Gary Younge
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Sociology Professor University of Manchester. Journalist. Author. Broadcaster. Type Media Fellow. Insta garyyounge. Order Dispatches @ linktr.ee/garyyounge
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Articles by Gary Younge
European resistance to US foreign policy over the decades
https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2026/mar/18/european-resistance-to-us-foreign-policy-over-decades Version 2 of 3.
The American way of killing by Malcolm Gladwell review – wide of the mark
Once, while having a steak dinner with Republicans in a small town in Indiana, the man sitting opposite me asked: “How do you cope in London, when Muslims elected that mayor and you have all that gun control?” I'd been in enough such situations to know that there was no “winning” a conversation that starts like this and so did my best to playfully bat the question away. “Well, the Muslims didn't elect a mayor – Londoners elected a Muslim mayor,” I said.
European resistance to US foreign policy over the decades
https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2026/mar/18/european-resistance-to-us-foreign-policy-over-decades Version 1 of 2.
European resistance to US foreign policy over the decades
https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2026/mar/18/european-resistance-to-us-foreign-policy-over-decades Version 0 of 1.
Militarised Xenophobia and building a broad anti-fascist movement — Chartist Original
It was Sivanandan (editor of Race and Class), who talked about Xenoracism, the form of racism connected to xenophobia, because they’re not the same thing. We’re seeing that on steroids in the US. The racial element of xenophobia has been made very clear. The only asylum seekers they want to take are white South Africans. At the same time, an Afghan man shoots a National Guardsman, and Trump says, “we’ve got to get rid of Somalis”,” which have gothas nothing to do with Afghanistan.
The life of civil rights hero Claudette Colvin should teach us this: resistance is collective, and it never stops
“In life, there’s the beginning and the end,” John Carlos, the African American sprinter who raised his fist in a black power salute from the podium of the 1968 Olympics, once told me. “The beginning don’t matter. The end don’t matter. All that matters is what you do in between – whether you’re prepared to do what it takes to make change. There has to be physical and material sacrifice.
Europe after empire
Black history Decolonising Museums Europe after Empire High on the wall of a corridor at the Royal Museum for Central Africa, in Tervuren, just outside Brussels, lays a marble panel featuring the names of the 1,508 Belgians who died in the Congo during the earliest years of colonisation. On a bright day, when the sun sits just right, they are joined by the roll call of seven more names, reflected through the glass window opposite, each carrying the date 1897.
Whither Woke? - The Ideas Letter
In the film American Fiction, the culturally refined Dr Theolonius “Monk” Ellison, an African American author and professor, is struggling to get his highbrow novels published: the white gatekeepers to the literary world believe they are not “Black enough” and would rather put out ghetto stereotypes. So he writes a spoof novel, set in the hood, under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh.
Essay: White History 101 and Black Lives Matter
White people also deserve a sense of history that is accurate, honest, antiracist and inclusive. So what would White History Month look like? The Nation, 21 February 2007, New York Whatever happened to James Blake? He is probably the most famous bus driver ever. And yet when he died aged eighty-nine in March 2002, the few papers that bothered to note his passing in an obituary ran just a few hundred words of wire copy and moved on.
Scapegoating the Immigrant | Gary Younge
One night in late August 1958 a white Swedish woman, Majbritt Morrison, got into an argument with her Black Jamaican husband, Raymond, outside the Latimer Road tube station in West London. When a group of young people known as “teddy boys”—distinguished by their high, slicked-back hair, big suede shoes, and Edwardian-style frock coats—joined in and started hurling racist insults at Raymond, Majbritt turned on them.
Diane Abbott on her standoff with Labour: ‘It was a question of who blinked first. And they did’
In Diane Abbott’s Westminster office, alongside a picture of her with Jesse Jackson and the framed front page of The Voice from 1987 declaring “A New Era” with a picture of Abbott, Bernie Grant, Paul Boateng and Keith Vaz – the four newly elected Black MPs – there are a number of large empty packing boxes. Abbott points at them and laughs. “Ordinarily I wouldn’t bother.
