Latest news with #ethnicminority
South China Morning Post
3 days ago
- Sport
- South China Morning Post
How this sports club empowers Hong Kong's ethnic minorities
A social club in Hong Kong wants to help people who come from ethnic minority backgrounds get involved in sports and become coaches. Inherited Sports supports ethnic minority communities by providing programmes that are sensitive to their cultural and religious needs. For example, the group runs a swimming class for Muslim women and children. They use Kowloon Park Swimming Pool when it is closed to the public and only have women coaches and lifeguards on duty. The initiative also trains young people to become coaches and sports leaders. According to the city's 2021 census, more than half of the South Asian community in Hong Kong work in just four areas. Not being fluent in Cantonese and Mandarin is often a barrier. But people from ethnic minority communities also face other challenges, such as racial discrimination, fewer resources and harmful stereotypes. Inherited Sports offers them training and workshops in a range of sports. It also provides a subsidy and career advice. The group has already helped 11 men and two women become certified coaches.
Telegraph
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
‘I'm not going back': What it was like to be Jewish at Glastonbury
'A friend had seen Kneecap play at Coachella [the music festival held in California in April] and told me not to go to Glastonbury,' says Suzi Sendama. 'He said he thought it would be more difficult for me than I thought it would be. I didn't grasp what he meant at the time.' After spending the weekend at the festival in Somerset, she now understands what her friend meant. A lawyer by day, Sendama, 42, has been going to Glastonbury for over 20 years. This was the first time she felt uncomfortable. 'What I've always loved about festivals is the ability to leave your life at the gate and enter a complete world of escapism, where it's just silly and fun and full of love and everybody supports each other, and you don't have to think about the horrific outside world,' she says. 'There's always awful things going on in the outside world to escape from. At the start of Ezra Collective's performance they said 'we want everyone to make friends'. Festivals are about those moments of love and unity. The rest of the weekend was not like that. 'I know that I'm part of an ethnic minority but you don't feel the hate every day. This weekend was pretty tough. It felt like a massive wake-up call as to the number of people who really do want to dismantle the state of Israel and that scares me. On Sunday, I had to take myself out of the event because I was so upset. People say 'you shouldn't feel threatened, it's not anti-Semitic,' but they would never dare tell a black person what is or isn't an anti-black racist statement.'' Sendama is not alone. Other Jewish attendees have been writing about the discomfort they felt over the weekend. In The Jewish Chronicle, Elisa Bray wrote that the 'stardust' of Glastonbury 'was lost this weekend.' When Jamie Peston, 44, who works in education, went to the festival for the first time last year, he 'fell in love with the chaos and the joy.' But after his experience this year, he wrote in a Facebook post entitled 'The Last Sunrise at Glastonbury: How a Festival of Freedom Turned Its Back on Jews Like Me' that he will not be returning. 'Before I went last year I was apprehensive and a lot of people thought I shouldn't be going, but I had a great time,' he tells The Telegraph. 'There were loads of Palestinian flags and keffiyehs, but that's not what Glastonbury is about, it's just what is portrayed [in the media]. I loved and enjoyed it this year, as well, but the context and detail and gravity of the anger, and the much more blatant anti-Semitism, had a huge impact on my experience. I'm not going back.' Apart from the general atmosphere around the festival, one incident in particular changed his mind. On Saturday afternoon, before a performance by the Australian punk band Amyl and the Sniffers, 'I realised I was in the middle of all the people who were holding Palestinian flags and wearing keffiyahs,' says Peston, who usually wears a kippah but didn't at Glastonbury. 