Tag Archives: Racism

Why Everyone’s Talking About Golliwog Dolls Right Now

Posted on by
Reply

Golliwog dolls have made an unexpected return to the news cycle recently, following a recent police raid in an Essex pub.

Here’s why these highly problematic emblems of the past are still causing such a stir – and why the home secretary appears to have dragged into the row.

What are golliwog dolls?

The dolls are based off a design first produced in 1895 by an American cartoonist called Florence Kate Upton in children’s books, and was supposedly based on 18th Century minstrels.

The fictional character became identifiable by its frizzy hair, large lips and teeth, and seemed to resemble a rag doll.

The caricature then started to appear on Robertson’s Jam jars in 1910, becoming a popular brand, before evolving into toys and collectibles.

As the word Golliwog is used to attack Black people, Golliwog dolls are seen as racist.

In the 80s, the name for the dolls became “gollys” in an effort to step away from the racist connotations, but the brand was eventually dropped in 2001.

Media regulator Ofcom has since declared the word “golliwog” to be a highly offensive term, describing it as: “Strongest language, highly unacceptable without strong contextualisation. Seen as derogatory to Black people.”

What do golliwog dolls have to do with an Essex pub?

It all started on April 4 when police in Essex revealed five officers had confiscated several dolls from the White Hart Inn in Grays, where they were being displayed behind the bar.

No one was arrested or charged in connection with the investigation, but the landlord is to be questioned when he returns from abroad in May.

It is all part of an ongoing investigation following a complaint about an alleged hate crime (being racially distressed) on February 24.

Though she denies she or her husband are racist, landlady Benice Ryley, said she would be replacing the confiscated dolls. She said she had a collection of about 30 dolls from family and customers, in the pub for nearly 10 years and that she could not see “any harm” in displaying them.

The police have said it would only be able to remove the next lot of offensive dolls if they received another complaint.

“No victim has come forward who has felt racially harassed, alarmed or distressed since any further dolls have gone up in the pub,” the police said.

What does this have to do with the law?

Crime and Disorder Act

Displaying golliwog dolls could be considered illegal under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998.

It might fall under the definition for racially aggravated behaviour, if “the offender demonstrates towards the victim hostility based on the victim’s membership or presumed membership of a racial or religious group.”

According to The Guardian, it might not be necessary for someone to come forward as a victim to secure a conviction, as this is a public order offence.

Equalities Act

Businesses have to offer equal service to customers and staff under the 2010 Equalities Act.

Breaking this could be a civil issue, leading local authorities to act (potentially removing the pub’s licence).

Malicious Communications Act

A 2016 Facebook post from Benice’s husband, Chris Ryley, has also resurfaced, showing the Golliwog dolls hanging from a bar shelf. When his wife commented under the image asking if displaying the dolls was “legal”, he replied: “They used to hang them in Mississippi years ago.”

This could be construed as a breach of the Malicious Communications Act 1988, which relates to electronic communication including “with intent to cause distress or anxiety”.

Essex police are using this post as part of their investigation into the pub.

Why has Suella Braverman’s name been mentioned?

Reports in the Mail Online suggested that the home secretary had told the police force off for removing the dolls. The newspaper quoted a Home Office source allegedly saying the police “should not be getting involved in this kind of nonsense” and focusing on “catching criminals” instead.

But Essex Police said this account was “categorically not true”. They alleged she had not contacted the force about the probe – but refused to rule out that the Home Office in general had contacted them.

The force said: “In addition, as is the case in all investigations across every police force, we maintain operational independence from the Home Office, which ensures that every investigation is carried out without fear or favour.”

What next?

After an investigation, Essex Police would have to send any possible charges to the Crown Prosecution Service before a final decision was made.

The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) has said the pub in question will now not be included in the Good Beer Guide, stating that it believes “pubs should be welcoming and inclusive places”.

Meanwhile, the saga has prompted a wave of reaction online, and polling company YouGov has revealed that 39% of respondents think it is still acceptable to sell/display the dolls, with 48% claiming it is not racist.

