Black nurses have shared their experiences of racism in the workplace, as the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) commemorates the 75th anniversary of Windrush at its annual conference this week.

In June 2018, the then home secretary, Sajid Javid, commissioned the Windrush Lessons Learned review – a report reflecting on the causes of the Windrush injustices. The independent review was in response to mounting evidence that members of the Windrush generation were losing jobs, homes and access to benefits, as well as being denied NHS treatment, detained, and forcibly deported to countries they left as children.

The findings, alongside the testimonies of black British citizens affected by the hostile environment, are truly anguishing.

Wendy Williams, the HM inspector of constabularyappointed as the independent reviewer, has examined the key legislative, policy and operational decisions that led to the Windrush injustices, and spoken to those who suffered grave and catastrophic consequences from becoming entangled in the government’s hostile immigration policies.

Williams’ review draws a stark conclusion: the UK’s treatment of the Windrush generation, and approach to immigration more broadly, was caused by institutional failures to understand race and racism. Their failures conform to certain aspects of Lord Macpherson’s definition of institutional racism, enshrined in the Macpherson report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, published in 1999.

Macpherson defined institutional racism as: “The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people.”

The Windrush Lessons Learned review pulls no punches in describing the failure of ministers and officials to understand the nature of racism in Britain. It shows how the government’s hostile environment immigration policies had devastating impacts on the lives and families of black citizens within the UK.

The fact that black British people who had spent much of their lives in Britain, working and paying taxes, were accidental victims of the government’s immigration policies, perfectly illustrates how the coalition and Conservative governments not only failed to adhere to existing race relations legislation, but also showed a complete lack of understanding about “indirect discrimination” – a concept accepted in legislation as far back as the 1976 Race Relations Act.

Neither that lesson of “unintended discrimination”, nor the definition of “institutional racism” from the Macpherson report, seem to have been learned by Britain’s policymakers and politicians. Not only is intent irrelevant for assessing whether policies are racially discriminatory, but race equality laws (including the 2000 Race Relations Amendment Act and the public sector equality duty) appear to have made little difference to immigration and citizenship policies affecting people from different ethnic groups.

This reveals a shocking lack of understanding of what racism is – namely that it’s not solely about intent. In April 2018, the dramatic apology by the then prime minister, Theresa May, showed a failure to understand this lesson, when she insisted it wasn’t her government’s intent to disproportionately affect people from the Caribbean in the operation of hostile environment immigration policy.

For policymakers and politicians to learn the profound lessons of the Windrush review, they must not only “right the wrongs” suffered by the Windrush generation (as well as those from other ethnic minority groups), but they must also understand how and why immigration and citizenship policies, and Home Office culture, have repeatedly discriminated against black and ethnic minority citizens over the decades.

The Windrush generation are owed a full apology – an apology that is based on understanding that their treatment wasn’t an accidental misfortune, but the result of institutional failure to understand the role of race and racism in Britain.

Displaced persons arriving in New York, 1948.

Photo: Clemens Kalischer via the NY Times

Did Anastasia deserve to die for her family's crimes against Fieval's family?

I've always found it interesting that "Anastasia" and "An American Tail" were made by the same guy...

My mom got us "An American Tail" as kids, since we were Jewish, and a Disney-like movie with Jewish characters was a one-of-a-kind thing. ("The Prince of Egypt" was still a few years away. Yes, I'm that old.) More to the point, my dad's side of the family is largely Russian Jews, who immigrated in the early 1920s, for exactly the same reasons as the Mouskewitz. Being a child of this background and very literally obsessed with cats, I had mixed feelings about the movie.

When "Anastasia" came out a few years later, Mom didn't let that history stop us from enjoying the new princess movie, but she didn't shelter us from it either. We regarded it like we did the real history behind any sugar-coated princess movie. She even got us some history books about the real Romanov family, and we were fascinated by the subject.

Still, it's an odd elephant in the room, watching "Anastasia" and knowing that her granddad was the one who sent those Cossack cats after Fievel's village, and her dad himself continued doing it to the Jewish mice who didn't leave.

