Sweet Brown is wearing a tie-dyed tank top, a scarf knotted around her short dark hair. She’s talking to the camera like it’s someone she knows intimately, telling the story of her brush with death: “I said, oh lord Jesus, …
The martyring of Scott Adams
Picture this: it is 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts, and the Witchfinder General is patrolling the area in search of accused witches. The bodies of the women most recently found guilty are still hanging by their necks from the gallows; tensions …
Ultra-patriots are Putin’s greatest threat
The biggest threat facing Putin today is not from Western-sympathising, anti-war liberals, but Right-wing “ultra-patriots” frustrated by the Russian army’s failures in Ukraine. Earlier this month, the Russian MP Oleg Matveychev warned of a potential coup: “The situation is not …
What’s driving Britain’s anti-migrant protests?
Last week, after a demonstration against the housing of refugees in a Knowsley hotel turned violent, many on the Left were quick to denounce the protestors as fascists or racists, and to lay the blame on Suella Braverman for warning …
The Guardian’s links to the slave trade
The Guardian prides itself on being one of the most Left-leaning and anti-racist news outlets in the English-speaking world. So imagine its embarrassment when, last month, a number of black podcast producers researching the paper’s historic ties to slavery abruptly …
What authors hide about sensitivity readers
Although created with good intentions, the practice of sensitivity reading has a way of tipping over into absurdity — the most recent example being Anthony Horowitz’s new book, which features a Native American character. It was dinged for two instances …
Race was invented by liberals
A little more than a year ago, I was sharing a boozy dinner with a prominent conservative pundit when the conversation turned to matters racial. Reflecting on the unrest that had roiled America in the summer of 2020, my companion …
Is it racist to like big butts?
The human butt has long been the object of all manner of obsessions. We worry over it: its size, its shape, whether or not it has cellulite on it, how it looks in a pair of jeans. But now, a …
The feebleness of white nationalists
Ever since the election of Donald Trump, the putative rise of “white supremacy” or “white nationalism” has been a perennial worry among mainstream pundits, both inside America and abroad. For liberals, the imminent rise of “fascism” serves as a powerful …
Harry Flashman’s imperial morality
I suppose it’s only a matter of time before the times catch up with George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman books. One can imagine the scene: an earnest young editor picks up a copy of the books, drawn to them by the …
Anti-racism attacks my American Dream
What was I — a lifelong Democrat — doing at an election watch party in rural Virginia, surrounded by Republicans? As Ron DeSantis, 800 miles away, filled a huge TV screen with a post-landslide victory speech, he provided part of …
The erasure of black Jews
What does a Jew look like? If you ask this slightly suspicious question, most people’s minds will conjure a stereotype. The Woody Allen type: scrawny, cerebral, wears horn-rimmed glasses and probably has a prominent nose. Few people would immediately think …
The British police need guns
The public unsurprisingly jumped to conclusions when it was reported, earlier this month, that a Metropolitan Police officer had fatally shot an apparently unarmed black man. Voices from the black community and beyond have speculated that the shooting was either …
The American media’s racism fantasy
It was the kind of correction you love to see. The story that originally broke in the final days of August, about a young black athlete being racially heckled in front of a crowd of thousands at Utah’s Brigham Young …
The Queen saved the Commonwealth
“Racism was outlawed in England in the 60s & it’s been allowed to thrive so why should black & brown mourn!! #queen”, tweeted — and then deleted — the former footballer Trevor Sinclair. An associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University, …