Share Button

Black Employees Face Backlash From White Managers When They Self-Promote At Work

Posted on by
Reply

The classic career advice many of us hear is: “The work does not speak for itself. You need to make sure others know about it, too.“

But recent research complicates the suggestion that everyone should advocate for themselves by promoting their own accomplishments.

A 2022 study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology surveyed a racially diverse and stratified sample of professionals, all from a large global financial institution and who all had white managers. Employees answered a survey about their self-promotional behavior with prompts such as “I talk proudly about my contributions or education with others at [company name],” and a group of management researchers used manager surveys and human resources information to see how supervisors rated the employees’ performance.

The researchers found that although white, Asian and Latinx employees received higher job ratings when they talked more about their contributions and accomplishments, Black employees were penalised by white managers for doing the same thing. Black employees who rated themselves highly on self-promotion received lower ratings of their job performance and assessments of their fit with the organisation.

In other words, self-promoting at work benefited white, Asian and Latinx employees while it had negative consequences for Black colleagues.

What explains this racial bias? The researchers think that white supervisors could be holding negative stereotypes of lower job competence against their Black employees while other racial groups were not dealing with the same thing.

As a result, when Black employees excel and communicate their accomplishments, strengths and contributions, their white managers see this as something that goes against their stereotypes of Black employees’ competence and skills.

“When managers perceive the violation of their stereotypical ‘norm’ of Black employees, they feel uneasy and thus react negatively,” said Jiaqing Sun, an assistant professor in the London School of Economics’ department of management, and a co-author of the study.

“The unique bias revealed in our study is more likely to happen in [occupations] highly emphasising competence, education, and skills, and also with a low representation of Black employees, such as financial banking, high technology and higher education,” Sun told HuffPost via email.

“It’s really not you, it’s them.”

– Career coach Ebony Joyce

The study controlled for employees’ education levels, tenure at the company, length of time in their current position and how long they had worked with their direct manager to “really try to isolate the extent to which self-promotion is positively impacting performance ratings,” said Sandy Wayne, a management professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the lead author of the study.

“What we did find was that African Americans, controlling all those other potential predictors of performance ratings, were getting lower ratings than other groups when they engaged in higher levels of self-promotion.”

Black employees can find sponsors to advocate on their behalf, but this is not their problem to fix.

Career coach and diversity consultant Ebony Joyce said the study’s findings resonated with her experience as a Black professional and with what she has seen with clients.

“We’re faced with this double-edged sword. You’re taught to do the work, put your head down and your work will speak for itself,” she said. “And you notice after a while that everyone is getting promoted around you. And you’re like, ‘I’m doing the work. What do I need to do?’ And then when it comes to advocating for yourself, that doesn’t work, either.”

Joyce said she has worked with many Black clients in this situation who wonder if there is another certification or degree that they need to get to be promoted. To them, Joyce advises, “You already have the education and the expertise and everything that you need already. You are just not supported within the organisation that you are in.”

If you’re a Black employee looking to stay within your organisation, it can help to find a sponsor at your company, outside of your direct manager, who can speak up on your behalf. As Morgan Stanley senior client adviser Carla Harris put it in a TED talk, a sponsor is someone, usually within your same company, who is not just going to speak positively about you but will be willing to spend “their valuable political and social capital on you” and “has the power to get it — whatever it is for you — to get it done behind closed doors.”

Wayne said it is also critical for Black employees “to track and to maintain documentation on areas in which you have excelled and accomplished a great deal, so almost more objective indices of one’s competence and performance, rather than just communicating that yourself to your manager.”

But in many cases, the best option is to leave.

This is what Joyce said she did when she experienced this trap of self-promotion. At her then-job, she noticed people she started with the same day were getting promoted while she was not. Joyce would do the things being asked of her in performance reviews and would go to leadership and human resources with documentation, but she still saw no change and continued to watch less-experienced co-workers advance.

