i don't know what justice is any more. a 20—year—old man dies of a suspected drug overdose and three others are stabbed after thousands of people attend two raves in greater manchester, despite the lockdown. and a virtual church service is held to remember the 72 people who died in the grenfell tower fire three years ago. one headlines at the top of the hour. —— more headlines. now on bbc news, global questions invites its international audience to put their questions to a panel of experts on the impact of the pandemic. hello, and welcome to london for this edition of global questions with me, zeinab badawi. the killing of george floyd has sent shock waves around the world and has reignited long—held demands for an end to racism and white privilege, which has been maintained at the expense of others

within communities, countries and at the international level. in this global questions, we ask if the global system is racist and, if so, what can be done to fix it? well, i'm now inside the bbc‘s headquarters here in central london and, of course, we have to bring you our two panellists and our audience members, who will be putting questions to them, and they willjoin us via video link from all over the world. let me tell you who's in the hot seat this week. we have alice bah kuhnke, who was, until a few months ago, minister of culture and democracy in sweden. she is now an mep, one of the few black members of the european parliament. and baratunde thurston

is an african—american writer, activist and comedian. he wrote the new york times bestseller how to be black, and is currently hosting live on lockdown on his instagram. welcome to you both and, of course, to our audience members. a round of applause from me. and welcome to you, wherever you're watching, and remember you too can join the conversation. it is #bbcglobalquestions, let's get right down to ourfirst question, and it's from melbourne in australia, down under, joanna, what's your question, please? hi, my question is, equally shocking racist acts and criminal injustice have happened so many times in the past, yet we have not seen such large—scale, widespread protests. what makes the incident of george floyd different? alice, is it different this time? does it feel like that to you, as somebody who's campaigned, really, pretty much all your life against racial injustice? well, i think and i feel

that there is some kind of difference this time, and i think it's due to the fact that we are living in a pandemic. the covid—19 pandemic is still going on and still going strong. and we know that the consequences from the pandemic will hit the poor and the black the hardest, and we are also living in a climate crisis, so i think there are so many things that really plays its part why, and that's why we are reacting on a whole other level this time. baratunde, do you agree with alice, do you feel it is different this time because of all the reasons she's. . ? i do think in many ways it is different this time. we had a flagrant violation of someone‘s human rights and, indeed, their life, in daytime, with multiple witnesses and multiple video cameras, and to alice's point, being in the middle of a pandemic, i think, is a significant reason why

this has gotten more attention. we literally have no distractions. there is no sports happening, there is no live reality television programmes, we can't go to the mall or to a shop, we are all... we've been forced to bear witness to this heinous crime. and we in the us have been trapped in our homes and denied income, as have people all around the world, so we are focused in a way that i don't think previous incidents have given us the opportunity to be. and, joanna, do you think it's going to perhaps help bring about change in australia in the way that aboriginal rights groups hope it will? absolutely. everyone around me, people of my generation, are starting to learn to educate themselves to become more aware of our histories. ithink, generally, yes, it's definitely changing. ok. let's go to the united states now, to boca raton, florida, to a student there, tahid. what's your question, please? my question is, will a global police

reform be necessary to help prevent and eventually eradicate racism, inequality and police brutality within our societies? baratunde, there's been a lot made about police reform, particularly by the democrats in the united states. yes, there has. and i think fixing policing is key. to my fellow american in florida, his question, to ending various forms of racism and discrimination. policing in this country, in the us, has been designed to control populations much more than provide public health and safety, and we've exported our model, both through arms sales as well as through trainings, where folks look up to the united states police forces, and we are not alone in having a police violence issue. we are alone in the excessiveness of the use of excessive force in this country. we are literally off some of the charts. so i do think we're going to need, notjust internal reform in the us, but the system of money that encourages an overweaponisation

of law enforcement, and an overdependence, plus an exportation of the us model, it's going to have to happen around the world as well. alice? i think that the education that is needed and that will come, hopefully will come out of this, the education of our armed forces in different ways, and how they use their means and use the powers that they have, and that they have monopoly on, i think that is a crucial question and something that we are discussing in sweden, we are discussing it in brussels, that we need to make sure that the trust that is needed to be from the people towards the police must... i mean, it's crucial that the trust exists, and right now it's questionable, and many people around the world in different countries don't feel the trust for the police, and when the police don't have that trust, our whole society is on the tipping edge.

