After Reform’s Election Wins, Many of Us Fear More Than Politics

 

After Reform UK’s major gains in the recent local elections, much of the national conversation focused on strategy, polling, and what the results might mean for Westminster. Commentators discussed Labour’s losses, Conservative collapse, and Nigel Farage’s political resurgence. But for many racialised people, disabled people, immigrants, refugees, Muslims, and other vulnerable communities, the emotional response has been very different.

For many of us, these results did not feel politically neutral.

They felt threatening.

Not because people are incapable of accepting democratic outcomes, but because the rhetoric surrounding these elections has already revealed how certain groups are viewed within sections of British political culture. The concern is not abstract. It is rooted in repeated public incidents involving Reform candidates and figures accused of racist, anti-immigrant, Islamophobic, antisemitic, and discriminatory remarks.

One newly elected Reform councillor was suspended after reports resurfaced that he had written online that Nigerians should be “melted down and used to fill potholes.” Other candidates linked to the party were scrutinised over alleged racist comments, far-right symbolism, Islamophobic posts, or conspiracy rhetoric. These incidents were not invented by political opponents after the fact. They were reported publicly during and after the election period, and in several cases the party itself responded through suspension or investigation.

And that matters.

Because political rhetoric does not simply disappear once ballots are counted. It shapes social atmosphere. It influences what people feel permitted to say openly. It affects how neighbours treat one another, how strangers behave in public, and how institutions respond to vulnerable groups.

When political figures repeatedly frame immigrants as threats, refugees as burdens, Muslims as suspicious, or disabled people as drains on public resources, some people become emboldened. Prejudices that once remained quieter begin surfacing more openly because individuals feel their views are now politically validated.

That is one of the deepest fears many racialised and vulnerable people are carrying in the aftermath of these elections.

Not only fear of policy changes, but fear of social permission.

Permission for racism to become louder.
Permission for xenophobia to become casual.
Permission for disabled people to be treated with even greater suspicion.
Permission for hostility to be reframed as honesty.

Many people from Black and brown communities already know what it means to live under constant low-level racial hostility: the comments about immigration, the assumptions about belonging, the questioning of competence, the subtle and overt reminders that whiteness is still treated as the national default. Muslims already know what it feels like to see ordinary existence politicised. Refugees already know what it means to be discussed more as problems than as human beings. Disabled people already navigate systems built around disbelief, surveillance, and conditional dignity.

That is why these election results feel emotionally heavy for many communities.

Because politics never remains confined to Parliament or council chambers. It enters workplaces, schools, GP surgeries, buses, streets, waiting rooms, universities, social media spaces, and everyday interactions. Once hostility becomes normalised politically, it often spreads socially.

And local government matters profoundly in this context.

Councils oversee social care, housing support, safeguarding systems, community services, and disability provision. For disabled people especially, local politics can shape the conditions of survival itself. Support packages, transport access, home adaptations, safeguarding interventions, and welfare assistance are all connected to institutions now operating within a broader political atmosphere increasingly shaped by anti-immigrant rhetoric and suspicion toward welfare systems.

For racialised disabled people, these fears become layered. Because race already affects whose pain is believed, whose distress is minimised, and whose vulnerability is treated compassionately. Many Black and brown disabled people already encounter systems where they must work harder to be perceived as deserving, credible, or non-threatening.

And perhaps that is what unsettles so many of us most deeply: the sense that prejudice is no longer remaining at the edges of political discourse but is becoming increasingly normalised within it.

History shows repeatedly that discrimination rarely begins with policy alone. It begins culturally. Through repetition. Through jokes. Through “common sense” rhetoric. Through the steady framing of certain groups as excessive, costly, suspicious, dangerous, or less deserving than others.

Then eventually institutions begin reflecting those assumptions back onto the people forced to depend on them.

I think many people underestimate how frightening that process can feel when you are already vulnerable. When your survival already depends on systems that are overstretched, conditional, and often shaped by disbelief, political hostility does not feel theoretical. It feels personal.

Because for many of us, politics is not an intellectual exercise.

It lives in whether you are safe walking down the street.
Whether racist abuse becomes more common.
Whether disabled people are treated with dignity.
Whether refugees are seen as human beings.
Whether support systems become harsher.
Whether compassion survives public life at all.

