German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Saturday condemned anti-Jewish statements heard at protests over the fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza.
Mrs Merkel called for calm and warned “whoever takes hatred of Jews to our streets places himself outside our constitutional order”.
“Those who bear hatred towards Jews in the street, those who incite racial hatred put themselves outside our Basic Law,” she said in her weekly podcast.
“Such acts must be punished severely.”
The head of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany also condemned anti-Semitic chants made during the protests.
Police made about 60 arrests last Saturday and about 100 officers were hurt when the rally turned violent.
Some participants at marches in towns across Germany shouted anti-Semitic slogans, which Mrs Merkel said was “unacceptable”.
Others burnt Israeli flags and in one case the entrance to a synagogue was stoned.
Police said a Jewish man was punched in the face and abused with anti-Semitic language while walking home early on Saturday.
They said the 41-year-old victim, wearing a traditional skullcap, or kippa, passed three other men in Duerer Square at about 2.15am.
One of three punched him in the face, knocking him against a shop window, and used an anti-Semitic slur.
The victim was taken to hospital, where he was treated and released.
Police said the men had not been found.
Source: The National News
Also Read: Germany sees 15% rise in politically motivated anti-Semitic crimes
“Such acts must be punished severely.” The head of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany also condemned anti-Semitic chants made during the protests. Police made about 60 arrests last Saturday and about 100 officers were hurt when the rally turned violent.Some participants at marches in towns across Germany shouted anti-Semitic slogans, which Mrs Merkel said was “unacceptable”. Others burnt Israeli flags and in one case the entrance to a synagogue was stoned. Angela Merkel
On August 26, 2020, four years to the day that Colin Kaepernick first took a knee to protest police brutality, NBA and WNBA players and other athletes across multiple sports leagues held a strike after a Kenosha, Wisconsin police officer shot Jacob Blake in the back seven times in front of his children. BRANDS
Athletes are loudly echoing the sentiment of members of the Black community and beyond: All lives cannot matter until Black lives matter.
This issue cost Colin Kaepernick his job. But our latest research shows that the majority of Americans now believe professional athletes and celebrities have an obligation to use their status and influence to focus attention on the issue of systemic racism even, if that means refusing to play or perform.
How did we get here?
First, our research shows what Black Americans have long known to be true—institutions have earned the mistrust of the Black community.
It comes as no surprise that Black Americans are specifically and substantially less likely than other people of color to trust American institutions, with mistrust of NGOs (49 percent trust), Media (48 percent trust), Business (45 percent trust), and government (34 percent trust). Black Americans also have little trust in small businesses (51 percent) and their employers (59 percent), in comparison to their counterparts of other ethnicities.
Second, business and government both continue to fall short in addressing systemic racism. Only 36 percent of Americans say that the call for racial justice is being heard by government, with federal government getting particularly low marks at 33 percent. And while 55 percent of Americans expect CEOs to be actively anti-racist, 44 percent believe that the business community has “done very little” to address systemic racism. For Black Americans specifically, there is a 45-point gap between expectations of business to create change—and business’s actual performance on this front.
Read the complete article at: Edelman
Also Read: In The Year After George Floyd’s Murder, Beacon Hill Confronts Structural Racism
BRANDS
Last month marks one year since the killing of George Floyd, and over that often-tumultuous timespan of public outrage, nationwide street demonstrations, and protest, Americans have been forced to take a critical and introspective look at ourselves as a nation of a diverse citizenry.
In the last year, we have confronted how racism in the day-to-day practices of our police and overall criminal justice system impacts the Black community. At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically highlighted the ignominious and thus disconcerting reality that longstanding racial inequities in our institution of medicine are as commonplace and intact as they were before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And as we approach Juneteenth, the annual holiday to commemorate the end of slavery, I’ve been forced to reconcile that Blacks in America cannot truly achieve freedom and liberation if medical racism still exists. For those of us who have experienced it firsthand, racism in medicine is as violent, dehumanizing, and socially destructive as wanton police brutality against African-Americans and other peoples of color in this country.