"Go, Pompom, Kibble and Fluff-Baron! Kill those Jew mice, and I'll give you extra catnip treats tonight!"

Don Bluth presents both the Romannov family and their victims with equal sympathy, even opening both movies with the family celebrating a holiday, with the kid heroes getting a plot-specific present, before being viciously attacked.

"Wow Grandmama! Fieval and Tanya could use this as a merry-go-round!"

*Cough* "Yes uh, about those Jewish mice Sweetie..."

Bluth's portrayal of the Romanov family is not entirely inaccurate. By all accounts, Nicholas II was a deeply loving father who both doted on his children, but raised them not to be spoiled. Despite being royalty, the princesses shared bedrooms and did charity work at hospitals.

It's a baffling irony that Nicholas was nevertheless was a tyrant, and not remotely just to his Jewish subjects. When I was about twelve, Mom got me the Dear America book A Coal Miner's Bride, about the Catholic Polish immigrants who also fled the oppression of the Russian Tzar. (Anastasia's family conquered part of Poland in the 1800s, banning the Pols from speaking their own language and drafting their sons into the Tzar's dick-measuring contest wars.) Anyway, that's what my mom's side of the family was fleeing when they immigrated. Yes, my family has double reason to hate the Romanovs.

So, I personally don't have a lot of sympathy for Nicholas II. But the horrors his poor wife and children endured in their final moments never fails to get the reaction from me.

The rationalization for the murder of the children and queen was that it was the only way to ensure that the monarchy never returned. But I assume most modern-thinking people would say that the ends do not justify the means in this case.

That said, millions of families like Anetka's and Fievel's suffered as bad or worse than the Romanovs, because of the Romanovs, and no one remembers them because they didn't wear tiaras. This no doubt was another factor that killed sympathy for the Romanov children. But they were still children.

The question today is, if we can feel for a family that was literal royalty, despite their father being an undeniable tyrant against our own families...can we also feel for Palestinian and Israeli families, during a conflict that is vastly more complicated than Imperial Russia?

Or do they need to be cute mice and glittery princesses to get our attention?

Hot take: I dont want king charles to die from his current sickness.

Cause while it'd be very funny, honestly at this point im more upset and worried about the insane amount of money that'd be spent on his funeral and William V's coronation than any joy I'd feel from seeing another rich royal racist pedo die. That money should be spent on the people rather than celebrating some inbred people who happened to decend from William I.

The Yuma County Water Users Association wrote to the Immigration and Naturalization Service on April 23, 1943, asking that Mexican workers from neighboring Sonora be allowed to stay in the U.S. to help with the harvest. 

Record Group 85: Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service

Series: Subject and Policy Files

File Unit: 55854/100H

Transcription: 

[stamps read "SPECIAL" and "VIA WESTERN UNION"]

WUG 26 111

YUMA ARIZ APR 23 148P

EARL H HARISON COMM IMMI AND NAT

DIV DEPT OF JUSTICE

THIS FARMING AREA RAISING ALFALFA FLAX AND OTHER VITAL WAR CROPS SERIOUSLY SHORT OF FARM LABOR BUT SITUATION COULD BE RELIEVED IF MEXICANS FROM ADJACENT SONORA WERE ALLOWED TO HELP IN HARVEST NOW COMMENCING. SOME SONORA MEXICANS HAVE DRIFTED IN DURING THE PAST FEW MONTHS BUT FACE IMMEDIATE DEPORTATION. MEXICANS RECRUITED BY A F S FROM INTERIOR MEXICOS HIGH ALTITUDE AND COOL CLIMATE CANNOT STAND OUT HEAD AND MOST OF THEM HAVE LEFT. BORDER MEXICANS FROM SONORA AN LOWER CALIFORNIA USED TO OUR CLIMATE ARE EXPERIENCED FARMERS. THIS HELP ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY TO HARVEST VITALLY ESSENTIAL WAR CROPS. CAN DEPORTATION BE STAVED TEMPORARILY OR UNTIL AUTHORITY FOR LEGAL ENTRY CAN BE SECURED

YUMA COUNTY WATER USERS ASSOCIATION HENRY FRAUENFELDER PRESIDENT.

