Reports today of the sentencing of a man who sold 20,000 bottles of illegal skin lightening products on Ebay has brought the issue of 'colourism' into the news.  Colourism is a system of inequality that views fairer hues as more beautiful than darker skin complexions. Studies have shown that it is often the reason behind skin lightening, a practice common among people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities in the UK, US and parts of the Caribbean and Africa. Many remain unaware of the health risks, including increased chances of skin cancer, plus liver and kidney damage. The lightening products routinely contain hydroquinone or corticosteroids, both banned and dangerous chemicals. One called 'Pure White Dark Spot Corrector Serum' contains both but does not list them as ingredients.
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Labour MP Kim Johnson commented. “Illegal skin lightening products are incredibly dangerous, not just because of the physical harm they can do but also because they reinforce Eurocentric beauty standards and valorise fair skin at the expense of darker complexions. That this legacy of colonialist attitudes is still so prevalent and these products are still widely available in 2024 is a stain on our society, and must be stamped out. These attitudes stretch far beyond the realm of beauty standards and are reflected in the economic and structural oppression of people with darker skin.” She is calling for tougher government restrictions on the sale of these items.

Read more about this story here. Read more about colourism in the book 'Shades of Black: The Origins of Colour Consciousness in the Caribbean', available here.

Right Rev Rose Hudson-Wilkin, the C of E's first female black bishop in a stinging rebuke against government ministers and others “who are threatened” by the social justice movement has declared “Woke” should not be used as a negative term. Speaking at General Synod Hudson-Wilkin said such people want others to think it was a “sin created by the left.”

“When it comes to the topic of racial justice, I have heard the word ‘woke’ being bandied about by many people, including government ministers, certain radio presenters and those in the media. And in every case, they’ve used it incorrectly. The term woke originated in the USA and it was a black terminology, speaking specifically and directly to black people regarding the need to wake up and stay alert, to be consciously aware. So it is not just a mere word, it is a movement.

“Those who are threatened by the authenticity of this movement want to scare us into thinking that being woke is a sin created by people on the left. But as the people of God, we should never be afraid or embarrassed of being called an advent people, always in the business of preparing and staying alert. So I want to address the elephant in the room… in case there is anybody nurturing those incorrect thoughts and mumbling under one’s breath or to your neighbour, ‘here we go again’, negatively using the term woke.

“We must remain awake to the reality that the church’s commitment to racial justice is not the church attempting to follow the world’s direction of travel regarding inclusion, equality and diversity, but instead it is a given. It comes from a deep desire to follow the lead of Christ.”

The issue of racial justice was not an “optional extra that we can choose to address if we feel like it. The racial justice mandate flows not from identity politics, but from our primary identity in Christ. The gospel calls us to prophetically address head-on the evils in our society, indeed in our world, which leave some parts of humanity dehumanised.”

The General Synod, the C of E’s ruling assembly, decided by 364-0 votes that all parishes should develop local action plans to address racial injustice and dioceses should collect relevant data on race and ethnicity.

​Read more here and here.

The Church of England has committed £100m to a new fund to compensate for its historical benefit from the international slave trade. The money will be used to support projects “focused on improving opportunities for communities adversely impacted by historic slavery” and deliver a programme of investment, research and engagement over the next nine years. 

The fund has been set up as a result of a report for the Church Commissioners, the body that manages the C of E’s £9bn-plus endowment fund. The origins of this fund have been traced partly partly to Queen Anne’s Bounty, a financial scheme established in 1704 based on transatlantic chattel slavery. Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said the report “lays bare the links of the Church Commissioners’ predecessor fund with transatlantic chattel slavery. I am deeply sorry for these links. It is now time to take action to address our shameful past.”

Read more here. Read the Church Commissioners Report here.

On October 31, to mark Black History Month, international charity Christian Aid will be showing MJR documentary ‘After the Flood: the church, slavery and reconciliation' to all of its staff worldwide. Christian Aid UK Climate Justice Church Programme Manager for Black Majority Churches and MJR trustee Sarah-Jane Nii-Adjei said: "Christian Aid has a global ecumenical platform and will be raising the profile of this film to staff from the UK (including colleagues from Ireland, Scotland and Wales) and countries we work in. Different teams can then contact MJR if they would like to licence the film for training and development purposes." The internal event will include a panel discussion with Rev Alton Bell, Chair of MJR and Prof Robert Beckford sharing more about the film.

Rev Guy Hewitt will take up this post in November and lead the Church’s Racial Justice Unit. It follows a recommendation from the unit in its April 2021 report 'From Lament to Action'. The announcement follows the resignation of the Archbishops' Adviser for Minority Ethnic Anglican Concerns, Dr Sanjee Perera who hinted a potential tension over her role's continued place alongside the Archbishops' Racial Justice Commission.

Ordained in 2005 Rev Hewitt has a background in social policy and development, working internationally on issues of marginalisation, economic enfranchisement, racial justice, youth empowerment, and gender equality. He is a staunch critic of the UK government over its handling of the Windrush scandal, saying in 2018: “The UK is still not at ease with race. Colonial history is still not taught here. The modern global Britain, with a multicultural society, is still an aspiration rather than a reality.”

Chair of MJR Rev Alton Bell commented: "Although MJR welcomes the appointment of the CofE's first racial justice director, we hope this is not just another PR exercise analogous to the shuffling of the deckchairs on the Titanic. We want to see concrete evidence of change. We want the CofE to take the lead in reparatory justice practices, such as: changing the way slavery is taught in schools, advocating for a national memorial to those who were enslaved, and returning stolen artifacts. We wholeheartedly welcome the new racial justice director if this new position is a catalyst for systemic change".