'I got talking to a woman next to me. She asked if I'd seen Kneecap and I said no, then we had a chat, then suddenly in the middle of the conversation she said ' Oy vey ' at the end of a sentence. I jolted. I said 'What did you just say?' and she said 'it's Yiddish'. I said 'I know, are you Jewish?' and she said 'no.' I remembered in the back of my mind reading about people in these kinds of groups learning Yiddish phrases so they could work out who was Jewish and who was not. I realised then that I didn't want to be there any more.' Peston says his experience at Glastonbury was part of a trend of rising anti-Semitism. 'What we're seeing is a massive shift in what the mainstream thinks is acceptable and OK. It's making me feel significantly concerned and destabilised. While I champion free speech, I think there is a very clear line, which was crossed a long time ago. Part of the problem is the normalisation of extreme language.' Police have launched criminal investigations into the Glastonbury performances by Kneecap, an Irish rap group, and Bob Vylan, a punk duo from London. In May, Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, a member of Kneecap who performs as Mo Chara, was charged with a terror offence for allegedly displaying a Hezbollah flag at a gig in London last November. Kneecap have been outspoken critics of Israel's war in Gaza. During Bob Vylan's performance on Saturday, singer Bobby Vylan led thousands of fans in chants of 'death, death to the IDF [Israel Defense Forces],' and spoke about working for a 'f------ Zionist.' The BBC, which screened the performance, issued a statement saying the 'anti-Semitic sentiments were utterly unacceptable.' In a separate statement, Glastonbury organisers said they were 'appalled' by the comments, which 'very much crossed a line.' Sir Keir Starmer condemned the 'appalling hate speech.' The chief rabbi, Sir Ephraim Mirvis, posted on social media that the 'airing of vile Jew-hatred at Glastonbury' and the botched response amounted to a ' time of national shame.' Bob Vylan have had their US visas rescinded ahead of a planned tour and have reportedly been dropped by their management. 'I'm not scared, and that's the irony of this whole situation,' says Peston. 'Zionism is simply the belief that Jews have the right to self-determination in our ancestral homeland. The existence of Israel means that, if things ever got truly dangerous, I could pack my bags and go somewhere safe – something Jews haven't always had the luxury of doing, often with disastrous consequences. So when I hear 'death to the IDF' it lands as something much deeper. It doesn't mean I support every action of the Israeli government or military. It means that the very idea of Jewish safety and continuity is being rejected, and that's profoundly unsettling.' For at least one Jewish attendee, Glastonbury was an opportunity to openly celebrate his faith. 'I have always worn a massive Star of David necklace,' says Matthew Waxman, 34. 'It's a big part of my identity. For a long time wearing it has been a mixed experience. On the one hand it stops people from making casual anti-Semitic remarks around me, but on the other hand it generates filthy looks from time to time. People who have a problem with it rarely say anything. Glastonbury was in line with that experience. 'The other reason I wear it is because it's not a pleasant time to be a Jew and I know a lot of people who hide their identity in public. I've had many experiences where people come up to me and say seeing someone being proudly visibly Jewish made them feel a bit safer or not alone. Again that was the case at Glastonbury. You can't let the b------- grind you down. There were pockets of genuine anti-Semitism at Glastonbury like there are everywhere, but I don't let anyone intimidate me.' Glastonbury will have a fallow year next year to allow the fields to recover. While war rages in Gaza, organisers of festivals and broadcasters – particularly the BBC – will continue to face the difficult question of where artistic freedom ends. For the Jewish festival-goers put off by their experience this time, that may not be enough. 'I'm sad that this place of unity and love from people from all walks of life felt like it's not for everybody any more,' says Suzi Sendama. 'I'm glad there's a break next year because it gives more of an opportunity for it to be rectified.'
