racism
Racism operates directly and indirectly to exclude people from real access to equality. Racism feeds unjust policies which deny people categorised as "other": their human rights. Racism can feed social exclusion within communities and in turn breed cycles of hostility and violence. Treating "non-citizens" differently to "citizens", apart from what else it amounts to - amounts to discrimination on the basis of race.
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The Peace Advocacy of Martin Luther King (Part 4 of 4)
To appreciate Martin Luther King’s thoughts on peace, we must understand his thoughts about the relationship between human beings. He saw all human beings as caught “in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” He expands on this thought in his 1964 speech, “The American Dream”. All I’m saying is simply this, that all life is interrelated. And we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny — whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you…
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Martin Luther King and Non-violence (Part 3 of 4)
Martin Luther King thought deeply about the best methods to use to overcome the injustices facing African Americans. This in itself is an important observation. It is appropriate for us in the 21st century to also think deeply about questions of method. His speeches frequently describe and defend nonviolence as the method he felt was both effective and moral for the issues on which he worked. Sometimes the description was in response to criticism of the method as “too extreme”, at other times it was to reject the violence advocated by some. His explanations were patient and detailed. The basic steps of the method are outlined to his fellow ministers…
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Martin Luther King Jr. – What role did Christianity play in his civil rights advocacy? (Part 2 of 4)
Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta Georgia, the second son of Martin Luther King Sr. and Alberta Williams King. Martin Luther King Jr. was by vocation a Baptist minister. He was in the fourth generation of his family to take up this vocation. It is impossible to fully appreciate Martin Luther King’s work without understanding the role that Christian thought and inspiration played in his advocacy of human rights. Martin Luther King’s letter from a Birmingham prison to fellow Christian clergymen gives insight to the role his religious commitment played in generating and sustaining his commitment to work for justice. Further, the people from whom he came, the…
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Martin Luther King Civil Rights Leader and Peace Advocate (Part 1 of 4)
Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his life for the poor of the world, the garbage workers of Memphis and the peasants of Vietnam. The day that Negro people and others in bondage are truly free, on the day want is abolished, on the day wars are no more, on that day I know my husband will rest in a long-deserved peace.—Coretta King This article is part of a series on human rights forebears. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr lived a life beyond the ordinary and writing about him is challenging. His life made the world that came after him better. This article will not do justice to his contribution.…
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The Hundred Foot Journey
The Hundred Foot Journey, plays out against a physically short distance, yet the distance that keeps the people involved apart, is vast. The movie tells the story of a meeting between two cooking cultures: Indian and French. Both are proud of their cooking traditions. An Indian family, displaced some time before to England by political violence in their home country, seeks out a new life across the channel in Europe. A chance car breakdown takes them to an idyllic French town; where they find the food ingredients with the flavours they are seeking. Their arrival sparks a competition between cooking cultures and rival restaurants. Four characters are at the heart…
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Crossing Over: does immigration policy discriminate?
Does immigration policy discriminate? The White Australia policy is gone – so we might conclude that it doesn’t. And indeed Australia would be unrecognisable to those who created the White Australia policy at the end of the 19th century. Times change and such racist practices are now a condemned part of the past. Today Australia celebrates the diversity and strength of its people: actively creating pathways and welcoming individuals and families from around the world into its community. Race is not relevant. That’s not the full story of course. Currently a human rights inquiry is investigating the treatment of children in Australian immigration prisons. These are children from families, or…
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Belle
Humans are complex beings. The movie “Belle” (director Amma Assante) explores human complexity, particularly as it manifests in everyday human relationships. The movie is set in the late eighteenth century at the height of the transatlantic slave trade. Dido Elizabeth Belle (played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is the central character of the movie. She was born into slavery, but her father, Captain John Lindsay, was the nephew of the Lord Chief Justice William Murray (Earl of Mansfield). By this chance of fate, Dido escaped a life of slavery and was brought up instead in British high society – as part of the Lord Chief Justice’s household. The movie explores what life may…
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The Duty of Kindness and Sympathy Towards Strangers and Foreigners
It is hardest to write of those things about which we feel most deeply. Today I wish to write about someone whose words and life have profoundly influenced and inspired me. That person is Abdu’l Baha: the son of the founder of the Baha’i Faith and its leader from 1892 to 1921. I wish to address particularly what Abdu’l Baha had to say about the issue of ‘foreignness’. One hundred years ago, on 16 and 17 October 1911, he gave his first recorded talk to the people of Paris. The theme of his talk was “the duty of kindness and sympathy towards strangers and foreigners”. What did Abdu’l Baha see…
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Tragedy
It is one of the saddest realities of our modern world that prejudice and hate often rear their ugly heads through acts of gross violence. Yet that is precisely what happened this month. Unfathomable bigotry took the lives of 77 innocent men, women, and youth in Norway. To dwell excessively here on the evil ideology that precipitated this tragic event would be to give undue attention to the deluded ideas of a shameless man who has, according to many accounts, perpetrated this evil for the explicit purpose of advertising his shocking racism. We cannot play into his scheme. So even as we peremptorily reject and condemn the violence and its…
