This emotional disconnect is the conclusion of living a life oblivious to the fact that their skin colour is the norm and all others deviate from it. At best, white people have been taught not to mention that people of colour are ‘different’ in case it offends us. They truly believe that the experiences of their life as a result of their skin colour can and should be universal. (Location 29)

Slavery was an international trade. White Europeans, including the British, bartered with African elites, exchanging products and goods for African people, what some white slave traders called ‘black cattle’. Over the course of the slave trade, an estimated 11,000,000 black African people were transported across the Atlantic Ocean to work unpaid on sugar and cotton plantations in the Americas and West Indies. (Location 156)

Tags: slavery

Note: .slavery

Although enslaved African people moved through British shores regularly, the plantations they toiled on were not in Britain, but rather in Britain’s colonies. The majority were in the Caribbean, so, unlike the situation in America, most British people saw the money without the blood. (Location 172)

Tags: colonies, slavery

Note: .slavery .colonies

The public pressure of the campaign was successful, and an Act of Parliament declared slavery abolished in the British Empire in 1833. But the recipients of the compensation for the dissolution of a significant money-making industry were not those who had been enslaved. Instead it was the 46,000 British slave-owning citizens who received cheques for their financial losses.3 Such one-sided compensation seemed to be the logical conclusion for a country that had traded in human flesh. (Location 181)

Over a million Indian soldiers – or sepoys (Indian soldiers serving for Britain) – fought for Britain during the First World War.7 Britain had promised these soldiers that their country would be free from colonial rule if they did so. Sepoys travelled to Britain in the belief that they would not only be fighting for Britain, but by doing so they would be contributing to their country’s eventual freedom. (Location 231)

Tags: india

Note: .india

Riots always seem to kick off in the summer. (Location 262)

Tags: riots

Note: .riots

history shows us that this country had created a global empire it could draw labour from at ease. But it wasn’t ready for the repercussions and responsibilities that came with its colonising of countries and cultures. It was black and brown people who suffered the consequences. (Location 282)

Tags: uk, colonies

Note: .colonies .uk

Coming into effect on 31 May 1962, the Commonwealth Immigrants Act drastically restricted immigration rights to Britain’s Commonwealth citizens. Even the wording was different. The 1948 British Nationality Act used the words ‘citizens’ to describe those from Commonwealth countries; in 1962 they were described as ‘immigrants’, adding a new layer of alien to people who had enjoyed the right to reside just fourteen years earlier. With a new emphasis on skilled workers, the Commonwealth Immigrants Act stated that those wishing to move to Britain now needed a work permit to settle in the country.30 The logic behind this still prevails today. (Location 409)

When the London riots of August 2011 mirrored, almost step by step, what happened in Brixton in 1985, I wondered how often history would have to repeat itself before we choose to tackle the underlying problems. (Location 713)

We tell ourselves that racism is about moral values, when instead it is about the survival strategy of systemic power. (Location 809)

Tags: rcism

Note: .rcism

2013 British report revealed that black people are twice as likely to be charged with drugs possession, despite lower rates of drug use. Black people are also more likely to receive a harsher police response (being five times more likely to be charged rather than cautioned or warned) for possession of drugs. (Location 880)

Tags: racism

Note: .racism

black people] tend to receive higher doses of anti-psychotic medication than white people with similar health problems. They are generally regarded by mental health staff as more aggressive, more alarming, more dangerous and more difficult to treat. Instead of being discharged back into the community they are more likely to remain as long-term in-patients. (Location 895)

Tags: racism

Note: .racism

When a senior coaching or operations position became available, teams were required to interview at least one black or minority ethnic person for the job. This was a shortlist requirement only. Teams were under no obligation to hire said person. The rule wasn’t a quota. Neither was it an all-black shortlist, or a rigid percentage target. Instead, it was an incredibly tame ‘softly softly’ attempt to rebalance the scales. The Rooney rule was implemented a year after it was introduced. A decade after the rule’s implementation, the evidence was showing that it was working. In those ten years, twelve new black coaches had been hired across the States, and seventeen teams had been led by either a black or Latino coach, some even in quick succession. The general consensus was that the sport’s bosses had begun to see candidates that they wouldn’t have previously considered. (Location 921)

Tags: racism

Note: .racism rule to have at least one black person on the shortlist

Updated: Jul 05, 2020

white privilege is an absence of the negative consequences of racism. (Location 1049)

white privilege is the fact that if you’re white, your race will almost certainly positively impact your life’s trajectory in some way. And you probably won’t even notice it. (Location 1065)

Tags: whitepriviledge

Note: .whitepriviledge

racism that defines it as prejudice plus power. (Location 1087)

the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.” (Location 1215)

‘Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. (Location 1219)