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In her book, Killing Rage: Ending Racism, the late bell hooks communicates the weight of what feels like an axiomatic truth: All black people in the United States, irrespective of their class status or politics, live with the possibility that they will be terrorized by whiteness. As we bear witness to the authoritarian violence imposed upon Ukraine by Vladimir Putins deployment of Russias military might, and to his perverse fantasy of a New Russia, we must never forget that anti-Black racism in the U.S. is inextricably linked to the perverse fantasies of white supremacism and operates according to vicious, racist violence. This is one reason why, for me, all the oppressed people of the world the colonized, the violated and the marginalized must be heard, and their pain made legible on its own terms. At the end of the day, however, I know that, as Black, I am deemed by many to be the most racially abject monstrosity that there is. I continue, though, to be shocked by the global degree to which Black people experience anti-Black racism.

Adele N. Norris is senior lecturer in sociology and social policy in the faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand, and coeditor of Neo-Colonial Injustice and the Mass Imprisonment of Indigenous Women. In my engaging discussion with Norris, which follows, she illuminates the harsh reality of the similarities of the U.S.s anti-Black racism and that of New Zealand, which was also colonized by the British.

Whiteness as a normative structure pervades New Zealand. Indeed, the Indigenous Maori are disproportionately imprisoned, and Black bodies experience forms of anti-Black racist stereotyping that are found within the U.S. and places like Finland and Sweden. As a scholar who engages Black feminist methodologies to explore state-sanctioned violence against Black, Brown and Indigenous people, Norris explicates these contemporary dehumanizing forces with clarity and autobiographical insight.

George Yancy: In my own work, I have argued that the Black body is deemed the site of the racially deviant, the racially monstrous, the racially abhorrent and the racially abject. In the U.S., Black bodies are disproportionately stopped and placed under surveillance, incarcerated and rendered criminal as a self-evident truth. This vicious and racist treatment of Black people is not confined to the U.S. The Western world, out of which the concept of race developed, has historically operated under myths about Black bodies and the trope of blackness as evil, sinister and ugly. Whiteness, of course, was valorized as the apex of civilization, the most intelligent and the most aesthetically beautiful. It is this last issue that I wish to discuss with you. Here in the U.S., there have been laws passed against hair discrimination vis--vis Black people. This cuts at the heart of Black aesthetic integrity, agency and humanity. As you may know, Afro-Finns have started an annual celebration in the form of a Good Hair Day to deal with complex aspects of the racialization of hair. The denigration of Black hair has also been experienced by Black people in Sweden, especially mixed-race people who have suffered from being stared at and rendered exotic and strange because of their hair. Youve written about the issue of Black hair and anti-Black racism. Are you surprised that such a form of racism continues to exist in the 21st century? And what are your thoughts on the psychological toll that this sort of anti-Black racism has on Black people?

Adele Norris: I remember with the election of President Barack Obama how eager people were to mark his presidency as the beginning of a post-racial era. For me, that moment is marked by the many ways his Black wife, former first lady Michelle Obama, was vilified at a national level from her body, hair texture, to her facial expressions. A wider-white-elite society, in expressions of outrage, compared Mrs. Obama to men and monkeys. The same with Venus and Serena Williamss appearance undergoing pervasive scrutiny over their 20-year careers. What this shows is that Black women rising to the heights of global success are not exempt from the white dehumanizing gaze. The corresponding psychological burden is felt and carried within us all when we see Black womens appearance picked apart and disparaged. The night of Donald Trumps presidential election, a New Zealand colleague asked me if I thought Michelle Obama would run for president. I could tell the question was meant to virtue signal, which was confirmed after my response: Seeing her [Mrs. Obama] compared with monkeys every day, I hope not. My colleague was visibly baffled and walked away. People are so desensitized to and comfortable with a certain amount of anti-Blackness that it hardly registers in the minds of non-Black people, including people of color.

In places where Black bodies are recent and few, there is a paucity of a language for anti-Blackness and Black racial discrimination. The language is not well-developed in academic, political and social discourses. Anti-Blackness, in these contexts, is understood primarily through the ways it is expressed in the United States, especially in its most extreme forms. Last year, a 12-year-old Black girl (Zimbabwean and Samoan) from Rotorua, New Zealand, made headlines for being called the N-word and teased for her hair texture by her classmates. I remember reading that she asked her principal to address her school about the harms associated with the N-word. She said the kids are learning it from somewhere and have been using it since she began school at the age of 6. Children who have never lived in the United States possessed an understanding of Black subordination. What I found most interesting about this case was the applause the young girl received for starting an anti-Black bullying and racism initiative at her school. Shes only 12. Why are her adolescent years spent engaging in work that schools and parents should do? These cases are everywhere (e.g., Britain, Canada, South Africa, Sweden, the U.S.).

The psychological and emotional toll related to hair discrimination is massive for Black youth, [but] gets rarely classified as anti-Black racism. Black peoples experiences of state-sanctioned violence are so severe that cases of hair discrimination are peripheral to extreme cases of police brutality against Black bodies, but they are [also] violent and disturbing. It is important to see that hair discrimination and police brutality are products of the same system.

I would argue that the stigmatizing of Black hair is one mode of visual anti-Blackness. It has to do with the anti-Black dimensions of the white imaginary and the white gaze. White people have created a world within which what they see and what they imagine are what they deem to be the only legitimate ways to see and to imagine. As a result, Black people and I would include people of color, as Frantz Fanon would say suffer in their bodies, because their bodies are bombarded with racist fictions and racist stereotypes. Talk about anti-Blackness and how it operates within New Zealand (or Aotearoa, its Maori name). Do Black people find themselves facing and resisting the toxic reality of being reduced to their epidermis, where they suffer under forms of anti-Black surveillance?

