Black History Month 2048
Celebrating airbrushed versions of the heroes of the past is easy. A more urgent task is to identify and support the heroes of tomorrow.
Ten years ago: United we Stand?
This is an article I wrote 10 years ago today, when I was just starting my journalism master’s degree at Columbia University. Each of us was assigned a New York neighbourhood as our “beat” – mine was Crown Heights in…
“Race and Racism in Britain” by John Solomos
I’m sure that for sociology students, this book is a very valuable text. It’s very methodical and thorough – it looks at its subject from every angle, and almost every paragraph contains at least one reference to a book in…
Racial identification
Read a fascinating article in the Fall 2007 edition of the Du Bois Review. In an article “The New Latin Nation”, Alejandro Portes made the very interesing, and ironic, point that whereas in the past, much Mexican immigration to the…
Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis and freedom of speech
I went to see Salman Rushdie in conversation with Lisa Appignanesi at the Southbank Centre last night. I have never been a particular Rushdie fan, so was pleasantly surprised by his wit, intelligence and affability. He was talking mostly about…
Get in touch with your inner racist!
When I lived in New York, there was a small shop across the street that was owned by a man from Afghanistan. I used to visit him in the days after September 11, and he had a bewildered, beleaguered look…
“The Muslims are breeding”
It’s sad that there’s a site called “Islamophobia Watch.” Not, as its critics would argue, because there’s no such thing as Islamophobia and it’s all just political correctness gone mad, but because it shows that every day, several times a…
Who’s your audience?
I love watching Chris Rock. He’s one of the few stand-up comedians who is pretty much guaranteed to make me laugh every time I watch him. However, watching Chris Rock videos on YouTube recently proved to be a very different…
Clueless
It’s become clear since I moved back to London that most white British people have absolutely no idea what racism is. They persist in lumping it together with any other form of name-calling, and denounce any attempt to clamp down…