And that is why, after these election results, many vulnerable people are not simply thinking about politics.

We are thinking about what kind of society people are becoming willing to tolerate.

So what do we do now?

First, we refuse silence.

We refuse the idea that racialised people, disabled people, immigrants, refugees, Muslims, and other vulnerable communities should quietly absorb fear in order to appear “reasonable.” We refuse to normalise rhetoric that dehumanises people and then dismisses our concern as oversensitivity once we respond to it.

Second, we pay attention to local politics with the seriousness it deserves.

Too often, people focus only on Westminster while ignoring the fact that councils shape daily survival. Local government decides who receives support, which communities are protected, whose needs are prioritised, and which forms of vulnerability are treated as disposable. If we care about justice, dignity, and social protection, then council chambers matter just as much as Parliament.

Third, we document everything.

We document racist incidents.
We document discriminatory treatment.
We document cuts, exclusions, hostile rhetoric, and institutional failures.
Because one of the ways prejudice survives is through denial. People always claim vulnerable communities are exaggerating until evidence becomes impossible to ignore.

And finally, we protect one another.

This political moment will require solidarity across communities that are often deliberately divided against each other. Disabled people, migrants, Black and brown communities, refugees, Muslims, queer people, poor people, and all those pushed to the edges of public sympathy cannot afford isolation. Political rhetoric becomes most dangerous when vulnerable people are separated from one another and taught to compete for dignity.

We should not respond to this moment with panic.

But neither should we minimise what many people are feeling.

Because history shows that societies do not become hostile overnight. They become hostile gradually, through repetition, through normalisation, through public exhaustion with empathy.

And if we want a different future, then we have to resist that hardening now, socially, politically, locally, and collectively.

Not only for ourselves.

But for the kind of society we are still trying to protect.

AI, Deepfakes, and Violence Against Women

Introduction: When Violence No Longer Needs a Body

Artificial Intelligence is often discussed through the language of innovation, efficiency, and progress. Governments promote it. Universities celebrate it. Technology companies market it as the future. Yet beneath this optimistic narrative lies another reality, one that women are already experiencing in profoundly intimate and violent ways.

One of the clearest examples is the rise of AI-generated deepfakes.

Deepfakes use artificial intelligence to create fabricated but highly realistic images, videos, or audio recordings that make people appear to say or do things they never did. While the technology itself is not inherently gendered, its use has become overwhelmingly targeted toward women, particularly through the creation of non-consensual sexual content. Female journalists, academics, students, celebrities, politicians, and ordinary women have found their faces digitally inserted into pornographic videos without consent, often with devastating psychological, professional, and social consequences.

What makes this especially disturbing is not only the violation itself, but the ease with which it can now occur. A photograph taken from social media, a public interview clip, or a university profile picture can become raw material for sexual exploitation. Violence no longer requires physical proximity. It can be generated remotely, anonymously, and at scale.

This essay argues that AI-generated deepfakes represent a new form of gendered violence in which women’s bodies, identities, and reputations become technologically reproducible and endlessly manipulable. AI did not invent misogyny, but it has created new mechanisms through which misogyny can operate faster, wider, and with alarming legitimacy.

The Gendered Reality of Deepfake Abuse

Although deepfake technology has multiple applications, research consistently shows that the overwhelming majority of non-consensual deepfake content targets women in sexually explicit ways. The technology has become deeply entangled with existing patterns of misogyny, harassment, and sexual domination online.

This is significant because it reveals something important about AI itself: technologies do not emerge outside of culture. They absorb the values, desires, and violences already present within society. Deepfakes did not suddenly create the objectification of women; rather, they automated and intensified it.

The harm caused by deepfakes is often minimised because the images or videos are “not real.” But this distinction misunderstands the nature of violence. Psychological humiliation, reputational destruction, fear, anxiety, and loss of professional credibility are real consequences, regardless of whether the content is fabricated.

For women, especially those working in public-facing professions, the threat extends beyond embarrassment. Deepfakes can undermine authority, silence participation, and force withdrawal from public spaces. Female politicians, academics, and journalists are particularly vulnerable because credibility is already unevenly distributed along gendered lines. A manipulated video does not emerge into a neutral environment, it enters a culture already willing to scrutinise, sexualise, and disbelieve women.

