Sunny and Bhupinder Gill have become the first South Asian brothers to be appointed on the same officiating team for an English Football League game.
Bhupinder will be the assistant and Sunny the fourth official for the Championship match between Bristol City and Nottingham Forest on Saturday.
The pair, who are Sikh, are the sons of former EFL referee Jarnail Singh, who retired in 2010.
“It’s a proud moment for the family,” Bhupinder told BBC Sport. More
A political and equalities activist has become the first black man to be elected head of an Oxbridge college.
Lord Simon Woolley, founding director of campaign group Operation Black Vote, will be the next principal of Cambridge University’s Homerton College.
The former Equality and Human Rights Commissioner said it was a “must-have role”.
He grew up on a Leicester council estate and left school without any A-levels.
The cross-party peer, who was fostered and adopted as a child, later returned to education and gained a degree and a masters.
He is the third black person to be elected as head of a college at Oxford or Cambridge. More
When Uncharted: The Lost Legacy was released this year, it gained a lot of attention – not because it is the latest instalment for a popular franchise, it stood out for another reason.
The game was set in India, had two lead women, and one of them, Nadine Ross, is a black South African.
Other big releases this year include Assassins Creed Origins, which is set in Egypt with an African protagonist, while Star Wars Battlefront II used the likeness and voice of Janina Gavankar, an actress with part-Indian heritage.
But speaking to BBC Asian Network, Jo Twist, chief executive for Ukie, the trading body for the UK’s games industry, said there was still a long way to go before video games could be truly representative of the gaming audience. More
The Church of England has appointed its first black female bishop.
The Rev Dr Rose Hudson-Wilkin, chaplain to the speaker of the House of Commons, has been named as the new Bishop of Dover.
Dr Hudson-Wilkin, who was born in Jamaica, said she aimed to ensure that “hope, love and justice remains at the heart of our changed lives together”.
The Archbishop of Canterbury said he was “absolutely delighted” by her appointment.
The Most Rev Justin Welby said she was “one of the most influential and effective ministers… through her long service as Chaplain to the Speaker of the House of Commons”.
Dr Hudson-Wilkin, who is also a chaplain to the Queen, led prayers at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in May 2018. More
Former Charlton and Huddersfield boss Chris Powell has joined England manager Gareth Southgate’s coaching staff.
The move is part of a Football Association programme designed to “solve the challenge of under-representation” of black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) coaches.
Michael Johnson, who guided Guyana to their first Gold Cup this summer, will team up with the England Under-21s.
There are only five BAME managers in English football’s top four divisions.
Former left-back Powell was capped five times by England during his playing career. He has also managed Southend United and had caretaker spells in charge of Leicester and Derby.
The FA has also announced that Jason Euell, Marcus Bignot, Omer Riza and Matthew Thorpe will work with other age-group sides.
“The main pressure that we feel is the need to chip away pieces of our identity, just to feel like we belong.”
Katiann Rocha has experienced discrimination because of her hair, often hearing comments such as “messy”, “unkempt” and “wild”.
The 16-year-old is a co-founder of the Halo Code – a guide for schools and workplaces to prevent discrimination around hairstyles or texture.
“It will allow for black people to be fully accepted in an environment that celebrates their natural hair and styles, because we’ve been discriminated against it for so long,” she tells Radio 1 Newsbeat.
The Halo Code explicitly protects students and staff at school and work with natural hair and protective hairstyles associated with their racial, ethnic and cultural identities. More
October is Black History Month and also on 16 October it is World Food Day. With that in mind we have chosen Marcus Rashford as our Inspirational Diversity Champion of the month.
Marcus is a professional footballer who plays for Manchester United. He was bought by his mum who often struggled to afford food to provide meals for Marcus and his siblings.
The issue of food poverty for families and children had always therefore been something that Marcus was very keen to help with and he has been working with the charity FareShareUK to raise money to supply meals for 3 million vulnerable people. During the coronavirus lockdown the government insisted that food vouchers for families on free school meals would not be extended outside of term time so he decided to act.
