I Don't Care That A Career Hammer-User Saw A Nail...

The BBC later apologised, attributing the outburst to involuntary verbal tics associated with TS and adding that the language was “not intentional”. This is now another very difficult moment for the BBC: what was its judgment, should the epithet have remained audible in a pre-recorded broadcast. Clearly, it should not. One hopes someone will apologise soon to Jordan and Lindo.

Yes, it's the BAFTA Tourettes thing again, an incident which has galvanised every race hustler and activist  out there... 

But what unsettled me most unsettles me still. I was disturbed by the word, of course. It remains abhorrent and I don’t use it. It carries, in this context, a history drenched in violence and dehumanisation.

And it was used by someone with a disability, a fact you yourself can't explain away: 

The medical facts are clear. Coprolalia, a symptom experienced by a minority of people with TS, can involve the involuntary utterance of socially taboo language. Neurologists are clear that such tics are not expressions of belief or intent. They are not intentional - and not deliberate. Disability advocates rightly warn against stigmatising those who live with the condition.

But you can't let an opportunity go to waste just because of a few inconvenient facts, can you? 

But two truths can exist at once. A neurological condition can be real and worthy of understanding, and yet the harm or hurt caused by a racial epithet such as this – at a time like this – can be real. I have reported on race throughout my 14-year career, from discriminatory policing and hostile environment policies to the creeping mainstreaming of xenophobic rhetoric as we heard, for example, in Keir Starmer’s island of strangers speech.

And you've spotted another nail to swing your hammer at. *yawns* 

Racehustling Attempts To Conquer Cyberspace...

...after all, us folk here in reality have had enough of them, so they have to have new worlds to try to conquer.

A new study published in the Jama Network that looked at Black adolescents’ exposure to online racism – including traumatic videos of police violence, online racial discrimination and racial bias perpetuated by AI – can cause increased anxiety and depression.

As online hate speech increases and the federal government cracks down on diversity initiatives, which Tynes said has spurred the normalization of racism, investigations into youth’s exposure to online racism is more important than ever.

“We need studies that are documenting what’s happening,” Tynes said. “And also we need platforms to help people to manage those experiences, to critique them.”

Anf how does this 'online racist' express itself? Not, Reader, as you might have thought... 

The study began with a nationally representative sample of 1,138 white, Black, Latino and multiracial adolescents recruited by Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel, a US online research panel. Out of the larger sample, 504 participants were asked to complete a seven-day survey for a nationwide look at young people’s online behaviors in December 2020. While the study authors only focused on Black participants’ responses, they hope to compare those experiences to that of adolescents of different races in the future.

Because racehustling needs new victim narratives to survive. 

Respondents reported experiencing algorithmic bias one time per day every three days.

 Whut?

Some of the survey questions about algorithmic bias included how many times in the past year that a filter made them look more European by lightening their skin and straightening their hair, or whether their content about racial justice didn’t get likes because a platform suppressed it.

Maybe it didn't get likes because it was observably stupid. And a filter is something you apply yourself, isn't it? 

Questions about positive experiences that they had online around race included how many times they saw favorable comments or information about their race on a television show, film, a cultural website or social media.

If you aren't seeing favourable comments about your race, maybe it's a sign about your race's behaviour? 

Another question asked how many times they learned something positive online about their race’s contributions to society in the past 24 hours.

Forgetting that it's often made up bollocks anyway, or deliberate propaganda?  

Tynes wants youth to be armed with digital literacy tools that help them navigate algorithmic bias that perpetuates racism.

They'd do better witth actual literacy tools, wouldn't they?  

She hopes to analyze whether teaching Black history in schools imparts students with the knowledge and confidence needed to “help people protect themselves, critique the messages, and place them in historical context so that they don’t have the impact that they have”.

As Longrider points out, historical context has gone out the window!  

The 'Guardian' Always Knows Who Is Most Affected

Police are being forced to disclose the ethnicity of suspects in response to a rise in far-right speculation on social media, a former senior officer in the Metropolitan police force has warned.

And it is, of course, the usual suspects. 

Dal Babu, a former chief superintendent (Ed:and inveterate race-baiter) in the UK’s biggest force, said police having to disclose the race of suspects in incidents involving people of colour was an “unintended consequence”. “When the new guidance was issued, I warned that there was a danger that there will be an expectation for police to release information on every single occasion,” he said. “I have sympathy for my former colleagues in the police. They are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. They are under pressure because there is such intense speculation from the far right on social media after every major incident about the background of suspects.

I think the intense speculation comes from everyone, not just the tiny amount of genuinely right wing accounts! 