Experiences of anti-Blackness are often muted or subsumed by a fascination with Black culture and aesthetics. I think Black people can be deceived by non-Black peoples fascination with Black entertainers and athletes and fail to understand that Black culture can be consumed by holders of anti-Black beliefs. The two are not mutually exclusive. One of the first things I noticed teaching Introduction to Sociology in New Zealand was how students responses and understandings of racial stereotypes and social inequalities mirrored [those of] U.S. students. While there is a deeper understanding of the effects of colonization, which is the result of a powerful Indigenous presence, notions of Black and Indigenous people as criminal, deviant and lazy are embedded beliefs Black people engage with daily.

Also, people may be familiar with Brown bodies, but they have rarely lived next door to a Black person or worked with one. There is an expectation for Black people to make the people around them feel comfortable, which typically involves the Black person assuming a posture of subordination. Many U.S. scholars have written extensively about this. In many ways, I think my research agenda, which heavily engages with anti-Black racism and racial inequalities, protects me. People know exactly who I am when I show up because I am not just a Black body. For example, I was approached by a white colleague to collaborate on a project for which he wanted to critique U.S. Black womens scholarship in relation to Marxism. I asked him to name five Black women authors. He stared blankly, and I walked off. While he took pride in his love for Bob Marley, he had never cited a Black woman in his 20+ years in the academy.

However, I am not surprised when I meet other Black people who are accustomed to racialized surveillance and consider racism an American invention. Some Black people from the African diaspora have spoken and written about daily experiences of racial profiling in New Zealand. With so few Black people, they are not likely supported or validated. I do think being from the U.S. links me to a tradition of resistance and a knowledge of whiteness where it does not take me long to identify covert forms of anti-Blackness and respond accordingly.

The point about your white colleague is so powerful. He wanted to critique the work of Black women without being able to cite a single Black woman author. This says to me that he doesnt really give a damn about what Black women actually think. You know, I can imagine Black people and people of color from the U.S. visiting New Zealand and thinking that they will finally experience a reprieve from the daily insults of racist microaggressions. Given the global dimensions of anti-Black racism, however, I would not be surprised how deeply anti-Black racism runs in New Zealand. Could you say more about how you have dealt with anti-Black racism in New Zealand?

Being from Mississippi, I am often asked how it feels to have left. Mississippi is one of those places recognized and rarely contested for its brutal history of white hostility toward Black people. People feign a look of shock when I respond that the world is like Mississippi. Mississippi just owns what it is. It is like in 2018 when Cindy Hyde-Smith, the Republican senator from Mississippi, said, If he [a cattle rancher] invited me to a public hanging, Id be on the front row. Hyde-Smith was still elected for saying exactly how she felt. Two years later, the world held a front-row viewing of George Floyds public lynching. For those white people seeing a large Black man rendered powerless, and his life slowly and brutally taken from him as others watched, is reminiscent of the Jim Crow era, post-slavery, where the lynching of Black people by ordinary white citizens in collaboration with law enforcement was a sanctioned practice. Floyds public lynching represented for many people that all was right in the world and order had been restored. I work with and engage with many people like Cindy Hyde-Smith on a daily basis.

During Trumps presidential campaign, extreme-right groups around the world mobilized and expanded exponentially. Growing visibility of white supremacist groups the True Blue Crew and United Patriots Front in Australia, and the New Zealand National Front and Right Wing Resistance in New Zealand hardly received media and academic attention. Yet, statements such as We are not as bad as the U.S. are commonplace. If the U.S. is your point of reference, you are doing pretty bad. Like the U.S., there is unwillingness to name and confront white supremacy here. Even after the Christchurch massacre in 2019, when Brenton Harrison Tarrant, a white supremacist, murdered 51 people at two mosques, New Zealanders were quick to point out that the gunman was Australian. A massacre of this scale should have signaled white supremacy as a national threat. Racism is seen as something that happens elsewhere.

Evasive tactics deployed to explain away systemic racism are most evident in the reluctance to use the terms race/racism. For example, racial segregation as a result of housing discriminatory practices becomes cultural bubbles or ethnic clustering, and racism becomes unconscious bias. Racism is viewed as something people would not do knowingly. When I informed my colleagues of my first experience of many instances of racial profiling, they responded that people are just curious. Yet, two months later when I disagreed or could not undertake a task a colleague asked of me, I was called an uppity Negro, twice. Of course, I was not outraged or surprised. Navigating white hostility and other forms of anti-Blackness (anti-African Americanness) has been a transnational burden. As a daughter of Jim Crow survivors, white hostility was always discussed in my home so that when we saw it, we could identify it and not internalize it.

The structure of whiteness is to obfuscate its reality. Your insights suggest global instances of white mystification. When I think about the European imperialist violence brought to bear upon the Indigenous Maori in New Zealand, I think about the suffering, misery and death of Indigenous peoples in both North America and Australia. Collectively, I think about the themes of land dispossession, cultural ruptures in language, religious rituals and broader questions of cultural identity. European imperialism is about domination, usurpation and dehumanization. Death and dying are inextricably tied to European arrogance, xenophobia, exoticization and hatred of those deemed less than human. Could you talk about how the Indigenous Maori continue to face contemporary forms of discrimination, inequality and oppression?