Like the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021, the institution of medicine requires a civil rights and physician reform act to combat physician misconduct as it pertains to racial bias and structural racism in medicine. History has repeatedly shown that laws backed up with enforcement and sanctions for violations can change behavior, such as school integration laws. Medical racism is an age-old practice that sorts and ranks people into hierarchal racial groups that predictably results in the allocation of quality care and resources and other favorable social rewards disproportionally to white patients to the maleficent neglect of its citizens of color.
From a public policy perspective, the Medical Practice Acts are state laws set in place to regulate the practice of medicine to ensure that patients are not injured or harmed and instead protected. These laws vary from state to state, and the behaviors typically deemed professional misconduct for physicians range from inadequate record-keeping to physical abuse of a patient.
Read the complete article at: KevinMD
Also Read: Racism Derails Black Men’s Health, Even as Education Levels Rise
medical system medical system
Growing up in Arkansas, Jared Middleton remembers learning only the basic facts of events with heavy racial dynamics, such as the Civil War and the civil rights movement.
It wasn’t until George Floyd’s murder in May 2020 that Middleton, a high school special education teacher in Springdale, Arkansas, began to scrutinize history lessons that didn’t include multiple perspectives or discussions of lasting implications. He wants his own son to get “a more complete history” of how the nation was founded, he said.
Recognizing that schools have long ignored the history of people of color, many teachers have endeavored to incorporate lessons on topics ranging from the Tulsa race massacre to the Chinese Exclusion Act. But conservatives across the country are alarmed by how, exactly, teachers are adding nuance to discussions of race and racism in U.S. history classes. In Arkansas and more than a dozen other states, lawmakers have introduced or passed new laws to curtail or re-direct the tone of those lessons.
Now teachers are pushing back. On Saturday, groups in more than 22 cities are organizing rallies and other events to protest legislative efforts to restrict the scope of such conversations.
Becky Pringle, president of the National Teachers Association, the country’s largest teachers’ union, said the organization is weighing legal action against laws restricting how racism and history are taught.
“And we’ll defend any teachers brought up on charges,” she said.
Read the complete article at: MSN
Also Read: Racism – not teaching about it – is the real threat to education
Now teachers are pushing back. On Saturday, groups in more than 22 cities are organizing rallies and other events to protest legislative efforts to restrict the scope of such conversations. Becky Pringle, president of the National Teachers Association, the country’s largest teachers’ union, said the organization is weighing legal action against laws restricting how racism and history are taught. “And we’ll defend any teachers brought up on charges,” she said.
The majority of U.S. children believe that people of different races are not treated fairly in their country, according to a new study releasing today by Sesame Workshop, the educational nonprofit behind Sesame Street.
In Coming Together: Family Reflections on Racism, shared exclusively with TIME, 86% of the children surveyed responded that they thought people in the U.S. were treated unfairly because of race; nearly half of the children surveyed said that they have personally experienced discrimination of some kind and many also noted that they have personally witnessed unfair treatment.
The study was commissioned last summer by Sesame Workshop to gauge how children perceived and were affected by the national reckoning with structural racism following the murder of George Floyd. To collect the data, Sesame Workshop surveyed 147 families across 35 states with children from ages 6 to 11. The children were first asked general, open-ended questions about their hopes, fears and the world around them; they were able to respond using drawings, writing, photos or videos. The questions intentionally did not mention racism or protests so researchers were able to gauge how top of mind the issues were for the children. Then, parents and children both answered questions explicitly addressing race and racism.
The study was conducted in two rounds that took place in June 2020 and again in January 2021, to see how the kids’ views may have changed. In the second wave, parents reported that they felt more comfortable talking about race with their kids and that they believed their children had a deeper understanding of racism than they had in the first round.