Photobombing de Gaulle: how a forgotten picture rewrites the history of WWII
On August 26 1944, the day after the liberation of Paris, General Charles de Gaulle walked down the Champs-Élysées amid scenes of...
A broader songsheet: An interview with Gary Younge
When you got involved with Red Pepper in the 1990s, what did you hope for the alternative press? I was driven by this idea that the left was out of touch – not in terms of its policies but its interests. I wanted to bring in more of that place where the personal meets the political. I thought that the left could be more interesting than it tried to be. I still think there is a preponderance towards what is important as opposed to what is interesting.
Britanija, ostrvo koje nestaje
Kad smo se 2015. vratili u London, posle dvanaest godina života u Sjedinjenim Državama, nismo uspeli da upišemo sina u lokalnu osnovnu školu. Odeljenje koje je trebalo da ga primi u školi u Hakniju, kraju u kom živimo, već je bilo popunjeno maksimalnim brojem od 30 učenika i niko od njih nije planirao da se ispiše. Gotovo sve nereligijske škole u kraju takođe su bile popunjene. Na kraju je dobio mesto u školi udaljenoj dve milje.
Racial justice briefing launch event
Join Refugee Action for the launch of our new briefing, ‘Asylum in the UK: A front line for racial justice’. Based on research carried out by refugees and people seeking asylum. We have to talk about racism in the asylum system. And when we do, we have to recognise that the fight for racial justice and the fight for refugee rights are one and the same. This briefing and launch event intend to continue building bridges between the two movements.
The day apartheid died: South Africa’s first free elections – archive, 1994
South Africans defied organisational chaos, personal hardship and long queues to throng polling stations yesterday for the historic all-race election that crowned their long march towards democracy.
In Britain's degraded politics, fighting racism has become a cynical game | Gary Younge
Diane Abbott in 2019. Photograph: Dominc Lipinski/PA “The very serious function of racism is distraction,” Toni Morrison argued in a lecture in Portland, Oregon, in 1975. “ It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and so you spend 20 years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is.
Small Island | Gary Younge
When we returned to London in 2015, after twelve years in the US, we could not get our son into the local elementary school. His class in Hackney, the neighborhood where we live, had the maximum of thirty kids in it, and none were leaving. Pretty much all the nonreligious schools in the area were at full capacity, too. He ended up getting a spot at a school two miles away. When our daughter started kindergarten a couple of years later, her class was also capped at thirty, and full.
The Story Behind Martin Luther King’s iconic ‘I Have a Dream’
By Gary Younge The night before the March on Washington in 1963, Martin Luther King Jr asked his aides for advice about the speech he was due to make the next day. “Don't use the lines about ‘I have a dream,'” Wyatt Tee Walker told him. “It's trite, it's cliché. You've used it too many times already.” King had indeed employed the refrain several times before.
Story Behind Martin Luther King Jr’s Iconic ‘I Have A Dream’ Speech
By Gary Younge The night before the March on Washington in 1963, Martin Luther King Jr asked his aides for advice about the speech he was due to make the next day. “Don’t use the lines about ‘I have a dream,’” Wyatt Tee Walker told him. “It’s trite, it’s cliché. You’ve used it too many times already.” King had indeed employed the refrain several times before.
MLK’s Story Behind “I Have a Dream”
The night before the March on Washington in 1963, Martin Luther King Jr asked his aides for advice about the speech he was due to make the next day. “Don’t use the lines about ‘I have a dream,’” Wyatt Tee Walker told him. “It’s trite, it’s cliché. You’ve used it too many times already.” King had indeed employed the refrain several times before.