The Collapse of Trust and the Weaponisation of Doubt

One of the most dangerous aspects of deepfake technology is its ability to destabilise trust itself.

Traditionally, photographs and videos have functioned as forms of evidence. AI-generated media disrupts this assumption by making fabrication increasingly difficult to detect. This creates what some scholars describe as a “liar’s dividend,” where genuine evidence can be dismissed as fake, while fabricated material can circulate as truth.

For women, this has profound implications.

Women already navigate cultures in which their testimony is frequently questioned, minimised, or reframed as emotional exaggeration. Deepfake technology intensifies this dynamic by introducing permanent uncertainty around visual evidence and identity. Women may struggle not only to prove that something happened, but also to prove that something did not happen.

This creates a particularly gendered form of vulnerability. A woman can become digitally violated without her participation, knowledge, or consent, while simultaneously carrying the burden of disproving the fabrication.

The violence, therefore, is not only sexual. It is epistemic. It attacks credibility, coherence, and trustworthiness.

Deepfakes, Power, and Institutional Vulnerability

The rise of deepfake abuse also raises urgent institutional questions, particularly within universities and workplaces.

Institutions increasingly encourage visibility. Staff and students are expected to maintain online professional profiles, participate in digital engagement, attend recorded meetings, and produce public-facing content. Yet this visibility also creates exposure. Images and videos shared for legitimate professional purposes can be extracted and repurposed into exploitative material.

Women in academia and leadership positions may therefore experience a new form of technological precarity: the awareness that professional visibility itself carries risk.

This matters because institutional responses often lag behind technological realities. Policies around harassment, misconduct, and safeguarding frequently remain grounded in older understandings of abuse that separate “real” violence from digital harm. As a result, women subjected to AI-generated exploitation may encounter confusion, minimisation, or procedural gaps when seeking support.

And once again, certain women are more exposed than others.

Black women and women of colour often experience overlapping forms of racialised misogyny online, including hypersexualisation, stereotyping, and disproportionate harassment. Deepfake technologies do not erase these dynamics, they reproduce them within digital form. AI systems trained within unequal societies inevitably inherit unequal patterns of representation and exploitation.

The Illusion of Neutral Technology

Defenders of AI often argue that technology itself is neutral and that responsibility lies solely with users. But this argument is too simplistic.

Technologies are shaped by the environments in which they are designed, funded, and deployed. Deepfake systems are not emerging in a social vacuum; they are developing within digital cultures that already normalise misogyny, harassment, and the commodification of women’s bodies.

Moreover, many AI systems are built under the assumption that innovation should move quickly, while ethical and legal protections struggle to keep pace. The result is a familiar pattern: women become the testing ground for technological harm long before institutions decide the harm is serious enough to address.

Neutrality, in this context, becomes a form of deflection.

Because when a technology overwhelmingly harms one group in particular, it becomes increasingly difficult to argue that its social effects are merely accidental.

Conclusion: Violence in the Age of Artificial Intimacy

AI-generated deepfakes reveal that violence against women is evolving alongside technology. Harm no longer requires physical contact, geographic proximity, or even direct interaction. A woman’s image, voice, or likeness can now be manipulated, circulated, and consumed without her consent, often by people she will never know.

What makes this especially dangerous is the combination of realism, speed, and scale. Deepfakes transform misogyny into something infinitely reproducible. They allow humiliation to circulate rapidly while making accountability increasingly difficult to secure.

AI did not invent violence against women. But it has created new infrastructures through which that violence can operate quietly, anonymously, and with technological sophistication.

And perhaps that is what is most unsettling.

Not simply that machines can fabricate women’s bodies, but that society continues to treat those violations as secondary harms until the damage becomes impossible to ignore.

Call to Action

If AI-generated violence against women is treated as an unfortunate side effect of innovation rather than a structural issue requiring urgent intervention, the consequences will only deepen. Deepfakes are not harmless digital experiments. They are part of a growing ecosystem of technological abuse that exploits the gaps between law, ethics, and accountability.

