Skip to content

Racist slurs are never banter

Here's to staying hopeful

Lucy Caldicott
Lucy Caldicott
— 2 min read

By the time you read this, the almost total eclipse of the moon will have passed its peak. Where I am, it's cloudy anyway and the sun will be coming up soon but I know it's happening. The world is turning. It's another day and almost another year.

I urge all white people to watch Azeem Rafiq's testimony from the DCMS committee this week. Watch it and sit with it all for a bit. Put yourself in his shoes. It’s devastating to watch and a lesson in the difference between banter and racist slurs. The P word is as unacceptable now as it ever was. It's not meant affectionately. It's not reclaimed. And, white people, it's not for you to decide anyway.

And do read Shaista Aziz's article and this one by David Matthews.

Interesting and useful links 🖇️

A useful twitter thread about prayer rooms and inclusion in the workplace.

This new animation from Bond’s Disability and Development Group dares us to do things differently when it comes to telling stories about disability.

I love Wanda Traczyk-Stawska, still fighting the far right in Poland at 94-year-old.

Learning points 🎓

I'm often to be found wide awake and anxious at 4am. Thanks to Emma Mitchell, I learned the other day that our levels of dopamine (feel-good) are lower and cortisol (feel-yikes) are higher between 3-6am. I'm still awake but at least I understand better why. Here's Emma's thread about it.

Day of the Week 📆

Appropriately enough it's Islamophobia awareness month

What am I watching? 👀

This effective little clip, All the Little Things, depicts what racist micro aggressions are and their impact on people.

What am I listening to? 👂

KOKOKO!

Five men, four black, one white dressed in yellow boiler suits stand in front of a grey wall
Kokoko!: ‘songs about identity and struggle’

KOKOKO! is a Congolese band I've just discovered. Discover them too 😀

Joy-giving things 😍

It's been a heavy week. It's also self care week so I've made sure I got myself out of the house and into the light as much as I could.

a bandstand surrounded by trees, autumn leaves are on the ground and some in the trees, the sky is blue
Myatt's Fields bandstand by me

Have a lovely weekend

Lucy

PS Here's to staying hopeful.

If it’s your first time reading this newsletter, find out more here.

If you enjoy this newsletter and get something from reading it, could you do me a favour and tell your friends 📣

If you like ChangeOut, you can buy me a coffee! ☕️

All past issues of the newsletter are here and available to all subscribers.

Subscribe to get them hand-delivered by me to you every week.


blog
Lucy Caldicott

Lucy Caldicott

Related Posts

Members Public

"If I was getting it for nothing, I wouldn't mind"

I watched the harrowing Netflix documentary about the Grenfell tragedy this week, Grenfell Uncovered. It is exceptionally difficult to watch, as it splices heart-wrenching memories and testimony from survivors and firefighters with the piecing together of the many elements of negligence and incompetence that came together to create the circumstances

Members Public

Team culture in a hybrid world

Some reflections on how hybrid working makes work better for everyone. In my mind, we talk about hybrid working as if it's something new but, to me, the word might be new but the activity isn't. I've always worked in teams that are all

Members Public

Vision-free leadership

Sometimes it feels hopeless to write this newsletter. I started it just before the pandemic as my way of making sense of what I see around me. Lots of things that I simply can't make sense of have happened since then, including within the last 24 hours. I

Mastodon