thanks very much indeed for that. ok, let's now go to indian—administered kashmir, and to saurabh bandari there. what do you want to ask our panellists, saurabh? my question, why america has become the hub of racism? because in the last two decades we have seen the racism cases coming from america, and this is a matter of concern because as it is a civilised nation, if the cases are coming from there, what will happen in the rest of the world? this is my question, thank you. a question there that some people may disagree with. i don't what you think, baratunde, why is the united states the hub of racism, according to saurabh? yeah, that's a powerful and very complex question. i'll try to be very simple in my answer. the united states was founded on racism. simply put, that's why. there were a group of europeans who were tired of being subjugated on their lands, and they came

to this one and subjugated the people who were here. we invented the mass trade, with the help of the british and the portuguese and the dutch and french, we invented a system of dehumanisation based on race, and the british and in particular the united states perfected it, and made it a really dark science, the dehumanisation of people from being of african descent, the trading of those bodies, the whipping of those bodies, and it built our society. so part of america's power in the world, a huge part of it, is derived from racism, and we haven't been very honest about that. this is not me trying to be totally negative about my own country, which i also love, but i also need to be honest. so i think one of the reasons that we are a hub of racism is because racism has served this country very well. and we have the power... but, baratunde, just before i go to alice very quickly, you've seen how these anti—race protests have galvanised people from all walks of life

and from all ethnicities in the united states? it sounds like you are saying all white americans are racist? no, i'm definitely not saying all white americans are racist. i actually think in many ways every american has been infected with the disease of racism. we are all born into a very corrupt power—abusing system, so we can't help but exhibit it. it has been really beautiful to see, and this is something that makes this moment feel different from some in the past, the number of white americans, non—black americans, corporate leaders, sport leaders, coaches, league officials even and shoe companies saying black lives matter. that is different. and you can live in a racist society and still fight against that racism and not be totally corrupted by it. all right. alice, let me just ask you this because we've had a lot of points on social media, people talking about addressing unconscious bias towards black people and then this particular kind of issue, which is to do with cultural symbols

like statues, for instance. black people have not chosen their past, but they still feel they have to... the weight of history from hundreds of years ago, they still have to feel that. somebody else says this is what happens when you try to sweep colonialism and slavery under the rug, like they don't leave scars. you were a minister of culture and democracy until recently in sweden. how do you address this question of the cultural symbols that people have alluded to here? for me, it's so obvious that the lack of education and the lack of having a critical view on the history, on the narrative of who we are and where we come from, is really... i mean, is a bad thing and is standing in the way for creating an equal society. so of course we need to have discussion about the names of the streets and what statues we have and so on and so forth, but we mustn't be fooled and believe

thatjust because we throw a statue into the river, suddenly racism will disappear. i mean, so much more is needed. it's easy, it's the easy way out to let politicians say, oh, we changed the name of this street, ok, check on that. imean, no. we need so much more. on that question because we have seen confederate statues, you know, figures from that period, the civil war, ba ratunde, do you think these statues should come down or stay up? i think they should come down. i think in many cases they should be preserved in a museum of horrors and things we shouldn't celebrate. in the us, we've got a bunch of phony statues to traders and people who stood against a united republic and the freedom of all human beings, and we don't have statues to the people who built the actual nation, we don't have statues to the people who were crushed to make space for the nation that would be born on their blood. around the world i've seen this,

all over europe as well, there's a lot of celebration of people who were colonialist, who were exploiters and extractors of wealth and value from peoples all over the world, and they are still celebrated too. and what we celebrate, literally what we put on a pedestal, is a key indicator of what our values are. all right, thank you both very much indeed. let's now go to colombo, the capital of sri lanka, to amman. what is the question you want to ask, please, amman? so my question is how will the george floyd incident and the wave of antiracism that followed impact the racial awareness of minorities in third world countries across the globe? the impact on racial awareness of minorities in less developed countries around the world. ok, alice? well, i think that one thing that differs from this murder compared to previous ones is also

that the world is more global today. i mean, we are getting more connected with each other for every minute that goes by, so i think... i've been talking to, text messaging with my relatives in west africa during the hours when they had electricity and could load the battery and their mobile phones, and they knew about it, they knew about the murder, and they wrote to me and said now maybe it is happening, freedom is coming, and so on and so forth. so i think that minorities and poor people and people that are not privileged will have the chance to also get information about this, and with the information and the knowledge that people are raising their voice, going out in the streets and protesting and really not accepting the racist system could reach minorities around

the world in a way that has not been done before, and hopefully it will be a tool for them also to get to know about their rights. over to you, baratunde. i think we are all connected, in a much more digital sense and in a visceral sense. and when you look at other types of freedom movements in the world's history, labour movements, women's rights movements, the rights of indigenous people and minorities, the rights of children, they are bolstered by the development of those movements in other nations. so none of us is free until all others are free, until all of us are free, this is a common refrain for freedom movements and solidarity going back generations. i think we feel that. i certainly feel less alone in the struggles of the united states, seeing people take to the streets of auckland and lagos at the same time for very similar issues. we've seen it in representations around the occupy wall street

