Tag Archives: race

Young People Really Don’t Like Being Called BAME And This Is Why

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If you’re a person of colour in the UK then the chances are you don’t much like the term BAME (which stands for Black, Asian and minority ethnicities). And you might not feel too good about the term “ethnic minorities” either.

BAME has long been a contested phrase, frustrating many marginalised people who believe it homogenises otherwise diverse groups under one umbrella acronym that doesn’t signify their varied identities and experiences.

As alternatives such as “racialised communities” gain more currency, young people have told a leading diversity charity that while they don’t like the term BAME, they do see value in finding a new unifying signifier to use instead.

The charity Blueprint for All surveyed 500 18-30 years olds in the UK to find out their views on the subject, with the aim of sparking a wider public debate and greater sensitivity in the way people of diverse backgrounds are described.

The survey found that 98% of respondents believe in the values of a shared language that unifies people from diverse heritages. However, there was no shared word or expression yet that participants felt represented them all.

Isabella Bromfield, 20, a student who took part in the survey, is one of many young people hungry for new words to describe themselves.

“I do not feel there is a shared word or expression that represents us, but I think it is important to have a shared language that unifies everyone from diverse heritages,” she tells Huffpost UK.

“This is a really important conversation to have in terms of moving forward on how to accurately, empathetically and correctly label people in the best way, so that they feel comfortable.”

Respondents to the survey felt uncomfortable with a range of existing umbrella terms commonly used to describe their heritage – 55% saying they felt uncomfortable with the term BAME, 52% with BME (“Black and minority ethnic”) and 59% with “dual heritage”.

The descriptors that people felt most comfortable with included Asian (74% of Asian respondents), Black (67% of Black people surveyed), mixed race (64%), brown (62%), and people of colour (61%).

Azaria Yogendran, a communications account executive of mixed South-Asian descent, 24, tells HuffPost UK: “I’ve gotten used to using the term BAME but I feel like it’s a term that makes race and ethnicity easy to allude to for people who are not from diverse heritages and who don’t know how to talk about race.”

She feels uncomfortable, she says, “about why I am placed in this group and who is placing me in it. I feel like it has become a term that is thrown around without remembering that each individual within it is very different.”

Azaria Yogendran
Azaria Yogendran

The term BME was originally coined in the 1970s when people came together to fight the racism and discrimination that was particularly prevalent within Black communities. The ‘A’ for Asian was added in the 1990s to represent both South and East Asian people.

More recently, BAME has been used by politicians and workplaces when talking about diversity and inclusion. And while the inception of BAME came from a place of unification, in the present-day context many point to its limitations.

While Yogendran appreciates this historic political significance to the term, in the same way that, politically, the label “Black’ included non-Black people of colour – she feels there is no modern-day relevance.

“I have read that the term was originally made to unite ethnic groups against discrimination in the 1970s, but it seems to have evolved from being used by people from diverse backgrounds to being used about them,” she says.

“I feel the term lumps together a large group of people who don’t necessarily have anything in common apart from not being white and there is an implication that those in the group are at a disadvantage.”

Her experience as a mixed South Asian British woman in the UK is completely different to someone of a Korean British or Zimbabwean British background, she notes – and yet they are lumped together.

“It doesn’t feel positive to be in this group, and it feels like your actual heritage is ignored, because you are swept up in a generalisation that implies anyone non-white is just that and nothing more. The most notable thing about your heritage is what you are not, not what you are.”

As mixed-race groups become the fastest growing ethnic demographic in the UK, people are wondering how this will affect the evolution of the terminology. But ultimately, says Yogendran, it should be up to the individual how they want to be referred to.

“I don’t think there’s a term that would encompass everyone,” she says. “Each person is different, so it would be a question each time to see what people prefer. Personally, I’d prefer to be referred to as someone of ‘mixed heritage’ or ‘mixed cultures’, because I’m a mix of Sri Lankan, Indian-Ugandan and British but I am not ‘mixed race’.”

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‘Shocking’ Inequality Is Still Behind Many Stillbirths And Premature Births

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A quarter of stillbirths and a fifth of premature births across England are due to socio-economic inequalities, research suggests.

A review in the Lancet of more than a million births found that South Asian and Black women living in the most deprived areas experience the largest inequalities when it comes to what happens to their pregnancy.