Governments, universities, technology companies, and institutions can no longer afford to respond reactively. There must be stronger legal protections around non-consensual AI-generated imagery, clearer institutional safeguarding policies, and greater accountability for platforms that allow exploitative content to circulate unchecked. AI development cannot continue to prioritise speed, profit, and experimentation while treating women’s safety as an afterthought.

But regulation alone is not enough.

We also need a cultural shift in how technological harm is understood. Violence does not become less real because it is digital. Psychological humiliation, reputational destruction, sexual exploitation, and fear are not diminished simply because a machine helped produce them.

And women should not have to prove catastrophic damage before their violation is taken seriously.

The conversation around AI must therefore move beyond fascination with innovation and begin asking harder questions about power, ethics, and who is expected to absorb the risks of technological progress. Because if we continue to treat AI as neutral while ignoring the unequal harms it produces, we are not witnessing the future of technology.

We are witnessing the automation of old violences in new forms.

 

Tomorrow, It Could Be One of Us: When Having a Voice Becomes a Death Sentence

I keep returning to the moment the news arrived, abrupt and disorienting in its finality. Yanar Mohammed has been assassinated. There is always a pause when a woman like Yanar Mohammed is killed. It is not only grief that settles in that instant, but recognition. A quiet, collective understanding of what it means when a woman dares to speak and is silenced for it.

Yanar Mohammed was not invisible, nor was she marginal in the sense institutions often imply when they fail to protect women. She was visible in precisely the ways that are publicly celebrated. She was outspoken, committed, and relentless in her defence of women’s rights. She embodied the very figure that global discourses of empowerment claim to uphold. Yet that visibility did not shield her. It marked her. It rendered her legible not only to those who supported her work, but to those who sought to extinguish it. This contradiction between celebration and exposure is one we continue to avoid confronting.

Violence against women is persistently framed as episodic, as though it emerges from isolated acts carried out by individuals. We are invited to understand each killing as tragic but singular, disconnected from broader structures. Yet the repetition itself tells a different story. In Iraq, particularly in the aftermath of the Tishreen protests, women who stepped into public life as organisers, protesters, and symbols of resistance were not only visible. They were targeted. Figures such as Sara Talib became emblematic not simply of dissent, but of the risks attached to it. Women were shot in their homes, pursued beyond the public sphere into spaces presumed to be private and safe. These acts were not random. They were deliberate. They communicated a message with chilling clarity. Speak, and you will be made into an example.

What is often less visible, but no less consequential, is the aftermath of such violence. The killing of one woman reverberates outward, disciplining those who remain. Silence begins to spread, not as absence but as strategy. Colleagues withdraw. Voices lower. Names are withheld. Women become cautious not only about what they say, but about being known at all. The question shifts from what must be said to what can be survived. Fear, in this sense, is not incidental. It is functional. It is doing precisely what it was designed to do by narrowing the space of participation until speaking itself becomes a risk calculation.

Even within that fear, something else emerges. A quieter, more unsettling question begins to take shape. Could this be me tomorrow? It is a question that resists geographical containment. There is a persistent temptation to locate such violence elsewhere and to frame it as a feature of instability in distant contexts. This is a deflection. The forms may differ and the intensity may vary, but the pattern persists across borders. In Brazil, women organising in favelas encounter escalating violence as a response to their visibility. In Myanmar, restrictions on basic necessities such as menstrual products under military rule demonstrate how control over women’s bodies is reframed as governance. In Iran, conflict reshapes not only infrastructure but imagination itself, limiting what women are permitted to hope for, to demand, and to survive.

Beyond these contexts, the terrain of violence has expanded rather than diminished. Online spaces, often imagined as sites of democratic expression, have become extensions of surveillance and harassment. Women are subjected to threats, deepfakes, and sustained intimidation that function cumulatively rather than singularly. In these spaces, silencing does not arrive in one decisive act. It emerges through continuous pressure that renders participation exhausting and, at times, untenable. The method changes. The outcome does not.

To treat this as separate from politics is to misunderstand its function entirely. Violence against women who speak is not peripheral to democracy. It is part of its erosion. When participation in public life carries the risk of harm, representation becomes selective and filtered through fear. When women must weigh visibility against survival, voice ceases to be a right and becomes a privilege unevenly distributed. Discussions of democratic decline frequently centre on elections, institutions, or economic instability. Yet the persistent removal of women from public space through intimidation and violence is no less significant. It reshapes who can appear, who can speak, and who is permitted to remain.