“[I was] getting overlooked to where it was really a slap in the face and almost, I felt like, an embarrassment to me, as to ‘What am I not doing?’” she said. “After, I think, year three of not being promoted, I had decided to leave the organisation, which was the best thing for me. And the next place that I chose to work was for a manager who looked like me.”

For Black employees who do exit unsupportive companies, Joyce advises them to look at the turnover of diverse staff and the representation in leadership of places they want to work at next to lower the chances of the situation happening again.

Ultimately, however, the burden should not be on Black employees to deal with their white managers’ bad managing. Instead, it is the organisation’s responsibility to rectify the problem.

“The backlash toward Black employees’ self-promotion only exists when the manager holds a negative competence-related stereotype, so the most direct method to mitigate the bias is to mitigate the stereotypes,” Sun said. “This is, of course, not an easy job, but it is organisations’ responsibility and the only pathway to create an equitable workplace.”

Or, as Joyce put it, “This is one of those cases where it’s really not you, it’s them.”

Share Button

‘Chilled To The Bone’: What Jewish People Need You To Know About Kanye West

Posted on by
Reply

In some ways, a masked millionaire managing to even out-do conspiracy theorists by saying, ‘I love Hitler’ is so outright absurd, that it could be funny.

But when I watched Kanye West go on his latest antisemitic rant on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s podcast, in which he claimed to be a good person who just happened to love Hitler, I felt not only chilled but also utterly depressed. It is a scary time to be a Jew.

Jew hatred has become fashionable over the last few years. I’ve got used to seeing #Jews trending on Twitter all the time – never for a good reason.

Sometimes, the hatred is from the far left, who demonise us as Zionists (in their narrative, Zionists who are the puppet masters of politicians, have an obsession with money and like to kill children). And sometimes it is from the far right (who also claim Jews are the puppet masters of politicians, have an obsession with money and like to kill children).

We are fighting both, but right now Kanye – who legally changed his name to Ye last year – is at the centre of what is sometimes called the horseshoe effect – the idea that all the extremes meet in antisemitism. The problem isn’t that he is one man going on tirades but that he is an extremely influential man, who has twice as many Twitter followers as there are Jews in the entire world.

“I felt chilled to the bone when I saw a clip of what he was saying,” Lindi*, a 73-year-old Jewish grandmother from Leeds, tells me. “I feel frightened because a whole new tranche of people will be attracted by what he says. The world is a much smaller place than it used to be – ideas get quickly spread around.

“Just before he went on his rant, he was having dinner with Donald Trump who is a very powerful man hoping to become President again. The reach of people like this is huge. And it is no longer just about words – it is not just moaning about Jews at dinner parties – but actual physical attacks are happening.”

Lindi (left) and Sam S(right)
Lindi (left) and Sam S(right)

Last year antisemitic incidents reached a record high – up 34% – and of these 2,255 attacks, 176 were violent. We are one of the smallest minorities in the country, making up just 0.5% of the UK, but the victims of 23% of all religious assaults.

“One of the things that is worrying me is that he is turning two oppressed communities, who should be allies, against each other,” says Sam S*, 43, from London. “It feels like he’s trying to start a race war and it feels like the far right are encouraging it. I’m worried it’s not going to stop. It’s going to keep escalating.”

Some have put West’s rants down to mental health, as he’s previously spoken about his diagnosis of bipolar disorder. But many have contested the idea that mental illness could cause antisemitism.

“This isn’t just mental illness – what he is saying is the result of a deep ideology,” says Alex Hearn, 47, from London, who is an antisemitic activist and the director of Labour Against Antisemitism. “The things he has come out with are tropes going back hundreds of years; it is part of a deep conspiratorial belief system. They aren’t off-hand comments but the tip of an ideological iceberg.

“Some of it is far right, white supremacist, Nazi ideology and it merges in with a supersession ideology that Black people are ‘the real Jews’ and that the rest of us are just pretenders. It’s a mix of increasingly popular ideas.”

