Western media has a tendency to tell “a single story” of Africa, and particularly so of African women, which creates a stereotypical perception of Africa and opens the door for unhelpful white saviourism. Last year, Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah recently released an anthology called The Sex Lives of African Women, which explores the sexual lives of …
Stories about areas in the UK that are a ‘no-go’ for non-Muslims often circulate online. But are these valid concerns, or a moral panic grounded in a fear of difference? One of the most bizarre and unfounded claims about the British Muslim community in recent years is a moral panic that is popular amongst politicians …
Visual elements of news are crucial components of communicating information to the public. The implicit prejudices that news images convey are significant, because they perpetuate harmful stereotypes about marginalised groups. News images as communication Effective communication requires that the audience absorb the information that it is presented with. Words can only go so far …
What is sacrificed by athletes who overcome racial and gender discrimination to become the almost god-like machines at the pinnacle of their respective disciplines that we see them as? Our greatest athletes are often praised for ‘keeping their cool’, likened to machines, or hailed as the ‘Greatest Of All Time’ (a ‘GOAT’). This is particularly …
Does the diverse casting of shows like Bridgerton and Hamilton do enough to improve BAME representation? A lack of on-screen racial diversity is not a new phenomenon — White actors are too often the ‘go to’ for casting directors, and characters of colour (when included at all) are often relegated to the background. “Colour-blind” casting, …
The apparent relevance of the Manchester Arena bomber having been ‘suspected’ of praying shows the dangers of Islamophobia including all aspects of Muslim life. The public inquiry into the Manchester Arena bombing, in which twenty-two people were killed, was established to learn about what happened and how to prevent similar attacks from occurring in the …
Blaming marginalised communities for society’s problems deflects attention away from where it is needed. The Covid-19 pandemic has birthed a dangerous cocktail of anxiety, conspiracy theories, and racism. The UK witnessed a sharp rise in anti-Asian hate crimes in the pandemic’s initial stages, in direct response to narratives describing Covid-19 as the “Chinese virus”. Fake …
Sensationalist media contribute to creating social tensions during the pandemic COVID-19 has brought to light the major inequalities that exist within our society, in particular the disproportionate effect on BAME communities. The media and government have been responsible for creating scapegoats out of minorities in the rise of cases through baseless allegations. The UK …
Two women every single week are killed by a current or former partner in England and Wales. Women are approximately twice as likely to experience domestic abuse than men, but it is women’s voices that seem to be ignored in media coverage of cases. Furthermore, many feel that the systems in place for protecting women …
Earlier this month, our CEO Sajda Mughal OBE wrote a piece for the Independent about the rise of the Far-right and Islamophobia in the UK. The article shed light on the fact that many politicians, institutions and news outlets have been either consciously or subconsciously reluctant to treat far-right extremism with as much severity as …
