A group of schoolchildren line up on a playing field for a race. There’s some good-natured trash talk and varying levels of steely-eyed determination. A few toes stray over the start line in search of an advantage.

But there’s a twist. A teacher explains that their starting point will be determined by their privilege.

“If English is your parents’ first language, take a step forwards.”

“If you have ever been the only person in the room of your race, take a step backwards.”

There are some groans of protest but nobody seems too worried. The kids who get to advance…

The week of June 21st 2020, a month after George Floyd was killed, an unprecedented eight of the top ten New York Times bestsellers were about race.

The “racial reckoning” prompted by Floyd’s death was the first time many white people had thought about racism. It was the first time they’d questioned their attitudes and behaviour. It was certainly the first time they’d thought to read a book on the subject.

And so, as those newly race-conscious readers set out to learn about the black experience, they looked at those eight books…and chose the only one written by a white…

It used to be easy to define racism. It was the notion that one race was superior to another. It was hatred and fear and bigotry. It was the belief that the colour of a person’s skin was more important than the content of their character.

Times have changed.

In part, this is because change was necessary. Thinking of racism only as individual prejudice made it harder to address gaps in education outcomes and employment rates for example. It obscured the impact of wealth inequality and a lack of social mobility. …

From time to time, Robert P George, a professor at Princeton University, runs an experiment on his students. He asks them to imagine what they would have done if they were white and living in the American South during slavery.

You guessed it; they’d all have been abolitionists!

Even though slavery was worth more to the US economy than the railroads and manufacturing combined. Even though anyone caught providing food, shelter or aid to escaped slaves risked crippling fines, jail, and even death. …

In 1959, police raided a screening of the newly-released French drama “Les Amants” because it featured a two-second shot of a woman’s nipple (I watched the movie for research purposes). The scene was considered so scandalous that the cinema manager, Nico Jacobellis, was fined the equivalent of $22,000 for “possessing and exhibiting an obscene film”.

After five years of legal battles and appeals, the case made its way to the Supreme Court of the United States, where Justice Potter Stewart overturned Jacobellis’ conviction, offering his famously subjective definition of pornography as he did so:

…I know it when I see…

Every black person has a story about racism. It might be about a chance encounter on holiday or being denied entry to our own home. It might be about the statistically improbable rate at which we’re “randomly selected” for additional screening or those awkward moments when a poorly thought out comment backfires.

If there’s such a thing as “the black experience”, these stories are a part of its oral tradition. A collection of life lessons, clapbacks, and cautionary tales through which we celebrate our victories and vent our frustrations. They’re in-jokes that provide a sense of community and solidarity. …

On April 8th, officials in Windsor, Virginia released footage of a traffic stop tailor-made for the “abolish the police” era.

A brand-new SUV with tinted windows, just the type of vehicle that black people are disproportionately stopped for driving. A black man, or better yet, a black lieutenant, sat behind the wheel, the Stars and Stripes proudly displayed on the shoulder of his uniform. Two white police officers attended the scene, barking threats that were lifted verbatim from of a movie that was set in 1930s Louisiana.

Even though the driver, Lt. Caron Nazario, hadn’t committed any crime, the officers…

The last time somebody called me a n****r, I was on holiday.

I’d just arrived in Skopje, North Macedonia, innocently searching for something to get the taste of airline food out of my mouth, when I heard a shout from across the street:

“Hey! You! Uh… you are n****r.”

I looked over and saw a boy, no more than 18 years old, sitting on his bike. He waited for my reaction, his foot poised on the pedal in case I decided to chase him. I hadn’t provoked him. He was half my size, his English was barely up to the…