Coming from the U.S. with an understanding of the racist laws and policies such as Black codes, Pig Laws and Jim Crow that eroded the progress Black people made during Reconstruction I saw the effects of Indigenous land dispossession, but I also saw features of Jim Crow, though it was not codified like in the U.S. Many Indigenous people were urbanized and relocated to urban hubs like many Black people, but on a much smaller scale. While segregation was not codified in New Zealand in the same way as in the U.S. via Native reservations and redlining, Mori were encouraged to migrate from rural areas where they owned land and were targeted for social housing to meet the demand of cheap labor and to further facilitate land dispossession. Like the U.S., social housing means lack of home ownership that disrupts the creation of generational wealth.

Urbanized hubs of predominantly Indigenous and Polynesian people were singled out as in need of targeted policing and social control. When I first arrived in 2015, I looked up the imprisonment rate. I thought it was a typo. While New Zealand is a small country of 5 million people, the imprisonment rate per capita for Mori is higher than the imprisonment of Native Americans. Mori women represent roughly 16 percent of the total population of women, yet Mori women represent 65 percent of women imprisoned (over four times their representation). Mori rate of imprisonment follows the trend of Indigenous people in Australia, Canada and the U.S., which is often framed through a lens of deviancy with little attention toward state-sanctioned and colonial violence. My collaboration with Indigenous colleagues strives to fill this gap in New Zealand criminal justice scholarship.

Speaking about the issue of criminal justice, what impact did the killing of George Floyd by a white police officer in the U.S. have on bringing light to bear upon the disproportionate effect of policing of Maori people? I ask because I am aware of how the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in the U.S. galvanized protests in Australia that brought attention to the large number of deaths of Indigenous/Aboriginal peoples there while in police custody. While there are differences, there are so many shared patterns of carceral violence experienced by Indigenous peoples who are subjected to racialized and colonial oppression. This speaks to overwhelming proof that there are fundamental links between processes of otherization, race, white supremacist state power and criminalization.

Issues raised by BLM protests resonated with many Indigenous, Black and Brown New Zealanders. Many Indigenous people have firsthand experiences of racialized policing, surveillance and imprisonment, and understand the implications via lived experiences. BLM became a rallying cry reinvigorating attention toward Mori mass imprisonment. However, in places like West Papua, where Black Indigenous people are experiencing genocide under Indonesias rule, BLM was easily incorporated alongside the Free West Papua movement, which has a large New Zealand base.

While I was thrilled to see how quickly BLM traveled and spoke to specific issues in this context, I did not recognize parts of it. What happens to Black social movements when they migrate, and Blackness is not centered or understood? If we are not careful, it is like consuming Black culture. BLM was adopted in ways that did not shine light on the Black experience. Expressions of anti-Blackness in the U.S. were acknowledged, but how anti-Blackness is experienced in New Zealand was not. Black children being called the N-word by white people and [non-Black] people of color is a huge problem in a place like New Zealand, but it rarely gets attention. I only use this example to show the interesting power dynamics that influence how Blackness is articulated, if at all, when movements like BLM travel outside of the U.S.

Many people who champion BLM also regard experiences of all marginalized people as being on par, when they are not. I explain to my class that Black and Indigenous bodies are read as deviant and violent by white society and by other people of color. I remember a couple of faculty members discussing a large, irate student roaming the halls. The student was described in such a way that the two people knew who the student was except for me. I was envisioning someone at least six-feet tall around 250 pounds. Finally, someone said to me that they saw me speaking with the student. The exact words were, He accosted you in the hallway. I think I would have remembered being accosted. The student they spoke of was a young, thin Black male nowhere close to six-feet tall. I found him quite timid. He always smiled when he saw me, because I always acknowledged him and inquired about his studies. Yet, it was amazing how two white faculty members held the same image of a giant.

The implications of the perceptions of Black bodies go unexamined in New Zealand. Yet, it is a truth of Black life for which BLM shines a spotlight. In some cases, BLM became a tool people used to leverage visibility and space without a particular focus on various forms of institutional racism. Under such conditions, anti-Blackness remained at the periphery if at all acknowledged.

Could you provide a sense of how you envision ways in which Black communities, though small in New Zealand, must resist anti-Black surveillance? Also, how are Indigenous communities fighting against various modes of discrimination?

Aretina Hamilton advanced a concept called white unseen in 2020 to explicate how deeply embedded the erasure of Blackness is as it relates to Black pain, Black anxiety and Black despair. The sanctioning of this erasure is evidenced by the fact that it is so deeply normalized that it takes severe disruptions, like in the case of George Floyd, for Black rage to gain validity.

White unseen, as Hamilton describes, is an intentional thought pattern and epistemological process where the everyday actions, terrors, ruptures, and tensions faced by Black and Indigenous people are rendered invisible. As Black people, it is important for us not to fall into this thought pattern as well, such that we do not register something like hair discrimination as a form of anti-Blackness or consider it too minor of an issue to warrant action. The insidious nature of white supremacy renders something like hair discrimination as race neutral compared to police violence that led to the premature deaths of Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain, Mike Brown, Atatiana Jefferson, Philando Castile, Freddie Gray, and many more. Like racial profiling, hair discrimination reveals the insidious nature of the global white gaze that demands Black subordination. Black people are expected to acquiesce under the white gaze, and everyone knows it.

We saw how Black people were treated in China when COVID-19 first emerged. We see as the world watches Russia invade Ukraine how Black people are not allowed to flee Ukraine and have been forcefully removed from buses by Ukrainian police. We are witnessing in real time how Black lives do not matter globally. The initial step is seeing anti-Blackness as a global phenomenon, a pandemic not something existing solely in the United States. It is important for us to see these connections and combine our energies to make them visible.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

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Anti-Black Racism Is Global. So Must Be the Movement to End It. - Truthout

This week, two years after Black Lives Matter protests prompted by the death of George Floyd, and the prime ministers promise of an urgent examination into the state of racism in the UK, the government has put forward an action plan in response to the controversial Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities (Cred) report.