​Read more here.

Research by the Church Commissioners into a Church of England investment fund has revealed that for over a century it invested large sums of money in a company responsible for transporting slaves. 'Queen Anne's Bounty' was formed in 1704 to help support poor clergy. In 1739 its accounts showed £204,000 (estimated to be worth £443m today) had been invested in the South Sea Company which had an exclusive contract to transport slaves from Africa to Spanish colonies in South America for more than 30 years from the 1710s. Church investments in the South Sea Company continued well into the 19th century and the fund today is worth £10.1bn.

Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby has said he was "deeply sorry for the links". "This abominable trade took men, women and children created in God's image and stripped them of their dignity and freedom. The fact that some within the Church actively supported and profited from it is a source of shame. It is only by facing this painful reality that we can take steps towards genuine healing and reconciliation - the path that Jesus Christ calls us to walk."

Read more here and here. Read the Church Commissioners report here.

MJR's documentary ‘After the Flood: the church, slavery and reconciliation' reveals more of this history of complicity with colonial slavery on the part of the Church of England and other churches, and also talks about the reconciliation Justin Welby speaks of. Find out more here.

Black Equity Organisation (BEO), the UK’s first national civil rights organisation established to advance justice and equity for Black people has been launched by some of the country’s most influential Black figures, including shadow foreign secretary David Lammy, academic David Olusoga, chief executive Karen Blackett, business leader Dame Vivian Hunt and artistic director Kwame Kwei-Armah.

Launched to coincide with the second anniversary of the murder of George Floyd, BEO is founded on the premise that systemic racism not only exists but plagues millions of people across Britain. The legacy of historic policies and attitudes means that 50% of Black children live in poverty, Black mothers are four times more likely to die in childbirth and at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Black people were four times more likely to die from Covid than white people.

The organisation has been compared to the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) in the United Scales, founded in 1909 by key Black progressives.

Read more in The Independent. Or in The Guardian here. The launch of BEO has been supported by six law firms - more.

A proposal for the Church if England to appoint racial justice officers in each of its 42 dioceses has been turned down by the Archbishop's Council due to cost. It was a key recommendation from the 'From Lament to Action' report published in April after years of inaction over institutional racism. Co-chairs of the anti-racism taskforce that produced the report, the Rev Arun Arora and the Rev Sonia Barron, said they were “deeply shocked and disappointed” and that it “boils down to a matter of priorities” and would “inevitably lead to conclusions as to how much or how little this matters to decision-makers in the church”.

Elizabeth Henry, who resigned as the C of E’s race adviser last year, said: “To say it’s too costly is a gross insult. It’s to say racial justice is too expensive when it is a foundation of our faith. This decision is a disgrace. We have to stop waiting for the church to allow us racial justice. I pray black and brown people will vote with our feet.”

Other recommendations in the report included that shortlists for senior clergy should include at least one appointable candidate of a minority ethnic background by September, with an expectation this occurs for all other jobs in the Church.

Read more here and here..

At an extraordinary meeting on March 2 Bristol City Council voted in favour of a motion for "Atonement and Reparations for Bristol’s role in the Transatlantic Traffic in Enslaved Africans", becoming the first city outside London to do so. The cross-party motion passed by 47 votes to 12 and was the result of a grassroots campaign dating back many years.

Cllr Cleo Lake said in the meeting: “Reparations, as I hope was made clear in this motion, does include but goes beyond monetary compensation. The contribution of African civilisation, culture and people versus how we have been treated is one of the world’s great paradoxes". She added later: "I want to be very clear this is not about rewriting history, but rather about casting a bright light on it. Instead of clinging to comforting myths about Britain’s heritage, let’s face up to the reality of our history – let’s talk about it – and let’s learn from that to create a better future for all of us.”

Mayor Marvin Rees acknowledged the complexities in conversations around race, class and social immobility and spoke of the need for discussions around reparatory justice to be attached to real policy. He added: “I’m not just a mayor, I still experience the world as a black man and, even within this organisation, I experience the consequences of having black skin. Race does not disappear just because we want to wish it away.”

Read more here. Watch a recording of the meeting here.

In a recent article in the Independent, Noah Berlatsky comments on the speech by Donald Trump's defence lawyer Bruce Castor, one that has been universally castigated as bumbling and incompetent. Berlatsky strikingly states that: "the truth is that Castor could have stood up for two hours and made farting noises with his underarm, and his client would still be acquitted." Republican senators have already indicated that they will vote to acquit before hearing the evidence, never mind weighing up, the merits of the case. The GOP is a white identity party, committed to traditional hierarchies of race, gender, sexuality, religion, and wealth. Trump is their perfect president because he shows "that the only qualification for rule is to be white, straight, Christian, male and rich".

Ta-Nehisi Coates 2017 article "The First White President" for the Atlantic argued that Trump is "a white man who would not be president were it not for this fact" – meaning he was the president who had no qualifications, talents, accomplishments, or experience to his name other than his identity as a wealthy white man.

Berlatsky continues: "White supremacy is not actually an ideology of superiority. It’s at base an ideology of entitled inefficacy. The Trump ethos is that the most incompetent, foolish, evil white man in the country is worthy to rule simply because he is a white man." Protecting that privilege seems to matter more to Republican senators than the rights and wrongs of the January 6 Capitol invasion and Trump's role in inciting it, even though theirs were among the lives endangered.

Read the full article here.