Yahoo
07-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
White British children are now minority in one in four schools
White British pupils are now the minority in one in four schools in England, official data reveal. Analysis of school census data, collected from more than 21,500 primaries and secondaries in January, shows that in a quarter of them, the majority of the cohort is recorded as ethnic minority or white non-British. In 72 schools, no white British pupils are recorded, and in 454, they make up less than 2 per cent of the student body. The demographic shift is apparent in many of the country's big cities such as London, Birmingham, Manchester, Bradford and Leicester. At Rockwood Academy, in Birmingham, for instance, none of the 1,084 students were recorded in the census as 'white British', while just 12 of the 2,779 pupils at Loxford School, in the London borough of Redbridge, were white British. The figures, released by the Department of Education this week, have been published as a report predicted that white British people will become a minority in the UK population within the next 40 years. The Buckingham University study projects a big rise in the proportion of the UK population comprising foreign-born and second-generation immigrants, from below 20 per cent to 33.5 per cent within the next 25 years. By the end of the century, six in 10 people in the UK will either not have been born in the UK, or will have at least one immigrant parent, and one in five will be Muslim, according to the report by Prof Matt Goodwin. The dramatic population change raises 'profound questions about the capacity of the UK state to both absorb and manage this scale of demographic change', he claimed. Concern about legal and illegal immigration levels, and their long-term impact, is fuelling a surge in support for Reform. In this week's Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election, in Scotland, Labour prised a win from the SNP but only Reform saw a significant swing in its favour, taking 26.1 per cent of the vote. The party's performance has led to predictions that Reform is on course to pick up more than 10 seats in next year's Scottish Parliament elections, and poses a real threat in the 2029 general election. The school census data demonstrates that the white British share of the young population is in decline in many areas. Children in state schools in a third of council areas are now mostly ethnic minority or white non-British, up from about a quarter a decade ago. In all 32 London boroughs, apart from Bromley, white British children are in a minority. In Bromley, they make up 50.3 per cent. In Newham, just 5 per cent of children were recorded in the school census as white British. The figure in Harrow was 7 per cent. Other local authority areas in England where the majority of children are not white British include Manchester, Nottingham, Coventry, Luton, Milton Keynes, Peterborough, Oldham and Blackburn and Darwen. The analysis of the school census figures excludes independent schools, schools where a high proportion of students had no ethnicity classification, and those where there were a very low number of pupils. Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, raised the 'scandal' last week of white working-class educational failure, saying that children had been 'betrayed' and 'left behind in society'. Government data shows that only 21 secondary schools in England where more than a fifth of pupils are white working class had any record of success with this group. Nick Harrison, the chief executive of the Sutton Trust social mobility charity, said white working class underachievement was 'a ticking time bomb for equality of opportunity in our country'. In an attempt to steal ground from Reform, Ms Phillipson announced a new independent inquiry into white working class educational outcomes, which will be led by Sir Hamid Patel, the chief executive of a leading academies trust, and Estelle Morris, a former Labour education secretary. While the issue has been widely researched in the past, it has resulted in little or no action to try and tackle the problem. A comprehensive inquiry undertaken by the Commons education committee in 2021 found a significant educational achievement gap between white working class children and their more advantaged peers, and between this group and their equally disadvantaged ethnic minority counterparts. According to the report, attainment gaps are fuelled by high concentrations of poverty, inadequate resources, low teacher quality, and a lack of aspiration and investment in disadvantaged areas. Use of the term 'white privilege' was also criticised for potentially alienating disadvantaged white communities Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
07-06-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
White British children are now minority in one in four schools
White British pupils are now the minority in one in four schools in England, official data reveal. Analysis of school census data, collected from more than 21,500 primaries and secondaries in January, shows that in a quarter of them, the majority of the cohort is recorded as ethnic minority or white non-British. In 72 schools, no white British pupils are recorded, and in 454, they make up less than 2 per cent of the student body. The demographic shift is apparent in many of the country's big cities such as London, Birmingham, Manchester, Bradford and Leicester. At Rockwood Academy, in Birmingham, for instance, none of the 1,084 students were recorded in the census as 'white British', while just 12 of the 2,779 pupils at Loxford School, in the London borough of Redbridge, were white British. The figures, released by the Department of Education this week, have been published as a report predicted that white British people will become a minority in the UK population within the next 40 years. The Buckingham University study projects a big rise in the proportion of the UK population comprising foreign-born and second-generation immigrants, from below 20 per cent to 33.5 per cent within the next 25 years. By the end of the century, six in 10 people in the UK will either not have been born in the UK, or will have at least one immigrant parent, and one in five will be Muslim, according to