Trevor Phillips
@TrevorPTweets
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Chair, WebberPhillips, @GreenParkLtd & @indexCensorship; Senior Fellow @Policy_Exchange ; Columnist @thetimes ;Presenter, @SkyNews
Joined February 2019
Kaieteur, (Essequibo)Guyana.The longest single drop waterfall in the world. Where the rainbow starts, and where we saw out 2023 and welcomed 2024. Message to Maduro: no amount of oil in the world could create this magical place. Essequibo Ah We Own! . Happy New Year!
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So “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”, celebrating the Underground Railway, written AFTER the Civil War by a freed slave, made popular by the African American Fisk Jubilee Singers, sung at many black funerals and civil rights demonstrations, honoured by Congress, now to be banned.
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Thank you everyone for your condolences and your support for our family. Since Brandon Lewis and I spoke he has been in touch privately to express his sympathies; I am grateful. @RidgeOnSunday.
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2/2 It was a favourite of Paul Robeson, of Louis Armstrong and of Martin Luther King. The last attempt to ban the song was in 1939, in Germany. So black people’s own culture is also now to be cancelled. Please everyone, take a breath before you eliminate black lives from history.
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A small moment I felt proud to be part of. This interview with @KwasiKwarteng was followed by one with @DavidLammy . Perhaps the first time a flagship political programme was led by three black men NOT discussing what they look like but the economy, Ukraine and domestic politics.
.@KwasiKwarteng tells @TrevorPTweets the PM was right to clarify his position regarding his Jimmy Savile comments directed at Labour leader, and says the language was "perfectly reasonable" in context. #Phillips: 📺 Sky 501, Freeview 233 and YouTube
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It would be bad manners to comment on decisions of my estimable successors at the @EHRC David Isaac and Kishwer Falkner, both appointed in much the same way as I was.But I served a three full terms at CRE/EHRC under both Labour administrations and Tory/Lib Dem coalition…. 1/5.
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……I laughed out loud and couldn’t stop. I do hope the current EHRC is not asked to pay a price for my over-developed sense of the absurd…. 5/5.
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Astonishing. I was publicly assured by senior dons at Oxford on Tuesday evening that the disgraceful Selina Todd incident was merely a one-off. If Oxford cannot live up to its claims then it should remove these platitudes from its website @IndexCensorship.
Badly judged & rude of some students last night at Oxford to decide to “no platform” me 30 mins before an event I had been invited to for #IWD2020 to encourage young women into politics. They should stop hiding and start engaging. #FreeSpeech.
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To be fair, I do have beef with the UN human rights conference circus, which declared me persona non grata when I led the EHRC….partly because when I was asked to endorse the appointment of Saudi Arabia to the chair of a UN body sitting in judgement on the rights of women….4/5.
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……Uganda, where homosexual acts get you life in prison; or demanding that a Pakistani heritage Muslim woman be judged by a body whose advisory group proudly features representatives from Saudi Arabia, China and Russia given their records on women’s and LGBTQ+ rights….3/5.
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…so being the only other person to go through the proposed UN process may I respectfully suggest to @EHRC critics that they consider the irony of arraigning Falkner before a body whose expert committee recently appointed as its rapporteur a longtime representative from….2/5.
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“In Britain we have deep enough social divisions of our own without having to shoehorn America’s cultural conflicts into our daily lives”. Race matters. But in our country the subtle walls of class and culture count for more. @thetimes.
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Why the “royal race row” is more than celebrity tittle tattle. A tragedy. So much good might have been done by the Duke and Duchess. But their partisans have cornered them into becoming standard bearers for damaging, divisive and opportunistic narratives
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Culture wars do matter, whether we like it or not. For critical race theory to succeed people of colour must fail. For trans activists to get their way, women must be erased. What being woke really means for race equality and for feminism in @thetimes today.
The march of wokeism is an all-pervasive new oppression | Comment | The Times
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Wow. Proud of my Guyanese heritage today.
There are few things I enjoy quite as much as watching indoctrinated Western virtue signallers get epically destroyed by people from developing countries who are willing to be honest.
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I’ve been absent from this for some weeks, and probably won’t return for a while, but for those who asked about the issue of Covid-19 and ethnicity, the project is being led by the brilliant Professor Kevin Fenton of Public Health England. My team is number crunching.