FSA

725P.

[Pencil marks reads "/3/6" or "1316"]

[stamp reads "A MESSAGE CENTER P.M. APR 23 (illegible) & NATZ SERVICE DEPT OF JUSTICE" and "SPECIAL"]

"Yugoslavs Fighting at Home, to Train Here," Brantford Expositor. May 27, 1942. Page 3. ---- By FRANK FLAHERTY, Canadian Press Staff Writer ---- OTTAWA. May 27 - (CP) - While Gen. Draja Mikhailovitch and his elusive Chetniks battle the Nazis in the mountains of their native Yugoslavia pushes plans for the training of a new army and air force in Canada, to fight the Nazis from the outside.

Dr. Izidor Cankar, first Yugoslav Minister to Canada, in an interview with The Canadian Press today expressed appreciation of the hospitality granted by Canada to the forces of his country. "The Canadian Government has published an order by which it ex- tends the hospitality enjoyed up to now by the Belgian, Norwegian, Polish, Czechoslovak and Netherlands troops to the Yugoslav army and air forces which our Government intends to raise and train in this country," he said. "We are very grateful to Canada for this generous action by which we shall be enabled to join the efforts of the Allied Nations and combat our common foe from abroad as our people are combatting them in conquered Yugoslavia." MANY AVAILABLE Dr. Cankar said he hoped training of Yugoslav forces would start soon, but declined to say where it would take place. He said there are a considerable number of Yugo- slav citizens in various parts of North and South America, some of whom may join the forces of that country. "The struggle of the Yugoslav people at home is terrible. Indeed it is repugnant to think of all the horrors which are committed in my country. THE NEW ORDER "The famous new order means there is a diabolical pride, an inhuman disdain of mankind if they are not German. It means cruelty, robbery and fatal moral drunkenness caused by the shedding of in- nocent blood and by the suppressed fear of what will happen if Germany loses the war. "The reaction of our country to this new order is obvious. We love freedom as we love life itself. We can be conquered but we can not feel well and we can not keep quiet until we are free. "Our people have been warned against lightly-provoked sacrifices, . but they did not care. There is only one fight from the boundaries of Italy to Bulgaria, from the boundaries of Hungary to Montenegro.

"There is the lonely hero Mikhailovitch with his Chetniks, but not only Cherniks are fighting. The whole nation is engaged in the fight. The feeling of Yugoslav national unity now is higher than ever."

So I couldn’t find an original source for this image but multiple facebook friends have shared it.

And I really wonder what the artist was trying to convey.

Is Paddington dead and he’s meeting her in the afterlife?

Or is Paddington in fact the personification of Death and is reaping her soul?

[Image ID: A coloured ink drawing depicting a corgi, Queen Elizabeth II and Paddington bear walking away from the viewer on a white background. The Queen and Paddington are holding hands. Text at the top of the image say “Don’t be frightened Ma’am ... the world will be holding your hand”. The corgi is carrying red, white and blue bunting which drags behind them. The Queen is wearing a green coat and hat, and black heeled shoes, and is carrying a black handbag. Paddington is wearing a blue raincoat, and red wellington boots and hat, and carrying a brown suitcase. There are two triangular sandwiches on the floor in the foreground, implying Paddington has dropped them. There are light blue and red circles added to the background.]

Will America Survive 2024?

James F. Gauss, Ph.D. January 16, 2024 Author’s Note:  It was my intention to write this post toward the end of 2023.  However, life intervened and I procrastinated.  The truth is, I do not relish writing about negative, grim posts about our nation.  I fervently pray that I am way off base in what you are about to read. Sometime in the fall of 2009, as I was getting ready to retire for the…

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The Wind Knows My Name

Isabel Allende’s latest book begins with an epigraph, a quote from The Little Prince: “Here is my secret. It’s quite simple: One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.” Having a good friend who is blind but sees more clearly than many of my sighted friends, the quote prepared me to read Allende’s book with a clear mind and an open heart. Allende’s…

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War refugees arriving in the city, 1947.