Alex Hearn (left) and Joseph Cohen (right)
Alex Hearn (left) and Joseph Cohen (right)

Prior to Kanye’s latest outburst, he’d already threatened to go ‘death con three’ on Jewish people. Disturbingly, a group in Los Angeles were later photographed draping a banner reading “Kanye is right about the Jews” over a freeway overpass.

For all the Hollywood celebrities who condemed anti-semitism in the aftermath, there were others who repeated some of the rapper’s rhetoric.

Most notoriously, basketball star Kyrie Irving posted a link to a controversial Amazon documentary called ‘Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America’ which contains both Holocaust denial and the same idea being spread by Kanye – that African Americans are the ‘real Jews’. (He’s since apologised).

Last week, Amazon boss Andy Jassy refused to bow to pressure to remove the film from the streaming site, saying: “We have to allow access to these viewpoints, even if they are objectionable.”

Hearn believes this stance is potentially “more dangerous than what Kanye is saying”.

“What we are talking about is the normalisation of conspiratorial thinking about Jews in popular culture,” he adds.

What can we do about Kanye and his antisemitism? Jews are stuck in a bind. Speak up and we are whiny – some even accuse us of being racist. Attempt to close him down, and that is proof of our ‘power’. And yet, I can’t tell you how powerless I feel.

“It is this battle which is most painful to me as a Black British Jew.”

– Lara Monroe

For Black British Jews the situation is complicated and, perhaps, doubly painful. Before Kanye was attacking Jews, he was attacking his own people, says Lara Monroe, a 43-year-old from East London, who writes about her experience of being both Black British and Jewish.

“To divorce Kanye’s antisemitic comments from those he made towards his own Black community can miss the nub of what is going on,” she tells HuffPost UK. “When Kanye and Candace Owens were photographed together wearing an ‘All Lives Matter’ top that was a trigger that something deeper was coming.”

For her, it is particularly painful to see his attempts at starting a war between minorities when she encompasses both.

“Who wins when the relationship between the Black and Jewish communities is broken by the agents of chaos who consciously or unconsciously stir it? The white supremacists. It is this battle which is most painful to me as a Black British Jew.

“When someone like Kanye chooses to be one of those agents, both Black and Jewish people can either feed into this with anger, mistrust and accusations of lack of solidarity or we can do what works, by being alert to and disrupt any spark of supremacist language or behaviour.”

“We can see Kanye becoming radicalised as we watch.”

– Joseph Cohen

Within hours of the Alex Jones’s podcast broadcast, Kanye was temporarily suspended from Twitter. But activist Joseph Cohen, who is in his late 30s and from London, says the dangerous thing about stopping antisemites talking on the mainstream is that they head into more extreme spaces.

“We can see Kanye becoming radicalised as we watch,” he says. “At first it was just about a Jewish manager. Then it was ‘death con three on Jews’ and now it’s ‘I love Hitler’. One of the pluses of still being able to see what he says is that we can see the full extent of his radicalisation. It is almost impossible for anyone to defend him now. I do worry that if we don’t allow for free speech, we push them into the arms of the neo-Nazis, but as it is, Kanye is already in bed with them.”

Cohen, who investigates antisemitism for an organisation called Israel Advocacy Movement, raises concerns that Kayne is not only influencing white supremacists in America, but the far right in Britain too.

“The most powerful Black artist in the world has united with some of the most dangerous and violent white supremacists on the planet and the far right in this country – people like Tommy Robinson – are being inspired by it,” he claims.

“It was only recently that they were focused more on Muslim people and were even attempting to pretend they were friends of Jewish people. But now the far right is, once again, universally focused on Jews and Kanye is helping with that. People who never thought about Jews suddenly believe these tropes – these ancient tropes about us – because Kanye is saying them. And the hardest thing is, I don’t know what we can do about it.”

*Some interviewees chose not to share their surnames.

Share Button

Raheem Bailey GoFundMe Reaches £100k After Schoolboy Loses Finger Fleeing Bullies

Posted on by
Reply

Raheem Bailey is a name you would have seen all over your social feeds over the weekend. Devastatingly, the 11-year-old had a finger amputated after he suffered an injury trying to flee bullies at school.

