Across Europe, thanks to press reporting, ‘criminal’, ‘immigrant’, ‘Roma’ are becoming interchangeable. In focusing on immigrant crime, the press reflects the priorities of police and politicians who are the main sources for such stories. Police crime statistics The raw material for immigrant crime stories are police reports, particularly the release of selective and ethnically-based crime
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Public accountability not public relations
For more than two decades, anti-racists have struggled to put the issue of institutional racism on the agenda. In the period from the Scarman inquiry of the early 1980s through to the last few months, the accepted wisdom was that police racism existed but it was a case of ‘a few rotten apples’. To root
What is institutional racism?
Institutional racism is that which, covertly or overtly, resides in the policies, procedures, operations and culture of public or private institutions – reinforcing individual prejudices and being reinforced by them in turn. Why do we need to distinguish institutional racism from individual racism? The problem is that individual racial attitudes and stereotyping have often been
Globalism and the Left
If imperialism is the latest stage of capitalism, globalism is the latest stage of imperialism – and, yet, nowhere in the whole literature of the Left[1] is there any evidence of a systematic attempt to understand, let alone combat, the havoc being wreaked on Third World countries by capital in its latest avatar. Instead, the
Terror Act: A Charter For Repression
In November 1997, Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorism unit staged simultaneous raids on the Kurdistan Workers Association in Haringey and the Halkevi Turkish and Kurdish Community Centre in Stoke Newington. Police spent seven hours at the KWA photographing and searching each room seizing the centre’s financial records, bank statements, chequebooks, grant application information, training records, National Lottery
The Internet: New Media Or Old Values?
”One European is worth 28 Chinese, or perhaps 2 Welsh miners worth 1000 Pakistanis.” That was the unwritten rule used by BBC news in the 1970s to rate a story’s importance, according to the inside account by Philip Schlesinger in his book Putting ‘Reality’ Together . In the intervening years we may have seen some
Using the HomeBeats multimedia software with young black children
A pilot at the Khandaani Dhek Bhal project, Heckmondwike, West Yorkshire, August 1998 Aims and Objectives All children need to be valued for who they are. Strong identity and feelings of self-worth are crucial in child development. Academic research on black* children’s self-esteem and self-image has shown that, from a young age, black children are
Racism Goes Global
Globalisation, we are told by the likes of Tony Blair, is, in the final analysis, a good thing. But good for whom? For the West or for the Third World? For rich or for poor? For black or for white? Here, in the UK, counter-globalisation networks are publicising the facts that European politicians like Blair
The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry
The public inquiry into the official handling of the 1993 murder of Stephen Lawrence opened in March. Police were accused of incompetence, insensitivity and racism in their response to the stabbing and to Stephen’s parents and the survivor of the attack, Duwayne Brooks. Below is a summary of the main points to emerge by the
Racism Goes Global
In May, the World Development Movement (WDM) launched ‘People Before Profits’, a campaign designed to expose multinationals’ abuse of human rights, workers’ rights and the environment. The activities of five multinational companies Nestlé’s, Rio Tinto, Shell, P&O and Premier Oil were highlighted through a week of direct action at the companies’ respective AGMs. ‘The idea