Experts behind the review suggested that some factors, such as high body mass index (BMI) and whether a mother smokes, could be contributing to the risk, but also pointed to racism and economic issues.

Calculations for the study suggest that half of stillbirths and three quarters of births where the baby is smaller than expected in South Asian women living in the most deprived fifth of neighbourhoods would be potentially avoidable if these women had the same risks as white women living in the most affluent fifth.

Similarly, about two thirds of stillbirths and nearly half of births involving small babies in Black women from the most deprived neighbourhoods were potentially avoidable if they had the same risks as white women in richer areas.

SDI Productions via Getty Images

The NHS has set a target of halving stillbirth and neonatal death rates, and reducing levels of premature birth, by 25% by 2025.

An estimated 60,000 babies are born prematurely in the UK every year (before 37 weeks).

In 2019, around one in 255 births resulted in a stillbirth in England and Wales, alongside around one in 302 in Scotland.

In 2020, there were 2,429 stillbirths (167 fewer than 2019) in England and Wales, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

In the new study, a team from the National Maternity and Perinatal Audit analysed birth records between April 1, 2015 and March 31, 2017, in NHS hospitals in England.

They worked out the impact of socio-economic factors, adjusting for whether women smoked, their BMI and other pregnancy risk factors.

Socio-economic status was measured for each local area and combined information on income, employment, education, housing, crime and the living environment.

In total, almost 1.2 million women with a birth of a single child were included in the study, of whom 77% were white, 12% South Asian, 5% Black, 2% mixed race/ethnicity, and 4% other race/ethnicity.

Overall, 4,505 women experienced a stillbirth (after 24 weeks), the study found, while of 1,151,476 liveborn babies, 69,175 were premature and 22,679 were births involving foetal growth restriction (smaller babies).

Risk of stillbirth was 0.3% in the least socio-economically deprived group and 0.5% in the most deprived group; risk of a premature birth was 4.9% in the least deprived group and 7.2% in the most deprived group; while risk of foetal growth restriction was 1.2% in the least deprived group and 2.2% in the most deprived group.

The experts found that 24% of stillbirths, 19% of live premature births and 31% of live births of smaller babies were attributed to socio-economic inequality and would not have occurred if all women had the same risks as those in the least deprived group.

But when experts adjusted for ethnicity, mothers smoking and BMI, these statistics were cut (to 12%, 12%, and 16%, respectively), which the authors suggested means these factors may explain a considerable part of the socio-economic inequalities in pregnancy outcomes.

Pregnancy complications were found to disproportionately affect Black and minority ethnic women – with 12% of all stillbirths, 1% of premature births and 17% of births with growth restriction attributed to ethnic inequality.

In this group, adjusting for deprivation, smoking, and BMI had little impact on these associations – suggesting factors related to discrimination based on ethnicity and culture may contribute to poor outcomes.

Co-lead author Dr Jennifer Jardine, from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said: “The stark reality is that across England, women’s socioeconomic and ethnic background are still strongly related to their likelihood of experiencing serious adverse outcomes for their baby.

“I think that people will be shocked to see that these inequalities are still responsible for a substantial proportion of adverse pregnancy outcomes in England.

“Over the past few decades, efforts to close the gap in birth outcomes focusing primarily on improving maternity care and targeting individual behaviours have not been successful.

“Birth outcomes don’t only represent a woman’s health during pregnancy but also reflect her health and wellbeing across her entire life.

“While we must continue to encourage healthy behaviours during pregnancy, we also need public health professionals and politicians to strengthen efforts to address the lifelong, cumulative impact of racism and social and economic inequalities on the health of women, families, and communities.”

Co-lead author Professor Jan van der Meulen from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine added: “There are many possible reasons for these disparities.

“Women from deprived neighbourhoods and Black and minority ethnic groups may be at a disadvantage because of their environment, for example, because of pollution, poor housing, social isolation, limited access to maternity and health care, insecure employment, poor working conditions, and stressful life events.

“National targets to make pregnancy safer will only be achieved if there is a concerted effort by midwives, obstetricians, public health professionals and politicians to tackle the broader socioeconomic and ethnic inequalities.”