movement years ago, the power of money, that is something else that needs to be changed around the world. so i think there's an opportunity for folks in all kinds of nations at different stages of development to feel strengthened by the possibility of shifting how power is used and abused. a lot of people would say we need to take these actions to eradicate racism, but how do you actually eradicate the thought that black people are inferior somehow, which is almost like an ideology? i would say that eradicating racist thoughts is very different from eradicating the impacts of racism. there are the thoughts, and then there are the power structures which allows those thoughts to have power, unfairly, over other people's lives. and we should be working on both. but i don't think it's enough to do either. if we change a bunch of processes, but don't get inside the minds of people, then it's probably not going to stick. if we get a bunch of people who are thinking the right things, but still operating in a corrupt power structure that's designed to dehumanise darker skinned people, that's designed to exploit certain

parts of society or see people as not fully part of the society, then that also won't stick either, so we need both of those to fully push this away. and an extra challenge, a sort of scientific challenge, is that we are evolved to see difference, we are evolved to have concepts of in—group and out—group, and part of why we build civilisations and society is to overcome some of those instincts. i have the instinct to want to smack somebody at various times in the week. i don't do it, right? i exercise control over some of those. i don't say everything that's on my mind out of respect for my fellow human beings, so we also have to recognise that just having thoughts and certainly having a sense of us versus them, to some degree, is in our nature, but then we create process, we create society, we create rules and incentives to overcome that nature and bring out the better part of that nature so we can all benefit. alice, i mean, get back into the schools and try to educate people from a very early age

that racism is not something which is acceptable. i'm convinced that we need to work with being antiracist all the time. it has to be something that starts on a high level and keeps on going. we will not be finished because there will come new generations, and when it comes to being willing to share power, because it's also about power, then it doesn't matter how much education one has, you could be a professor and be racist, you can be filled with knowledge about how human beings function and so on and so forth, we also need to make sure that we have legislation in place and that we use the legislation and that we use the legislation that we have. the laws must be functional. but laws don't always change minds, do they? but anyway, all right. no, but then we have laws that will be used by force. i mean, racism is forbidden

in almost every country, and still racism exists. and why do we accept having laws and legislation that doesn't work? why do we accept that? amman, do you want to come back to our two panellists and pick up on anything they've said? yeah, go ahead? so my question is actually... while i agree with them on most of it, like realistically, even though... no matter how we control and how much we fight, as minorities, considering how the whole george floyd incident went down, would it have to go that far for us to have long—term change in those third world countries, and is there any possible solution we can go through without taking that route, to solve it more peacefully? baratunde? amman, thank you so much for asking that. the truth is, i hope not. i hope not every individual on this planet has to experience the pain of a lesson for it to resonate

with them, i hope the same for every nation. sometimes really dramatic, violent and unjust incidents need to happen to catalyse a movement and get that sort of change. but as i look at a different sort of development, a different sort of change, just within technology we've actually seen developing nations do this leapfrogging where they don't dig up all their streets, they went straight to wireless, as one very small, slightly related example. i think there is room for innovation, for inspiration. i'm not guaranteeing it, i am speaking my dream much more than my prediction, but we can't always require everyone to go through the exact sort of pain to be able to empathise and learn a lesson, otherwise no lessons would ever have stuck throughout world history, so i know it's possible to make those leaps without going through the depths of a george floyd—like situation. i hope that's what happens. alice, did you want to come back to amman?

u nfortu nately, i'm also quite pessimistic, because the human being is such a strange creature. we know how the world looks, we know what happened during the second world war, we know what racism leads to, and we know that if you want to be a sustainable society, racism is not a good idea. it costs money, it is ineffective, it is bad, and still we do it. so i think we really need to have pressure on every level to avoid more people being killed and suffering. thank you both. now let's go to our final question, from a nigerian postgraduate student at oxford university, where she is president of the african society there. what do you want to ask the panellists? multilateral institutions,

which to a very large extent have very significant influences on the political and economic fate of countries, continue to exclude black and minority voices, so the united nations, for instance, has no african country as a permanent member on its security council. how can these sorts of systems be reformed, and do you think these changes we are seeing in the world can have any impact on these institutions? all right, alice, that's kind of flipping the question, really, why do white people maintain a grip on multilateral institutions and the international system politically, economically, culturally and socially and so on? so why has white privilege ruled the world? one main factor is again power. when you get the grip of power and you don't want to share,

