A curious story surfaced recently, when the parents of Rachel Dolezal, an American civil rights activist, revealed their daughter to be a white woman ‘passing’ as black. With racist ideology still embedded in American society, this triggered a national conversation, raising issues which I will aim to address as respectfully as a white, British, cisgender…
In 2016 the UN General Assembly will hold a special session focusing on the global issue of drugs. To prepare for this, and to review UK drug policy, there will be a parliamentary conference next month. Could we be facing a change in official attitudes towards drug prohibition? It seems inarguable that prohibitionist drug policy…
Despite growing awareness about mental health, as a topic it generally remains taboo. Verbalisation of destructive thoughts is avoided; it interferes with the facade of a society in which the modern lifestyle surely equates to contentment. It is viewed as weakness, or melodrama. Mental illness is surely absurd in a well-off society with people starving…
It is tragically fitting that the week preceding the Ferguson grand jury’s decision ended with a police officer fatally shooting a 12-year-old black child in Ohio. Tamir Rice was playing with a fake gun when police reacted to an emergency services call by descending on the scene and shooting the boy twice when he reached…
When Mike Brown was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri this summer it seemed to be just the latest link in a long chain of similar cases. In a so-called ‘post-racial’ society, the shooting of young black men by police officers appears to be a tragic theme strung out across the…
Last week the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response was launched in Ghana, six months and over 3,000 deaths after the virus emerged in Guinea. It is the first time in history that the UN has formed such a response to a public health emergency, and rightly so, with the World Health Organisation (WHO) and…