The piece is fantastic; communicating the everyday inhumanities experienced by fat people. The list is long and depressing: bullying in childhood and beyond (cruelty as young as three, the article reveals), partnering with a person you’re not attracted to just to feel desired, being fired or unable to progress in a career or company, having a doctor celebrate your eating disorder as a means to lose weight, the internal struggle to separate self-worth from size, hiding eating behaviors from co-workers and loved ones, and so on.
We’ve known for years that bias against the overweight prevents us from seeking necessary medical attention, as well as misdiagnoses. It ultimately, unfortunately, leads to a near total distrust in doctors—unless, of course, you are equipped to find a fat-positive provider, one that recognizes the failure of the BMI-based system (which is a luxury afforded to the wealthy). The latter point brings about a question of intersectional fat-positivity: both in socioeconomic privilege and in racial discrimination.
Category: Racial Equality
UK Denies Windrush Generation Members Citizenship
Some immigrants known as the Windrush generation, who have been living in the UK for decades, are now being denied citizenship because they lack the proper documentation proving they lived in the UK before 1973.
Seventy years ago, when the UK was recovering from World War II, Britain put out ads in Caribbean countries under its control, hoping to attract people to help rebuild the country. In 1948, 492 West Indians—as British subjects—boarded the vessel Empire Windrush, attracted by a promise of more stable work. They ushered in the Windrush generation—a generation of black and brown people from British Commonwealth nations that were invited to come work in the UK until 1971, only to face harassment, bullying, and racism when they arrived. According to Oxford University’s Migration Observatory, there are an estimated 500,000 people in the Windrush generation.
Criminal Justice Reform Is on the Midterm Ballot | American Civil Liberties Union
This mass incarceration crisis wasn’t created by crime rates but by politics and racism. History shows us that mass incarceration went up when crime rates were low and went up when crime rates were high. It is the result of deliberate choices made by elected officials around the country, Democrats and Republicans alike, to lock up more people.
via Criminal Justice Reform Is on the Midterm Ballot | American Civil Liberties Union
Living while Black on Campus | American Civil Liberties Union
We have seen it again and again: A Black or brown person is sitting in a Starbucks, barbequing in a public park, touring a college they hope to attend, or sitting down in the college they already attend. And then someone calls the cops on them for looking like they “don’t belong” or are “out of place.”
Police departments have choices about how to react to such biased 911 calls. All too often, however, they let themselves be used to weaponize the biases of those who call them. That’s why police need to adopt better policies and training to address these calls when they come in.
via Living while Black on Campus | American Civil Liberties Union
GOP Official Resigns After Calling NFL Players ‘Baboons’ and ‘Ignorant Blacks’
As racists across the country melt down over Nike’s new Colin Kaepernick ad celebrating his activism, one Republican county official has resigned over Facebook posts that called black football players who protest police brutality “baboons” and “ignorant blacks.”
Carla Maloney resigned as secretary of the Beaver County Republican Committee after local outlet the Beaver Countian published some of the garbage she wrote and shared on a personal Facebook page under her old name, Carla Belich Fueller, which has since been deactivated. Here are some of the opinions she reportedly shared online:
via GOP Official Resigns After Calling NFL Players ‘Baboons’ and ‘Ignorant Blacks’
Michaela Coel on MacTaggart lecture: ‘I feel better having shared’ | Television & radio | The Guardian
“I’ve no mortgage, no credit card, no real kids, no car, happy with my bicycle; money’s nice, but I prefer transparency,” she explained. “My stories are my babies, I wanna look after them, so I asked to reserve a portion of my parental rights; my copyright … I used the only power I had; and declined.”
When asked to explain why she turned down the offer, she said the company’s response to the question of why they would acquire all the copyright wasn’t satisfactory. “The first thing I asked was: ‘Why do you want to take all the copyright?’” she said. “And when the answer is ‘that’s just the way it is’, then I’m out because that doesn’t sound like a good answer to me. It sounds cloudy. I don’t trust that.”
Celebrate Women’s Suffrage, but Don’t Whitewash the Movement’s Racism | American Civil Liberties Union
Aunty Lee’s memory is a bit cloudy regarding whether the first time she cast her ballot was in an election for local politicians or a presidential race, but one thing she knows for sure is her pastor at the time inspired her to exercise her constitutional rights and fulfill her civic duties. He said, “When it’s time to vote, make sure you vote. When it’s time to do grand jury, make sure you go.”
At age 20, Aunty Lee understood the magnitude of her pastor’s advice, given the disenfranchisement of Black folks that she witnessed growing up in Millers Ferry — including poll taxes, literacy tests, and outright violence and intimidation that prevented Black people from voting. To be a Black citizen in America but denied full citizenship rights epitomizes the hypocrisy of American democracy. This is a sad truth that I repeat like a blues refrain to my students.
US child migrants: First ladies speak out on Trump separation policy – BBC News
The former US First Lady Laura Bush has condemned a controversial policy that splits up families who illegally enter the country at the Mexican border.
Writing in the Washington Post newspaper, she describes the separation of children from their parents as cruel, immoral and heart-breaking.
Her comments follow growing controversy over President Donald Trump’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy.
Earlier Melania Trump made a rare statement expressing concern.
Mrs Trump “hates to see children separated from their families”, her spokeswoman said.
via US child migrants: First ladies speak out on Trump separation policy – BBC News
ER Doctor Suspended After Mocking Patient Suffering From Anxiety Attack
An emergency room physician has been suspended after a video of her mocking a patient claiming to be suffering from an anxiety attack was posted to Facebook, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
In the video, Dr. Beth Keegstra, of El Camino Hospital in Los Gatos, is seen doubting Samuel Bardwell’s account of what happened to him, saying, “You are the least sick of all the people who are here, who are dying. So you put your head up. Don’t try to tell me you can’t move. Come on. Sit up.”
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She tries to force Bardwell to sit up by pulling at his arm, even though he clearly tells her that he is unable to.
via ER Doctor Suspended After Mocking Patient Suffering From Anxiety Attack
Five Undocumented Immigrants Killed in Texas in a High-Speed Car Chase With Border Patrol
NBC News reports that at around 11 a.m. on Sunday, immigration officials stationed near the town of Big Wells in southwest Texas spotted three SUVs they believed to be smuggling undocumented immigrants. Agents stopped two of the cars, they said, but chased after a third, which was reportedly speeding along Highway 85 at around 100 miles per hour. Border Patrol agents and a local sheriff’s deputy chased the car until it ran off the road, ejecting several passengers.
“Border patrol was pursuing a vehicle, a Chevrolet Suburban, and one of my deputies assisted and took over the pursuit just west of Big Wells,” Dimmit County Sheriff Marion Boyd told ABC News. “The vehicle was traveling around 100 miles per hour and from what we could tell the vehicle ran off the road, caught gravel, then tried to recorrect and that caused the vehicle to turn over several times.”
via Five Undocumented Immigrants Killed in Texas in a High-Speed Car Chase With Border Patrol