MLK's Story Behind "I Have a Dream"
Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech, like much of MLK’s legacy, is selectively remembered. It attacked the material roots of American racism, just as his anti–Vietnam War speech five years later excoriated American militarism. The night before the March on Washington in 1963, Martin Luther King Jr asked his aides for advice about the speech he was due to make the next day. “Don’t use the lines about ‘I have a dream,’” Wyatt Tee Walker told him. “It’s trite, it’s cliché.
Uncommon Sense: BONUS EPISODE – Public Sociology, with Gary Younge, Chantelle Lewis, Cecilia Menjívar & Michaela Benson
About What is public sociology and why does it matter more than ever? Gary Younge, Chantelle Lewis and Cecilia Menjívar join Michaela Benson to reflect on its meaning, value and stakes. In a time of perpetual crisis and gross inequality, how can sociologists best change minds and set agendas? Why are some voices valued over others? And who does being truly “public” involve more than simply being high profile?
‘We Return Fighting’ | Gary Younge
In the summer of 1944 First Sergeant Jefferson Wiggins was just outside the French town of St.-Lô, on his way to help liberate the Netherlands, when a woman offered him a bottle of calvados. “You don’t understand how it is to have your freedom, to lose it and then to regain it,” she told him. Wiggins, an African American soldier from Dothan, Alabama, was in his late teens. He did not speak French.
Arriving Without Belonging | Gary Younge
In 1987 Maya Angelou delivered a poetry performance to a packed theater in Lewisham, South London. The theme of the evening was love—“romantic love, agape love, sensual love, familial love, and self-love”—but also what she called “love for what might seem to be unlovable.” Angelou was thinking of how some people felt toward their Black forebears who had suffered degradation, who had been forced to make a show of their subservience just to survive.
Lov na crne ljude
Kada su 2020. počele demonstracije pokreta Black Lives Matter, prvo u Sjedinjenim Državama a potom i širom sveta, glavna meta protesta nije bio Derek Chauvin, policajac iz Mineapolisa koji je ubio Georgea Floyda. Floydovo ubistvo izazvalo je snažnu reakciju javnosti zato što je Chauvinova brutalnost jasno ukazala na jedan mnogo dublji problem.
Making News: Notes on a Scandal
* * * Our understanding of what constitutes news can be summed up in an aphorism shared at some stage in most journalism departments: ‘When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.’ The logic here is clear. Things that one expects to happen are not news; but events that challenge our perception of what should happen are news. The problem is that those perceptions, even when they are accurate, are not forged objectively.
Royal Academy of Arts
From the Summer 2023 issue of RA Magazine, issued quarterly to Friends of the RA. As police turned hoses and unleashed dogs on Black children demanding equality in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, the United States Secretary of State Dean Rusk lamented the impact that America’s racial violence was inflicting on its soft power at a crucial moment.
On the Banning of Black History in Florida, and “The Crown”
Skip to content Race and Ethnicity United Kingdom Podcasts On the Banning of Black History in Florida, and “The Crown” On the Banning of Black History in Florida, and The Crown On this week’s episode of Start Making Sense, we discuss attacks on Black Studies, and The Crown on Netflix.February 16, 2023 Black history is being banned in Florida and excluded from the College Board’s recommended AP Black Studies course.Powered by RedCircle Also on this episode: The Royal Family and The Crown—you...
Britain’s Winter of Discontent
London—Every Thursday at 8 pm during the spring of 2020, British people would emerge from lockdown for a few brief minutes and make some noise. Some of us bashed pots and pans, others cheered and whooped, others simply clapped. This display of national gratitude was for our “essential workers”—nurses, bus and train drivers, teachers and sanitation and Deliveroo workers—who had to do their jobs so that society could function.
Lo spirito della resistenza in Uk: intervista a Mick Lynch
Una discussione ad ampio raggio su sindacalismo, classe operaia, la leadership laburista di Keir Starmer, il cambiamento climatico, il movimento Black Lives Matter – e sulle prossime elezioni generali britanniche. Gary Younge: Voglio iniziare cercando di capire da dove provieni. Sei nato nel 1962, in una famiglia con cinque figli, a Paddington, da genitori irlandesi arrivati qui durante la guerra.