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The march of wokeism is an all-pervasive new oppression | Comment | The Times
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If I hadn’t written today’s @thetimes essay on the meaning of wokeism I would have said this is a joke. It isn’t. It’s a nightmare. Who’s next?.
Excuse my language but @Ubisoft can go fuck itself. Solidarity with @helenlewis who is one of the finest writers around. What contemptible cowardice by @Ubisoft_UK
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@KateMaltby Kate, I wouldn’t normally comment, but having spent the last 48 hours looking the Duchesses’ family this seems like the most inventive royal two fingers to a) the police and b) others too far away to mention I have ever seen. And the cause merits it. Good for her.
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@MForstater Maya, totally in your corner. My metaphor won’t survive legal scrutiny I know. But the point is that self-ID bullies will destroy all that has been achieved on equality during the past 50 years - for example, making accurate pay gap reporting - gender or ethnicity - impossible.
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Still probably The Greatest Living Athlete. (True fans will remember the T-shirt). My day is made perfect.
@TrevorPTweets So much of what you write/say makes sense in today’s world I just wish you had a bigger platform.
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My hope for 2021: a brighter dawn. Daybreak over the ponds, North London
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Authoritative take from boss of the biggest science museum group in the world - an inventive and intelligent approach; great contribution to History Matters Project @Policy_Exchange “It’s not the job of museums to censor history”
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I was only today made aware of this (thank you, John Ware). The presenter of the supposedly satirical Islamophobe of the Year award says "Nobody from Charlie Hebdo could make it" just weeks after 12 were killed in the attack on the magazine. I feel sick.
@shmarxism @SayeedaWarsi @Conservatives Dear .@SayeedaWarsi what do you think of the IHRC giving the islamaphobe of the year award to #charlihebdo months after 12 staff at #charliehebdo were massacred by Islamic jihadists for printing the Mohammed cartoon.
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Incredibly sad to hear this from the alma mater of Paul Robeson, one of the most eloquent, elegant English speaking voices of the 20th Century. People shout about exalting the African American tradition and then reveal that they can’t even be bothered to find out what it is.
'Proper English is racist.'. What is our world coming to?. I have a school full of black and brown kids who are taught proper English and doing well at it thanks very much. To deny children the opportunity to write and speak well is a SCANDAL! How dare you all behave like this😡.
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A small suggestion for NINE NIGHT. In Caribbean communities we mark the start of a soul’s long journey on the ninth night after death. In the case of the late Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II this will be Friday September 16.
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The really annoying thing about @MatthewSyed is the fact that his column now appears the day before mine and usually says what I want to say - only better. I’m demanding a move to Friday. Toppling statues won’t transform inner cities.
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I am now reassessing every ambition I’ve ever had. Whatever they’ve been taking I’ll have a double dose of that, please.
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For the record : it’s possible for people of colour to disagree without racist name-calling. When two musical greats, Miles Davis and Wynton Marsalis fell out things got fruity - but they each argued their case eloquently without trashing the other’s reputation. Me in @thetimes.
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Wise words from someone who has actually stepped outside the twittersphere and fought bigotry live.
The left needs to have an open and frank discussion about ‘no platform’ and free speech. The concept is increasingly being (mis)used to silence opinion we don’t like and seem unwilling to debate. In the internet age we need to win the political arguments.
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Thoughtful, grounded, pragmatic, an immigrant viewpoint from @nadhimzahawi . Rightly condemns ethnic violence but he cuts right to the heart of what matters. How the British dream of integration can survive.
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@campbellclaret Especially when the story is “Potential grandfather and aunt have the same conversation that every potential aunt and grandfather in the world have when a baby is on the way, except that when black people are involved it becomes toxic because we aren’t really normal people”.
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@colinrtalbot @jpshaddock Her Majesty’s Passport Office to Georgetown, Guyana. One way to put a stop any Windrush-style *misunderstandings*.
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@colinrtalbot @RidgeOnSunday Thank you Colin. I had promised myself never to speak about this on the programme again (after the Hancock business) but I hope it’s obvious why I felt I had to.
