Is the Northern English city of York racist? A "report" says it is
As Paul says in Titus 1:15:
"Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled."
The condemnation of York is readily understood as the product of defiled minds -- minds that WANT to find racism under every bed
A small historical note: The report says:
"there were high status and wealthy people in York from all over the Roman Empire, including North Africa"
That happens to be true. But note that both in ancient times and to this day, the indigenous North African population is WHITE. The Roman empire did not extend into Sub-Saharan Africa, the home of blacks
Families are spread out on the grass beneath one of our greatest cathedrals. In the meandering lanes and alleyways hereabouts, crowds drift happily past handsome shop fronts selling everything from expensive watches to fudge.
The Sunday market is teeming, the adjacent food market is packed and there is plenty of boat traffic on the grand old River Ouse.
Farther out from the city centre, it's like a Sunday afternoon in suburbs all over the country. Some people are mowing the lawn. Some are in the pub following the fortunes of English cricket up the road at Headingley.
It is hard to acknowledge that behind this veneer of balmy weekend contentment in the capital of 'God's own country', I am looking at a city mired in bigotry and xenophobia.
That, however, is the conclusion of a hefty report by something calling itself Inclusive Equal Rights UK (IERUK), which has just come to a pretty damning conclusion: 'Racism in York is casual, systemic, and structural.'
Citing multiple disparities in everything from education to employment and policing, with anecdotal evidence, this alarming document, funded by the Labour-run city council, paints a picture of a place closer to Alabama circa 1955 than 21st-century Yorkshire.
The council clearly agrees, since it has just given the authors £25,000 to pursue their findings as part of a five-year strategy to make York an 'Anti-Racist City'.
The evidence, we are told, is beyond reproach. 'The five-year anti-racism strategy, actions and recommendations are entirely based on data and research collected, collated and analysed,' says IERUK, which claims to have undertaken a 'deep dive' into all official statistics before drawing its very grave conclusions. 'The evidence clearly shows the imbalances, injustice, and violence towards many minority communities in the city.
'It is now time to acknowledge that systemic racism and prejudice are prevalent in the City of York.'
But before we invite the commissars to erect the 'cancel' signs around this ancient city of Romans, Vikings, medieval architecture, Quakers, chocolate, railways and horse-racing, it seems only proper to take a closer look.
And two things stand out right away. First, this is not a York which chimes with any of the people whom I have been talking to this weekend (including members of these allegedly persecuted minorities).
Second, you need only undertake your own 'deep dive' to see that this data is extremely selective and in, some cases, even flawed.
Nor, despite its grand name, is IERUK any sort of national organisation. It is a York-based grass roots campaign focused exclusively on local minorities and is not comprehensive. Its website acknowledges it has yet to recruit anyone from either the Jewish or Chinese communities.
And there are plenty of people here who think its conclusions, however well-intentioned, are plain wrong.
'People are nice round here. It's a happy place — no racism. I'd say 99 per cent are good people,' says Zahaad Latif, 25, who has been helping out on the family's gift and electricals stall here in the market for the past 15 years.
His family moved to Yorkshire from Pakistan and have had no regrets. 'You sometimes hear bad things about what goes on in London, but that's why people move up here.'
Stallholder Angie Gannon, who sells pretty, handmade cards, has been trading here for more than 30 years. She hadn't heard about the report until I mention it. She looks it up online and is appalled.
'This is all wrong. This is a cosmopolitan city — a vibrant city with lots of foreign students, too, but it's not racist,' she says firmly, pointing up the road in the direction of York Minster.
Was that not the former seat of the Church of England's first black archbishop, John Sentamu? He served as Archbishop of York from 2005 to 2020. 'We all loved him round here,' says Angie.
She would much rather the council spent the £25,000 on more communal seating in the city centre and restoring the fountain which used to stand near her stall.
Yana Gausden, originally from Thailand, has plenty of customers at her NaNa Noodles bar, but pauses to chat. Has she ever been a victim of racism — casual, structural, systemic or otherwise?
'No!' she says firmly. 'People are not racist here.'
Time and again, people tell me that York may not be perfect — because nowhere is — but it is generally a cohesive, happy place, no different from most other places......
Perhaps the most intriguing claim in the report is that this was once a predominantly black city. 'York has had a minority ethnic population since Roman times,' it states. 'For instance, black slaves were buried in the city in around 200 AD, while other remains suggest there were high status and wealthy people in York from all over the Roman Empire, including North Africa.
'It has been suggested by one historian that at around that time, the population of York, largely a military garrison town, was predominantly black.' Sadly, the academic source notes do not offer any further guidance on this.
What is also striking is an apparent official reluctance to question or even discuss any of this.
When contacted yesterday, neither the Labour MP for York Central, the Tory MP for Outer York, nor York City Council were available for comment.
If it is only the ordinary voters of York who are happy to offer a response, so be it. And I fail to find a single one who concurs.
