When Black psychiatrist Dr Chester Pierce (1970) coined the term ‘microaggression’, he couldn’t have predicted its development into everyday speech. Yet, I do not think it effectively articulates the ‘impact’ of those small but heavy loads of violence — there is an alternative: deriving from sociology, ‘science’, and comics. — “Forty years ago, I created a formula that altered atomic relative distance. I learned how to change the distance between atoms. That’s why [the Ant-Man suit] works” — Hank Pym to Scott Lang.

Like any regular person after a hotly anticipated blockbuster film — this time Barbie — I left the screening thinking about French theorist Guy DeBord, the spectacle, and late 1960s Marxism. — Guy DeBord’s The Society of the Spectacle (1967) is not what I thought I would be thinking of when I saw Barbie only a few weeks ago. In summary, everybody is trapped in capitalism’s advertised life. The Spectacle: a system of violence demanding your attention and your attention dictates…

In American filmmaking there has been a renaissance in horror that uses genre storytelling to commentate on racism. However, following texts like ‘Men’ on patriarchy, the UK has a gap that could use horror to discuss whiteness in provincial spaces — including country estates as sites of (post)colonial violence. — Growing up in Middle England and going to school in the country until I was thirteen, it was in those formative years that I soon found that the hills have eyes — to take the namesake of Wes Craven’s 1977 classic horror film that sees a suburban family set…

Contrary to the more popularised ‘institutional racism’, terms like ‘institutional whiteness’ are not so widespread in wider public discussions. Yet, it must be said the so-called ‘diversification’ of the UK Honours list is as interesting as it is alarming. Here, I observe many Black people allocated space to speak…

Whilst Bridgerton fans shipped Kate and Anthony as #Kanthony, we also must consider how the Netflix show fits into a wider dominant media culture that situates Black and Brown people in interracial relationships only as worthy of love when in proximity to a white person and white families. — NB: The use of “whites” in the title is intentional and for effect— it is a response to the number of people (but especially white people) I see using ‘Blacks’ in academic writing. We are human beings — Black people. Stop calling us Blacks! I also know this is something I have done in the past. Being Black does not mean we do not make mistakes. You will not find me going back editing it out past work, but leaving it and using it as an example of growth by learning.

With more Black people now on our film and television screens, it was not really until I started to watch NBC’s hit show ‘This Is Us’ in late 2021 I could point to a Black character in a contemporary drama and say “I relate” to their experience of the world. — When I saw Netflix’s ‘A Great Day in Hollywood’ advert doing the rounds on Twitter in 2018, I was racking my brains for a present day-set film or television show I related to in the context of my Blackness no questions asked (but I couldn’t). It was around that time…

The Railway Children is one of my favourite stories ever — and this sequel continues it admirably. The arrival of 150,000 Black American troops to Britain meant there were more Black people here during The War, than in 1948 with the coming of postwar Caribbean migrants, otherwise known as the Windrush. — When I was a child visiting my grandparents in the mishmash urban-rural terrain of Lichfield City, Staffordshire, my grandmother gifted me with an audiobook rendition of Edith Nesbit’s 1906 text The Railway Children. In those days, it was on CD-ROM! I went on to read and love the novel, and…

The history of anti-racism and postwar Caribbean migrants is inextricable. For me, Black Caribbean insurrection against British police and education has long enveloped this narrative, whilst cricket as a tool of anti-racism has been pushed to the sidelines. — Premise Playing cricket since childhood, I have always been interested in the political nature of the sport — but it hasn’t reached the contemporary mainstream in the same way football has. Having written previous articles on Walter Tull in journalism and in academia, racism in football is quite well-known. There is…

This essay comes from an entry I submitted for a call for papers about Bridgerton that I did not end up using. It’s essentially a first draft badly in need of editing, and I’m posting because people showed interest in what I was writing (it is definitely unfinished). — Context In June 2021, I submitted an abstract to a Call for Papers [CFP] about the Netflix programme Bridgerton. ‘Call for Papers’ is just academic jargon for submissions from prospective writers to an ad. …