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Revealed: The Met Is Facing More Than 60 Probes By Police Watchdog

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Questions have been raised over the accountability of the Metropolitan Police after it emerged the force was facing 63 active investigations from the independent watchdog – with some going back years.

The figure was provided by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) after a request from HuffPost UK following a series of complaints about the UK’s largest police force in recent months.

Our data request initially revealed one investigation still ongoing that was first opened in March 2015, and four cases still active for each of 2018/19 and 2019/20. One of these, involving an officer who hit a vulnerable teenager 34 times with a baton and sprayed her up close with CS gas, was finally concluded on Friday as we published this story.

The watchdog, set up out the ashes of the Independent Police Complaints Commission in 2018 to ensure “greater accountability to public”, has an annual budget of around £73m and last year received around 4,300 referrals nationally. 

Forces must refer the worst incidents to the IOPC – such as if someone dies or is seriously injured following police action – and if they receive a complaint it considers legitimate. The IPOC can also “call in” smaller investigations being carried out by forces into themselves, if they consider incidents to be serious enough.

But there are warnings “the system is broken” as the IOPC’s probes into the Met have come into sharp focus this year.

In March, the watchdog announced it was launching two separate investigations relating to Sarah Everard, whose death put a global spotlight onto violence against women and girls. One is examining how Wayne Couzens, the serving officer charged with Everard’s murder, came to sustain serious injuries while in custody. The other investigation is examining an “inappropriate” graphic that was allegedly shared by an officer who took part in search operations.

Hannah Mckay via REUTERS

Police detain Patsy Stevenson as people gather at a memorial site in Clapham Common Bandstand following the murder of Sarah Everard.

In the last week, the IOPC’s investigations of the Met led to two more developments.

On Monday, it announced the Met would face scrutiny over how it handled the disappearance of 19-year-old Richard Okorogheye, whose body was found in Epping Forest, Essex, in April. The watchdog is investigating whether racism played a part in the search following complaints from Okorogheye’s mother, Evidence Joel.

“Maybe it’s the culture, my language barrier,” Joel told Channel 4 News, adding that she believed officers considered her to be “one of those African women who was being frantic” and did not immediate take action to find her son.

On Wednesday, the Crown Prosecution Service announced two police officers had been charged with misconduct following an IOPC investigation into the circulation of inappropriate photographs of sisters Nicole Smallman, 27, and Bibaa Henry, 46, who had been stabbed to death in a north London park. The watchdog carried out a criminal investigation into allegations that the officers, Pc Deniz Jaffer, 47, and Pc Jamie Lewis, 32, took “non-official and inappropriate photographs” of the crime scene before sharing them on WhatsApp.

PA

Bibaa Henry (left) and Nicole Smallman, who were stabbed to death at Fryent Country Park in Wembley in the early hours of June 6.

But the investigations go back a number of years.

The longest-running, HuffPost UK understands, relates to the death of Black teenager Stephen Lawrence. In 2015, the Independent Police Complaints Commission announced former Scotland Yard commissioner Lord Stevens would be investigated into claims that documents were not passed to the 1998 Stephen Lawrence public inquiry led by Sir William Macpherson.

A referral followed a complaint to the force on behalf of Neville Lawrence, Stephen’s father, that there was a “failure of top rank or very senior officers, including but not limited to the deputy commissioner Sir John Stevens, to provide full, frank and truthful information to the Macpherson Inquiry on the issue of corruption”.

It focused on two letters sent by Lord Stevens, but was halted while four former Met officers were investigated over their work on the initial murder investigation. The CPS is still to decide if the four are to be charged, six years after the complaint was opened.

Another still ongoing investigation began following British sprinter Bianca Williams accusing the Met of “racial profiling” after she and her partner were stopped and searched by officers in west London in July last year. The European and Commonwealth gold medallist and Ricardo dos Santos, 25, the Portuguese record holder over 400m, were stopped and handcuffed while with their three-month-old baby in Maida Vale.

Video footage shared widely on social media showed the pair – who are both Black – being aggressively pulled out of a car by officers. The distressed athlete is heard repeatedly saying: “My son is in the car.”

Met Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick later apologised and launched a review into the use of handcuffs pre-arrest after the vehicle stop.