“Children understand the concept of race and identity much earlier than we as parents think they do,” Tanya Haider, Sesame Workshop’s Chief Strategy Officer and EVP of Research and Ventures tells TIME. “They understand differences, they understand color. Children are enormously intuitive and perceptive, and they also pick up that people react differently to those differences.”
Read more at: Time
Police officers and racism have forced Black fathers to have an added responsibility to their parenting. Black fathers must have a conversation with their children about how to survive when encountering a racist civilian or police officer.
Infamous incidents such as George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Philando Castile are just a few examples in which their deaths resulted from a deadly encounter with racism. Former officer Derek Chauvin was convicted on all three charges against him in the killing of George Floyd. However, police officers who conduct similar controversial actions do not always get the appropriate justice.
Even then, Black parents across America now have a responsibility to try to teach their children how to avoid such encounters in the first place if at all possible. In that regard, on this Father’s Day, Black fathers are having to double down on teaching their kids how to stay alive in a racist atmosphere; especially since their killers may not always receive justice. The lessons being taught are universal.
Quincy Williams, a Black father of a 23-year-old son from Laurel Hills, Calif., told his son that interactions with law enforcement are “not the time to prove that you are right.” Williams has told his son to “remain calm and make no quick movements so you can get home. We will handle the situation as needed.”
Dr. Eric Bell, a Black father in Northern Virginia, tells his 17-year-old son that “though we live in a society rich with opportunity only limited by ones imagination, there are segments whom aim to promote discourse and destruction through the advancement of division in people.” Dr. Bell also tells his son to “continue to seek out the good in people, educate the uninformed, and never allow yourself to be silenced through any form of oppression from anyone!”
Read the complete article at: Seattle Medium
Also Read: How Racism Affects Children of Color in Public Schools
James Meredith was walking down Highway 51 just south of Hernando, Mississippi. It was June 6, 1966, the second day of his planned 220-mile trek from Memphis to Jackson, which he undertook to encourage Black people to overcome racist intimidation and to register to vote.
As cars filled with newspaper reporters and police officers rolled nearby, he walked a sloping stretch of road lined with pine trees. He heard a shout: “James Meredith! James Meredith!”
A white man in a roadside gully lifted his shotgun, aimed at Meredith and fired. Meredith was hit and crawled across the road, his eyes wide with panic. As he splayed onto the gravel shoulder of Highway 51, blood soaked through the back of his shirt.
The attack, which happened 55 years ago, propelled Meredith back into the spotlight. Four years earlier he had integrated the University of Mississippi, which prompted bloody rioting and a political crisis. Now, in 1966, photographs of an anguished, injured Meredith splashed across newspapers’ front pages, and the media again admired his stoic fight for racial justice.
Civil rights leaders and thousands of others took up Meredith’s walk, transforming it into a huge demonstration known as the “Meredith March” and “March Against Fear.”
But Meredith, who survived his wounds, resisted his assigned political role. While liberals celebrated his sacrifice, he grumbled that he should have carried a gun, and in the ensuing weeks, he complained that the march lacked order, imposed upon Black Mississippians and endangered women and children.
The shooting revealed how James Meredith fits no conventional political category. He is a civil rights hero who does not associate himself with the civil rights movement. He espouses conservative ideas of self-reliance, discipline, morality and manhood, yet he proclaims a radical mission to destroy white supremacy.
Read the complete article at: The Conversation
Also Read: Biden Vows to End ‘Systemic Racism’ on Greenwood Anniversary
President Joe Biden vowed to “root out systemic racism” in a statement Monday to mark the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre, which wiped out one of the nation’s most prosperous Black neighborhoods.
Biden will travel to the Oklahoma city this week to commemorate the massacre that took place on May 31 and June 1, 1921, when a White mob destroyed Tulsa’s Greenwood district, known as “Black Wall Street” for its abundance of Black-owned businesses. An unknown number of people were killed, with estimates ranging from 50 to 300.
“We honor the legacy of the Greenwood community, and of Black Wall Street, by reaffirming our commitment to advance racial justice through the whole of our government, and working to root out systemic racism from our laws, our policies, and our hearts,” Biden said in the proclamation.