Cred was widely criticised by politicians, journalists, campaigners and the British public for downplaying the prevalence of institutional racism in Britain, to the extent that commission chair Dr Tony Sewell denied there was any evidence of its existence. Not only that, even its commissioners and contributors distanced themselves from its processes, questioned the reports academic rigour and expressed concern about the tailoring of evidence to conform to a predetermined political narrative. No 10 was alleged to have spent three months rewriting its findings. A working group from the United Nations, an organisation usually defined by diplomatic reserve, went so far as to label the report an attempt to normalise white supremacy.

Understandably, then, expectations of the response from the equalities minister, Kemi Badenoch, were low. Matters were scarcely helped when, in her foreword to the action plan, the minister decried the lazy consensus around disparity. Perhaps this was the minister attempting to engage compassionately with the 75% of Black and Black British citizens who see discrimination in their everyday lives, whether through their experiences at school, in accessing housing, at work or when engaging with public services and the criminal justice system.

In the 97-page plan, the government has committed to revamping the history curriculum for schoolchildren, issuing advice to employers on how to measure and report on ethnicity pay gaps, and clamping down on online racist abuse through new legislation. There are other positive developments, including the recent establishment of the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, which could have real benefits after the disproportionate number of Covid deaths in minority ethnic communities.

However, the government could have gone further to improve the parameters by which we assess racial equality, to help achieve more positive outcomes. It would have been a quick win to introduce legislation to make ethnicity pay gap reporting mandatory, as occurred with the gender pay gap in 2017. There is also the problematic issue of the government making progress on the one hand while eroding the rights of minority ethnic communities on the other, not least with a swath of planned restrictive legislation from a combination of the policing, borders and elections bills to an overhaul of the Human Rights Act.

In its response to Cred, the plan says: We do not agree with those who think that lack of opportunity should be seen solely through the prism of ethnic minority disadvantage. It would seem politically convenient to reduce the struggles of life down to these terms, allowing the government to distract from the need to improve conditions for communities in the UK. I certainly dont know one member of the minority ethnic working class, including my parents, who would couch their experiences in this language. Our communities are made up of individuals of different ethnicities who all share overlapping commonalities that bind us, including in addition to class age, gender, faith and sexual orientation. These identities impact every aspect of our lives in complex ways that move beyond a singular discussion of race. It is on this basis that for more than a decade the Runnymede Trust has been calling for all members of the working class to be offered protections under the Equality Act, regardless of their ethnicity, in acknowledgment of the vulnerabilities that exist across society.

There are reasons to be optimistic about the governments action plan. In much of the offer there is a more conciliatory and considered tone than Creds report which downplayed the impact of racism on inequality and lauded Britain as a model for other white-majority countries. Indeed, say it quietly and call me an optimist, but on early review we may even consider the government position a discreet repudiation of some of the more divisive aspects of the Cred report maybe it is even a calling a truce in the contrived culture war, at least in the context of race.

In particular, the government response does not appear to make any direct reference to the term institutional racism. Creds original position on the issue was deeply flawed, with Sewell repeatedly insisting on the record that there was no evidence to support such a concept.

I am acutely aware of the timing of the response, in a week in which the Royal Society for Chemistry confirmed that the field has an institutional problem with racism, and that there is only one Black chemistry professor in the entire country. And its the same week that a 15-year-old Black girl was reported to have been strip-searched at school by the Metropolitan police without the presence of an appropriate adult, in an incident that the authorities are clear would not have happened had the child been white. And it comes hot on the heels of the revelation that the Cabinet Office reached a six-figure settlement for racial discrimination in a bullying case at the heart of Whitehall, which the former deputy cabinet secretary Dame Helen MacNamara linked to systemic issues within our countrys government apparatus.

The UK has made great strides towards achieving equality, but as Boris Johnson himself said when launching Cred: It is no use just saying that we have made huge progress in tackling racism. There is much more that we need to do. As always, I think of future generations in these moments. We owe it to them to act.

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After the Sewell report, the race action plan seems a step in the right direction - The Guardian

The comedy series from Matt Lucas and David Walliams was removed from various services including Netflix and BritBox in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests

The BBC has returned Little Britain to iPlayer after its creators made edits to better reflect the changes in the cultural landscape since the show first aired 20 years ago.

The comedy series from Matt Lucas and David Walliams was removed from various services including Netflix and BritBox in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.

Matt Lucas and David Walliams. Yui Mok

It had faced criticism because of the use of blackface make-up in some sketches.

A BBC spokesman said: Little Britain has been made available to fans on BBC iPlayer following edits made to the series by Matt and David that better reflect the changes in the cultural landscape over the last 20 years since the show was first made.

Lucas and Walliams have both previously apologised for their use of blackface on the show, which began as a radio programme in 2000 before running as a TV series on the BBC between 2003 and 2007, launching their respective careers.

(From left to right) Russell Brand, David Walliams and Matt Lucas in a special Comic Relief performance of the Little Britain stage show at the Hammersmith Apollo in west London. Ian West

The said in a joint statement on Twitter in June 2020: Once again we want to make it clear that it was wrong; we are very sorry.

In the series, Walliams sported black make-up and a large afro wig to play the overweight black woman Desiree DeVere.

Lucas also used blackface to play Pastor Jesse King, who said he was from the ghetto and spoke in tongues to cure the sick.

In the wake of Black Lives Matter protests prompted by the killing of George Floyd, stars including Ant and Dec and Leigh Francis also apologised for portraying black people on TV.

Lucas previously said he has regrets about Little Britain, describing the comedy as cruel.

Representatives of Lucas and Walliams have been contacted for further comment.