Last year, the watchdog said it made 11 recommendations for the Met to improve its use of stop and search powers after a review of cases found the “legitimacy of stop and searches was being undermined” by a number of issues, including a lack of understanding about the impact of disproportionality and poor communication.

In one investigation, a Black man in possession of someone else’s credit card was suspected of having stolen it even after providing a credible explanation. In another case, officers used stop and search powers after brothers Liam and Dijon Joseph, who are Black, fist-bumped, claiming they believed they had been exchanging drugs.

Family HandoutPA

The family of Richard Okorogheye have questioned the force’s handling of the investigation into his disappearance.

Not all the outstanding cases are so well-known. On Friday, a probe that had only appeared to prompt two write-ups in local media based on an IOPC press release saw a police officer dismissed for hitting a vulnerable teenager 34 times with a baton.

The Met said Pc Benjamin Kemp used force that was “utterly inappropriate” on a 17-year-old girl, who was on escorted leave from a mental health unit and had become separated from a group in Newham, east London, in May 2019. CS spray and handcuffs were used on the girl, as well as the baton strikes. Kemp was sacked following a misconduct panel that came after complaints were made by an NHS trust staff member and the girl’s mother.

The number of cases has raised concern among politicians. Jenny Jones, a Green party peer and ex-member of the London Police Authority, revealed in 2014 she had been recorded on a database of “domestic extremists” by the Met Police and that officers had been tracking her political movements since 2001.

Asked about our findings, she told HuffPost UK: “It is extremely difficult for people to hold the Met Police accountable for their wrongdoing. My own personal experience of being spied on by the Met Police and taking complaints to the IOPC confirms that the system is broken.

“The IOPC is massively underfunded and under-resourced. It took them nearly three years to investigate a complaint I brought against multiple police officers, and if I hadn’t been assisted by an excellent legal team then it probably would have taken even longer.

“The IOPC is so heavily reliant on gathering witness statements from police officers that unless there is some massively compelling external evidence, it is very hard for the IOPC to actually uphold any complaints.

“Unless people obtain justice for legitimate complaints against the police then not only will we have a second rate and potentially corrupt police service with officers regarding themselves as above the law, we will also have a groundswell of public opinion that is alienated from the police and mistrustful of them.”

Former police officer Lord Brian Paddick, the Liberal Democrat spokesperson on home affairs in House of Lords, said: “Liberal Democrats have had concerns for some time about what is happening in the Metropolitan Police, particularly around culture and diversity.

“Persistent disproportionate focus of stop and search on Black Londoners, particularly when section 60 [a temporary power that lowers the bar for police to be allowed to search people] authorises searches without suspicion, together with a disproportionate focus of internal misconduct on ethnic minority officers and staff, raise serious questions about the culture inside the Met.

“The police must foster trust and confidence with all communities if they are to be effective in tackling crime, particularly knife crime.”

An IOPC spokesperson said: “We investigate the most serious and sensitive incidents and allegations involving the police in England and Wales. Most complaints about the police are dealt with by the relevant police force.”

HuffPost UK has approached the Met for comment.

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Richard Okorogheye: Watchdog To Investigate Whether Racism Hampered Police Search

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The police watchdog is to investigate whether racism played a role in the way the Met handled Richard Okorogheye’s disappearance.

On Monday, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said it would investigate complaints made by Okorogheye’s mother, Evidence Joel.

She has said she was “disappointed” about the way she was initially treated by police, and how her reports about her son’s disappearance were handled.

Joel told Sky News that police had asked her: “If you can’t find your son, how do you expect police officers to find your son for you?”

“Maybe it’s the culture, my language barrier,” Joel told Channel 4 News, adding that she believed officers considered her to be “one of those African women who was being frantic” and did not immediate take action to find her son.

The 19-year-old, who had sickle cell disease, went missing from his home in Ladbroke Grove, west London, on the evening of March 22.

His mother contacted police the following day, but he was not officially recorded as missing until 8am on March 24.

Okorogheye’s body was found in Epping Forest, Essex, on April 5.

The IOPC will also look at the Met Police’s overall handling of the missing person report.

IOPC regional director Sal Naseem said: “Our thoughts are with Richard’s family and friends and all those affected by this tragic loss. We have spoken to his family and explained our role.

“Our investigation will establish whether the police responded appropriately to the concerns raised that Richard was missing.

