Sideways Sociology: UK Anti-Racism is a special mini-series featuring expert guests John Narayan, A.S. Francis and Hannah Ishmael. They introduce us to three key figures in the story of UK anti-racism – Ambalavaner Sivanandan, Gerlin Bean and Len Garrison – illuminating how their work and ideas speak to sociology, showing us what it means to be anti-racist.
What does tech have to do with anti-racism? Why do we dismiss complex economics at our peril? And how do global struggles for justice connect to those at the local level? John Narayan – Chair of the Council of the Institute of Race Relations, and a lecturer in European and International Studies at King’s College London – introduces us to Ambalavaner Sivandanan, or “Siva”, a giant of anti-racism who showed us how to truly understand discrimination, and how we can best confront it, togeth...
What did Black radical politics look like in the UK in the 1960s and 1970s? What was its relation to the Black women’s movement, which urgently highlighted the multiple oppressions faced by Black women? How, in studying such movements, can we celebrate brilliant activists, without erasing the importance of whole movements and collectives? Here, A.S. Francis – author of Gerlin Bean: Mother of the Movement – introduces us to Gerlin Bean, the Jamaican-born activist who came to the UK as a studen...
How can archives fight racism? How can progressive educational resources tackle the harm of discrimination? Why have millennia of British history so often been presented through a reductive and harmful white gaze? Hannah Ishmael – lecturer in Digital Culture and Race at King’s College London – introduces Len Garrison, an activist, archivist and determined educationalist who worked to improve education, particularly for minoritised populations – and to disprove and displace assumptions about t...