There’s a scene in the movie The Addams Family Values when Christine Baranski, as camp counselor, reads the names of the camp attendees effortlessly but pauses at the name Jamal. ‘I’m not sure how to pronounce this name,’ she says with a frown. ‘Ja..Jay mal?’ Cue eye rolls from Jamal, who is probably used to…
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White washing throughout television is completely normalised to the point where audiences rarely question it. As a result, we are subconsciously digesting white supremacy. White supremacy is not necessarily always overtly expressed, as avid viewers of white washed television, we regularly intake and express white supremacy in more subtle ways. Consider some of the…
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Blood is thicker than water, but for some ethnicity is the deciding factor. That’s a bold claim but as a target of family racism, it’s something that I am forced to think about. I’m what could be considered ‘biracial’, that is, my mother is Anglo-Australian and my father is Italian. All racism is bad and…
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US clothing brand, American Apparel is no stranger to controversy, but the retailer’s latest campaign featuring a Bangladesh-born model with the words ‘Made in Bangladesh‘ sprawled across her bare chest has raised a few eyebrows, and sparked a lot of misguided criticism. The marketing scandal portrays a culturally-conflicting image of an exotic, Bangladeshi-American woman in…
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ONOMOllywood, is a project that challenges our perceptions of race in classic films. Unfortunately, looking back at the well-known classics brings to mind protagonists who are almost exclusively white. But Dakar-based photographers, Omar Victor Diop and Antoine Tempe, are changing the way we think about this. ONOMOllywood consists of a series of 20…
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Picture this: you’re into online dating and log on to check your profile. You have received a message of interest from a user from what you perceive to be a different ethnic background to your own. What do you do? While you, dear Lipster, may be inclined to see where things lead, internet dating services…
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Marvel, the US comic book giant behind Spiderman, The Hulk and Captain America, are bringing back 1960s heroine, Ms Marvel. But rather than the tall, blonde air force officer, her new persona will be a 16-year-old Muslim girl from New Jersey. Ms Marvel’s new alter ego, Kamala Khan, is a high school student living with…
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I am a hybrid child. And no, that doesn’t make me an alien. Actually, it some ways, it probably does. I identify as being an Australian Muslim of Malay descent, and I’ve spent a long time pondering what that really means for me. I left Singapore when I was 12. Aside from my immediate family,…
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Growing up in London, England born to a white mother and a black father had conned me into a false sense of security that the world accepted and rejoiced diversity. That is until I moved to Australia and attempted to join modeling agencies that thrived on extraordinary ideals. And so began my journey into investigating…
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