Children play football in the sharp spring sunshine, bright voices bouncing round the walls of close-packed tenement housing. We have reached the right place.An ordinary neighbourhood for people living ordinary family lives: going to school, catching trams to work, buying bread in the corner shop. You have to look carefully to find evidence of deadly … [Read more...] about What are we stumbling into?
racism
Confronting gender-based violence: Hopscotch by Nadine Aisha Jassat
And let’s just name the problem here:these streets I’ve walked I’ve walked in fear,and never once have these words begunin a woman’s mouth. This week’s Sceptical Scot poetry post highlights Hopscotch, by Nadine Aisha Jassat, a powerful, gut-churning challenge to gender-based violence. The poem, and the film it inspired, feels deeply personal. But it is set in a … [Read more...] about Confronting gender-based violence: Hopscotch by Nadine Aisha Jassat
Mother country, get it right
In 2016, on the 50th anniversary of the Race Relations Act, the poet Benjamin Zephaniah looked back at the evolution of racism in Britain. In poetry and prose he presented evidence that is disturbingly topical in a week of continuing upheaval in the UK. [That was written five years ago. It’s touching to see so many new views of this old post. It’s a tribute to the great … [Read more...] about Mother country, get it right
The terrifying rise of Alt-Right fight clubs
Anastasia Yankova, a Russian model-turned-mixed martial artist who has appeared in a Nike commercial, was a month away from her professional debut when she took to Instagram to post a cartoon of Adolph Hitler.In the image, Hitler is seated on a window ledge, looking down with weepy-eyes on a dreary, overcast sky. “Matches my mood,” Yankova wrote.“Aryan sadness?” asked a … [Read more...] about The terrifying rise of Alt-Right fight clubs
Social cohesion and racism in Scotland
Two days after Scotland voted decisively to remain in the EU, a Scottish Sikh woman was told to get off the bus and go back where she came from. ‘I thought where should I go back to? Glasgow, where I was born?’She laughs as she tells her story. But she looks closer to tears. No-one had spoken in her defence as the bus continued on its journey through the most culturally … [Read more...] about Social cohesion and racism in Scotland