The young Black student was attacked, beaten and pushed to the ground in his school in Abertillery, Wales, based on racist bullying, said his mother Shantal.

Doctors worked six hours to save Raheem’s fingers but ultimately could not save it.

Since she shared the news, the story has gained worldwide attention, with the likes of Anthony Joshua, Jadon Sancho and US basketball player Gerald Green speaking out.

The mum also started a GoFundMe page with the intention of raising £10k for Raheem’s medical costs, including a prosthetic finger. But since the story broke out, donations have poured in, far exceeding the family’s expectations.

Currently, the donations stand at £101,847.

Shantal Bailey wrote on the donations page: “Raheem has faced racial and physical abuse, as well as more generic bullying about his height and other things, since he started secondary school in September 2021.”

Though she had been aware of some comments, she was not aware of the extent of her son’s bullying, she said.

“Raheem was attacked by a group of children and beaten (mainly kicked) after being pushed to the ground. Consequently, Raheem made a desperate attempt to leave the school grounds in order to escape the situation.

“Whilst climbing the fence, his finger got caught and attached to it, causing the skin to strip and the finger to break in half it.”

The mother said she had contacted the school about the incident and was assured it would be dealt with.

The school, Abertillery Learning Community, announced yesterday that it would be closed today as it work with police to investigate the issue.

In a statement issued on Sunday, Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council said that all campuses would be closed on Monday, saying: “Abertillery Learning Community is working with Gwent Police in relation to an ongoing investigation into an alleged assault on the secondary campus.

“All campuses at Abertillery Learning Community will be closed tomorrow on health and safety grounds.

“Learners will access blended learning for Monday, 23rd May. The safety and well-being of learners and staff remains of paramount importance to the Learning Community and the Local Authority at all times.”

Share Button

Viola Davis Says A Director Once Called Her By His Maid’s Name

Posted on by
Reply

Viola Davis recalled a microaggression she experienced decades ago as she discussed how race has impacted her Hollywood career.

Speaking at the Cannes Film Festival for a powerful Women In Motion conversation on Thursday, the Oscar-winning actor said an unnamed director once referred to her by his maid’s name. “And I’d known him for like, 10 years,” she said. “And he called me Louise, and I found out it was because his maid’s name was Louise.”

“I was maybe around 30 at the time, so it was a while ago. But what you have to realise is that those microaggressions happen all the time,” she explained.

The actor also spoke about times she’d been told she wasn’t “pretty enough” for certain roles. “It breaks my heart, and it makes me angry,” she said. “For many reasons. A lot of it is based in race. It really is. Because let’s be honest; if I had my same features and I were five shades lighter, it would just be a little bit different.”

Viola recently starred as Michelle Obama in The First Lady, which wraps up its 10-episode season in June, and also recently released her memoir, Finding Me.

She’ll also star in The Woman King, a historical epic inspired by true events in the Dahomey kingdom, a former West African state in what is now Benin.

Share Button

Young People Really Don’t Like Being Called BAME And This Is Why

Posted on by
Reply

If you’re a person of colour in the UK then the chances are you don’t much like the term BAME (which stands for Black, Asian and minority ethnicities). And you might not feel too good about the term “ethnic minorities” either.

BAME has long been a contested phrase, frustrating many marginalised people who believe it homogenises otherwise diverse groups under one umbrella acronym that doesn’t signify their varied identities and experiences.

As alternatives such as “racialised communities” gain more currency, young people have told a leading diversity charity that while they don’t like the term BAME, they do see value in finding a new unifying signifier to use instead.

The charity Blueprint for All surveyed 500 18-30 years olds in the UK to find out their views on the subject, with the aim of sparking a wider public debate and greater sensitivity in the way people of diverse backgrounds are described.

The survey found that 98% of respondents believe in the values of a shared language that unifies people from diverse heritages. However, there was no shared word or expression yet that participants felt represented them all.

Isabella Bromfield, 20, a student who took part in the survey, is one of many young people hungry for new words to describe themselves.