“You will not find pressure on social media to name the ethnicity of suspects when black players are being racially abused on social media, for example. We are in a position in our country where race is being amplified by far-right racist groups and the police are being forced to respond. It is a worry.”

Strange to put a train rampage by a knife wielding maniac injuring 11 people, some critically, on the same level of public interest as someone making monkey chants at a football game, but you do you, Dal… 

Even after police revealed that the two arrested suspects were British nationals, attempts were made to suggest that information was being withheld.

Gosh, I wonder why people just don’t trust police statements any more? 

Habib compared the statement on Sunday morning by a senior police officer, who had described both suspects as British, to official statements identifying the Southport murderer as a Welshman. It was “possible” that the suspects were British but, he said, adding that the police had not released their names, “I will remain extremely suspicious until we get chapter and verse.”

Oh, right. I remember why, now! 

Man Who Only Has A Hammer Sees Nothing But Nails

Something is happening, and we see it on both sides of the Atlantic. On the surface, it is about flags, identity and political allegiance. But to me, as an American living in Britain, recent events reveal something deeper: both our societies are normalising hate ​and othering in ways that corrode not only our politics but our souls.

Nothing better than a foreigner come to tell us where we are all going wrong, eh? Good old 'Guardian'! But maybe I shouldn't be hasty, maybe he has something valuable to s...

Oh.

The something is aggressions and micro-aggressions: a coarsening of everyday encounters. I have snapshots. Recently, at a celebrated creative hub in London, I twice endured blatant bias. My guests and I – the only all-Black table in the room – were left in the dark, literally. As night fell, every other table was given a lamp except ours. When I raised it with management, I was interrupted, dismissed and told it was an oversight. A Black staff member was sent to smooth things over​. An official later told me that while they had “a different view of what happened”, they accepted that this was “how [I] experienced it” and admitted it “fell short of [their] usual standards”. My Blackness was overlooked, diminished and dismissed – while whiteness was appreciated, affirmed and celebrated, in a space that loudly markets itself as a home of “belonging”.

The thought that there could be other reasons for this failure to supply a lamp doesn't appear to have ever crossed his tiny mind; maybe the staff were working to a rota of tables and that one was last? Maybe all the other tables were polite and appreciative, and his was loud and racous and demanding, so naturally the staff left him to last? 

These are not minor indignities. They are signs of a culture where suspicion and prejudice are no longer whispered but weaponised.

Of course they are, dearie.... 

Martin Luther King Jr warned: “Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.” Hatred, he knew, corrodes the hater as much as the hated. Love, by contrast, is the only force capable of transforming both. This is not abstract philosophy. It is lived truth.

That you can use MLK as an example, when he'd be utterly horrified at what modern day 'black culture' represents is enough evidence for anyone to immediately dismiss your chip-on-the-shoulder whinge. 

Societies cannot thrive if they are built on grievance. Empathy must become a public practice woven into our schools, workplaces and laws.

The black movement itself is built on grievance.  

Here in Britain, empathy would mean confronting racism where it hides in plain sight: in private clubs that celebrate whiteness while ignoring Blackness, and in everyday encounters where bias is excused as banter.

I've thought about this and decided: nah.  

Oh, How I Longed To Be A Hotel Receptionist In The Week...

                                     

...so I could apologise. and ask housekeping to remove them and replace them with a complementary fruit basket.

Full of bananas and watermelon! 

By The Time They Are Being Arrested, They Are Surely Already ‘Criminalised’

Black children detained by police are 15% more likely to be “criminalised”, that is charged and put into the criminal justice system, than white children detained for similar types of offences, a study has found.

Who says so? Well, Reader, I bet you can’t guess it’s yet another activist group, can you? 

The report by the Youth Endowment Fund (YEF), which tackles youth violence, found that black children were 14.8% less likely to be offered diversion, which can include mentoring or counselling, that usually results in them avoiding getting a criminal record at an early age.

aAns is this down to their own actions when confronted? Gosh no, it’s gotta be because the majority white society just has it in for them, eh?  

The authors of the study say they have taken into account the seriousness and prior offending record, and are thus comparing like with like. The racial gap pointed to “systemic inequities”, the report said. The study examined almost 265,000 records of children aged 10 to 17 who were arrested by the Metropolitan police in London, or where a decision was made to take further action after a stop and search.

Well, they won’t be doing tpo much of that in future, I’m sure!  

There is some anecdotal evidence that as black young people mistrust police more, they are less likely to admit their guilt, which is a prerequisite for being accepted for some diversion schemes.

