A round-up of the bizarre and brilliant of the web corralled by the University of Portsmouth Library.
The British winter can be a dull and depressing time, so it is important to find something fun to divert yourself until the two days in June when we actually see some sunshine. Happily, Time Out has helped us out …
Suffering from the intersectional oppression both as Black people and as women, Black women face communal microaggressions and exclusion in academia, as elsewhere, making an already steep career path even more difficult for them. This is reflected in the challenges …
Pioneering Black British women in education and research Read more »
Looking after ourselves means taking time to care for bodies and minds together. It doesn’t matter what you read or what exercise you do, only that you enjoy what you are doing. As I was once told, “life is not a rehearsal”, so make the most of your time. Enjoy every moment you can, and if you can’t, see if there is anything obvious you can do to make life better.
Bringing an admittedly selective sweep of leading Black ladies up to the late twentieth century, we see how Black women have been instrumental in making up for deficiencies in the welfare state, building self-sufficient communities, neutralising some of the most dangerous periods of interracial strife in British history, while still making waves in popular culture.
There’s an old saying that “an Englishman’s home is his castle” – somewhere you can retreat from the world and feel entirely safe and secure. While this is hopefully true, the police want to remind you (and everyone else) that …
Staying relaxed and self-aware is vital to our wellbeing but the wicked state of the world means that this is often not easy. Reading for pleasure has been found to have a profound impact on wellbeing. It doesn’t matter what …
The fifth of November is remembered every year in England as Fireworks Night, the anniversary of the foiled Gunpowder plot to blow up King James I at the opening of Parliament.
Looking back over the Black History Month blog posts from last year, you will find descriptions of the many powerful Black women who successfully overcame the frightening violence and persecution that followed the uptick in racism and fearmongering in the 1950s following the post-war economic collapse. Figures such as Mavis Best who changed the law from a tool of persecution to a standard for equality that gave police sweeping powers of arrest without cause and allowed them to intimidate Black people with the threat of arbitrary arrest and instigated the Race Relations Act of 1965 that replaced colonial laws and established equal rights in law for everyone, regardless of their ethnicity. These figures are so important that I wanted to revisit them again briefly here.
Contrary to the prevailing myth that Black people arrived to an entirely white population mid-20th century on the Windrush, archaeological evidence suggests Britain was ethnically diverse from at least the time the Roman Empire arrived in Britain, facilitating international trade and mobility and have answered the call to aid Britain from every corner of her empire ever since.
Saluting sisters: celebrating the impact of Black British women This Black History Month, we are focusing on the history, legacies and lasting impact of Black women. With so much online content focused on Afro-Americans, I have tried to centre Black …
