We’ve written plenty on this blog about the worsening levels of violent racism against Africans in Israel. This time last year Olufemi Terry reflected on a comment by the Israeli immigration minister: “This country belongs to us, to the white man.” Last summer Miri Regev, an MP, told a rally “the Sudanese are like a […]

I finally got around to watching “Thierry Henry 1:1” on iTunes. The promo material is written in breathless prose: “Who is the personality hidden in this dream career? … What are his ideals? What goals does he want to reach? … Thierry Henry is a world star torn between past and present.” This is all false advertising […]

Aimé Césaire was one of the greatest poets of the last century. His writing was so good that the person who did the illustrations published alongside his poems was Pablo Picasso. Césaire’s best-known works are Cahier d’un retour au pays natal  (1939) and Discours sur le colonialisme (1955), both of which are available in strong translations. Césaire (born […]

We could call this: The Afro-Trifecta, if you will. They are a lawyer, some sort of business person, or a doctor. Teacher? Respectable, but not enough money. Artist? Quickest way not to be invited home during the holidays. And god forbid, an athlete. Most African parents consider the term “student athlete,” a gross oxymoron. Which is […]

We’re not making this up. It turns out Royal Dutch flagship carrier’s KLM decision to hire the Dutch East India Company as its PR firm was a bad plan. According to their website, KLM will fly you to ‘the Dark Continent’ (their original inverted commas) to visit Lusaka, Zambia, a city of two million that […]

What do a model, the former bassist of a rightist rock band, a fantasy writer who has several times expressed her admiration for Thilo Sarrazin (the Bundesbank executive, who questioned whether migrants were ‘unfit or unwilling to integrated’ into society), a streetworker with a potty mouth, a former soldier, and a dropout neo-Nazi have in common? […]

On 10 October 2013, a certain segment of white South Africans left their children with the “girl” for a couple of hours as they marched through the streets demanding acknowledgement of the “genocide” (sic) being perpetrated against them as an “oppressed” (sic) minority. I also stumbled across, to my horror, Carly Rae Jepson (of “Call Me […]