The Strange Thrills of “The Crown”
I was in Barbados, visiting relatives, when Princess Diana died. That afternoon I met an Englishwoman on a walk. “I feel so awful just being out enjoying myself,” she told me. “I’m sure if you died, she’d have no problem going on with her holiday,” I replied. The woman was appalled and offended. I was genuinely baffled. It was the first and last conversation I had with a stranger on the topic. In both my personal and professional life, I don’t do royals.
EP.199 - GARY YOUNGE — ADAM BUXTON
Adam talks with British journalist and author Gary Younge about gun violence in America, identity politics and 'Uncle Toms'. Conversation recorded face to face in London, 17th November, 2022 Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support and conversation editing.
Leaderless, Rudderless Britain at the Mercy of Desperate Conservatives
London—“I can believe six impossible things before breakfast,” the Queen tells Alice, in Alice in Wonderland. It feels like over the last 6 weeks Britain has been waking up to at least that—and then some. In just 44 days the country lost a Queen, a pound, economic credibility, a chancellor, a home secretary, a prime minister—and its political sanity.
Amid Inflation and Corporate Windfalls, French Workers Are Rising Up
Martigues—Laurent has worked more than 20 years for the French Postal Service, but the mail carrier still earns just about €1,600 a month after Social Security contributions, a meager rate that’s getting weaker and weaker with rising inflation. “We can’t keep living like this,” he told me at a rally in this historically industrial city just outside of Marseille. Laurent joined one of more than 100 demonstrations on Tuesday in support of nationwide strikes across the public and private sectors.
British Prime Minister Liz Truss Is No Margaret Thatcher
London—British Conservative Party conferences normally give their leaders unadulterated adulation, but these are far from normal times in the land of hope and glory. The delegates did their best to put on a show of loyalty in Birmingham when Prime Minister Liz Truss made her maiden speech, but it can’t have been easy with the party hitting record lows in the polls after the turmoil of the past two weeks.
Meet Liz Truss, Britain’s New Conservative Prime Minister
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London—In the 2015 general election campaign, the Tory prime minister, David Cameron, threatened a “coalition of chaos” if Labour were to emerge as the largest party and govern with the assistance of the Scottish National Party. In the end, the Tories won outright. Since then we have had three general elections (ordinarily, only one would have been necessary), fallen face first-out of the European Union, and are now on our fourth prime minister in six years.
By Gary Younge, Mychal Denzel Smith Verified, Mary Dejevsky Verified, Natasha Hakimi Zapata Verified
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The Nation
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Boris Johnson's (Far From Final) Bill for Damages
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“Them’s the breaks,” an unrepentant Boris Johnson told reporters crowding outside Downing Street on July 7. Just 1,079 days after he took the reins of the United Kingdom’s government, the man once dubbed “Britain’s Trump” resigned in a storm of scandals, lost local elections, and plummeting popularity ratings.
By Natasha Hakimi Zapata Verified, Mychal Denzel Smith Verified, Gary Younge, Ali M. Latifi Verified
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The Nation
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Boris Johnson’s Downfall Also Marks Brexit’s Final Act
As the ethical lapses kept piling up, Boris Johnson, who studied classics at Oxford university’s Balliol college, reached for the moral code of the Iliad. “He thinks in classical terms,” one MP told the London Times. “For him there is no greater honour in resigning than being killed…. if you are going to die, go down fighting.” It was quite a reach. Ultimately Johnson’s end owed more to Homer Simpson than to Homer the ancient Greek author. He didn’t go down fighting but was dragged out in denial.