And still, women continue. This is the contradiction that systems of violence cannot fully resolve. Women withdraw, and then return. They write under pseudonyms, and then sometimes under their own names. They fall silent, and then speak again, often with greater clarity and urgency. Violence does not extinguish resistance. It transforms it. It sharpens its edges, multiplies its forms, and extends its reach. Each woman who is killed for speaking does not end a conversation. She expands it, inscribing her absence into what remains to be said.

This is perhaps the most difficult truth to hold. The conditions that made Yanar Mohammed’s assassination possible are not confined to one place. They exist in varying degrees across different contexts, embedded within systems that regulate whose voices are tolerated and whose are not. The distance between there and here is far thinner than we are willing to admit. The mechanisms of silencing, whether overt or subtle, immediate or cumulative, are already in operation.

Tomorrow, it could be one of us.

Not necessarily through assassination, though that possibility cannot be dismissed. More often, it arrives through quieter means. It appears through erasure, through intimidation, and through the gradual internalisation of limits that teach women to disappear before they are ever directly targeted. It is in these moments that the stakes of speaking become most apparent.

The question remains, unresolved and urgent. What does it mean to continue speaking anyway?

To share, to write, and to insist on presence is not merely an act of awareness. It is an act of refusal. Refusal to allow silence to complete the work that violence begins.

The Calculations No One Sees

 There is a quiet mathematics to living in a disabled body.

It is not the kind you are taught in school. There are no formulas, no guarantees, no clean answers. And yet it governs everything.

Before leaving the house, there is a calculation. Before agreeing to a meeting, there is a calculation. Before attempting something as ordinary as building a business or sustaining a routine, there is a calculation.

How much energy do I have today. How much will this take. What will it cost me tomorrow.

These are not abstract questions. They are the conditions under which decisions are made.

What often goes unspoken is that this constant negotiation is work in itself. It is cognitive, emotional, and physical labour that remains largely invisible to those who move through the world without having to account for their bodies in this way.

Some forms of disability are immediately visible. A wheelchair signals difference in ways that systems at least claim to recognise, even if that recognition is often partial or inadequate. But chronic illness introduces another layer, one that is less easily seen and therefore more easily dismissed.

There is a particular kind of strain in being both present and questioned. In showing up and still having to justify the limits that shape your participation. In navigating a world that expects consistency from bodies that cannot promise it.

This is why the language used in public discourse matters so deeply.

When figures like Nigel Farage speak of a “war on welfare,” the phrasing does not simply describe policy. It reshapes perception. It frames support as excess, need as suspicion, and survival as something that must be scrutinised.

It leaves little room for the realities that sit behind the word “welfare.” The realities of unpredictability. Of exhaustion that cannot be scheduled. Of days that end early, not by choice, but by necessity.

There is an assumption built into much of this rhetoric that effort and outcome exist in a straightforward relationship. That if one tries hard enough, the body will respond accordingly. That productivity is always available to those who are willing.

But for many of us, that relationship does not hold.

Effort does not guarantee capacity. Intention does not override limitation. And pushing beyond what the body can sustain does not lead to success. It leads to collapse.

These are not failures of character. They are conditions of embodiment.

What becomes difficult, then, is not only managing the body itself, but navigating the expectations imposed from outside. Expectations that are often shaped by people who have never had to question whether their energy will last the day.

By late afternoon, the margin narrows.

Tasks that seemed possible in the morning begin to recede. Concentration fragments. Physical stability shifts. The body signals, sometimes quietly and sometimes without warning, that it has reached its limit.

And yet the world continues to measure worth in output, in consistency, in visible participation.

There is a gap here that cannot be ignored.

A gap between how disability is lived and how it is spoken about. Between the complexity of embodied experience and the simplicity of political language. Between what is required to survive and what is assumed about those who rely on support.

If there is to be any meaningful conversation about welfare, it has to begin from within this gap.

It has to take seriously the lived realities that are so often flattened into narratives of dependency or misuse. It has to recognise that what is being discussed is not a system in isolation, but the lives that depend on it.

And it has to move away from certainty.

Because certainty, in this context, is often a sign that something essential has been overlooked.

