group

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People gathering to oppose Unite the Right demonstration say they were hit with pepper spray and lighter fluid in clash on University of Virginia campus Hundreds of far-right demonstrators wielded torches as they marched on to the University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville on Friday night and reportedly attacked a much smaller group of counter-protesters who had linked arms around a statue of Thomas Jefferson. Starting at a municipal park less than a mile away, alt-right protesters who have gathered for the weekend Unite the Right rally marched in a…

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Google reportedly fires author of anti-diversity memo

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CEO Sundar Pichai says internal document that criticised efforts to promote women and under-represented minorities is contrary to our basic values Google reportedly fired a software engineer on Monday after a in a memo to employees. It is contrary to our basic values and our code of conduct. The firing of the memos author, who identified himself as James Damore in an email to the Guardian, was first reported by tweeted a link to further comments by Pichai: Our co-workers shouldnt have to worry that each time they open their…

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Unlearning the myth of American innocence

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The long read: When she was 30, Suzy Hansen left the US for Istanbul and began to realise that Americans will never understand their own country until they see it as the rest of the world does My mother recently found piles of my notebooks from when I was a small child that were filled with plans for my future. I was very ambitious. I wrote out what I would do at every age: when I would get married and when I would have kids and when I would open…

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Issa Rae: ‘So much of the media presents blackness as fierce and flawless. Im not’

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The creator of Insecure talks the dating totem pole, films obsession with slavery and the gender-race pay gap as season two begins I dont want the stench of the current administration on this show, says Issa Rae. I dont want people to look back and be like: Oh, this was a Trump show. I want them to look back and say Insecure was an Sex and The City, which Rae co-created, writes and stars in, first aired on HBO last autumn, exactly a month before the US election. Culturally, Obama…

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How Facebook groups bring people closer together neo-Nazis included

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Mark Zuckerbergs new mission is to bring the world closer together. But Facebook groups can unite extremists as easily as they serve hobbyists Ricky Caya was looking for something. A 43-year-old postal service worker and father of two in Quebec, he felt unsettled and unconnected. The great social movements of the 1960s, the American civil rights movement, flower power, the big trade union movements people today dont have that, he said. So when a Facebook post crossed his news feed promoting a new organization that sought to bring together good…

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Mayweather accuses McGregor of racism and uses homophobic slur

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Floyd Mayweather called Conor McGregor a faggot and accused the UFC fighter of racism in an ugly public appearance at Wembley Arena Floyd Mayweather attacked Conor McGregor with a homophobic slur and accused the UFC fighter of racism in the final leg of a promotional tour that has descended into an ugly war of words. The UFC lightweight champion was again forced to defend himself against allegations of racism as Mayweather rounded on him at a heated press call in front of 10,000 fans at Wembley Arena. Racism still exists….

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Chris Lilley’s Jonah from Tonga withdrawn by New Zealand’s Mori Television

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NZ minister says the Australian comedy television series perpetuates negative stereotypes of Pacific people The board of Mori Television has withdrawn an Australian television series written by and starring Summer Heights High. Georgina te Heuheu, the chair of Mori Television, said once the full board of became aware of the screening of the program on Thursday evening, a decision was made then to pull the series. She said the values of Maori Television include respecting all communities. We are a Mori media outlet with our own standards, and a mandate…

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‘Race fraud’: how a college quota scandal exposed Brazil’s historic racial tensions

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Brazils supreme court is preparing to rule on a 2014 law on racial quotas as concerns grow over abuse of quota systems which even led one government department to draw up a checklist to assess candidates facial features Late last year, Fernando received news he had dreaded for months: he and 23 of his classmates had been kicked out of college. The expulsion became national news in Brazil. Fernando and his classmates may not have been publicly named (Fernando, in fact, is a pseudonym), but they were roundly vilified as…

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Portland’s dark history of white supremacy

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The city is known for its liberalism. But a racially charged double murder sheds light on an enduring current of militant racism Ciaran Mulloy remembers how the neo-Nazis outnumbered the anti-racists in Portland in the 90s. A union organiser and anti-fascist, he was was deeply involved in fighting against the far rights infiltration of American youth culture in the 1980s and 90s. But when he arrived in the city in 1990, he said, we were not prepared for what was out there in Portland. There were multiple gangs, and 300…

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The White House forgets the Holocaust (again) | Timothy Snyder

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Remember how the Trump administration deliberately ignored the Jewish victims of the Holocaust? That is key to understanding Sean Spicers gaffe In a press conference on Tuesday, Sean Spicer claimed before an incredulous room of journalists that Hitler did not use chemical agents to kill people during the Second World War. Beneath this stunning factual error lurks a horrifying moral one. We didnt use chemical weapons in World War II. You know, you had someone as despicable as Hitler who didnt even sink to using chemical weapons Spicer said. When…

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