Oh, so the answer is within their own hands, yet they don't take it up? How surprising. 

The Black 'Community' Speaks....

...and shows us why the country will never be free of activists and racehustlers:

Speaking outside Brixton station the morning after a jury took three hours to return a not guilty verdict against Met officer Blake, who had denied murder, Carlton Warren said the verdict was “shocking”. “But what can you say? There’s nothing you can do,” the 64-year-old added. “It’s frustration you feel more than anything, it’s sad for his family, [Chris Kaba’s] not been given a chance. But we’re living in perilous times – it’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

It's not going to get better until you lance the festering boil in your own 'community'... 

Ola, 29, has never had a bad encounter with police in London. But in the 15 months he’s been in the country, he’s heard so many stories about “Black people being stopped and searched without a report of them being involved in anything” that he says he’s “not really surprised” by Chris Kaba’s story.The video producer says that even before he arrived in the UK from Nigeria, he had heard stories about police here.

The irony of someone from Nigeria fearing our police won't be lost on anyone... 

On a street near the Ritzy Picturehouse, Isaiah Nature, 52, questioned why lethal force was necessary. “Even though [Chris Kaba] was known as a violent man, if this is my job, I’ve got to look at the situation. I could shoot him in the leg, you could reach for the gun,” he said.

Sure you could, although wouldn't the dashboard get in the way?  

Walking back from a Jamaican bakery on Coldharbour Lane, Tasha Nelson, from Streatham Hill, was adamant that “justice hasn’t been served”. She was sad for a family who have lost a son and incredulous at the idea police can’t “stop a situation” like Chris Kaba’s without resorting to lethal force.“I went to all the vigils, because it’s just down the road from me,” she said. “I think police get away with so much. I have got kids and I’m teaching them how to react [if they get stopped]. I think if it was a Caucasian person bringing up kids, you don’t need to discuss it, it’s not the same. In this situation [Chris Kaba] didn’t have a gun. I think if it had been a Caucasian guy sitting in the car, it would have been entirely different.”

The elected representatives aren't any smarter:

The Clapham and Brixton Hill MP, Bell Ribeiro-Addy, said “there was a lot of pain and anger and hurt”, first at the fatal shooting, and then at the acquittal, in a borough that has “the lowest confidence in police in London”.

“So many Black men have faced harm, in some cases death, following contact with the police,” she said.

And how many 'following contact with other black men'? Black men like Chris Kaba, in fact? 

“I understand [police] have a complex job with extreme pressures, but no one is above the law. Black people are over-policed as citizens and under-policed as victims.”

Well, if they won't tell the police what they know, what else can the police do? 

Meanwhile, race relations activist Lee Jasper, a former policing director for London, called for juries in such cases to hear expert evidence on institutional racism.

“If the rationale is a police officer only needs a reasonable belief to fire his weapon, then it’s tantamount to a licence to kill,” he said. “This verdict will make it absolutely clear to Black communities that when it comes to the Met police, Black lives don’t matter.”

They don't seem to matter much to the black community either. Maybe tackle that first.

Your Prejudices Are Showing, Gaby...

And they aren't, of course, as the total waste of public money that was the trial of an armed officer for shooting dead a deadly threat has shown...

For Kaba’s grieving family, this latest in a string of acquittals was proof the police “can kill with impunity”, as a campaigner said.

Funny sort of 'impunity' that puts you on trial for following your training. Are you sure you know what that word means, Gaby? Will this help?

Police chiefs, conversely, have responded by demanding more safeguards against prosecution. Though the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, has agreed to demands that officers in such cases remain anonymous until convicted – not unreasonably, given the threats reportedly made against Blake and his loved ones – she has ordered an independent review into some of the more questionable asks on the National Police Chiefs’ Council wishlist, alongside a crackdown on police vetting and an overhaul of CPS guidance on charging officers. It’s time to get to the bottom, once and for all, of why successful prosecutions are so rare.

Because every member of that jury would have put themselves in the place of that officer facing a man using a vehicle as a deadly weapon and wondered just what else he was supposed to do, Gaby.... 

The home secretary cannot, however, let herself be held to ransom.

The Home Sec has already been held to ransom (by the racehustlers) many times, what's one more? 

...let us also hear from those who think justice is already almost impossible to get and who understand the human consequences of some of the NPCC’s more technical-sounding demands, such as making it harder for inquests to return verdicts of unlawful killing against police officers.

I think we've heard quite enough from that quarter, with their selective outrage when blacks are harmed by someone not also black, don't you? 

