Readers respond to Maya Goodfellow’s article about attitudes towards immigration and the role of politicians in fuelling anti-migrant sentiment

Maya Goodfellow’s article ( We keep hearing about ‘legitimate concerns’ over immigration. The truth is, there are none, 13 August ) is a good intervention in the debates over immigration as she calls out the complicity of mainstream politicians in their condoning of racism. The “hostile environment” for illegal immigrants, a longstanding policy adopted by both Labour and Conservative governments since the 2000s, has been playing a key role in consolidating a racist culture in Britain. As politicians beat the drum, many ordinary British people practise it on a day-to-day basis. Let me provide an example.

My partner and I have been living in the UK for more than 20 years; we speak fluent English and we look east Asian. We moved to a small town in Yorkshire a few years ago. When we went into a local Co-op to buy a weekend newspaper for the first time, we were told that they didn’t have it. At the local newsagent, the shopkeeper sent their colleague to spy on us from outside, as if we’d be shoplifting. We tried to appoint a gardener to help us manage our large garden, and all three of the contractors we called in declined the business without giving any reason. I can only guess that some Yorkshire folks we’ve come across cannot get their head around the fact that we don’t run a Chinese takeaway and that we live in a large house.

‘It’s always, always an issue’: bed and breakfast owners Anita and Marvin Johnson on bringing back bygone hospitality and keeping a low profile

Marvin and Anita Johnson know who they are – a married, middle-aged Black couple who own a bed and breakfast in the Atlanta suburb of Stockbridge, Georgia. They also understand that when some guests arrive, it may be the first time they spend the night with Black hosts.

So when people peruse the website of Stockbridge Lakes Bed & Breakfast , they see images of a picturesque lake, lush landscaping and elegant bedrooms. They learn about the gourmet breakfasts, the sleeping porch and the paddle boats that guests are free to use. But they won’t find any photos of the innkeepers.

The violence exposed racist, anti-immigration narratives based on lies. Yet there has been a gaping hole where the counter-argument should be

Far-right thuggery. Marauding mobs. The prime minister’s descriptions of those who brought one of the worst episodes of violence on to the country’s streets captured their actions, but not their motivations or origins. Where did the rioters come from? Why now? Why are they attacking those they are attacking? If many people in this country are now, in Keir Starmer’s words feeling “targeted because of the colour of your skin, or your faith”, how does such a colossal violation come about, and how will it be addressed? The only answers we have been given treat the problem as one of security, of a troublesome minority who “do not represent” the country, and which will be stamped out by a heavy security response and prison sentences. A freak event triggered by the Southport stabbings . And that’s that.

But it will not be that. Because that minority reflects, and draws on, decades of racism, Islamophobia and anti-immigration rhetoric and policy broadcast by parts of the rightwing media, the Conservative party and the Labour party itself. Those years will not be swept aside by a policing crackdown. And their legacy will not, more importantly, be dismantled without its narratives being taken on and confronted.

Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist

Children’s commissioner finds wide disparity with white counterparts in year to June 2023, with 88% of searches aimed at finding drugs

Black children are four times more likely to be strip-searched by police officers across England and Wales than their white counterparts, according to the latest nationwide figures disclosed by a watchdog.

The children’s commissioner also found that children under the age of 15 are a bigger proportion of those subjected to intimate searches, official figures from the year to June 2023 showed. Fewer than half of all searches of children in that year (45%) were conducted in the presence of an appropriate adult.

Just as RAR helped turn the tide on the National Front in 1970s, activists today are planning concerts in this summer’s trouble spots

Anti-racism campaigners are planning to organise unity gigs in the towns and cities blighted by anti-immigrant riots to combat the growing influence of the far right in some parts of Britain.

Love Music Hate Racism (LMHR) – the successor organisation to the Rock Against Racism (RAR) movement which helped turn the tide against the National Front in the 1970s – is planning to follow a concert in London in September, featuring singer-songwriter Paloma Faith, with a series of local gigs across the country over the next 12 months.

Most think Labour handled unrest well and agree with pursuit of those inciting racial hatred online

Voters have given broad approval to the government’s handling of the social unrest that broke out this summer, including its pursuit of those inciting racial hatred and violence online, according to the latest Opinium poll for the Observer .

However, the significant boost Keir Starmer enjoyed in his personal approval ratings immediately after his election win has dissipated, falling back to the levels he recorded during the election campaign.

Susan Lorincz faces up to 30 years in prison in a case that provoked outrage from civil rights advocates

A jury on Friday convicted a white Florida woman for shooting and killing a Black mother of four through her front door in a case that provoked outrage from civil rights advocates and the victim’s family.

Susan Lorincz denied the manslaughter of Ajike “AJ” Owens, who came to her house to remonstrate after the defendant assaulted two of Owens’ children on 2 June last year. Lorincz could receive a prison sentence of up to 30 years in prison at hearing on a date to be determined.

First-time offenders, armchair inciters and children given hefty sentences by magistrates and judges

When far-right riots sprang up in towns and cities in parts of the UK more than two weeks ago causing serious damage, endangering lives and injuring dozens of people, the prime minister, Keir Starmer, promised rapid sentencing for those who took part.

This promise appears to be being fulfilled, with 1,117 arrests and 677 charges brought against rioters as of Friday afternoon – a number that is expected to rise in the coming weeks.

Daniels’s film starts well as it points up the social pressures that informed the Latoya Ammons case, but succumbs to tired horror tropes

Ten years ago, Lee Daniels announced he was taking on a movie project based on the real-life case of Latoya Ammons , a single mother who claimed that her house was haunted, that her children were being possessed by evil spirits and that she needed a “deliverance” – in other words, an exorcism. Well, the resulting very silly and mediocre movie has now finally arrived, with Ammons in real life having long since moved out of the house in question; it has itself been bulldozed, and some of the more excitable and credulous media coverage which helped clinch the film deal has cooled in retrospect, leaving behind, perhaps, a greater emphasis on those heartless observers who were callous enough to wonder if Ammons’ paranormal claims were a drama-queen ruse for avoiding the rent and bamboozling social services.

Daniels could have made a brilliant, heartfelt film about the Ammons case, which absorbed precisely that possibility; the possibility that it wasn’t real, but real in another sense, a film that proposed “possession” as a metaphor for the racism, sexism, poverty and class prejudice that creates dysfunction and delusion in a family in this situation. And for a while, it looks as if Daniels is doing that, with robust and potent performances from Andra Day as the mother, Mo’Nique (so powerful in Daniels’s film Precious ) as her social worker, and Glenn Close as Alberta, the cranky born-again Christian grandma, with Close giving this black-comic role both barrels, just as she did playing JD Vance’s crotchety Mamaw in Hillbilly Elegy.