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Little Britain removes blackface character from BBC iPlayer to 'better reflect changes in the cultural landscape' - GB News

A new report points to Greater Victoria as an emerging national hotspot for hate crimes.

Among census metropolitan areas (CMAs) with at least 10 hate crimes reported to police, Victoria CMAs 97-per-cent increase in such incidents between 2019 and 2020 ranks third highest in the country, according to figures from the Canadian Centre for Justice and Community Safety released through Statistics Canada.

Only Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo (up 253 per cent) and Peterborough (126 per cent) CMAs had higher increases year over year than Victoria.

Based on population, the B.C. capital regions 8.3 police-reported hate crimes per 100,000 people in 2020 that translates to between 33 and 38 incidents overall ranked it 12th in Canada and was higher than the national average of seven. The near-doubling of incidents reported pushed Victoria CMA up from 20th place on the national list in 2019.

Vancouver CMA recorded B.C.s highest rate with 13.8 cases/100K, and the fourth-highest in Canada. Victorias rate was also higher than Abbotsford-Mission CMA (3.9/100K) and Kelowna CMA (2.3/100K).

The report does not detail why police-reported hate crimes rose in Victoria CMA, but points to two broader categories of potential causes.

The first points to a general disconnect between stated public policies (including official multiculturalism) protecting specific populations and practice. Indigenous peoples and those designated as visible minorities generally report feeling less safe than the rest of the population, in some cases are much more likely to be overrepresented in the justice system, and along with sexual minorities, are more likely to report experiencing discrimination and victimization, it reads.

The second concerns the COVID-19 pandemic.

The (pandemic) further brought to light the varying experiences and perceptions of some of Canadas diverse population, as well as the systemic barriers they face, including varying levels of perceived safety and self-reported victimization. Within this context, the report points to the rise of hate crimes targeting East or Southeast Asian populations, undoubtedly a legacy of false, populist rhetoric that initially framed COVID-19 as a Chinese disease.

Overall, Canadian police reported 2,669 hate-motivated criminal incidents in 2020, the largest number recorded since comparable data became available in 2009.

B.C.s incident report total grew by 198 over 2019, second-most only behind Ontarios 316. But the B.C. increase for 2020 pushed it to top spot among the provinces with a rate of 10.1 police-reported hate crimes per 100,000 population.

Looking at the Canadian numbers more closely, hate crimes motivated by hatred of a race or ethnicity represented 62 per cent of the total a substantial increase over previous years, the report states while religion-related hate crimes dropped to 20 per cent.

RELATED: UVic study shows hate crimes against Asian Canadians increase during pandemic

Crimes motivated by hatred of a sexual orientation accounted for 10 per cent of the total, while those targeting such factors as language, disability, age, and sex or gender comprised seven per cent, similar proportions seen in recent years.

Separating incidents by physicality, the report stated that non-violent hate crimes rose 41 per cent, while violent hate crimes were up 32 per cent.

While the report does not directly reference the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States and elsewhere, including Canada, 2020 was also a high watermark for that movement, drawing broad support, but also encouraging opposition from the fringes.

The report notes that the number of police-reported crimes motivated by hatred of a race or ethnicity increased 80 per cent, from 884 to 1,594. Much of this increase was the result of more police-reported hate crimes targeting the Black population (+ 318 incidents), East or Southeast Asian population (+202 incidents), the Indigenous population (+44 incidents) and the South Asian population (+38 incidents).

The report states police-reported statistics capture only crimes that come to the attention of police or other authorities and other studies have found that a large number of incidents perceived to be motivated by hate went un-reported for a number of reasons, including but not only a lack of confidence or trust in the police or other social institutions.

RELATED: PHOTOS: Thousands attend rally for Black lives in downtown Victoria

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wolfgang.depner@peninsulanewsreview.com

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Police-reported hate crimes rose dramatically in 2020 in Greater Victoria Vancouver Island Free Daily - vancouverislandfreedaily.com

Eric Adams at church (photo: Erica Sherman/Brooklyn BP's Office)

God told me, Eric, youre going to be Mayor. I am here because of my spirituality, Eric Adams said last month as he announced the creation of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Partnership. Though the office will connect with all faiths, it is being led by Gilford Monrose, pastor of the predominantly Black church, Mt. Zion Church of God 7th Day in Brooklyn, where Adams has lived for decades and was borough president before becoming the citys 110th mayor.

Throughout his winning campaign and into his administration, Adams roots in the Black churches of New York City are evident. In fact, it was support from these congregations and others across the five boroughs that helped pave the path for the Democrat and former two-term Brooklyn Borough President to elevate to Gracie Mansion.

Mayor Adams is only the second Black mayor in the citys history, and the first since David Dinkins, who served from 1990 through 1993. According to recent Census data, more than 24% of New York City residents are Black, and 79% of Black Americans identify as Christian, according to the Pew Research Center. For New York political candidates, Black churchgoers are a key constituency and dependable voting bloc, especially in what are usually low turnout local elections.

While Adams road to the heights of political success was not always a smooth one, Black churches can take some credit for his ascension through the ranks of the NYPD, into state and city government, and win in the tough 2021 mayoral election. Adams did particularly well in the competitive 2021 primary -- where he beat Kathryn Garcia by just 7,197 votes after the final round of ranked-choice voting -- in communities of color, especially predominantly Black areas of the city such as his Central Brooklyn and Southeast Queens bases, the two areas where hes lived virtually all his life, as well as the North Shore on Staten Island and Harlem in Manhattan.

Now, despite the many obstacles of a unique election cycle amid a devastating pandemic, the Black church including Baptist, Methodist, Catholic, and Pentecostal congregations, its leaders and worshippers could have more meaningful influence in the New York City mayors office than perhaps ever before.