He wrote an open letter to all MPs calling for the decision to be reversed. The letter drew on his own experiences growing up relying of free school meals and food banks. He asked that the government make the U turn to protect the lives of the most vulnerable which was not about politics but about humanity. In June 2020 it was confirmed that he had been successful in his quest and the government changed their mind and extended the scheme through the school holidays.
He has now formed a taskforce with some of the UK’s biggest food brands to continue the work to reduced child food poverty and backed proposals from the National Food Strategy, for an independent review of UK food policy. Marcus is confident that the group could help change lives for the better and is hoping that with a bigger team of experts he will be able to help more children.
To find out more about Marcus see here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Rashford
To find out more about Black History Month see here https://www.blackhistorymonth.org.uk/
To find out more about World Food Day see here http://www.national-awareness-days.com/world-food-day/
Candice Carty-Williams has said she feels “proud” but “sad” to become the first black author to win book of the year at the British Book Awards.
Her critically acclaimed debut novel, Queenie, fended off titles from authors including Lisa Taddeo, Oyinkan Braithwaite and Margaret Atwood.
She’s joined on the winner’s podium by Bernardine Evaristo, who was named author of the year.
Her Booker-winning novel, Girl, Woman, Other, won fiction book of the year. More
We stand together in solidarity with our black students and staff.
As a university community and as individuals we are appalled by the senseless racist killing of George Floyd in the USA. We are equally saddened that the UK is not innocent. We know Sheku Bayoh, Kingsley Burrell, Sarah Reed, and many others have died in police custody in this country. We also all know about the racially motivated murder of Stephen Lawrence.
We need to see the situation for what it is and we need to be honest: these experiences exist and structural racism is present in our communities and in our universities. As employers, educators, researchers and community leaders we have a duty to act and an important part to play, and we should start with apologising for not doing enough and for not confronting racism with the urgency it deserves.
We also know saying this isn’t sufficient. We have a duty to do better. Equality, diversity and inclusion are founding principles of our institution and core beliefs of our students and staff. We know that world events and media coverage shouldn’t be the only driver for change but recent events and feedback from staff and students tells us that we need to do more.
With this in mind, we are committing to a review of all of our equality and diversity work and by the end of September 2020 we will be sharing our detailed plan of action setting out how we will do more to achieve systemic and long-lasting change for our students and staff. As part of this, we will be reflecting on the work done by the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee, the BAME attainment gap project and the BAME Staff Network.
The Vice-Chancellor will also be appointing a member of staff to work directly with her 1-2 days per week, on a secondment basis, to champion and deliver this important work.
We recognise that we also have a responsibility to educate ourselves and we will shortly be sharing resources for students and staff across the university.
In the meantime, we recognise how tough, hurtful, and traumatising the last few weeks have been to our black students and staff.
If you need support now, or at any time in the future, you can contact the Wellbeing Service or GSU Advice Service (for students) or the Employee Assistance Programme, a wellbeing champion or a member of Human Resources (for staff).
You can also join our BAME Staff Network (by emailing Natasha Abreo) or GSU’s BAME Student Society by emailing Mayo Femi-Obalemo, or email any suggestions you may have about how the university should take further action to Naseer Ahmad or Simone Murch from our EDI team.
Black lives matter.
Professor Jane Harrington
Vice-Chancellor and on behalf of the University of Greenwich
Dr Sandhi Patchay
Chair and on behalf of the University of Greenwich BAME Staff Network
GSU Officers
On behalf of Greenwich Students’ Union
Gail Brindley, Director of HR & Professor Mark O’Thomas, PVC, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Science, Co-Chairs, and on behalf of the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee at the University of Greenwich
In 2003 Winsome Pinnock was described as the “Godmother of Black British playwrights” – and the label has stuck. She has a new play at the Royal Exchange theatre in Manchester which digs into attitudes in Britain to the historical slave trade between Africa and the Caribbean.
Pinnock has encountered several people lately who were convinced British playwrights had already written about British involvement in the African slave trade – finally outlawed in 1833.
“In fact until recently almost no one here had written about it,” she says. “I suspect people remember certain films or they think of the African American plays which have been produced over the years. But that’s not our story.”
By “our story” Pinnock means all Britons, regardless of skin colour. More