“I do not feel there is a shared word or expression that represents us, but I think it is important to have a shared language that unifies everyone from diverse heritages,” she tells Huffpost UK.

“This is a really important conversation to have in terms of moving forward on how to accurately, empathetically and correctly label people in the best way, so that they feel comfortable.”

Respondents to the survey felt uncomfortable with a range of existing umbrella terms commonly used to describe their heritage – 55% saying they felt uncomfortable with the term BAME, 52% with BME (“Black and minority ethnic”) and 59% with “dual heritage”.

The descriptors that people felt most comfortable with included Asian (74% of Asian respondents), Black (67% of Black people surveyed), mixed race (64%), brown (62%), and people of colour (61%).

Azaria Yogendran, a communications account executive of mixed South-Asian descent, 24, tells HuffPost UK: “I’ve gotten used to using the term BAME but I feel like it’s a term that makes race and ethnicity easy to allude to for people who are not from diverse heritages and who don’t know how to talk about race.”

She feels uncomfortable, she says, “about why I am placed in this group and who is placing me in it. I feel like it has become a term that is thrown around without remembering that each individual within it is very different.”

Azaria Yogendran
Azaria Yogendran

The term BME was originally coined in the 1970s when people came together to fight the racism and discrimination that was particularly prevalent within Black communities. The ‘A’ for Asian was added in the 1990s to represent both South and East Asian people.

More recently, BAME has been used by politicians and workplaces when talking about diversity and inclusion. And while the inception of BAME came from a place of unification, in the present-day context many point to its limitations.

While Yogendran appreciates this historic political significance to the term, in the same way that, politically, the label “Black’ included non-Black people of colour – she feels there is no modern-day relevance.

“I have read that the term was originally made to unite ethnic groups against discrimination in the 1970s, but it seems to have evolved from being used by people from diverse backgrounds to being used about them,” she says.

“I feel the term lumps together a large group of people who don’t necessarily have anything in common apart from not being white and there is an implication that those in the group are at a disadvantage.”

Her experience as a mixed South Asian British woman in the UK is completely different to someone of a Korean British or Zimbabwean British background, she notes – and yet they are lumped together.

“It doesn’t feel positive to be in this group, and it feels like your actual heritage is ignored, because you are swept up in a generalisation that implies anyone non-white is just that and nothing more. The most notable thing about your heritage is what you are not, not what you are.”

As mixed-race groups become the fastest growing ethnic demographic in the UK, people are wondering how this will affect the evolution of the terminology. But ultimately, says Yogendran, it should be up to the individual how they want to be referred to.

“I don’t think there’s a term that would encompass everyone,” she says. “Each person is different, so it would be a question each time to see what people prefer. Personally, I’d prefer to be referred to as someone of ‘mixed heritage’ or ‘mixed cultures’, because I’m a mix of Sri Lankan, Indian-Ugandan and British but I am not ‘mixed race’.”

Share Button

Sikh MP Speaks Out About ‘Taliban’ Jibes And Racist Attacks Outside Parliament

Posted on by
Reply

Joe Giddens – PA Images via Getty Images

Tan Dhesi, Labour Party MP for Slough

A Sikh MP has spoken out about the “Taliban” jibes he faces and how a visitor was attacked outside parliament for wearing a turban. 

Tanmanjeet Dhesi, who is Britain’s first turban-wearing MP, said racism was a “common experience” for many people from ethnic minorities. 

He told Gloria De Piero on GB News he had been called “Taliban” over the last couple of decades, adding: “After the 9/11 attacks – the level of racism towards people, especially with turbans like me, or with beards, that increased substantially. 

“In the US – our close friend and allies – there, Sikhs were shot dead, just because they had a turban and beard. 

“People made Islamophobic remarks, calling them the Taliban, and then more than one individual was shot dead, because of that hatred – which is unfortunately instilled in so many people across not only North America, but Europe too.”

He said people could not imagine the impact the Taliban and Mujahideen had on Sikhs in Afghanistan who faced “significant persecution”. 