Photo: Arthur Rothstein via the Howard Greenberg Gallery

Paying My Tribute to the Queen 我對女王的致敬

Paying My Tribute to the Queen 我對女王的致敬

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News Wrap: Final tributes for Queen Elizabeth in Scotland, Minnesota nurses strike

News Wrap: Final tributes for Queen Elizabeth in Scotland, Minnesota nurses strike

In our news wrap Monday, thousands in Scotland turned out for final tributes to Queen Elizabeth, former President Trump’s lawyers urged a federal judge to continue barring investigators from reviewing White House documents found at his Florida home, Sweden’s elections give a populist party a new voice and 15,000 nurses in Minnesota launched a three-day strike over issues of pay and…

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From the Salt Lake Tribune, 2017:

“I am a 67-year-old American white woman. My parents enlisted in World War II to fight fascism. They both served; my mother was a nurse, my father navigated bombers. They lost friends in that bloody war so that all the world could be free of fascism. They did not fight so that some white people could claim supremacy or that Nazis could openly walk the streets of America.

White person to white supremacist person: What is wrong with you?

People of European heritage are doing just fine in the world. They run most of the world’s institutions, hold much of the world’s wealth, replicate as frequently as other humans. You’re not in any danger here. The world is changing, that’s true. Others want a piece of the pie. They work for it, strive for it and earn it. Technology (robotics) is having a greater effect on your job prospects than immigrants. Going forward, tackling corporate control and climate change will need all of our attention, ideas and energy. Put down your Tiki torches and trite flags and get involved in some real work.

By the way, the world won the war against Nazi fascism in the 1940s, just as America won the war against the Confederacy in the 1860s. Aligning with two lost causes just labels you as profound losers.

And finally, white person to white person: Like my parents before me, I will not stand idly by nor give up my rights or the rights of other Americans because you think you are better than some of us. It doesn’t work that way. All Americans stand shoulder to shoulder against your hatred and bigotry.”

Jonna Ramey

Salt Lake City

Might Be Different, Yet Definitely Human

Might Be Different, Yet Definitely Human

Over the past several months, I’ve noticed a significant amount of anti-Italian humor on Twitter. Perhaps it’s the algorithms, and I’m seeing more of it because I’ve posted a bit more lately about being an Italian-American, or maybe there is a surge for some reason I’ve yet to discover. Whatever the reason, the reality remains: there shouldn’t be anti-Italian humor anywhere. My grandfather was…

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“Former Peddler Fined $45,000,” Ottawa Journal. October 15, 1942. Page 1. ---- LONDON, Oct 15. (AP) - Ellis Kahn, Russian-born former peddler who made a fortune in furniture, lost 100,000 pounds ($5445,000 ) of it today as a fine for failure to offer for sale to the treasury $135,593, in United States currency.

Kahn collapsed in Bow street court when he heard the sentence. 

The prosecutor said that Kahn, realizing that mall from the United States concerning accounts- was being read by the censor, informed authorities he had undeclared deposits there.

Besides the fine, he was assessed $200 in costs and sentenced to one month's imprisonment. He was given no time to pay the fine. The alternative to payment is 10 months' imprisonment.

Kahn pleaded guilty to five summonses under the wartime law by which Britain requires her subjects to offer United States money for sale to the treasury in order to obtain exchange for purchases in the United States. 

The Di-Angelo cold case becomes something of a true crime phenomenon. A well to do Italian family suddenly moves to the US, not odd in itself considering the times but only the two children and the mother have passports and immigration records despite photos that include a mysterious father figure who is never named, not even on the childrens birth certificates or the estates records.

The mother is struck by lightning in DC and her funeral and headstone are paid for by an anonymous donor. The kids are sent to a private school in DC, also paid for by an anonymous donor, but then they just disappear a few months in and there’s no further record of what happened to them. Missing posters circulated for a while but people forget about two missing orphans in the midst of World War II.

Some theories the mysterious father was in the Italian mafia or a high member of Mussolini’s inner circle and reclaimed the children secretly, some think the kids were kidnapped for ransom money, and some crazy theories swear the kids were spotted decades later, still children somehow, in Maine.