“We will examine whether the force appropriately risk assessed those reports, and if the amount of resources the Metropolitan Police dedicated to its enquiries were suitable based on the information known by the police and the risks posed.

“As there is a mandatory requirement for police forces to refer to us incidents which result in a death or serious injury, we will examine the actions and decisions of the police when dealing with the missing person report made in respect of a vulnerable young man.

“We will also consider whether Richard’s or his mother’s ethnicity played a part in the way the initial reports of his disappearance were handled.”

Okorogheye left his family home at around 8.30pm on March 22 and headed in the direction of Ladbroke Grove.

Police said further inquiries have established that he then took a taxi journey from the W2 area of London to a residential street in Loughton, Essex.

He was last seen on CCTV in Loughton, walking alone on Smarts Lane towards Epping Forest at 12.39am on March 23.

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‘Pervasive Racism’ Meant Black And Asian WWI Troops Were Not Commemorated

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“Pervasive racism” underpinned a failure to properly commemorate potentially hundreds of thousands of predominantly Black and Asian service personnel who died fighting for the British Empire, an investigation has found.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) apologised after its investigation found those individuals were not formally remembered in the same way as their white comrades.

Defence secretary Ben Wallace on Thursday morning told the Commons: “The number of casualties commemorated unequally, the number commemorated without names and the number otherwise entirely unaccounted for is not excusable.” He accepted that “prejudice” had played a part.

The investigation discovered at least 116,000 predominantly African and Middle Eastern First World War casualties “were not commemorated by name or possibly not commemorated at all”.

Martin Keene/PA

Graves of British soldiers who fought at the Somme in the First World War, who are buried at the Connaught Cemetery near the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme in northern France

The figure could be as high as 350,000, according to the report obtained by the PA news agency after it was first reported by the Guardian.

Most of the men were commemorated by memorials that did not carry their names.

When war broke out in 1914, King George V called for “men of every class, creed and colour” to join the fight. What was then the British West Indies is thought to have sent 16,000 soldiers to join the English forces, plus some 4,500 volunteers, who arrived in special contingents. 

In 1915, the British West Indies Regiment (BWIR) was formed, comprising two thirds of its men from Jamaica and the rest hailing from the Bahamas to then British Guiana. 

But Caribbean soldiers were not permitted to fight as equals against their white compatriots, with most serving for lower pay in the Labour Corps, according to the BBC. 

One who was commemorated however was Walter Tull, who was a footballer and the first Black Army officer to command troops in a regular unit. 

He died aged 29 while leading an attack on the Western Front during the second Battle of the Somme on March 25, 1918.

Tull served as a second lieutenant, leading men into battle at a time when the Army forbade a person of non-European descent becoming an officer.

As well as being one of the most celebrated Black British soldiers of the Great War, Tull was also one of the first Black professional football players in England, playing for Tottenham Hotspur while overcoming racial discrimination.

The investigation also estimated that between 45,000 and 54,000 Asian and African casualties were “commemorated unequally”.

Some were commemorated collectively on memorials, unlike those in Europe, and others, who were missing, were only recorded in registers rather than in stone.

In 2018 a war memorial featuring a Sikh soldier to honour the many from the Indian subcontinent who fought in both world wars was unveiled in Smethwick, Birmingham. 

The special committee behind the investigation was established by the CWGC in 2019 after a critical documentary on the issue, titled Unremembered and presented by Labour MP David Lammy.

Originally named the Imperial War Graves Commission, it was founded in 1917 to commemorate those who died in the war.

IWM via Imperial War Museums via Getty I

Soldiers of the British West Indies Regiment in camp on the Albert to Amiens Road, France, World War I, September 1916

The investigation found that the failure to properly commemorate the individuals was “influenced by a scarcity of information, errors inherited from other organisations and the opinions of colonial administrators”.

“Underpinning all these decisions, however, were the entrenched prejudices, preconceptions and pervasive racism of contemporary imperial attitudes,” it added.

One example given is based on communications in 1923 between F.G. Guggisberg, the governor of the Gold Coast colony, now Ghana, and Arthur Browne, from the commission.

At a meeting in London, it was said that the governor said “the average native of the Gold Coast would not understand or appreciate a headstone” as he argued for collective memorials.