In a January visit to The Greater Allen Cathedral of New York in Queens, Adams said, I cannot thank you enough, Allen, for all you have done. Never turned your back on me. Allowed me to become the Mayor of the City of New York.

Adams has been speaking at Black churches and spiritual gathering places for decades, including regular appearances in front of Rev. Al Sharptons National Action Network, perhaps the place in New York City best known for the intersection of politics and faith. Adams stopped by once again for its Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration. Many years up here [speaking], and you did not fight this hard for me to get here and not see things change, said Adams.

But there is one church, and one reverend in particular, that is arguably most integral to Adams life: Reverend Herbert Daughtry and The House of the Lord Pentecostal Church on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn.

Adams Connection with The Black ChurchNinety-one-year-old Reverend Herbert Daughtry was the National Presiding Minister of The House of the Lord Churches from 1959 to 2019. His father, Alonzo, founded the church. As Reverend Daughtry tells it, his father started out Methodist but broke away and began his own church in Georgia in 1930. The elder Daughtry moved north in 1940, settling in Brooklyn. Some of the church members followed him.

The younger Reverend Daughtry came a year later but the transition wasnt easy. His parents split and his mother moved to Jersey City. My background, Im straight out of the streets, Daughtry said in a recent phone interview. Brooklyn and Jersey City. My credentials also include some involuntary vacation time.

Daughtry said that his first incarceration came as a teenager of about 15-years-old. He remembers walking by a store near Ralph and St. Marks Avenues in Brooklyn with friends, but they didnt touch a thing. The police were across the street watching. Several blocks from the store we were pounced on like we were Al Capone. Taken to the precinct and beaten for nothing. I spent about three weeks in old Raymond Street jail. (The jail was closed in 1963.)

Daughtry would spend time in prison again for armed robbery as well as money laundering. But in 1957, towards the end of his final incarceration at the Lewisburg Penitentiary in Pennsylvania, he remembers, God spoke to me and said write. I wrote 11 pages of what I was called to do. That calling led him to become a revered church leader for the next six decades, work that included becoming a mentor to a future mayor of New York City.

Daughtrys preaching was mixed with activism, a push to save the planet and its people. He was particularly vocal about combating police brutality, due to his personal experience and watching a series of tragedies where police shot and killed several Black children throughout the 1970s. He prioritized working with and inspiring young people through the decades, a list that includes current New York State Attorney General Letitia James, City Council Member Charles Barron, and Mayor Eric Adams.

To some degree, Adams personal history mimics that of Daughtrys. The new, Democratic mayor was also arrested at age 15 and beaten by the cops, in this case at the 103rd precinct in Queens. The police brutality he endured, along with having grown up witnessing other police violence, also influenced Adams future, and how Adams and Daughtrys lives intersected.

Daughtry believes you have to have relationships in the systems you want to change.

According to Adams, who recently recounted the story on Hillary Clintons podcast, Daughtry, met with me and 12 other young menand he came to us and said listen, were fighting from outside. We want you guys to go inside and be advocates for justice and safety.

Daughtry was asking them to become police officers. We needed models of good, solid, respectful, competent policemen who would protect the community, said Daughtry. Many in the Black community resented law enforcement and opposed this plan. According to Daughtry, even Adams initial response was, Youve got to be crazy.

Yet, Adams would follow that guidance and graduate from the police academy in 1984 and eventually rise to become a captain. In 1995, he also helped found the group 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care. Daughtry says that that in itself was a way for Adams to both criticize the police department from the inside while trying to usher in change.

Once Adams was an officer, Daughtry says, It wasnt wise for us to be arm in arm. However, Adams continued to join Daughtry in his activism, demonstrating against police brutality, teaching anti-bias workshops, and working to counter violence in communities. Though Adams wasnt a regular at the church, Daughtry said he was still there often enough, never missing a special event, and providing extra security when needed.

This decades-long mentorship proved invaluable to Adams in his race for mayor. While public safety and Adams decades in the NYPD were key to his electoral success, his law enforcement background complicated things for some voters. According to Daughtry, the Black church community and strong police supporters made up a lot of Adams base.

Where he [Adams] had difficulty was that people remembered he was a police officer. With police baggage, he needed to have someone to say he was a good cop, said the Reverend. Its hard to support a former police officer when your innocent loved one has been killed by the police. But after spending decades fighting police brutality against Black New Yorkers, if they didnt recall Adams activism while in the department, they couldnt question Daughtrys bona fides. He had the credibility to say, Adams is solidly in the community. He fought the battles we fought.

During the 2021 campaign, Adams frequently spoke about Daughtrys influence on him, including encouraging him to join the NYPD.

As mayor, Adams has quickly been faced with the challenges he knew he was stepping into: improving policing, keeping the city safe, and ensuring, as he says it, that safety and justice go hand-in-hand. In his first months as mayor, Adams has had to deal with continued increases in gun violence, including the murder of two police officers in Harlem, outlining and implementing his policing policies, along with his chosen NYPD commissioner, Keechant Sewell. They must ensure that Adams promise of robust policing without overreach is enacted while garnering community support and improving NYPD morale. That community includes leaders and members of the Black church.

Adams acknowledged the importance of the Black church in a brief December interview with Gotham Gazette, saying, I would not be who I am if it wasnt for the Black church, as a police officer and now as the future mayor of the city.

When asked if the church will have a larger seat at the table because of this connection, he said, Without a doubt. I think thats the missing piece. Because they are the weathermen and women. They see inclement weather long before we do. The Black church knew we had a gang problem because they were dealing with the family members. They knew we were having a problem around drug use, opioid abuse. They were watching it. If we have a better connection with the Black church and theyre sitting down and feeding the information we need, we will be more preventive and not reactionary. We have ignored their warning signs and Im not going to do that.

