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March 01, 2021

Gay British Tamil community: a double barrier to celebrating Pride

Gay Pride is synonymous with inclusivity and celebration. However, for people of colour, few safe and intersectional spaces exist. This is especially true within the British Tamil community, of...

(Dis)united America is still far from 'King’s Dream'

Thomas L BlairPicture this. An awe-inspiring Black man preaching national unity in an era marked by violence and upheaval.  An overflow audience of residents and students rise to their feet to welcome the soul-saving American leader.His words, their m ...

Bug dilemma: to eat or not to eat

It happens on I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here but is eating insects healthy and environmentally friendly and, if so, should we swallow creepy crawlies? Ylenia Lemos got a first-hand taste of the subject. My mouth wasn’t exactly salivating when the cric ...

Black students denied access to Oxbridge

Thomas L Blair It’s a scandal. In all the talk of widening participation, the boffins at Oxbridge have never acknowledged and implemented the proposals of the 1990s Black-led student associations in their academic backyards.These were the Oxford Access ...

Student protest: Reminder of inner city uprisings

As protesting students took to the streets this month Marc Wadsworth remembers the many community uprisings and asks can Black people benefit from being more rebellious?No one can fail to have been shaken up by the scenes of fury on TV from the studen ...

Let’s make this Black Britain’s decade

Thomas L Blair This article supports the enduring capacity for cultural self-renewal of Black British communities, especially at times of disaster. Every thought-provoking topic weaves the immediate desperate present with its recent history and its must-be ...

What role for Sancho's children?

Thomas L Blair First came the bitter disenchantment of post World War II Afro-Caribbean settlers, and their youth who modelled a “reggae roots” counter-attack on political and cultural racism in Britain. Now the “new Africans” in Parliament may signal the ...

Why I growl at fatcat Non-Governmental Organisations

 Pia WalterI've always been one of those cynical people who distrust the sincerity of non-profit organisations, especially environmental ones. And although I adore the idea of raising money under superior motives, I believe translating this selfl ...

Daily Mail obsessions mapped out

 Deborah HobsonUK tabloid newspapers are commonly characterised by their pet hates as demonstrated in their loaded editorials, spewed out in their emotive headlines and typified in their published stories. The Daily Mail is no exception. In fact, if i ...

Western leaders are too cowardly to save Mid-East lives

 Robert Fisk: Western leaders are too cowardly to help save livesIt is a fact that it is ordinary people, activists, call them what you will, who now take decisions to change eventsHas Israel lost it? Can the Gaza War of 2008-09 (1,300 dead) and the L ...

New African Caribbean faces in parliament are high-flyers

Thomas L. Blair As Britain elected its first Conservative-led coalition government in living memory, African Caribbean British legislators were making history, too. They more than doubled their numbers - from four to nine - in the “Home of parliamentary de ...

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