The MP for Slough added: “Don’t think that minorities like the Sikhs or Hindus see the Taliban as some sort of heroes. They have faced the persecution and discrimination from those religious extremists.”

He has previously spoken out about how children tried to tear his turban off when he was at school, but warned it was a “similar experience” for many.

Dhesi described how an Indian guest, who came to visit him in the House of Commons to discuss the climate crisis, faced the same abuse. 

The Labour MP added: “As he was queueing up outside parliament – somebody, filled with so much hatred, went along and disparaging remarks to him, Islamophobic remarks to him, saying ‘go back to your country’, and so on. 

“He also, unfortunately, also tried to pull off his turban. While I was trying to console him – and it was lucky the police were there, who caught it on CCTV – I just felt so shameful, that this had happened outside our parliament.

“What image is that going to make of our country, as he goes back to Punjab, as he goes back to India? And unfortunately, it made news within the Sikh media – that this had happened outside the House of Commons, for which people have a great and higher regard – thinking of it as the mother of all parliaments.”

He said the incident demonstrated how common the problem was and how we need to tackle racism “head on”.

The interview is due to be aired on Monday at 12.40pm.

Share Button

TikTokkers Are Exposing All The Lazy Ways Men Write Women

Posted on by
Reply

If you’re watching a film or TV show and see a young woman dressed all in black with a grungy hairstyle and a resting bitch face, be warned – she’s probably a feminist character written by a man.

Or perhaps there’s an impossibly attractive woman doing some cooking, alone, wearing just an oversized white T-shirt and socks, as she dances around the kitchen, using a whisk as a microphone.

Such is the single dimension of some women characters on screen and in fiction, often written by men. And TikTokkers are exposing the lazy writing.

Female creators on the video-sharing app are acting out all the unrealistic ways women are often characterised: sexy, seductive, clumsy, and whimsical, their looks and tics a cue to their inner soul.

Actor and content creator Caitlin Reilly was among the first to the trend, satirising how a woman in sci-fi films is often depicted: you know, the geeky scientist who probably wears glasses and keeps her hair in a tight ponytail, and is so dedicated to her work, she has no time for love or a social life.

Reilly’s breakout video, which includes such lines as “I’m a woman and a scientist, I can’t be both good at my job and nice”, has been watched more than a million times.

She has also mocked action movies for the way they paint women; helpless, emotional, forgetful. “I forgot the box of things that are very special to me, I have to go back”, and the hysterical mum shouting “please find my daughter,” are lines that have seriously tickled her Instagram followers, too.

Over on TikTok, the trend has blown up in recent days, soundtracked by Portishead, as young women ridicule the way they’re written into fiction in the most mundane scenarios, from having breakfast to going to sleep, from putting on their makeup to taking it off, from reading to dating to chewing gum.

FYI, no one sucks on a lollipop sexily as they ponder over algebra.

In one clip, a woman experiencing a break-up sits wistfully, wearing just a top – many of these portrayals are trouser-less – as she licks ice cream seductively off a spoon. Ice cream is a big thing in the land of the male gaze, it seems.

In fact, many of these #writtenbymen clips are tagged #malegaze, spreading feminist theory about the problems with women being depicted from a masculine and heterosexual (indeed sexual) perspective to a new generation.

As well as drawing attention to sexism in screenwriting, some of the videos also touch on long-established and fetishising depictions of women of colour, of disabled women, and of trans women, as shown by creator AJClementine.

You’ll see what we mean when you check out others videos tagged into the trend. And while you’re watching them, please remember no woman in history has ever taken off her glasses to realise that she was beautiful all along.

She was “all that” already – without the nerd-to-hottie makeover by a man.

Share Button

Government Refuses To Reject ‘Incoherent’ Race Report

Posted on by
Reply

The government has refused to reject the controversial race report, which has been described as “incoherent, divisive and offensive”.

Equalities minister Kemi Badenoch said she was “very proud” of the “independent” report and criticised the “appalling abuse” suffered by members of the commission on race and ethnic disparities.

