No one should be surprised we exist
The documentary film, 'Rolé—Histórias dos Rolezinhos' by Afro-Brazilian filmmaker Vladimir Seixas uses sharp commentary to expose social, political, and cultural inequalities within Brazilian society.
Race
This is what they don’t want you to know
A new film on the life of Walter Rodney gives a glimpse of his radical solidarity politics and centers on his family, who struggled and suffered with him.
The ways of South Africa’s cricket establishment
In South African cricket, almost three decades after white rule ended, “local talent” means “local white talent,” even if you’re the national team captain.
Why is Egyptian social media against black pharaohs?
The notion that black people were kings in Ancient Egypt is generating a social media backlash. Understanding the racialized legacy of Egyptology can explain why.
Ignore and rule
What do Europeans do when they hear the war waged by the government of Ethiopia has killed more people than the war in Ukraine?
Forms of woundedness
The intergenerational traumas of an anti-Black world in August Wilson's Fences are only too familiar to South Africans.
“Black African” may be oxymoronic
For many African immigrants in the United States, being seen as Black doesn’t necessarily equate to seeing oneself as Black.
Stop paying attention to Jonathan Jansen
The South African professor is under fire for suggesting life under apartheid was better than life under democracy. Stop giving him so much airtime.
The humiliating weight of Frenchness in Tunisia
Tunisia had sought to Arabize itself since independence and failed. It's relation to France still very much defines the country's character.
The limits of the cop drama
A bleak new television drama, ‘Donkerbos,’ explores secrets in small town South Africa, but fails to offer alternatives to the tropes of good vs evil.
Small rebellions
Anti-blackness is on the rise in Ayiti. But Haitians and Dominicans are resisting, in ways big and small.
The Managers of Brazil
In the wake of the insurrection in Brazil, an Afrobrazilian reflects personally on the entanglement of race and class in the country, and on what needs to be done to unravel it.
Writing whiteness, writing America
What happens when black and brown authors write about white people? Although novels by Chinelo Okparanta and Mohsin Hamid tread into this risky unknown, they do not go far enough.
The Cape Colony
The campaign to separate South Africa's Western Cape from the rest of the country is not only a symptom of white privilege, but also of the myth that the province is better run.
What’s wrong with the South African Institute of Race Relations?
Surveys on race by South Africa’s Institute of Race Relations (IRR) are deeply flawed and cynically used. Its influence on mainstream politics is significant and dangerous.
In sun and shadow
On the last episode of our sports and music series on Africa Is a Country Radio, we visit with Sean Jacobs and Tony Karon of the Eleven Named People podcast to preview the 2022 men's World Cup football tournament.
The wounded hippo
In a US confronting its own anti-black racism, sentimental imaginings of Africa do little but uphold the white savior industrial complex.
Brazil’s violent caste system
Despite the country’s marker as a “racial democracy,” racism and prejudice still persist in Brazil, often violently and with deadly consequences.
Newen Afrobeat and echoes of Fela around the Andes
In the third installment on Afrobeat in South America, political scientist Simon A. Akindes writes about Newen Afrobeat from Chile’s capital.
Resistance and commodification
A scholar of Black Brazil discusses the past, present, and future of the antiracist movement, in the run up to this year's presidential elections.