Streaming Anxiety
“Haiti occupies a particular place in the collective African memory and imagination. For Europe / whiteness Haiti has always been a place of horror, the irony being the horror was white not black, the savagery white not black” Maybe Me,…
Diriye Osman: Why we must tell our own stories
I once attended a book club in which my short story collection, Fairytales for Lost Children, was being discussed. Except for me and the acquaintance who had invited me to this event, all the members of this book club were…
John Akomfrah on his film “The Stuart Hall Project”
For many of my generation in the seventies, Stuart Hall was just such a figure. In those heady, mono – cultural days, he was one of the few people of colour we saw on television who wasn’t crooning, dancing or running. I loved all the athletes and singers and dancers too but when you are a black teenage bookworm in seventies West London, let’s just say a public intellectual of colour disseminating ideas on television offered other more immediate compensations.
Frisked by Frisker : A Transphobia Story
So why the frisking, my darling frisker?
You size me up as I approach your citadel;
Your mind cannot withstand my masculine;
You frisk me as rough as I have ever experienced
How could you then question racist next door
Thierry Henry and nostalgic memories
I brought myself to tears this morning [I cry a lot these days, more than before] seeing the statue of Thierry Henry at the Emirates alongside Tony Adams. Henry was brought to tears by the honour and the memories of…
Excuse me while I die
We are 4 days into the 16 Days of Activist Against Violence Against Women which dates back to 1999. Fourteen years of days and weeks where the world supposedly focuses on violence against women will end on Human Rights Day,…
Changing relationship between “information and power”
Last week Paul Gilroy spoke at a meeting in Tottenham on the recent riots in London and elsewhere. Gilroy makes some insightful observations on the differences between the 1980s and 2011 for example the relationship between information and power has…
Cradle nation: An Evolutionary Sigh!
“Honestly, I haven’t been any where. I have not worked for a living for four years, now. “We know where it lives,” everyone says in rabid finality, so I took to listening to loud classical music. It has worked for…
East End White Pride Cancelled
On 2nd April a group under the name of “East End Gay Pride” [EEGP] planned to march through the Shoreditch and Whitechapel districts of Tower Hamlets, London. The march which was promoted as “united against homophobia and all prejudice” claimed…
Sounds of London
While away your days and nights listening to SoundCities. I listened to the ones from London – well south London, which is distinctly different from more hip areas up north like Kentish Town and Kilburn. I started to wish I…
Transphobic Britain
How, given the history of the black community in Britain after centuries of slavery, do Black people explain the rampant transphobia that they accord black transgender/transsexual people? Indeed, how does anyone who has ever or still suffers oppression, whatever form…
Whiteness as an act of cultural dominance
“White people embarrass me” – A personal reflection on racism and white privilege in Britain amongst the LGBTIQ community by Del LaGrace Volcano. The problem is not just white privilege – its refusing to acknowledge it when challenged. White people…
RIP: Darren Deslandes
January 1st 2016 UPDATE In July 2015, the Deslandes family launched the Darren Deslandes Peacemaker Foundation in honor of their son and brother Darren who was murdered on January 1st, 2010. The main aim is to assist families of the…
Harare North: the story tellers task
George Orwell and Graham Green both saw the role of the writer as one who questions and critiques the establishment, the State etc – something which Robert McCrum [writing in the Guardian] fears has been lost to mediocrity and market…
TEDxEuston
Spoke: Some were bold, some italic, some plain old blank! Audrey Brown, Onyekachi Wambu, Bryan Pearson, Chika Unigwe, Funmi Iyanda, Bola Olabisi, Lawrence Mbugwa, Yvonne Ike, Nasir El Rufai, Segun Aganga, Remi Adeseun, Nuhu Ribadu I am discovering in my…
Harare South to Harare North
Last Saturday I listened to a reading of Harare North by Brian Chikwava [winner of the 2004 Caine Prize] and was hooked after the first sentence. This is bad timing, I have too much to do to be reading novels…
Silencing transsexual women
UPDATE: It’s good to speak – following complaints changes have been made! Feminism in London conference was not open to transgendered women, read the Bird of Paradox blog to get a better understanding of the implications and problems with this….
Levels of Ignorance & other transphobic activities
The act of being Ignorant does not arise out of thin air but when a person from any enclave latches onto the words of a drunk and uses those words as an excuse for his or her agenda their integrity…
The death of Sean Rigg
On the 21st August 2008 around 8.30pm Sean Rigg, a 40 year old Black man from Brixton, died in the custody of Brixton Police Station. Sean is one of a long line of Black males who have died whilst in…
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