She rejected calls to reject the review from Labour, which described it as a “shoddy, point-scoring polemic which ignores evidence and does not represent the country”.

The shadow equalities minister Marsa De Cordova said the report had been “discredited” by the British Medical Association, public health expert Sir Michael Marmot, trade unions, Baroness Doreen Lawrence and human rights experts at the United Nations.

On Monday, the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent said the “reprehensible” report attempts to “normalise white supremacy” and could “fuel racism” in the UK.

But Badenoch told the Commons: “I’m very proud of it and of course we will not be withdrawing the report.

The equalities minister also said it was wrong to accuse people who argue for a different approach on how to address racial inequality as being “racism deniers” or “race traitors”.

She added: “The government even more firmly condemns the deeply personal and racialised attacks against the commissioners, which have included death threats.

“And in fact one member from the opposition benches presented commissioners as members of the Ku Klux Klan, an example of the very online racial hatred and abuse on which the report itself recommended more action be taken by government.” 

House of Commons – PA Images via Getty Images

Equalities minister Kemi Badenoch

Badenoch also claimed the report does not deny institutional racism despite a government briefing on the eve of its publication making clear that “the well-meaning ‘idealism’ of many young people who claim the country is still institutionally racist is not borne out by the evidence”.

She told the Commons: “The report does not deny that institutional racism exists in the UK, rather the report did not find conclusive evidence of it in the specific areas it examined.”

The equalities minister also insisted the commissioners did not want to “put a positive spin on the atrocities of slavery”, despite chair Tony Sewell writing in the report’s foreword that schools should teach a “new story” about African people and that the slave period was “not only… about profit and suffering”.

De Cordova hit back: “If left unchallenged, this report will undo decades of progress made towards race equality in the UK. Since publication, this report has completely unravelled.

“Its cherry-picking of data is misleading and incoherent, its conclusions are ideologically motivated and divisive, it is absolutely clear to all of us on this side of the House and across civil society that this report has no credibility.”

She added: “It is reprehensible and I hope the minister will reject it today so that we can get on with the task of tackling institutional and structural racism which is the lived experience of many.”

Badenoch said the government would respond formally to the report by the summer.

She and the prime minister have established a new, inter-ministerial group to review the report’s 24 recommendations, which will be chaired by Michael Gove.

Share Button

Black Lives Matter May Have Reduced Spread Of Covid, Says Sage

Posted on by
Reply

JUSTIN TALLIS via AFP via Getty Images

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement may have helped reduce the spread of Covid, scientists advising the government have said.

Experts on the ethnicity subgroup of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) said the anti-racist movement “fostered greater empowerment within the Black African and Black Caribbean community and enabled these groups to express their frustrations of many years”.

“This new empowerment may have created a sense of optimism and facilitated open dialogue which increased knowledge and contributed to greater use of cultural, religious and collaborative approaches to reducing risk and transmission of Covid-19 in Black communities in the UK,” the scientists said.

“Strategies include sharing videos of elders having the vaccine and hosting a Covid-19 vaccine event to address misinformation stemming from historic issues of unethical scientific research and religious beliefs.”

Ethnic minorities have been disproportionately impacted by Covid, suffering higher death rates than the white population. 

In the paper prepared on March 26 and made public on Friday, the scientists warned Bangladeshi and Pakistani groups “have not reported similar feelings of empowerment”.

“Establishing and/or rebuilding trust may take longer, particularly for Bangladeshi and Pakistani groups in the absence of a national movement such as BLM,” it states.

The experts also said the failures in public health messaging during the first wave of Covid due to “inaccessible language, modes of delivery and mistrust towards formal organisations” meant Bangladeshi and Pakistani groups “feel more wary or sceptical” of current government communication.

The BLM movement, which began in the US in 2013, had a global resurgence in 2020 following the killing George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Senior UK government ministers have criticised the BLM movement in the UK, including foreign secretary Dominic Raab who revealed he incorrectly thought the gesture of taking a knee was inspired by Game of Thrones.

Share Button