It’s true that we expect extraordinary things of firearms officers. Of the two other fatal shootings investigated in the year Kaba died, one involved a white man with a knife who attacked a police station and charged headlong at a Derbyshire firearms officer, who held off firing until the man was barely arm’s-length away. The other was a white man in Cumbria, holding a knife to a young child’s throat. He was shot after repeatedly refusing to drop the knife, and the child survived. The skill and steadiness under pressure involved in both cases is astonishing, and the consequences of a mistake unimaginable. I certainly couldn’t do it. But the same is true of brain surgery, and that doesn’t render surgeons above the law.

It does mean that it seems to take an extraordinarily long time to bring them to justice, Gaby. And I'd bet there's far more surgeons than AFOs in the country.

“I Didn’t Get Free Money And Now I’m Traumatised!”

The chief executive of the British Film Institute has apologised to a prominent film-maker of colour for mishandling his complaint about racial discrimination.

What did they do, refuse him entry to a premiere? Call him something unmentionable? 

Qureshi had complained to the BFI that he was given incorrect information about accessing National Lottery funding and inappropriately discouraged from bidding for it, and that his subsequent complaint was handled inappropriately.

Oh. 

The BFI commissioned an independent report from Verita, the complaints reviewer for National Lottery-funded organisations. The report concluded there was not enough evidence to draw conclusions on Qureshi’s view that there was “systemic racism within the BFI”, but it said the organisation’s response to the complaint “fell well short of constituting a formal response”.

Roberts said: “The report clearly indicates that our handling of your complaint fell well short of both your expectations and ours, and we let you down. I would like to reassure you that we take the findings of the Verita report seriously.” He said that the BFI had made several improvements to its complaints procedure, including meetings and phone calls with complainants and stronger training for team members.

Typical reflexive cringing when ever the RaceCard™ gets pulled and waved around.  

Qureshi said it was “helpful” to get an apology, though it’s “not for what I wanted”. He has not yet decided whether to meet with Roberts. He said: “There is only so many times organisations can say they have learned from their mistakes, usually by inflicting trauma on ethnic minorities. That it took five years to get this far only for them to go ‘trust us again’ is not a reasonable reassurance. Maybe a more significant one is change in their leadership.”

Not getting free money isn't a 'trauma' for most people and I'd stick with the leadership that's grovelled before you if I were you, chum. The next one might just tell you to take a hike! 

I Thought They Said ‘Diversity Is About More Than Colour’..?

It looks like that idea's gone out of the window now...

As Ursula von der Leyen sweet-talked and bullied EU leaders to send more women to Brussels over recent weeks, I kept hoping she would also make her incoming team of European commissioners more racially diverse. Thanks to an unexpected twist of fate involving (very) complicated Belgian politics, Hadja Lahbib, Belgium’s foreign minister, could soon make history as the first ever EU commissioner who is also a person of colour.

The person writing an anguished column in the 'Guardian' about the awful fact that a lineup of EU Commisioners is nearly all white (but could have gay or non-visibly disabled members) is none other than Shada Islam (a Brussels-based commentator on EU affairs. She runs New Horizons project, a strategy, analysis and advisory company). 

We can just imagine what sort of 'advice' you get from such a company...

If she gets the parliamentary thumbs up, Lahbib and the incoming EU Council president, Portugal’s former prime minister António Costa, who is of Goan and Mozambican heritage, will give a much-needed reputational tweak to an EU that boasts about being “united in diversity” but whose institutions still keep no data on their staff’s ethnicity and are visibly and notoriously “all-white”.

Now do Nigeria's government.  

Maybe Kier Starmer Isn't As Bad As I Thought...

Sir Keir Starmer has been accused of not listening to the Labour party’s adviser on race relations.

Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon, who is the mother of murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence, is reported to have told a private meeting of Labour’s ethnic minority MPs and peers on Tuesday: “I wish Keir listened to me.”

It's to his credit that he doesn't, Frankly, we've all heard rather too much from you. And we've certainly spent far too much taxpayer money on you, yet I see we are about to waste even more. 

It is alleged Baroness Lawrence complained of “gatekeepers” around the Labour leader who had prevented her work,The Times reported, and said she no longer knew how to respond to complaints about the party from black and minority ethnic voters.

The way she always responds, I assume - excuse them anything if they are black. 

Her remarks — at a behind-closed-doors meeting of the black, Asian and minority ethnic section of the parliamentary Labour Party — come amidmounting disquiet about the treatment of Black and Asian Labour MPs and voters including long-standing investigation into Diane Abbott, Britain’s first black female MP.

She's not being investigated for the colour of her skin, but for the content of her character. A wise man once had something pithy to say about that.