“No fats, no femmes, no Blacks, no Asians.” “Keep it White or Latin.” “No rice, no curry and no blacks.” Phrases like these have become a usual phenomenon in gay dating apps so much so that many gay men see these as a casual ‘preferences’ and would outright deny the racist connotation attached to them. …
Sexual Racism: The Rainbow is Whiter than It Appears Read More »
In the last decade, the Western film industry has justly received a lot of criticism for its severe lack of racial diversity, both on-screen and behind the camera. Initiatives like diversity quotas in awards governing bodies and popular movements like #OscarsSoWhite have not only resonated in North America and Europe but have become popularised in …
“Please, I can’t breathe,” said 46-year-old George Floyd before becoming unconscious. Floyd died of asphyxiation during an arrest in Minneapolis in May. His family ordered two independent autopsy reports. They did not trust the report from the authorities, which stated that he did not die from asphyxiation but a combination of pre-existing health conditions and …
Black Lives and Experiences – From USA to Norway Read More »
When studying abroad in Rwanda, learning about reconciliation and transformative justice following the Genocide Against the Tutsis, I found the memorials we visited most moving. They are honest, graphic, and jarring acts of remembrance and reckoning with history. No matter how painful the truth, the memorials and country itself maintains a commitment to honesty, responsibility, …
We Cannot Live in Two Separate Americas Forever. There is History to be Reckoned with Read More »
What’s missing from most modern discussions of racial injustice is the overarching ideology that has amplified, legitimized, and advanced every facet of systemic racism we see today. A number of key phrases have been foundation to the international conversations surrounding this topic—systemic racism, the cycle of poverty, mass incarceration, racial profiling, police brutality, the military-industrial …
Introduction One of the earliest postcolonial theorists, the Afro-Caribbean philosopher Frantz Fanon (1925- 1961) made profound philosophical contributions to the freedom struggles of the colonised people around the globe. Born as the descendant of a slave, under the French colonial yoke in the Caribbean Island of Martinique, Fanon began his illustrious career as a soldier. …
Fanon’s ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ at Sixty: A Philosophical Review Read More »
“Human, from the planet Earth.” That’s how countless diverse Star Trek characters from earth identify themselves to alien species, in distant galaxies in future centuries. That simple statement – always delivered matter-of-factly, regardless of the respective characters’ obvious racial or ethnic features – resonated with me and deepened my attraction to Star Trek over the …
Cartoons are incredibly powerful tools for critiquing and bringing to light societal and political problems, and satirical cartoons in particular have a special role in revealing injustices and hypocrisies. For this reason, cartoonists are often at the front lines of freedom of expression, and consequently, some face fierce persecution by governments and religious groups that …
Recently, a friend invited me to contribute to one of those end-of-the-year, best-of lists—a curious endeavor for 2020 of all years. In this instance, the items on the list were pre-set and included such things as best book, best podcast, and best recipe. While flipping through my Moleskine notebook, searching for an empty page to …
It is true that race and ethnicity are real lived experiences and that differences among and between people are experienced in bodies, histories, politics, and psychologies. It is also true that such differences are connected to practices of discrimination, bias, and oppression (racism). The problem is that many (if not most) people assume they know …
Race and caste are perhaps two major themes that have engulfed most part of the pandemic year. There are several reasons for this. The first is the sudden rise of covid cases, which in effect evoked an unstimulated response from western countries calling out the Chinese role in the pandemic, which in turn was held …