The calculations continue, regardless.

Quietly, repeatedly, and without recognition.

But they are there.

And they shape everything.

“You Can Help Her”: Colourism, Proximity, and Professional Placement

I remember the moment with a clarity that has not faded. We had both interviewed for the same HR role at one of the colleges within the University of Oxford. Monica and I were not strangers to one another’s work. We had operated within the same institutional environment, and over time I had supported her development. She had entered the field from a different professional background and was still consolidating her grounding in HR practice, whereas I had accumulated a greater depth of experience and, in many instances, had been positioned as the one to guide, mentor, and clarify processes for others, including her. It is for this reason that the outcome of the interview did not simply surprise me; it unsettled something more fundamental in how I had understood experience, progression, and institutional decision-making.

I was informed that Monica had been appointed to the role. This, in itself, could have been absorbed into the familiar language of interview variability, that people perform differently, that panels make decisions based on criteria not always visible to candidates, that no process is entirely objective. What followed, however, made such explanations insufficient. I was told, without hesitation, that I could “help Monica.” It is a statement that appears, at first glance, to gesture toward collaboration. Yet, situated within the context of the decision that had just been made, it revealed a far more complex dynamic. I was not being told that I lacked the requisite knowledge or capability; rather, I was being positioned as someone whose expertise could be drawn upon without being formally recognised or institutionally authorised. What was being offered was not a role, but a relation, one in which my knowledge would remain available, but my authority would not.

In attempting to make sense of this, I found that explanations rooted solely in individual performance or merit were inadequate. The dissonance lay not in the idea that someone else had been appointed, but in the terms on which I was subsequently positioned. It is here that the concept of colourism becomes necessary, not as an abstract sociological category, but as an organising logic within professional spaces. Institutional discourse often treats race as if it operates uniformly, as though all racialised individuals are read in the same way and encounter similar conditions of inclusion or exclusion. Yet colourism disrupts this assumption by revealing the gradations through which race is lived, perceived, and managed. Those whose skin tone, features, or presentation are read as closer to whiteness frequently encounter a different set of institutional responses than those who are more visibly marked as Black.

As a dark-skinned Black woman, I am not afforded the ambiguity that sometimes mediates how others are read. My presence is immediate and legible, and it carries with it a set of interpretations that precede any professional interaction. There is no capacity for my identity to be softened or deferred; it is already inscribed onto the encounter. This is not simply a matter of visibility, but of how that visibility is interpreted within organisational cultures that continue to associate professionalism, neutrality, and authority with proximity to whiteness. In this context, passing is not merely a personal or cultural phenomenon, but a structural one. It is less about an individual’s desire to align with whiteness than about the ways in which certain bodies are received as less disruptive to established norms. Those who are able to occupy this space of relative ambiguity are often granted a degree of institutional ease that remains inaccessible to those whose difference is more immediately marked.

This is not to deny the complexity of mixed-race identity or the forms of marginalisation that accompany it. Belonging is not guaranteed by proximity to whiteness, and experiences of dislocation are real and significant. However, within professional environments, proximity to whiteness can nonetheless operate as a form of institutional currency. It can facilitate access to roles that require representation, relational engagement, and public visibility. It can render an individual more legible as a safe or appropriate embodiment of the organisation. What is at stake here is not a hierarchy of suffering, but a recognition that institutions do not simply exclude or include; they differentiate, calibrate, and position.

The statement that I could “help Monica” must therefore be understood within this broader context. It signalled that my expertise was acknowledged but not deemed suitable for visible authority. My knowledge was positioned as useful, even necessary, but my presence was not considered appropriate for the role that would require sustained interaction, representation, and relational leadership. What I encountered was not a dismissal of competence, but a form of containment. I was being invited to contribute without being permitted to lead, to support without being recognised, to remain present but not central. This dynamic, which I understand as delegated expertise without positional power, is one that recurs with particular frequency for darker-skinned Black women in institutional settings.