'That's not the city I grew up in,' says Johnny Shaw, 27, who is running a stall selling candles made in York. 'It's always been an inclusive place, like most places — or so I've always thought.'
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A new generation of women is saying no to the stressful career ladder
The Girlboss is dead, and the Lazy Girl has risen from her ashes.
Since the pandemic, an anti-work sentiment has been building among young people: from the mass exodus of workers during the Great Resignation of 2021 to the recent “quiet quitting” movement, which encouraged workers to silently withdraw their time and commitment from their workplace.
#Lazygirljob is the latest incarnation to take root on TikTok. In brief, young people, mostly women, are rejecting the hustle culture of our millennial forebears in favour of undemanding, decently paid middle-management jobs where the breaks are long, and the stakes are non-existent.
The hashtag has more than 14 million views and is littered with videos of proud lazy girls detailing how easy their working lives are. One video is captioned, “All I do is copy and paste the same emails, take 3-4 calls a day, take my extra-long break, take more breaks, AND get a nice salary”. Another video reads: “I love my lazy girl job. I don’t have to talk to people, only come to the office twice a week.”
It’s not a phenomenon that exists solely online. A proudly lazy friend recently extolled the virtues of her “mouse jiggler” – a device she ordered from Amazon that keeps her cursor active while she “works remotely” – ie, re-watches episodes of Nashville.
To borrow a TikTok buzz phrase, Gen Z “don’t dream of labour”, and the stats back it up. A survey from Workspace Technology found that just 49 per cent of Gen Z say work is central to their identity, compared with 62 per cent of millennials.
The same study found that almost half (47 per cent) of Gen Z said that if their employer didn’t provide hybrid or remote options, they would look for jobs elsewhere. Angelica Hunt, senior marketing lead at the diversity, equity, and inclusion firm The Dream Collective, says that the #lazygirljob movement is born out of an ever-growing misalignment between companies and workers.
“Companies simply aren’t walking the walk regarding inclusion. Flexibility and hybrid working options are being reduced by companies mandating returning to the office and, in some cases, reverting to pre-Covid inflexibility,” she says.
Hunt believes that as Gen Z changes jobs at a higher rate than any other generation, they have realised that the issue exists wherever they go and are taking matters into their own hands in designing a working life that works for them.
“They want a work/life blend where they feel their work is in synergy with their lives, not in conflict with it,” she says.
“They’ve learned from their parents’ generation that pouring your whole life into work at the expense of all else may not be paying off as much as they once thought.”
In his widely circulated 2013 essay, On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs, anthropologist David Graeber argued that carrying out these so-called bullshit jobs will eventually gnaw away at one’s psyche.
“How can one even begin to speak of dignity in labour when one secretly feels one’s job should not exist?” he wrote.
Dr Anna Denejkina, the research director for YouthInsight, the research arm of Student Edge, argues that it is the perception of one’s work being considered useless that may be the core issue, rather than the work itself.
“We need to consider what can be done to change the social environment that produces these viewpoints and perceptions in the first place,” she says.
She says work that is stress-free or less demanding is not necessarily menial and won’t lead to feelings of the job being useless.
Hustle culture, she adds, “can breed the idea that individual success comes from your success at work, and this can be dangerous as it can conflate work success with life happiness”.
On a macro level, Denejkina says this disillusionment with the grind is a reaction to the decline in “absolute mobility” we’ve seen since the 80s, compounded with economic failings, out-of-reach housing, and the cost-of-living pressure. “With the large number of life stressors already impacting young people today, it’s expected that many are prioritising their wellbeing and looking for work that is stress-free or less demanding.”
If pop culture is a bellwether of the times, consider the media diet of millennial women: Ugly Betty, The Devil Wears Prada, Legally Blonde – all stories about women with capitalist ambition and talent. For Gen Z, that kind of neoliberal, aspirational girlboss figure is cringe; instead, we’ve found messy, barely-employed heroes in Fleabag and Lena Dunham’s Girls.
One need only look to the undisputed “It” girl book of the past five years: Ottessa Moshfeg’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation, in which the unnamed protagonist checks out of the hustling New York art scene to devote an entire year to slumbering in her Upper East Side apartment. While spending months in a drug-induced hibernation sounds divine, for most of us that’s out of reach. We’ll have to make do with the rewarding work involved in firing off a few emails before an extended lunch break.
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Cycling Authority Reverses Course: Bars Trans Athletes from Women's Cycling Events
The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), the global governing body for sports cycling, announced a significant policy change on Friday, resulting in transgender athletes being banned from participating in all international women’s events.
This development arrives over two months following UCI’s defense of its policy regarding the inclusion of transgender athletes in women’s sports. According to the revised guidelines, trans cyclists who “transitioned after (male) puberty” will henceforth be disqualified from competing in women’s events.