This is exactly what many Black church leaders are hoping for. They are cautiously optimistic that the issues they have been advocating for more action on including affordable housing, more jobs and reducing income inequality, improving educational outcomes, better public safety and health care will be addressed more meaningfully by an Adams administration.

Eric Adams has positioned himself as someone I can support, but at the same time I also have to hold him accountable. Its up to him to demonstrate that he can walk the walk, said Rev. Julian Walls Jr. of Greater Hood Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church in Harlem.

Rev. Charles Curtis of Mt. Olivet Baptist Church in Harlem said he has told fellow supporters of Adams, Dont expect New York City to turn overnight. Be patient with him.

An Unprecedented YearIn last years unusual election cycle, not only were there disruptions caused by the pandemic, for the first time there were multiple top Black candidates, and there was worry that voters would be turned off by ranked-choice voting, which was introduced into the mayoral primary for the first time.

There was also concern among some clergy that the long-term political power of the institution of the church could also be impacted with the rise of movements like Black Lives Matter and the growing political divide between younger Black voters and older, more religious Black voters. Church leaders spent a lot of time this past election cycle trying to navigate these issues to remain a relevant resource to both candidates and parishioners.

In a typical election year, candidates for New York City mayor spend many Sunday mornings visiting and speaking in-person at the citys myriad predominantly Black churches, especially in Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan. They know thats where many voters are.

But not last year. With the coronavirus pandemic upending traditional religious services, many of which were held online throughout much of 2020 and 2021, opportunities to speak directly to large numbers of African-American voters declined, and they too, didnt get the same exposure to candidates.

If it were not for covid, we would probably welcome the politicians to the church, acknowledge their presence, and thank them for worshiping with us, said the Rev. Elaine Flake, a co-pastor at The Greater Allen AME Cathedral, where her husband, Rev. Floyd Flake, is senior pastor and a former congressman who served in the House of Representatives from 1987 to 1997. Their church is among the top destinations for politicians.

One place where the changing nature of the relationship between the church and candidates could be found was a meeting room in the sprawling basement of Mt. Olivet Baptist Church at 120th Street and Malcolm X Boulevard in Harlem.

There, the mostly Black pastors from the New York Interfaith Commission for Housing Equality, met individually last spring with Democratic mayoral candidates Eric Adams, Maya Wiley, Scott Stringer, and Ray McGuire (all but Stringer are Black).

The Interfaith Commission is led by the Rev. Curtis, a kind, gregarious man who has led Mt. Olivet for over 40 years. He and the other pastors are aware that as leaders they have a voice in New York politics but are dismayed by the inaction of many politicians. Prior to one meeting of the Commission, Curtis explained the need for the church beyond being a place of worship saying, When politicians dont do their job, the church steps in.

Their hope was that the next mayor would in fact do the job well and be a partner to help address issues of social justice and inequality, including affordable housing, one of the major concerns that almost every clergy member interviewed for this article cited as pressing.

Virginia Montague is like a political church whisperer. A former political staffer and avid church-goer who is currently a member at Reverend Walls Jr.s Greater Hood Memorial A.M.E Zion church in Harlem, Montague understands both worlds well. She typically advises candidates on how to make a good impression on the congregation. That includes understanding church protocols and making a donation, she said, adding that both show that a candidate wants a relationship with the church and its congregants.

In previous election cycles, Montague had set candidates up with church appearances at various churches around the city. She said that the reason parishioners are inclined to listen to their pastors personal political recommendations comes down to trust. If Im relying on him for my religious experience, I trust him with that, I may very well ask him about politics too, she said of how many parishioners think.

With many in-person introductions off the table, during the primary there was an increased reliance on Zoom, which was deemed not as effective at reaching congregants by many of the pastors interviewed. Some churches were so focused on just getting people to show up to virtual services that politics took a back seat. Therefore, a pastors personal stance on the election may have been one of the only ways that some voters learned more about the candidates, aside from commercials or mailings.

African-American seniors are very tactile, said Montague. Most of them are not online. They get campaign literature. The pastors are going to present [candidates] very carefully.

In this election cycle, Black church leaders faced a complex calculation when deciding who to support. Although churches, as non-political tax-exempt organizations, cannot officially make endorsements, oftentimes pastors are asked for their personal opinions about candidates. While Curtis, Daughtry, and many other Black church leaders came out in support of Adams, other candidates also either had ties to or good reputations in various Black communities.

For example, Maya Wileys father was a lauded civil rights activist and she followed in his footsteps with her own career. Businessman Ray McGuire had given back to the community through philanthropy. Shaun Donovan, who is white, was praised for his work on affordable housing when he was commissioner of the citys Department of Housing Preservation and Development under former Mayor Bloomberg and then as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Obama administration. Scott Stringer, the recent city Comptroller and previous Manhattan Borough President, who is white and Jewish, had cultivated strong relationships with Black leaders over his years in public service.

Several Major African-American Candidates in the PrimaryThough the Black vote in New York City is by no means a monolith, Walls Jr. acknowledged that African-Americans will often vote for Black candidates. Its not that were against white people, but we want to make sure that theres representation, particularly when youre a minority group, he said. You have to vote as a bloc, or you wont have any influence.

This year presented a possible wrinkle in that strategy. In the final months leading up to the June primary, three of the eight leading candidates were African-American Adams, Wiley, and McGuire -- and another, Dianne Morales, identifies as Afro-Latina. Walls Jr. wasnt sure how people were going to choose.