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A moment @thetimes today. Comment cover is by rising star @tomowolade - poss only the 2nd black person ever to lead section. Rare for 2 of us to share pp - & neither on race! For me, a “veteran” black hack,v moving.Respect to @rolandwatson66 for seeing us as writers not symbols.
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Anyone calling you out on anti-semitism "wrong and offensive", "not a racist bone" blah blah blah . This is what JC said nine months ago. .Somebody obviously didn't get the memo. And obvo, @campbellclaret much more offensive than Willsman in CorbynWorld!.
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There are many ways of being a person of colour. We don’t all think the same. A reminder. And before anyone says “straw man” I’ll just politely remind you that I remain suspended from the party I supported for three decades and more for wrongthink.
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@AlStewartOBE @jocelinesharman Good luck tonight Al. Break a leg. I’ll be watching and cheering you on! TP.
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@suzanne_moore @johnmcternan They don’t need to. It’s evidently no longer a journalistic enterprise, with writers taking dictation from the ultra left. Many of us feel relieved when people we respect leave - we can complain without feeling we’re undermining the few honest journos they keep as fig leaves.
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I’m 40 days in after my first shot and still here.
Happily took my Astra Zeneca yesterday - no clotting so far and statistically more likely to happen to someone who hasn’t had the vaccine!.
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On this occasion, I would like to suggest to all who share in our traditions, and those who feel that it is appropriate, that you light a candle any time after 6 pm on Friday evening, and leave it burning until at least midnight, as is our custom. I will be doing so.
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@AlStewartOBE @nusuk Thank you both. I think it’s time that serious people of all ethnic and faith backgrounds, genders and both sexes stepped back into this difficult territory of identity politics. We’ll never find good answers through the current exchange of playground insults.
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Nobody can match Chuck Berry, but this comes as close as I’ve ever seen : How to kick off a new decade(and I’m not even a Springsteen fan, but dammit, the guy’s knocking on 65 at this concert). Joyous. (Thank you @FT ).
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Farewell to one of the good guys in politics. Me in @thetimes today. Sir David Amess: Scorn not the simplicity of a man who served.
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You don’t have to be partisan for this to lift your spirits about the kind of country we are.
Say what you like about Britain and it’s politics . but there ain’t many western democracies where you’d get a former Prime Minister leaving a lovely little message on your ring doorbell. 💁♀️🇬🇧
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It won’t be the first place woke people look for thoughtful and constructive debate on racism in the UK but respect to @TheSun for this brilliant initiative. Rather than calling people names on here, a serious attempt to talk to everyday Britain.
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@sowetokinch Respect to you. You are one of the people who carry black history in this country most proudly and if that were true you would be right to say ignore it. But this is a proposal being considered by the game’s official governing body,the Rugby Football Uniin.
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How to enrage @thetimes readers. Say “Britain is getting old. We need immigrants”. A warning : Japan - population down from 128.1 million in 2010 to 122.8 million now. From 2nd largest economy to 4th - overtaken by China and Germany. Soon, by India too.
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And driving into the old BBC TV CENTR, to discuss presenting one of their peak time shows, the security guard at the barrier asked me to wind down my window and said “who did you say you’ve come to pick up?”.
I was once asked if I was the taxi driver when I turned up to give a lecture 😳.
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Whoever you are, protect yourself, look after your families, take the jab.
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I can hardly believe that I’m writing this. And I don’t imagine she’ll be thrilled to hear it. But whilst I don’t buy the class analysis sloganising *deep breath* she has a point.
Identity politics without class analysis is just angling to comfortably be a part of the middle class while preserving cultural distinctiveness. It's all a bit "why do people assume *I'm* a cleaner", rather than asking why all the cleaners look like you.
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Gulp, just saw this and would like to respond “it takes one to know one” but I think I’ve got a little ways to go to get into the Burchill class. still, thank you, you absolutely made my day.
What a great writer @TrevorPTweets Trevor Phillips is!.
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A century ago Britain faced up to a second wave and administered a quarter of the globe with 40k civil servants and paper files. Today with computers and 400k people (plus an army of consultants)it’s a struggle to get masks to Manchester. Can we do better?
