Should place of birth influence a person’s worth? The UK has long struggled with the idea of cultural and national identity, as a country that wants to be proud of its long history, but must also accept its increasing diversity and grapple with how to address past crimes committed by the Britons of previous centuries …
How many of our instinctive habits are results of our ancestors’ experiences of inequality and discrimination? For years, I have known what the concept of ‘intergenerational trauma’ was, but I’d always thought about it as something that affected other people — something I didn’t really need to think about much apart from just to be …
It’s an innate trait of humans to need other people — to rely on other people for survival. This naturistic concept goes way back to tribal times where, without your community you would not survive. So why, all of a sudden, have we decided that we no longer need that? Why have we chosen to …
Repeated hugely inaccurate comparisons with Nazism weaken the seriousness and horror with which we are supposed to regard the atrocities of the Holocaust. Nowadays, it is almost becoming commonplace to see someone comparing some course of action with which they don’t agree to Nazism or the Holocaust. In only a few months, there have been …
We often talk about the need for migrants to ‘integrate’ into British society — but is this is a positive ideal, or coded language for racism and xenophobia? As Brexit, debates over British immigration policy, and a number of global refugee crises have swept public discussion over the last decade or so, the term ‘integration’ …
Building a life in a country that desperately wants to kick you out at every turn is extremely stressful at best, and at worst negatively impacts one’s mental and physical health. After joining JAN Trust, I have started truly taking notice of the very subtle ways in which the hostile environment policies work to exhaust …
A Glasgow community successfully promoting a messaging of tolerance and unity, and freeing their neighbours from Immigration Enforcement emphasises the role of positive messaging in achieving social change. Whilst the news and consumers of the news tend to have a negativity bias and may absorb negative events more than positive events — though this theory …
My “home”, to racists, is a country where I spent very few years of my life and with which I have extreme culture clash. From a young age, I was different. I knew I was different. I felt different. I looked different. My parents sounded different when they spoke English, and I found myself constantly …
Why freedom of expression has never been an unlimited right to be offensive. The phrase “political correctness gone mad” has become synonymous with “I’m no longer allowed to say what I want”, and is commonly used with some sort of reference to freedom of expression being violated. Applied to a variety of personal characteristics — …
All too often, people from minoritised ethnic communities or who have non-English accents are told they’re not from this country instead of being left free to choose their own identity. There is a bizarre double standard of anyone who is not from a White British family being expected to ‘integrate’ into British society by adopting …