A response from Arthur Browne showed “what he may have considered foresight, but one that was explicitly framed by contemporary racial prejudice”, according to the report.

“In perhaps two or three hundred years’ time, when the native population had reached a higher stage of civilisation, they might then be glad to see that headstones had been erected on the native graves and that the native soldiers had received precisely the same treatment as their white comrades,” he said.

In its response to the report, the CWGC says it “acknowledges that the Commission failed to fully carry out its responsibilities at the time and accepts the findings and failings identified in this report and we apologise unreservedly for them”.

In a statement CWGC director general Claire Horton said: “The events of a century ago were wrong then and are wrong now.

“We recognise the wrongs of the past and are deeply sorry and will be acting immediately to correct them.”

Lammy, the shadow justice secretary, said: “No apology can ever make up for the indignity suffered by the unremembered.

“However, this apology does offer the opportunity for us as a nation to work through this ugly part of our history – and properly pay our respects to every soldier who has sacrificed their life for us.”

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Charlene White Quits As Host Of Press Awards Over Society Of Editors’ Racism Statement

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Ian West/PA Photos

Charlene White, pictured here attending the ITV Palooza held at the Royal Festival Hall in 2018. 

Award-winning journalist and Loose Women panellist Charlene White has pulled out of hosting the Society of Editors’ National Press Awards following the Society’s widely ridiculed claim that the UK media is “not racist”.

In a statement sent to the SoE’s executive director Ian Murray, seen by HuffPost UK, White cited the much-criticised statement, released on Monday in the wake of Harry and Meghan’s interview with Oprah Winfrey. 

“Perhaps it’s best for you to look elsewhere for a host for your awards this year,” she said. 

“Perhaps someone whose views align with yours: that the UK press is the one institution in the entire country who has a perfect record on race.”

The first Black woman to present the ITV News At Ten, White worked in several senior broadcasting roles at the BBC before joining ITN in 2008. 

In 2020 she made her debut appearance as a guest presenter on Loose Women, and it was announced in January that she would become a regular in the wake of Andrea McLean’s exit from the show.

The National Press Awards, organised by the SoE, are set to take place on March 31, recognising outstanding coverage by journalists in the UK across 2020. Among the shortlisted candidates is HuffPost UK’s own Aasma Day, for her work on “reporting diversity”.

White, who has been involved in the awards as a judge for several years, called out the SoE’s inconsistent approach to racism and representation in the media, writing: “Your organisation approached me to become a judge for its awards and to work alongside you because at that time it was hugely lacking in terms [of] being a fair reflection of the UK population. In other words, the nominations and winners list involved very few non-white journalists.

“This is not an unusual scenario, unfortunately. Over the years several organisations have been held to account for eradicating and ignoring the work of ethnic minority professionals – and women.

“So, you told me you wanted that to change. In fact, we spoke at length about it.

“But here’s the thing. I only work with organisations who practise what they preach. My time is precious, so I’d rather not waste it.”

Murray, in a statement published on Monday, sparked a backlash against the organisation when he claimed: “The UK media has never shied away from holding a spotlight up to those in positions of power, celebrity or influence.

“If sometimes the questions asked are awkward and embarrassing, then so be it, but the press is most certainly not racist.”

His assertion, which he went on to defend in a heated interview with Victoria Derbyshire on Tuesday, was fiercely criticised – not least by members of the SoE’s own board, who said they were “deeply angry” about the way they had been represented. 

The SoE represents almost 400 members in senior positions across the UK media, several of whom have now publicly declared their opposition to Murray’s statement.

More than 168 journalists, writers and broadcasters from Black and Asian backgrounds across the media on Tuesday signed an open letter describing the SoE’s position as “laughable” proof of “an institution and an industry in denial”.

In her statement, White said: “Since the Black Lives Matter movement really took hold in the UK last year, every single institution in this country has had to finally look at its failings and its position in terms of how they treat ethnic minorities both inside and outside of its walls.

“But for some unknown reason, you feel as though the UK press is exempt in that discussion. I could list the many many studies that have been done on this, or I could quote facts and figures regarding the correlation between the lack of diversity in newsrooms and the way stories are covered.

“But I’m not your personal Google.

“What I am is a Black woman who has consistently stood up for what she believes in, irrespective of the impact it would have on my career.” 

