-
The Poetry of Langston Hughes
Racism and problems of race relations continue to generate injustice and racial animosity around the world. The problem is not confined to any one people or country, but the case of the United States is better known in the English speaking world. The poetry of Langston Hughes comes from a period in which racism had reached a peak – what is known as the “Jim Crow” era. The United States civil war ended slavery, but it didn’t end racism. Gradually racism took a stronger hold in society and by the early 20th century it gave rise to toxic theories of racial supremacy and scientific racism. A fierce segregation was instituted between…
-
More than one thousand deaths since 2000
On 15 December 2010, 50 people are believed to have drowned when their asylum seeker boat was smashed, only metres from safety, on the shores of Christmas Island. Some of the bodies of those who died will never be recovered. In protests by asylum seekers that followed, children held in detention are seen holding up placards asking: “The children died. Why?” [1] Yet the children and adults that died on 15 December are (horrifically) only a small fraction of deaths associated with “border security”. Sometime in 2010, the known number of deaths associated with Australia’s border controls passed 1000. This number in turn is only a small fraction of the known global toll associated with similar border security policies which are playing out on borders…
-
Book Review: The Strange Alchemy of Law and Life by Justice Albie Sachs
The victims and perpetrators of human rights abuses whisper from the pages of this short book. They speak to us of their struggle to realize their own humanity and recognize the humanity of each other. For a judge The Strange Alchemy of Law and Life is an unusual book. But then Albie Sachs is an unusual judge. A member of the African National Congress and a legal adviser to it when it was still a revolutionary movement, Albie Sach’s life moves from barely surviving a state sponsored terrorist bombing, to which he lost an arm and an eye, to sitting on the Constitutional Court of South Africa. It is the kind of life that prompts reflection,…