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If we are going to take race and racism seriously, a TV show, however compelling and poignant,can only be the starting point. Truth needs good data, analysis, and insight, Change needs concrete remedies that cost money and time. Here’s one reason we are still getting it wrong.1/2.
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From @thetimes a fuller explanation of my tweets early this morning re @EnglandRugby and #SwingLowSweetChariot
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They’re calling me a *veteran* now. Is this @bbcquestiontime speak for *oldest-on-the-panel*? Love it, license to start complaining about grime music. Oh wait, I did that already. #grumpyoldman. BBC News - Trevor Phillips: 'Insane reasons' for stabbings
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Important analysis by Munira Mirza. Tragedy is that the academic bubble seems so opaque that no one inside higher education seems to be aware that they are writing their own death warrant. Wake up. The Morlocks are coming.
A must read piece by Munira Mirza on the Noah Carl case and "intolerant zealots who are strangling intellectual freedom" #HigherEd . @StEdmundsCam
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This is why Westminster lives in fear of @SamCoatesSky Coates. You can run but you just can’t hide from @SkyNews ace investigator.
Sophy Ridge @SophyRidgeSky receives a gift from her successor Trevor Phillips @TrevorPTweets as she hands over the Sunday show baton. And I throw a lovely, touching moment into chaos
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Witty but important take by Dr Tony Sewell explaining why we need science rather than politics if we really want to #saveblacklives . This 👏👏👏.
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Proud to once again help on major health issues facing people of colour as we did in for @ProstateUK in identifying black men at risk - twice the average, and helping to create a national screening programme for #SickleCell . We will beat this thing. #saveblacklives.
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@JamesWigg_KT @NHSuk Jabbed! Thank you Dr Caz. And to your Filipino colleague who said to her colleague *Check this one, I can’t believe he’s old enough*😘😘😘. That spoonful of sugar thing really works.
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Anybody on here happen to be running for *leadership* of anything? Take a look at what that word looks like. It seems that it is possible to treat the party with respect without pandering to its extremists. #LabourLeadership.
Wouldn’t consider myself whatever it is people mean when they use the word ‘Blairite’ these days, but please for the love of God take a look at this response to a person telling him the Labour government hadn’t done enough in power
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@Cambridge_Uni Except that maybe it first needs to stop its fellows calling people - ok, me - *racists* for saying that universities have to live with the fact that some academics write stuff that other academics don’t like. Yes, that is a senior official of @Cambridge_Uni I’m talking about.
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Simon Stevens, head of @NHS has just said (he’s obviously angry) that some minority groups have been”disgracefully targeted with nonsense about vaccination”. The NHS will be proactive in tackling this in the next 4/5 weeks. Hallelujah. And good for him, for telling it like it is.
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"Nelson’s legacy isn’t the issue, the culture war is" - Index on Censorship Index on Censorship
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Totally joyful. And they can play.👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾.
“Sir Duke” performed by 12-year-old Temitayo Kayode and 11-year-old Demilade Adepegba in Nigeria.
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Just love the tweet. Ignore the comments. Some things should just make us happy for what they are.
These two toddlers' heartwarming reaction to spotting each other on the street will make your Monday.
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On the decline of religious adherence (not quite the same as belief). I didn’t expect so many comments to confirm the premise “I’m totally right so you must be totally wrong” so completely. Godless liberals don’t have all the answers | Comment | The Times
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@ProfTimBale @BBCr4today Right to note that class is a problem of politics - media and academia too. But we don’t have to throw a shade on this moment - let’s learn from it. It’s not an accident - it is the outcome of a conscious and intentional plan by the Tories, plus a huge change in public sentiment.
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@GoodwinMJ As the probable descendant of Gladstone slaves - maybe I should be out pulling on the ropes. But it may do more for #BlackLivesMatter to spend time today putting some more black people in top jobs. Odd to hear * Rhodes tmust fall*coming from. a Rhodes scholar @BBCr4today And. .
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Possibly the nicest and wrongest thing anyone’s ever said about me. Thank you @BoozeAndFagz - but there are men, gods and above them there is Poitier and there is Belafonte. I know my place.
We see him in today’s black gentleman scholars; Thomas Sowell, Calvin Robinson, Trevor Phillips, Tomiwa Owolade.