Boris Johnson’s Days Are Numbered
When British Prime Minister Boris Johnson arrived at St Paul’s Cathedral earlier in June for the Jubilee Thanksgiving service, the flag-waving royalists took a break from their revelry to boo him. The next day, he received notice that the number of parliamentary colleagues calling for a vote of no-confidence in his leadership had reached a threshold, and he would effectively have to run again for his job. Forty-one percent of Tory MPs called on him to go.
Can a United Left Win in Macron’s France?
Paris—Rachel Keke knows her way around a picket line. On a recent Saturday morning, at a branch of the supermarket chain Monoprix in a well-to-do Paris neighborhood, the 48-year-old housekeeper traded hugs with workers and supporters gathered outside.
The war in Ukraine has exposed the west’s refugee hypocrisy
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The war in Ukraine has exposed the west’s refugee hypocrisy
“I could fall in love with a sumo wrestler if he told stories and made me laugh,” Maya Angelou once told me. “Obviously, it would be easier if someone was African American… But if I make the effort to learn the language and respect the mores then I should be able to get along anywhere and with any kind of people. I think I belong wherever human beings are.” Ukrainians are no better, or worse, than Syrians, Yemenis, Eritreans or Iraqis at telling people stories and making them laugh.
Black Like Me? “Bridgerton” and the Fantasy of a Non-Racist Past
When I first moved to the US from London, I asked an American journalist what kind of reception I might expect as a Black Briton. “Well, when they hear an English accent, Americans usually add about 20 points to your IQ,” he said.
It’s Boris’s Party and Apparently He Can Booze if He Wants To
Boris Johnson in front of 10 Downing Street. (Dan Kitwood / Getty Images) Subscribe to The Nation Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Get The Nation’s Weekly Newsletter Fridays. The best of the week. By signing up, you confirm that you are over the age of 16 and agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Thank you for signing up for The Nation’s weekly newsletter.
Dawn Foster: a voice from the sharp end
Dawn Foster, who died suddenly at home in July, was so much more than a talented journalist. Raised in Newport, Wales, she was the rarest of public figures – a high-profile, working-class voice in Britain’s media landscape.
Un anno con le scrittrici africane
24 dicembre 2021 24 dicembre 2021 11:13 Questo articolo è stato pubblicato il 25 gennaio 2019 sul numero 1291 di Internazionale. Alla festa di Natale del Guardian nel 2017 – una cosa abbastanza dimessa, dove la proporzione tra chi vorrebbe ballare e chi invece preferisce parlare è almeno di uno a cinque – ho conosciuto Chibundu Onuzo, una scrittrice nigeriana. “Abbiamo lo stesso editore”, mi ha detto. “Scusami, non ho letto il tuo libro”, le ho detto io.
Giving Josephine Baker a Hero’s Grave Won’t Bury the Truth…
About France’s republican racism. By Gary YoungeTwitter November 29, 2021 fb tw mail Print msg wa sms Bookmark November 29, 2021 Dancer, spy, activist: In France, Baker found acceptance, fame, love—and a country for which she was prepared to risk her life.
Britain’s Labour Party Is Still Missing in Action
On the heels of its party conference, the Labour Party seems as far from power as ever. fb tw mail Print msg wa sms Bookmark October 1, 2021 Labour leader Keir Starmer gives his keynote speech on the final day of the annual Labour Party conference in Brighton, England. (Justin Tallis / AFP via Getty Images) Subscribe to The Nation Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Get The Nation’s Weekly Newsletter Fridays. The best of the week.
From Vietnam to Afghanistan-and Back: An Offering
If you only ever imagined us as your enemies, how could we be anything else? By Drew PhamTwitter Today 5:30 am fb tw mail Print msg wa sms Bookmark September 8, 2021 Media representatives film and take pictures of a US Air Force aircraft parked on the tarmac after an evacuation flight from Kabul at the Rota Naval Base in southern Spain. (Cristina Quicler / AFP via Getty Images) Subscribe to The Nation Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Get The Nation’s Weekly Newsletter Fridays.
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