The Nationality and Borders Bill evokes a chilling history for the UK’s East And South-East Asian Communities

Clause 9 of the UK Government’s Nationality and Borders Bill exempts the government from giving notice of a decision to deprive a person of citizenship if they believe the person can apply for citizenship elsewhere. This clause has potentially chilling effects for the UK’s people of colour, and as Daniel York Loh writes, recalls a… Read More

Why we can’t Live With The Lams and British television’s historic East Asian problem – Part 2

In the second part of his article, Daniel York Loh discusses the historic and ongoing issue with British East Asian representation, recently highlighted in the controversy around the BBC’s Living With The Lams  Read part 1 here Featured image: promotional picture from the BBC’s Chinese Burn I grew up with The Chinese Detective on TV in… Read More

Why we can’t Live With The Lams and British television’s historic East Asian problem – Part one

In the first of a two part article, Daniel York Loh discusses the controversy around the BBC’s Living With The Lams and how British TV still has a major problem with East Asian representation There’s an old entertainment joke which goes like this – “everyone is an expert on two businesses: their own business and… Read More

Hollywood’s upcoming films prove it loves Asian culture – as long as it comes without Asians

by Kelly Kanayama  When the trailer for Marvel’s upcoming Doctor Strange movie starring Benedict Cumberbatch dropped a few days ago, parts of the comics Internet were pretty excited. Magic + action + pretend martial arts + a superhero with whom many nerds are familiar but whose name probably wouldn’t be recognised by the average member of the public — this trailer had everything…… Read More

FROM THE ARCHIVES: I’m Not Your Pretty Little Lotus Flower

Although Media Diversified is on a site break for the month of August while we develop exciting new projects, we still want to continue delivering challenging, insightful content to our readers — so we’ll be going into the archives to bring back some of our most-read articles. Joy Goh-Mah and Rowena Mondiwa’s “I’m Not Your Pretty… Read More

Transracial doesn’t mean what Rachel Dolezal thinks it means

By Ellie Freeman I am transracial. But I am nothing like Rachel Dolezal. This week, Rachel Dolezal, the head of the Spokane, Washington chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), was revealed to be a white woman masquerading as a black woman. Just when you couldn’t imagine anything more contemptible… Read More

Kissing historically

by Mara Lee A couple of years ago, there was an outburst of protests in Canada, triggered by the design of the new hundred-dollar bill. On the bank note you see a woman leaning over a microscope, a depiction that is supposed to celebrate Canada’s medical innovations. The protests were because the woman at the… Read More

‘People have to know who you are’ – Between East and West

Wei Ming Kam “So, you’re Chinese, right?” I’m 12 years old and sitting next to the only other British-born Chinese girl in my year. In a secondary school with 150 girls in each year, that might make some kids feel isolated. For me, this feels largely normal. The current conversation though, with a row of… Read More

Prejudice, bias and convention: The problem for Equity and minority ethnic actors

by Paul Courtenay Hyu Actors, like any other profession, benefit from a trade union, which represents them in matters relating to work. The year I joined Equity, the actor’s trade union, in 1989, was the year that Miss Saigon opened in the West End and Jonathan Pryce was cast to play an East Asian part,… Read More