Such dynamics are not confined to formal decisions; they are reinforced through everyday interactions that accumulate over time. I recall working in an environment where I was the only Black person present. On one occasion, something trivial went missing, and the question of its disappearance was directed toward me with a casualness that made it difficult to confront. It was not framed as an accusation, yet it carried an assumption that required no explicit articulation. Moments such as these rarely find their way into official accounts of organisational culture, yet they shape how individuals come to understand their position within a space. They produce a form of embodied knowledge, a recognition of how visibility operates, of how quickly one can become the site onto which suspicion, humour, or unease is projected.

When considered together, these experiences reveal that inclusion within institutions is often conditional and unevenly distributed. It allows for participation, contribution, and even recognition, but it does not necessarily extend to authority or visibility. The distinction between being included and being positioned becomes critical here. To be included is to be present within the institution; to be positioned is to be granted a place within its hierarchy that carries weight, influence, and legitimacy. Colourism plays a significant role in mediating this distinction, shaping not only who enters organisational spaces, but how they are arranged within them.

What I experienced, then, was not an isolated incident or an unfortunate outcome of a competitive process. It was an instance of a broader institutional logic, one that operates quietly and often without explicit acknowledgement. It is a logic that permits the extraction of knowledge while regulating who is authorised to embody it. It recognises capability while simultaneously managing its visibility. And it does so in ways that are rarely named, but deeply felt. Once this pattern becomes visible, it is difficult to interpret such moments as neutral or incidental. They begin instead to appear as part of a coherent, if unspoken, system through which difference is organised and contained.

Layered Institutional Power: We Were Never Running the Same Race

 image by blogger

The idea of a “level playing field” continues to shape how we talk about opportunity, merit, and success. It is invoked to reassure, to motivate, and often to silence. If everyone begins from the same point, then outcomes can be explained through effort, talent, or resilience.

But this premise is fundamentally flawed.

We do not begin from the same point.

The image presented here conceptualises what might be understood as layered institutional power, a structure in which proximity to authority, legitimacy, and recognition is unevenly distributed before any individual action takes place. Rather than a single starting line, there are multiple entry points, each positioned at a different distance from institutional power.

White men occupy the closest position. This is not an assertion about individual intent or character, but about structure. Institutions  historically and contemporarily—have been organised in ways that centre white masculinity as the normative standard of authority. As a result, movement through these spaces is often facilitated by pre-existing networks, assumptions of competence, and a familiarity that reduces friction.

White women are positioned differently. While they encounter gendered constraints, their proximity to whiteness affords a degree of structural advantage not equally available to others. Their trajectory is shaped by both access and limitation, but it does not begin from the same distance as those who are racialised.

Black men, in turn, navigate a terrain marked by hypervisibility and constraint. Their presence within institutions is often conditional, mediated by racialised assumptions that shape how competence, authority, and belonging are perceived. Progress is possible, but rarely unencumbered.

Black women are positioned furthest from institutional power. This placement reflects not only the intersection of race and gender, but the cumulative effects of exclusion, misrecognition, and structural neglect. Expectations of excellence persist, yet are often accompanied by limited access to support, protection, or institutional validation.

This ordering is not incidental. It reflects the ongoing reproduction of power through institutional practices formal and informal that privilege certain bodies, voices, and identities over others.

To speak of whiteness in this context is not to make a claim about individual people, but to identify a system. Whiteness operates as a structuring logic through which authority is defined, distributed, and maintained. It shapes who is seen as legitimate, who is heard without resistance, and who is able to move through institutional spaces without constant negotiation.

This becomes particularly visible at the level of global leadership. Decision-making bodies, political institutions, and economic forums continue to be dominated by a narrow demographic, reinforcing the association between authority and specific identities. Even in moments of apparent diversification, power is not always fully transferable. It is often constrained, scrutinised, or rendered conditional.

The presidency of Barack Obama, for example, represented a historic shift in representation, yet did not signal a complete transformation of structural power. His leadership was persistently mediated in ways that revealed the limits of inclusion within systems that remain fundamentally unchanged.

Within this context, the persistent emphasis on individual resilience warrants critical examination. Calls to “work harder,” “lean in,” or “remain resilient” assume that distance can be overcome through effort alone. Yet resilience does not eliminate structural barriers, nor does it recalibrate starting positions.

The concept of layered institutional power therefore invites a shift in analytical focus. Rather than asking why individuals fail to reach particular outcomes, it directs attention to the conditions under which those outcomes are produced.