Biden has made racial equity a centerpiece of his presidency. The government must “reckon with and acknowledge” the role it has played in stripping wealth and opportunities from Black Americans, Biden said.
“I call upon the people of the United States to commemorate the tremendous loss of life and security that occurred over those 2 days in 1921, to celebrate the bravery and resilience of those who survived and sought to rebuild their lives again, and commit together to eradicate systemic racism and help to rebuild communities and lives that have been destroyed by it,” Biden said.
The Tulsa massacre was one of the worst episodes of racial violence in U.S. history, but for decades was little known outside Oklahoma.
Read the complete article at: Bloomberg
Also Read: How President Biden confronted racism and injustice in his first 100 days
“I call upon the people of the United States to commemorate the tremendous loss of life and security that occurred over those 2 days in 1921, to celebrate the bravery and resilience of those who survived and sought to rebuild their lives again, and commit together to eradicate systemic racism and help to rebuild communities and lives that have been destroyed by it,” Biden said. Biden vowed
Khady Gueye first became the target of online racist abuse after a Black Lives Matter protest she organised was met with opposition by some people in her hometown.
A year on, the 25-year-old is still glad she did it, but says the abuse she’s received has got more frequent.
Despite this, she says she doesn’t regret making a stand and will continue to do so.
“It’s changed my life entirely,” she tells Radio 1 Newsbeat.
‘No-one was talking about it’
This time last year, Black Lives Matter demonstrations were popping up all over the world, in response to the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis.
But Khady felt that “no-one was talking about it” where she lived in Lydney, Gloucestershire.
“Outraged and upset”, as the footage of George Floyd’s death circulated online, she decided to organise her own local protest.
“I wanted to highlight this tragedy for black communities in the area I live in, where discussions about race and racial justice just don’t happen,” she said.
The town council tried to block the demonstration from happening. The UK was still in a national lockdown and they told Khady they were worried about the spread of coronavirus.
But after getting threats and abuse about it online – including in the comments section of her local MP’s Facebook page – Khady suspected racism may be part of the reason.
The protest went ahead after the town council backed down, but Khady is keen to move away from a period she says “fractured” the local community.
“It was controversial in this area, everyone knows that,” she says.
“I feel that we’ve made progress in the sense that the conversations are still happening. Whether they are positive or negative, to make any real tangible change it starts with a conversation.”
Read the complete article at: BCC
Also Read: US embassies authorized to hang Black Lives Matter flags, banners on anniversary of Floyd’s murder
Chicago Public Schools will build a reporting system for incidents of racism and bias in schools, the district announced Thursday. Much of the work will focus on training and nondisciplinary solutions at the school level, but the district will investigate more serious incidents.
The program is called Transforming Bias-Based Harm and will include training for students and some staff on recognizing implicit bias and microaggressions. The district defines such actions as “everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults, whether intentional or unintentional,” based on a person’s race, sexual orientation, and gender identity.
This past fall, students at some of the district’s selective high schools began using social media to document instances of racism at their schools. They shared stories involving racial slurs, bullying, and racial profiling by school security officers. The district said that students and families would be able to start reporting incidents of perceived bias on the CPS website or by emailing [email protected]
District officials Thursday did not offer many specifics about how educators would address harmful behavior among students but said cases would be referred to counselors and social workers. In addition, officials said schools would be encouraged to use restorative justice practices, such as peace circles and mediation, rather than punitive ones. More serious allegations will be investigated by the Office of Student Protections, or OSP, which formed in 2018 to investigate cases of sexual abuse.
The effort will include student input — something some student groups said was lacking during the social-justice protests of 2020.
“Our students’ bravery in standing up and speaking out against injustice was a call to action for our team and the entire district,” said Debra Spraggins, OSP’s director of investigations.
Read the complete article at: Chicago Chalkbeat
Also Read: Complaints of racism, bullying in central Minn. school district prompt calls for change