the report by Prof Matt Goodwin. The dramatic population change raises 'profound questions about the capacity of the UK state to both absorb and manage this scale of demographic change', he claimed. Concern about legal and illegal immigration levels, and their long-term impact, is fuelling a surge in support for Reform. In this week's Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election, in Scotland, Labour prised a win from the SNP but only Reform saw a significant swing in its favour, taking 26.1 per cent of the vote. The party's performance has led to predictions that Reform is on course to pick up more than 10 seats in next year's Scottish Parliament elections, and poses a real threat in the 2029 general election. The school census data demonstrates that the white British share of the young population is in decline in many areas. Children in state schools in a third of council areas are now mostly ethnic minority or white non-British, up from about a quarter a decade ago. In all 32 London boroughs, apart from Bromley, white British children are in a minority. In Bromley, they make up 50.3 per cent. In Newham, just 5 per cent of children were recorded in the school census as white British. The figure in Harrow was 7 per cent. Other local authority areas in England where the majority of children are not white British include Manchester, Nottingham, Coventry, Luton, Milton Keynes, Peterborough, Oldham and Blackburn and Darwen. The analysis of the school census figures excludes independent schools, schools where a high proportion of students had no ethnicity classification, and those where there were a very low number of pupils. Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, raised the 'scandal' last week of white working-class educational failure, saying that children had been 'betrayed' and 'left behind in society'. Government data shows that only 21 secondary schools in England where more than a fifth of pupils are white working class had any record of success with this group. Nick Harrison, the chief executive of the Sutton Trust social mobility charity, said white working class underachievement was 'a ticking time bomb for equality of opportunity in our country'. In an attempt to steal ground from Reform, Ms Phillipson announced a new independent inquiry into white working class educational outcomes, which will be led by Sir Hamid Patel, the chief executive of a leading academies trust, and Estelle Morris, a former Labour education secretary. While the issue has been widely researched in the past, it has resulted in little or no action to try and tackle the problem. A comprehensive inquiry undertaken by the Commons education committee in 2021 found a significant educational achievement gap between white working class children and their more advantaged peers, and between this group and their equally disadvantaged ethnic minority counterparts. According to the report, attainment gaps are fuelled by high concentrations of poverty, inadequate resources, low teacher quality, and a lack of aspiration and investment in disadvantaged areas. Use of the term 'white privilege' was also criticised for potentially alienating disadvantaged white communities
Telegraph
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Trans children more likely to be ‘white and privileged', says Katharine Birbalsingh
Transgender children are more likely to be 'white and privileged', Britain's so-called strictest head teacher has claimed. Katharine Birbalsingh, 52, also said that they are searching for 'victimhood narratives', which she claims are 'admired' in modern society. The former government social mobility tsar, who is head teacher at the Michaela Community School in north west London, suggested she was 'unlikely' to have any transgender pupils because of the school's heavy ethnic minority intake. 'I think if one actually did a survey on this sort of thing nationally, I think you would find that white privileged kids would be more likely to be doing that,' she told The Standard. 'No question. 'Our society is such that victimhood is admired. And if you feel that you're white and privileged, then you don't have much of a victimhood narrative to embrace. 'So then you need to find something to embrace to be respected by your peers.' Ms Birbalsingh said she did not expect to be welcoming a trans pupil soon because much of the Michaela intake is from the inner city. 'That plays a huge part,' she continued. 'I think they'd be less inclined.' She added that she would want to support any child identifying as trans at the school and 'make sure they weren't just participating in a fad'. The head teacher said her school discourages children from doing anything 'performative'. 'Of course there are obstacles – racism, transphobia, homophobia, misogyny, all that exists clearly,' she added. 'But how you react to that obstacle is up to you. We reject victimhood and embrace agency and personal responsibility.' 157 children under 10 await gender care New figures show 157 children awaiting gender care in England and Wales are aged 10 or under. The data, obtained following the Supreme Court's ruling on the definition of a woman last month, also show there were 6,225 children on the national waiting list at the end of March – up from 5,560 at the same point a year earlier. Although the court ruling does not directly affect pupils, as gender recognition certificates are only available to people aged 18 or over, experts have said it will have consequences for the school admission policies of single-sex schools. The Telegraph has previously revealed that the NHS is treating nursery school-age children who believe they are transgender after watering down its own guidance. Ms Birbalsingh, who is known for her strict, uncompromising rule, said her school's values 'encourage the kids to seek the truth'. She has already banned phones entirely at Michaela and encourages parents not to buy them for under-16s at all. In April last year, the High Court upheld her ban on Muslim prayers taking place during the learning day. A pupil claimed the policy was discriminatory and infringed her right to religious freedom. However, the court sided with Ms Birbalsingh who had argued the ban was vital to ensure 'children of all races and religions can thrive'.