This decision was solidified at a UCI Management Committee meeting, which followed a seminar addressing the conditions for the participation of transgender athletes in women’s cycling events. This seminar, conducted by the UCI on June 21, included “various stakeholders — transgender and cisgender athletes, experts from the scientific, legal and human rights fields, and sporting institutions — were able to present their respective positions,” the statement read.
“From now on, female transgender athletes who have transitioned after (male) puberty will be prohibited from participating in women’s events on the UCI International Calendar — in all categories — in the various disciplines,” the statement read.
The assembly comprised both transgender and cisgender athletes, as well as experts from scientific, legal, and human rights fields, and representatives from sporting institutions.
The committee resolved that given the current “state of scientific knowledge”, it cannot be assured that any physical advantage a trans athlete may have would be negated post hormone therapy treatments.
“In this context, the UCI Management Committee concluded, considering the remaining scientific uncertainties, that it was necessary to take this measure to protect the female class and ensure equal opportunities,” the statement said.
The updated rules, which will be effective from July 17, dictate that individuals who do not fulfill the guidelines for the women’s category will now be classified under the men’s category, henceforth to be renamed “Men/Open.”
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Who Are the Real Authoritarians?
If the Trump presidency meant anything, it meant less government. Specifically, lower taxes, less regulation, and fewer (potentially war-causing) foreign entanglements.
True, Trump is no libertarian. He believes in federal funding of infrastructure and industrial policy – but maybe smarter and less intrusively so than Barack Obama or Joe Biden.
Typical Trump supporters are also anti-government – even more than Trump is. They were more suspicious of Anthony Fauci and the CDC, more opposed to lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and mask mandates during the Covid pandemic, more suspicious of the “deep state,” and less trusting of federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
Trump's appointments to the Supreme Court have given us rulings that are consistent with an anti-authoritarian approach to public policy. Among recent major decisions, the court has strengthened Second Amendment rights, limited the reach of the regulatory state, and protected the right of shopkeepers and merchants to follow their conscience rather than bow to the dictates of woke regulators.
You might suppose that the Court’s decision rejecting affirmative action at Harvard is an example of too much government intervention in the affairs of a private organization. Yet the federal government has been pressuring the private sector to engage in affirmative action ever since the days when John F. Kennedy was president. The latest Court decision begins to put limits on that intrusion.
The overturning of Roe v. Wade might be seen as a case of the Court’s failure to protect the individual from the state. But half the country doesn’t see the issue that way. Instead of being an arm of the federal government making abortion decisions for the entire country – the Court chose to let the people decide.
It was under the administration of Donald Trump that you gained the right to talk with your doctor by phone, email, Zoom, Facebook, and Skype. Under Obama, all that was illegal. Because of a Trump executive order, employers today can buy individually owned health insurance for their employees – insurance they can take with them from job to job and in and out of the labor market. If employers did that under Obama, they could be fined $100 per employee daily.
Under Biden, we are getting predictable backsliding – a reversion to the regulatory state. Thanks to a Trump executive order, 3 million families have “short-term” health insurance – plans that meet their medical and financial needs for as little as one-half the premiums charged in the Obamacare exchanges. Biden is going to take that freedom away – beginning next January.
But the most unsettling sign of impending authoritarianism is not the expansion of the regulatory state. It’s the willingness of federal law enforcement and our intelligence agencies to toss aside impartiality and directly interfere with democratic government.
As the Durham report makes clear, under the Trump administration, the real threat to democracy came not from the president or from an unruly mob on January 6th. It came from law enforcement and intelligence agencies intervening to change election results and undermine a duly elected presidency – along with help from the mainstream media and Big Tech.
It may surprise some readers to know that the New York Times was our nation’s first real newspaper. Prior to its founding, many newspapers had a political party’s name in their title, such as “Democrat” or “Republican.” Some of these newspaper names have survived even today. Regardless of the name, almost all the newspapers at the time were political party propaganda. The New York Times was the first newspaper that pledged to report impartial news.
All that changed with Donald Trump. When Times writers weren’t calling him “authoritarian,” they called him a “traitor” (270 times). When they weren’t calling him a traitor, they routinely called him other names, including “racist,” “misogynistic,” “xenophobic,” “homophobic,” and occasionally even “anti-Semitic.” These charges were just as baseless as the charge of treason.
At first blush, the Times today looks very much like the newspapers it replaced almost 200 years ago – as an organ of the Democrat Party. But the reality is worse than that. The Times, more often than not, is acting as the government’s newspaper.
The New York Times once printed the Pentagon Papers and fought for its freedom to do so against the U.S. government’s attempt to censor it all the way to the Supreme Court. Today, it rarely publishes anything that would be embarrassing to the FBI, the CIA, the Biden family, or the government in general.
Sadly, it is the Times itself that is proving to be a friend, not an enemy, of authoritarian tendencies in our body politic.
https://townhall.com/columnists/johncgoodman/2023/07/14/who-are-the-real-authoritarians-n2625718
****************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See
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