Many people watched almost the entire first season of ‘Suits’ and had no idea the actress playing Rachel Zane was mixed-race. The first hint that Meghan Markle might be ‘Blackish’ came when Wendell Pierce arrived to play her on-screen father. The next we knew, the American actress was dating Prince Harry, with headlines appearing like “Harry’s girl is (almost) straight outta Compton”. In other words, “ghetto.”
With her ‘exotic DNA’, the British public presumed Meghan Markle would be one of Harry’s short-term lovers. However, long before Meghan came on the scene, Black Brits had often joked about how Harry liked a bit of chocolate. He is, after all, more like his mother, we’d argue. We realised pretty quickly the seriousness of their relationship when the Prince issued an official statement addressing the “the racial undertones of comment pieces, and the outright sexism and racism of social media trolls and web article comments” about his girlfriend. …
My silence that day haunts me still.
Random acts of kindness have been the hallmark of my life for as long as I can recall.
When I was six years old, Miss Ivy plucked me from the streets of Kingston, fed me, clothed me, and sent me to school for nearly two years — all because I looked like her only son, who had died in a road accident.
At a carnival in Salvador, Brazil, a White English man in the crowd lent me £500 after my back pocket was slashed and all my cash and travellers’ checks stolen. He scribbled an address in Brixton, where I could return the loan when I was ready. …
The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) recently reported that kids as young as ten in England have taken to whitening their faces in an attempt to fit in after repeatedly being the target of hate crimes and being told to “go back to your own country” in Brexit Britain. It seems the more things change is the more they stay the same.
At twelve, my best friend was a white boy named David, who lived across the road from us. David and I walked to school together, went berry picking with his dad in summer, slept in each other’s house or pitched a tent in the back yard just for fun in stormy weather.
One day, David became ‘an accidental Skinhead’ when the barber gave him a lopsided haircut. I didn’t laugh when his white mate, Steve, said he looked just like a plucked chicken. David went back the next day and had his head shaved. He never spoke to me again after Steve had his hair chopped off too, although I lived on the same road in the same house and went to the same school for four more years. …
My Royalist-Jamaican mother would have been smiling down at me, from her seat on the right-hand side of God, as the taxi arrived to pick me up to meet the Queen at Buckingham Palace.
The idiot Eastern European driver parks his car at a bus stop two hundred metres from my flat, so I am forced to stride up to him suited and booted with dreadlocks flowing in the cold evening wind. He looks almost straight through me just as I reach the stationary Mercedes and starts the engine to pull out into the street. I quickly knock on his window and manage to open the passenger door as he steps on the brakes.
“Are you the car for Buckingham Palace?”
“Hurry up and get in, man,” he shouts back at me, “I’m parked in a bus lane. It’s a fifty pound fine!”
“I didn’t tell anyone to ask you to park here. I told your controller exactly where my flat is.”
“I was looking at Beaufort Mansions,” he offers up as a feeble excuse.
“That’s your problem, mate, that’s not where I live.”
“My problem?” he says with a snarl. …
You were in charge as long as you were on your own. Once someone white came along, you became his or her assistant.
In the first two buildings that Ralph Swimer Limited occupied, no white person would work. Not even those without qualifications. The Swimer family lived above the shop at 22 Whitechurch Lane and their living quarters were as disgusting as the business premises below.
Ralph Swimer had advertised in the Hackney Gazette for a Bookkeeper to Trial Balance. Each applicant who turned up for interview bluntly refused the job when offered. He was glad, finally, to sneer a well-qualified and pretty, young thing in her early thirties. …
Folks all over the world seem to associate Black people with crime and poverty. They see us as trying to escape from failing African nations to enter their countries to create no-go areas and more crime and poverty.
Even in Japan, where you rarely see a Black person, people hold on to their bags when they see a small, dark-skinned Black man approaching from a distance. Or they slam on the automatic locking system from inside their shinny new cars when I’m crossing the road minding my own business. My Saint Lucian-born travelling companion is oblivious to it all. He shares the same pastry-coloured skin tone as the Japanese. They don’t see him coming from a distance.
This is the reality of my life in the twenty-first century as a fifty-four-year-old British-born man of Caribbean descent with chocolate-brown skin. Perhaps it’s my own fault. I do nothing to help myself; it has been said. I don’t practice respectability politics. Nor do I have a fair-skinned partner of a different race or ethnicity by my side with “internationally beige” children to lessen my social impact in an otherwise racist and hostile world. …
There are so many untrue myths surrounding social media best practice. Here are just a few that may actually be hurting your business, content, and keywords.
1. Delete Or Bury All Negative Comments On Social Media
“Quick, bury those negative comments and reviews on social media.” That is the knee-jerk reaction for many. However, quite the contrary should be true; you should see this is a great opportunity to show that your brand is grown up.
Thank the negative poster for taking the time to point the issue out and tell them how you will ensure that this problem does not happen again (if your fault), or demonstrate where they are going wrong and supply an alternative.
If your service is an app, let them know that the issue will be cleared up in Version 1.1 …
These practical article writing tips will help you pimp your blog posts FAST. Boost the readability, engagement and conversion rates of your blog posts today.
Boss your blog like a superstar with these effective tips that will improve your blog posts now. Or you could always hire me to pimp your blog posts for you!
What we all want
Great content is at least a Prince we know that much. We also wish to have our blogs filled with great posts, perfect conversion rates, easy to read and of course some praise would be nice. In fact, ANY reaction at all would be a great start for most of us. …
You’ve been hosting your blog on wordpress.com for a while. Now you want to step things up a gear by joining the professionals with a self-hosted setup via wordpress.org with all the benefits that can bring. Here’s you guide.
The first question we should answer is what is shared and managed WordPress hosting? What are the differences, advantages and costs involved?
What are some of the benefits of managed WordPress hosting? Does it cost more? Should I switch from shared to managed?
What are the benefits of shared hosting? Should I stay where I am and update things myself? Who are the top shared and managed hosts? If you’re new to WordPress, you may become a little confused about which hosting plan is for you. We are here to help.
What is Shared WordPress Hosting?
Shared Hosting is a term used for the type of web hosting where numerous sites share the resources of ONE vast web server. Many hosting companies offer shared hosting plans at amazingly reasonable rates starting somewhere in the range of $3.95 every month to $9.95 every month. …
I could tell this wasn’t gonna go well.
We had been in some slight disagreement for the past few minutes in our open-planned office. It had started quietly at the line manager’s desk. But now, I had returned to my own workstation to continue the task she had set me, she was still fuming.
“Look at me when I’m talking to you,” she shouted; slamming her fist against a desk and throwing her voice across the office while our junior colleagues sniggered and stared.
I turned to look at her with slow, deliberate contempt that I saw her visibly shiver, while desperately trying to hold it together.
“What?” I said. “I told you I would speak to the client as you’ve asked. But I don’t see the problem. And I’m not going to pretend that I do see a problem when I think you’re clearly wrong. …
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