Rescued from the Fire: Reading Reflections on Race
Rescued from the Fire, by Abdullah Nazir Uhuru was given to me by a sister I’d met through work and was one of those books that sat on my shelf…
Category: Race, Power and Prejudice
Mental illness is not a foundation for bigotry or violence
A couple of weeks ago I saw a video in which a man verbally attacked some people on a train in a racist and hateful way. This man is a racist. He…
Why are white and black listed as ethnicities?
When working through some feedback forms to tie up a funding grant, part of the information we asked of the participants was their ethnicity. Why do we ask for ethnicity? We ask…
How to centre those with less power in cohesion work
There came a point throughout my work around cohesion that I stopped caring. Not about the goal or about people in general, but about the people whom our work was centred…
Shamima Begum: Hostile Environment
Who is Shamima Begum? Shamima Begum, a young woman who travelled to Syria at age 15 to live among the so-called Islamic State, was recently informed that her British citizenship would be…
Talking about racial privilege
Every so often one meme or another circulates attempting to define white privilege using simple and palatable concepts. One in particular reads that white privilege ‘doesn’t mean your life isn’t hard, it…
When white supremacy is mainstream, is it time to focus on less tolerance, not more of it?
The playing out of the last few days since the terrorist attack against Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand has been really difficult to process. A white supremacist terrorist and self…
How to be a better ally even when you feel marginalised
Allyship and being an ally are phrases often heard within social justice circles and from people that claim titles like liberal, woke or conscious. Sometimes it’s from people who have a…
How to identify and respond to gaslighting
When we talk about difficult topics we will almost definitely cross paths with people who are vocal in their disagreement of our perspective and position on that subject. By ‘difficult…
The Hate U Give Little Infants F’s Everybody
The Hate U Give is a 2018 movie based on a novel by Angie Thomas. It’s an intense, upsetting and provocative film that should spark multiple conversations (or debates). Here’s…