of course, also you tend to recruit people who define yourself, saying you are the one who should be in this kind of position. on social media, somebody said look at the european commission and parliament, that is a global system based on racism, so very quickly on the issue of the european parliament and the european commission and so on, are you happy with the representation of black and minority ethnic groups? no, no, no. it is a disgrace. we are representing the people of the european union, and we are like five or six black persons. that is not... we should have been more. i think this is a huge challenge, because we know that we need the trust from the people to be able to hold the democratic fort, and this will crack down

if we are not better in making sure that you can reach the position of being an mep even if you are black or a woman or an lgbti person and so on and so forth. baratunde, how would you answer this question? i appreciate the question a lot, there is a lot in the question. my answer is, in part, we have a global economic system which is built on foundations of eurocentric values, of white supremacy, but as importantly on exploitation of limited resources, human and natural, on extraction and on a belief in infinite growth. those are incompatible. you cannot believe in a model of infinite growth on a base of limited human and natural resources, and what we get out of that is chaos and the destruction of the only planet we have the proven ability

to be inhabitants of. there's another way to build the economic system, and the cost of building a model of scarcity and exploitation is that those with power in that model see it as a zero—sum game, the gain of another is their loss and nobody wants to lose anything, so to get beyond this requires significant effort. it requires a re—imagination ofjust how economies work. would you like to come back? yes, ijust want to select from the responses and just be clear that it is a long—term ambition to reform the global economic system in a way that is more representative and inclusive, and i think it is something we all have to keep in our consciousness, to figure how best to go about it. alice? i am so glad we are having this discussion. i hope we do not end it. i am so afraid we wake up

in a month or six months, or there is another murder of a black person, and we have more black bodies showing us that nothing is changing, and i hope that we all, from our different platforms and perspectives, understand that we need to hang in there and not give up and keep on raising our voice and not accepting the circumstances, not accepting the systems that try to create more inequality, we must raise our voice for a new world and a new order. thank you to my panellists, alice bah kuhnke and baratunde thurston, and all the questioners from around the world and to you, wherever you are watching or listening. we are the programme that brings you the trend lines behind the headlines, i hope we have thrown light on this very difficult question of whether the global

system is racist. i normally ask for a show of hands, but i think there was very much consensus that it is. the bigger question is what to do with it. for now, from me, zeinab badawi, and the rest of the bigger global questions team, goodbye. for most of us another fine day out there, blue skies and scattered clouds on the horizon. some of those clouds on the horizon. some of those clouds will develop into towering thunderstorms and we could have downpours of hail and gusty winds as well, but the chancellor actually what any one storm hitting your region is very low and most of us will not be getting thunderstorms. there is a weather system circling

the uk at the moment that is actually helping to generate some of the clouds and the thunderstorms. it is with us for the next few days, so we could have similar weather across the uk for we could have similar weather across the ukfora we could have similar weather across the uk for a few more days, that risk of showers and thunderstorms. by risk of showers and thunderstorms. by the end of the afternoon we will have seen some by the end of the afternoon we will have seen some storms by the end of the afternoon we will have seen some storms developing across parts of the midlands, in the south it will be three of such showers and storms, but from the east midlands into the northern parts of wales and eastern areas of northern ireland could see some heavy downpours through the course of the late afternoon and into the evening hours as well. eastern scotla nd evening hours as well. eastern scotland and in fact the entire or most of the north sea coast a com pletely most of the north sea coast a completely different story, it has been overcast and misty in places, see threats and that will continue through this evening and overnight. the show will die away overnight, so the end of the night is dry and very worn in places, temperatures no lower than 14 degrees in liverpool. here is monday and that lit weather

system i showed you, circling the uk, is still with us and it will continue to generate showers and thunderstorms, but i think tomorrow the distribution of the showers and the distribution of the showers and the storms will be somewhat different. in fact, the thinking is perhaps across more northern parts of the country, so the midlands and the south will see far fewer storms. the temperatures will rise and the sunshine will get up to 2a degrees. on tuesday, we are expecting the showers to become more widespread across the uk and you can see them brewing there almost in every corner of the country, so again fund and lighting is a possibility on tuesday almost anywhere. typical summer temperatures, into the low 20s in the south, high teens across the north sea coast. i mention that this kind of weather is going to continue for a female more days yet and it looks like it will be around thursday we will see the showers again. goodbye.

this is bbc news — the headlines: borisjohnson orders a review of the two—metre social distancing rule in england — ahead of non—essential shops re—opening tomorrow. the country has come together to squash the incidence of the disease down, and that gives us the potential now to look at those rules. unrest in the us city of atlanta after 27—year—old rayshard brooks is shot dead by police officers — the family's lawyer expresses his despair. i could even say we want justice, but i don't even care any more. i don't know what that is, and i've been doing this for 15 years. i don't know what justice is any more. a 20—year—old man dies of a suspected drug overdose,