Who begins closest to power?
Who is required to travel further?
And how are these distances maintained?

Answering these questions requires more than incremental reform. It requires a fundamental rethinking of how institutions are structured, how legitimacy is conferred, and how power is distributed.

If the race itself is uneven, then the solution cannot lie solely in encouraging individuals to run harder.

It must also involve asking whether the race, as currently designed, should continue at all.

Disability, Vulnerability, and War: The Civilians Who Cannot Run

War is often discussed in the language of strategy, geopolitics, and military capability. Analysts debate borders, alliances, and weapons systems. Yet these discussions frequently overlook one of the most vulnerable populations in any conflict: people living with disabilities.

According to the World Health Organization, approximately 16% of the global population lives with some form of disability. In conflict zones, that percentage can be even higher because war itself produces injuries, trauma, and long-term impairments. Despite this, disabled civilians are rarely centred in discussions about humanitarian response or evacuation planning.

For many civilians, survival in war depends on the ability to move quickly: to flee bombings, cross borders, or reach shelters. For disabled people, the elderly, and those with chronic illnesses, this mobility cannot be assumed.

People who rely on wheelchairs, mobility aids, carers, or medical equipment often face severe barriers during emergencies. Hospitals may be destroyed or overwhelmed. Electricity needed for medical devices may fail. Medication supplies can disappear within days. Accessible transport is rarely available in evacuation corridors.

The result is that many disabled civilians are left behind when cities empty.

Humanitarian organisations have repeatedly warned that disabled people are among the least likely to escape conflict zones and among the most likely to experience severe deprivation during displacement.

Disability does not exist in isolation; it is deeply connected to infrastructure and social support systems.

In stable conditions, disabled individuals rely on:

• accessible healthcare systems

• medication supply chains

• caregivers and support networks

• accessible housing and transport

• electricity and assistive technologies

War dismantles these systems rapidly. When hospitals are damaged, roads blocked, or supply chains interrupted, survival becomes precarious for those whose daily life depends on consistent care.

For individuals requiring dialysis, insulin, oxygen support, or specialised medication, even short disruptions can become life-threatening.

Displacement creates an additional layer of vulnerability. Refugee camps and temporary shelters are rarely designed with accessibility in mind. Basic facilities such as toilets, water points, and sleeping areas may not accommodate people with mobility impairments or sensory disabilities.

The United Nations has repeatedly highlighted that disabled people are often excluded from humanitarian planning, meaning their needs are addressed only after crises escalate.

As a result, disabled refugees frequently experience:

• limited access to aid distribution points

• isolation from community support networks

• higher exposure to neglect or exploitation

• reduced access to information about evacuation or assistance

These risks compound the already difficult realities of displacement.

International law recognises that disabled people require additional protection in crisis situations.

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities obliges states to ensure the safety and protection of persons with disabilities in situations of armed conflict and humanitarian emergencies.

Similarly, humanitarian principles embedded in the Geneva Conventions emphasise the protection of civilians, including those unable to defend themselves.

However, implementation remains uneven. In many conflicts, disability is still treated as an afterthought rather than a central humanitarian concern.

For those of us living with disability, watching images from war zones can feel deeply personal. When we see elderly civilians being evacuated from rubble or injured people transported through chaotic streets, we recognise how fragile survival can be when infrastructure collapses.

The question that emerges is simple but unsettling:

What happens to those who cannot run?

War exposes a fundamental truth: independence is often an illusion sustained by functioning systems. When those systems disappear, vulnerability becomes visible.

Addressing disability in conflict requires more than sympathy. It requires structural planning.

Humanitarian responses must include:

• accessible evacuation planning

• disability-inclusive refugee camps

• prioritised access to medication and medical equipment

• accessible communication systems during emergencies

• inclusion of disabled voices in humanitarian policy design

These measures are not optional additions; they are essential to protecting millions of civilians whose lives depend on them.

War does not only destroy buildings and infrastructure. It reveals the inequalities embedded within societies.

Disabled civilians, the elderly, and those requiring ongoing care often face the greatest risks when violence erupts. Yet their experiences remain largely absent from mainstream conversations about conflict.

If humanitarian responses are to be truly just, they must begin by recognising a simple reality:

In war, the people who cannot run are often the ones left behind.