Anti-racism Follow

Attacks on refugees and Islamophobia are one side of the changing face of racism, but there is also a groundswell of anti-racist sentiment.

Not so long ago the right wing press and the police tried to ban the Notting Hill Carnival. When all else failed, they physically attacked it. From its beginning they have hated it because it is a symbol of black resistance and black and white solidarity. The Notting Hill Carnival survived because of the resistance by black, and many white, people. The carnival was a response to the vicious race riots in August 1958.

Valerie Martin’s novel Property tells the story of a slave revolt on a sugar plantation in the US Deep South. Manon, the planter's wife, narrates it. Manon misses the excitement and culture of New Orleans, where she was brought up. More than anything she wants to be free of her boorish husband. She is appalled by his violence and sadistic cruelty and contrasts him with her father, who had a paternalistic attitude to his slaves. In the background there are rumours of slave rebellion.

Over the last few months there has been a barrage of headlines about black people and crime.The tragic shooting of two young women in Birmingham at new year led to an outpouring of grief and a moral panic about gun crime. Politicians queued up to tell us that rap music was the cause of the problem. But the whole idea of black on black crime has been falsely created by the police.

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When Doreen Lawrence asserted that no police officer had tended her dying son because they didn't want to get "black" blood on their hands, the reverberations shook British society. Stephen Lawrence's stabbing in April 1993 followed a series of other murders and racist attacks in south east London, where the Nazi British National Party (BNP) had opened its headquarters.

"Unless there is urgent action then a black or Asian person is going to be murdered by racists in Eltham." That is the chilling warning from Dev Barrah, who works at the Greenwich Council for Racial Equality.

The new film Rabbit-Proof Fence is based on a true story. It tells the story of three Aboriginal girls in western Australia who run away from a state institution for "half-caste" children. This is what Australia was like in the 1930s.

"NOT GUILTY." That was the jury's unanimous verdict on 12 charges against Asians who defended their community in Burnley from racist attack. The jury in Preston Crown Court last week sided with the Asians who on 24 June last year mobilised to stop gangs inspired by the Nazi British National Party terrorising the area.

"Thug and Liar Walk Free". Amazingly, it was the front page of Rupert Murdoch's Times that summed up most people's feelings last week as Leeds United footballers Lee Bowyer and Jonathan Woodgate walked out of Hull Crown Court. The two players were cleared of causing grievous bodily harm to student Sarfraz Najeib.

Official segregation The report on Oldham, whose economy centred on textiles, goes some way to acknowledging how racial segregation has happened over the last three decades. It describes how in the 1960s mill owners found it harder to "recruit people for anti-social work such as night shifts.

Around 100 people attended the National Civil Rights Movement annual general meeting last weekend. Kwesi Menson, the brother of Michael Menson, Sukhdev Reel, the mother of Ricky Reel, and Doreen Lawrence were among the many relatives of victims of racism who spoke at the event.