When you have this dynamic of three, he said in reference to Adams, McGuire, and Wiley, it makes it a little more difficult. What happens when you split the vote?

Prior to the primary, that concern was shared by Assemblymember Inez Dickens, whose district includes Harlem and who endorsed Adams. The Blacks in this country cannot afford for us to run against one another, she said. Weve got to learn to stick together and fully vote. We need to have one candidate.

Dickens and others worried that, even with ranked-choice voting lessening the impact of a split vote, the voice and interests of the larger Black community could be diluted. She also added that if no Black candidate won, then whoever became mayor would have done so without the full support of the Black community, and therefore could be less motivated to address their concerns.

With Adams victory, her fears did not come to pass. However, Dickens shined a light on the calculations that some Black leaders and voters, and those of most demographic groups, feel they need to make to ensure their voices are heard and their issues are addressed through their votes and government representation.

Impact of a New Generation of VotersIf the church is behind something, it will succeed, said Curtis, when asked if the churchs influence is waning.

But theres a new generation of voters, and movements that have risen and are changing the way people participate in politics. I still think people go to church, but it does usually skew a little older, said New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams in an interview. Elected officials are going to have to do a good job of engaging people where they are. Whether its online or the Black church.

Hawk Newsome is an outspoken activist and a church-goer who attends Convent Avenue Baptist Church in Harlem. In December, he and then-Mayor-elect Adams exchanged charged language with regard to Adams plans for policing in the city and Newsomes warning of potential rioting if Adams brought back the NYPDs anti-gun unit. (In mid-March, Adams introduced Neighborhood Safety Teams, a revamped version of those anti-gun units. Newsome, a co-founder of a local chapter of Black Lives Matter, is not officially connected to the national organization nor an official spokesperson for the Black Lives Matter movement.)

Newsome says that to some activists, the church is too concerned with respectability politics or courting political influence by being, in some cases, too deferential to or patient with politicians. While Newsome doesnt believe that Black Lives Matter is taking the place of the church, he does think the church hasnt stayed with the times. The church has failed to be active in this movement, in this fight for social justice in a way young people approve of, he said, though he did not outline what he thought church leaders should be doing.

Newsome believes the Black church plays a role in every election and acknowledged the groundswell of support Eric Adams received from Black clergy as part of the reason he won. Newsome had endorsed Wiley, who ran on a progressive platform, in the primary.

The church will remain a force into the future, according to Newsome, because Black Lives Matter could never give the feeling that the church gives. We give people a sense of fight, urgency. The church gives people hope.

Associate Pastor at Mt. Olivet, Rev. Dr. Wendy Kelly-Carter, knows that young people are spiritual and recognizes that for the church to have influence with parishioners long-term, it will have to acknowledge the beliefs of and include young people in leadership roles. She said of the younger generation, they have a lot to offer. And they have different ways of doing things. Certainly, they are more educated. Theyre upwardly mobile, not as traditional, a little bit more liberal on issues, like LGBTQ issues and abortion, that normally the Black church is not in agreement with.

Kelly-Carter believes that for the church to appeal to and influence younger people, itll have to adjust and change its outreach. Regarding Black Lives Matter, she said, Watching them you can see how young people think. They want things now, theyre not waiting. Whereas we took years to get things done. And instead of just passing out tracts (tri-fold papers with messages of God) on the street, Kelly-Carter said the church will have to meet the younger generation where they are: on social media.

Christopher Barrett, a 38-year old member of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, explained the dynamic at play when it comes to reaching different generations. The older folks get a lot of their news from the church, from the pastor, he said. The younger generation gets a lot of their news from social media, from their friends, through other platforms, and being activists.

Jerry Skurnik, a longtime political consultant, said that the primary election in particular revealed a gap between younger and older Black voters. He noted that Wiley did a lot better with younger Black voters based on the polls before the primary. While Adams did better with older Black voters, and there are more of them. Based on the final results, he said, it is clear that the larger voting bloc of older Black voters helped drive Adams win.

One of the challenges Black churches, and in fact most churches, face is how to maintain or grow their congregations when so many of the participants are older. They need to appeal to younger Black people to join the church, said Skurnik, echoing Kelly-Carter. If they want politicians to pay attention to them, they need to maintain or grow the parishioners they have. They need to replace the people who will age out.

Demanding Democrats Deliver More In a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans seven to one, its not surprising that Adams won the general election against Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa and others on the ballot. But it begs the question of whether a Republican can win a citywide election anymore.

Ted Ghorra, Chair of the Brooklyn Republican Party, is quick to point out that, These things dont trend overnight. But if you look at a number of communities, whether its the Asian community, the African-American community, the Latino community, the Jewish communityif you look at many parts of the city, we are doing much better in being competitive and winning where just a few years ago, many races were seen as a unwinnable. Because many of those communities relate to the messaging of truly endorsing small businesses and lower costs of living. With the right messaging and a continued effort, well continue to work hard, grow and do better.

Several pastors acknowledged that the Democratic Party has not always delivered for Black voters as much as it should. Pastor Dedrick Blue of the North Bronx Seventh Day Adventist Church, and a member of the New York Interfaith Commission for Housing Equality, said Democrats have done better than Republicans, but not enough.

Blue wants Black voters support to be earned. He also understands the importance of those voters showing up to the polls. We did know in the general election [Adams] would probably win, Blue said. But the pastors that I know were saying to their congregations, Lets not take the election for granted. Because if he is going to be elected, its better that he go in with a mandate, and a clear and decisive victory. Moving forward, even in New York, the Black pastors are getting fired up more and more about registration and turnout.

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'They are the Weather Men and Women': Eric Adams and the Black Church - Gotham Gazette