A UN human rights lawyer who said the word ‘superficial’ was a ‘racial trope’ has been behind a string of controversial comments – including accusing an Apple worker of ‘mansplaining’ for telling a woman who asked to be served by a female member of staff, ‘I’ll be happy to help’.
Dominique Day chaired a working group of experts on people of African descent which said there had been a failure to tackle ‘systemic’ racism in the UK – a finding the Government said was based on a ‘superficial analysis’. In response, Miss Day claimed this was an ‘upgrade’ from ‘lazy’ and called it a ‘familiar racial trope’.
Her UN group has previously claimed racism causes global warming and slammed a major race report from the UK Government‘s Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities for ‘normalising white supremacy’.
Miss Day also writes about issues around race and gender in a personal capacity, including the discrimination faced by dogs with ‘black-sounding names’ and the ways ‘motherhood’ has ‘indispensably sustained white supremacy’.
Dominique Day chaired a working group of experts on people of African descent which said there had been a failure to tackle ‘systemic’ racism in the UK
The American’s comments about a ‘mansplaining’ Apple employee came in a thread about an incident at a store in New York in August 2021.
Journalist Laura Bassett wrote: ‘I’m at Apple Store SoHo. A grey-haired woman walks in and announces, ”I’d like to buy a phone from a woman.” Male associate says, ”I’d be happy to help you!” She replies, ”No offense but I demand a woman. Men are too linear and can’t understand what I need in a phone.” lmao.’
After a follower questioned why the male employee had thought the customer could be talking about him, Ms Day claimed that he had been acting according to ‘the patriarchy handbook’.
She wrote: ‘I think you already know the belief that white male voices/leadership are always necessary and relevant is in the patriarchy handbook, with mansplaining as the chief weapon for those who fail to appreciate it.’
Miss Day attended Harvard College and Stanford Law School and now lives in New York City, where she runs social justice organisation Daylight.
In 2018, she wrote in a blog post on Medium about the links between the ‘mothering’ instinct and racism.
The American’s comments about a ‘mansplaining’ Apple employee came in a thread about an incident at a store in New York in August 2021
‘Motherhood has indispensably sustained white supremacy in America. We must reckon with the covert, even intimate, acts of caring that perpetuate institutional racism,’ she wrote.
The attorney said mothers were often ‘openly, flagrantly racist’ out of a desire to protect their children, citing the example of a Colorado woman who called the police on two Native American teenagers during her son’s college tour because they looked ‘creepy’.
Last year, she cited a study in an academic journal which found that dogs with black or Hispanic-sounding names were adopted slower.
Responding to the report, she said: ‘Folks just run on racism. Shelter dogs, especially pit bulls, with Black-sounding names are adopted slower. People overlay racial fears and white supremacy wherever the discretion to do so exists.’
In 2021, a report carried out by Miss Day’s UN working group found that climate change was ‘linked to economic and political frameworks that have systematically disregarded the right to life and other core human rights for people of African descent’.
It added: ‘Climate change is a biproduct of our ongoing economic reliance on extraction, exploitation and accumulation through dispossession,’ said the experts.
The group’s report on racism in Britain was published after a 10-day visit to the country last week to discover evidence of ‘racism, xenophobia and Afrophobia’.
After the visit, it wrote to the government to express ‘very extreme concern’ about the failure to address ‘structural, institutional and systemic racism’ against black people in Britain.
It’s not the first time Miss Day has waded in to UK politics, with the lawyer previously accusing Cabinet minister Dominic Raab of ‘brass neck’ for a November 2020 tweet about the importance of defending the rights of Britons living in EU countries
In response, Number 10 ‘strongly’ rejected most of its findings and said the report presented a ‘superficial analysis’ of complex issues.
This angered Miss Day, who claimed the word ‘superficial’ was an ‘upgrade’ from ‘lazy’ – which she said was used in one meeting during her trip – and called it a ‘familiar racial trope’.
But former Cabinet minister Shailesh Vara, whose family moved to Britain from Uganda in the 1960s, told MailOnline the Downing Street response was ‘not a trope in any way’.
‘A 10-day tour around England is hardly a proper way to truly understand the situation. Of course it is superficial analysis, it is not a trope in any way,’ the Tory MP said.
‘The UN report doesn’t reflect the UK as it is. The fact that so many people from across the world want to come and live here sends out a powerful message and speaks volumes to rebut the UN analysis.’
It’s not the first time Miss Day has waded in to UK politics, with the lawyer previously accusing Cabinet minister Dominic Raab of ‘brass neck’ for a November 2020 tweet about the importance of defending the rights of Britons living in EU countries.
In addition, her working group slammed a flagship 2021 study by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities which found there was no evidence of institutional racism in the UK suggesting it contributed towards ‘white supremacism’.
The UN group has a ‘robust’ discussion with Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch, an ‘anti-woke’ Tory ‘rising star’ who was born in Nigeria and is touted as a future Prime Minister
In its recent report on racial discrimination in the UK, Miss Day’s group called for an immediate and unconditional moratorium on the use of joint enterprise laws by prosecutions and the use of strip searches by police during stop and searches.
‘We have serious concerns about impunity and the failure to address racial disparities in the criminal justice system, deaths in police custody, ‘joint enterprise’ convictions and the dehumanising nature of the stop and (strip) search,’ it said in a statement.
In preliminary findings, it also claimed that austerity measures had exacerbated racism and racial discrimination for black people.
Speaking at a press conference in London on Friday, Ms Day said: ‘I’ve never visited a country before where there is a culture of fear pervading black communities – relating to a range of asylum, residency, policing issues.
‘An entire community experiences constant and ongoing human rights violations as a routine and normalised part of daily life.’
A Government spokesman said: ‘We strongly reject most of these findings. The report wrongly views people of African descent as a single homogeneous group and presents a superficial analysis of complex issues that fails to look at all possible causes of disparities, not just race.
‘We are proud that the UK is an open, tolerant and welcoming country but this hard-earned global reputation is not properly reflected in this report. We are not complacent and recognise some people experience racism in Britain, but we are very clear this has no place in our society and must be rooted out.
‘The UK government has made great strides in addressing racial and ethnic disparities, most recently with our ground-breaking Inclusive Britain strategy, which is focussed on closing outcome gaps between people from different ethnic backgrounds. Instead of sowing division we must celebrate the fact that this country strives to give everybody, from every community, in every corner of the UK, the opportunity to thrive and succeed.’