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A grownup perspective on #Sewell from someone at whom nobody can find a good reason to hurl a racist insult, though I imagine fanatics in here will try. The pro-Meghan camp overlooks how far we have come | Times2 | The Times @CliveDavisUK
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I can’t rival my friend @CliveDavisUK record of tranquility on the Thames but dawn over Hampstead Heath is right up there in moments to cherish.
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Trevor Phillips on his Person of the Year 2021 - the Queen, the paragon of quiet dignity.
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@spectator @afneil Thank you all. After this I won’t be commenting further on our interview. However, it is remarkable that in the 36 hours since it went live, critics have focused on 90 seconds of a 16 minutes segment. Some points on those 90 seconds. 1/7.
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Brilliant from @MatthewdAncona @tortoise . “The worst kind of liberalism is the lazy variety that seeks the line of least resistance………however hard we try, it is not always possible, or right, to split the difference.”
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Sophy on fire. Perfectly reasonable question, and tbh a bit disrespectful to the audience for a Cabinet minister not to have any kind of answer.
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A super, grown-up piece about race by @tomowolade brilliantly setting the scene for a rush of #windrush75 events When it comes to race we’ve got to stop talking like America.
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A whole new kind of twitter debate. Some reply without thinking. Now without even looking at the pictures. Wow.
@LambethHomAssoc @timmckane @Robert08117233 @CNN @nytimes @guardian “I don’t know if you have black children”. Err. checked out the photo? 😂😂😂😂.
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Cracking quote.
Quote of the week: “I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.” Abraham Lincoln. H/t The Ruffian @mrianleslie.
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@Miss_Snuffy You’re right K.Bizarrely when at the @ehrc no university would take our money to study this - apparently it would “stigmatise” other minorities. Are there any social scientists out there with enough curiosity to ask how this might help to shrink our long tail of academic failure?.
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Can we be rational about race? A scientific understanding could help us to improve life chances for all children. We need our boffins to be less worried about what people say and be more curious about why some people of colour win when the racial odds are stacked against them.
Poor Chinese and Indian children set a puzzle for educators by succeeding where better-off children fail. But the stereotype of “tiger moms” forcing their children into perpetual academic boot camps is often far from the truth, @TrevorPTweets writes.
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On my old pal Al Stewart. Plus advice to managers faced with a race/gender issue. Unlike @ITN @itvnews stop, breathe, & get professional advice before you make things ten times worse. Obvo @GreenParkLtd is top team but key is not to behave like amateurs!
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Why we need a calm space to debate big issues without fear of intimidation. Wise from @IndexCensorship CEO @RuthSmeeth. Differences of perspective won’t be solved by silencing those with whom we disagree. We all need to play the ball not the person.
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@AlStewartOBE Thank you Alastair. Kind of hoping that we won’t be head to head at weekends as I’m looking forward to watching you in action again!.
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How to have an argument on Twitter with an imaginary foe. Social media at its finest and maddest.
@MarkHumphries10 @thetimes *He didn’t use those words but that is what he said”. No. What I “said” is what I wrote. Not what you’d like me to have said.
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@simon_schama @CharlesMBlow Perhaps people need to start looking at who people of colour actually are and hearing what - in our diversity - we actually think rather than assuming they know who we are and telling us what we believe.
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@RobWhiteman @DAaronovitch @JennieGenSec @Keir_Starmer @lisanandy Name calling and character assassination are no answers to the question “why can’t we all get along?” Thank you to all who have been generous. To others: I may disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it. (Tho I’d prefer not to face that test).
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North London. Is this what Homer meant by “rosy-fingered dawn”?
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Absolutely stonking by @DAaronovitch re cancelling by @Tate. What on earth were they thinking? The late Philip Guston might reasonably ask #isitbecauseIiswhite? The answer to a demand for racial equality cannot be censorship or worse, #artisticapartheid .
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Everybody agrees that racism exists and needs to be tackled. But it’s not the only cause of COVID disparities. From epidemiologist Dr Raghib Ali : Don’t bury science under ethnic politics. Focus on risk not race. This insight will #saveblacklives.
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North London. Rosy fingered Dawn is back. But who knew she had a flame-haired brother? Sunset over Kentish Town.
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