The SoE has since added a clarification to its original statement, rowing back only slightly on Murray’s claim that the UK press is “not bigoted”. 

The addition reads: “The Society of Editors has a proud history of campaigning for freedom of speech and the vital work that journalists do in a democracy to hold power to account.

“Our statement on Meghan and Harry was made in that spirit but did not reflect what we all know: that there is a lot of work to be done in the media to improve diversity and inclusion.

“We will reflect on the reaction our statement prompted and work towards being part of the solution.”

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Inaugural Poet Amanda Gorman Says Security Guard Followed Her Home For Looking ‘Suspicious’

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Poet Amanda Gorman was racially profiled outside her own apartment, she revealed on social media Friday.

“A security guard tailed me on my walk home tonight,” wrote the Los Angeles-based 22-year-old. “He demanded if I lived there because ‘you look suspicious.’ I showed my keys & buzzed myself into my building. He left, no apology.”

“This is the reality of black girls: One day you’re called an icon, the next day, a threat,” added Gorman, who earned rave reviews with her recital of her original poem “The Hill We Climb” at president Joe Biden’s inauguration in January.

She later performed at the 2021 Super Bowl.

Gorman, the first national youth poet laureate, said that “in a sense, he was right.”

“I AM A THREAT: a threat to injustice, to inequality, to ignorance,” she said. “Anyone who speaks the truth and walks with hope is an obvious and fatal danger to the powers that be.”

“A threat and proud,” Gorman concluded.

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Who Is Accountable For Kemi Badenoch’s Public Attack On Our Journalist?

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Some people call it “cancel culture”. Others call it accountability. Rightly or wrongly, your Twitter feed can get you in trouble at work, or worse. But we’ve now learned that members of our government are not held to the same standards as the rest of us.

It’s almost a month since Britain’s equalities minister posted an eight-tweet thread filled with false allegations about the conduct of HuffPost reporter Nadine White. Nadine had asked Kemi Badenoch, as one of parliament’s most senior Black MPs and the minister with the portfolio for race and inequality, why she hadn’t appeared in a video aimed at increasing uptake of the vaccine among Black people. She emailed the MP’s office, and the Treasury press team, where Badenoch also holds a ministerial role. Rather than respond via either of those channels, the minister fired off a Twitter tirade about how this routine press enquiry was a “sad insight into how some journalists operate”, describing it as “creepy and bizarre”. Nadine was forced to lock her Twitter account after she received abuse.

It took us a couple of hours to file a formal complaint with the Cabinet Office. It took them three and a half weeks to reply, but at last the government has seen fit to answer our complaint. 

Their letter is short and to the point. “I note that the tweets were not issued from a government Twitter account but instead from a personal Twitter account,” writes Cabinet Office permanent secretary Alex Chisholm. “The minister is personally responsible for deciding how to act and conduct herself, and for justifying her own actions and conduct. As such, this is a matter on which the minister would be best placed to offer a response.”

The ministerial code states that “ministers of the Crown are expected to maintain high standards of behaviour and to behave in a way that upholds the highest standards of propriety”. But not, it seems, on their ministerial Twitter accounts. 

We were not alone in mistakenly thinking that the minister’s verified Twitter account, in which she describes herself as “Treasury & Equalities Minister”, was in some way linked to her job

How stupid of us. It is cold comfort that we were not alone in mistakenly thinking that the minister’s verified Twitter account, in which she describes herself as “Treasury & Equalities Minister”, was in some way linked to her job. The National Union of Journalists called Badenoch’s original outburst about Nadine “frankly weird, completely out of order and an abuse of her privilege”. The Council of Europe’s Safety of Journalists Platform flagged the incident as a potential threat to media freedom under the European Convention on Human Rights. The European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, recorded the attack as a “violation of media freedom”. I wonder how many of Kemi Badenoch’s 40,000 followers are also under the impression that her Twitter account is a reflection of her professional role and work as an elected representative.

Also mistaken was No.10’s race adviser Samuel Kasumu, who was so upset about Kemi Badenoch’s behaviour that he handed in, but was then persuaded to withdraw, his resignation. Apparently unaware of that Kemi Badenoch’s official parliamentary Twitter account is only “personal”, he wrote: “I believe the Ministerial Code was breached. However, more concerning than the act was the lack of response internally. It was not OK or justifiable, but somehow nothing was said. I waited, and waited, for something from the senior leadership team to even point to an expected standard, but it did not materialise.”

Nadine is a reporter who has done crucial work for HuffPost UK on racial inequality in the UK, not least during the Covid pandemic. So it’s just as well that it was not in a ministerial capacity, but from her “personal Twitter account”, that the minister for equalities made a show of not understanding how news works. Had she only had her professional hat on, she might have remembered that journalists send literally hundreds of requests for comment every day to every institution in the UK in order to find out if a story is accurate. We don’t publish stories without doing this – indeed, no story was published in this case.

It is a little confusing that Kemi Badenoch published screenshots of messages sent to her professional address and the Treasury press office in a “personal” capacity. But it’s certainly a relief that, when she declared to her 39,000 followers that Nadine’s conduct was a “sad insight into how some journalists operate”, and accused HuffPost and Nadine of “looking to sow distrust”, she wasn’t speaking as a government minister – because these claims are not only unbecoming of a senior politician, but betray either an alarming ignorance of how the press fits into our democratic system or a cynical display of bad faith.

In the end, Kemi Badenoch broke her silence by contacting a journalist – not Nadine or anyone from HuffPost, but a reporter at her local paper, the Saffron Walden Reporter. In a statement, she repeated her defamatory allegations about Nadine, this time claiming we had “stoked” a “false story” on social media, claims that were withdrawn from publication when it was pointed out that there was no evidence for them.

This apparently did not trouble her ministerial employers in the Cabinet Office or No.10. Perhaps they might like to clarify whether someone is speaking in an official capacity when they begin a statement with the words “as Equalities Minister”. 

It is absurd to any reasonable person to suggest the words of a minister are somehow less accountable if they are written by them on Twitter than a press release, or were given in an interview.

So who is responsible for the actions of the government’s ministers, if not the government? The Cabinet Office was clear: “This is a matter on which the minister would be best placed to offer a response.” No.10 agreed, with the prime minister’s press secretary saying it was “a matter for Kemi Badenoch” –although she added: “That would not be how we in No.10 would deal with these things.” 

Kemi Badenoch’s office, however, does not agree that it her responsibility, telling Nadine this week: “She has nothing further to add beyond what is included in the letter sent earlier today from Alex Chisholm to your editor.” The same Alex Chisholm who made it very clear it was for her to respond.

This story is not just about a government machine that is out of touch with the realities of our digital lives. It is absurd to any reasonable person to suggest that the words of a minister are somehow less accountable if they are written by them on Twitter than if they appeared in a press release, or were given in an interview. If any member of the public were to tweet out emails sent to their work address, accompanied by a slew of false allegations, they would expect a swift call from HR. Indeed, someone might like to tell transport secretary Grant Shapps, who formally announces weekly updates to the government’s travel and quarantine policies through his own Twitter account, whose handle he literally read out in Parliament. 

The ministerial code, which the government concluded Kemi Badenoch had not breached with her public attack on a journalist doing her job, is built around the loftily-titled Seven Principles of Public Life. Hopefully ministers are asked to read it when they enter office. “Accountability,” reads one principle. “Holders of public office are accountable for their decisions and actions and must submit themselves to whatever scrutiny necessary to ensure this.”

We’re a long way from David Cameron’s famously cringeworthy comment that “too many tweets might make a twat” – ministers of Kemi Badenoch’s generation are all too aware of how useful a platform Twitter is for their political and personal profile. But where they are rightly accountable for their conduct as elected representatives elsewhere in their lives, this effectively allows them impunity online.

The Cabinet Office themselves “noted” to us in their response that “the prime minister’s press secretary has already provided comments on this matter”, suggesting a tacit endorsement of their belief that this is not how a minister should behave. But both institutions apparently felt it was not their place to get involved.

Like a parent banning their teenager’s laptop but leaving them with a phone, Whitehall feels dangerously out of touch in providing such an obvious loophole. Remember next time you see a prospective candidate or councillor cancelled online for tweets they sent at university – our government ministers are allowed to say whatever they like.

Jess Brammar is editor-in-chief of HuffPost UK. Follow her on Twitter @jessbrammar

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