War poetry, the rebel’s art form

To find new value in war poetry, look to the Middle East writes Lisa Luxx Read More

Where were South Africa’s enslaved people from?

by Karen Williams  Slavery in South Africa began at the same time as colonisation in 1652, when Jan van Riebeeck, the representative of the Dutch East India Company (the VOC), arrived in Cape Town to set up a refreshment station. Van Riebeeck arrived with two slave girls from “Abyssinia” (Ethiopia). But Van Riebeeck’s arrival did… Read More

An introduction to the Indian Ocean slave trade

by Karen Williams  When many people think of slavery, they think of the translatlantic trade that took place between Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean. The legacy of enslavement in the Americas (particularly in the United States) is known globally through the cultural and political impact of African-American iconography, films, history and references in popular… Read More

Among A Race Of Others: An Overview Of Western Racial Classification And Colourism

by Anthony Anaxagorou Recently, a friend asked what makes someone a ‘person of colour’. For many White people and for many people of colour too, the term can seem strangely ambiguous. The ongoing refugee crisis has seen thousands of displaced people trying to enter Europe from the Middle East or East Africa adding yet another dimension… Read More

FROM THE ARCHIVES: Cultural Appropriation: The Fashionable Face of Racism

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. Chimene Suleyman’s “Cultural Appropriation: The Fashionable Face of Racism”… Read More

Reflections on a Culture in Crisis

Reflections on the Culture in Crisis Conference, April 2015 by Roya Arab We entered through a majestic arched carved stone entrance. My eye was caught by a plaque -akin to those found in early Near Eastern cities in clay, gold, silver and stone marking ancient monarchs – informing us that ‘Queen Victoria Empress of India’… Read More

My Middle East: ‘We should go out there and represent ourselves’

by Noor Alnaqeeb ‘Kuwait is still at war, right?’ This is something I hear all the time and is a prime example of how things in the Middle East are grouped together under damaging labels, leaving the entire region with one single story. Challenging the stereotypes around where I am from is a constant battle… Read More

‘Defining’ Terror, and Why ISIS Suits the West

by Chimene Suleyman ISIS have never shocked the West. Not really. They are an al-Qaeda template with a Twitter handle. There are only so many ways you can torture and kill someone, and it’s nothing Abu Ghraib hasn’t seen before. But is there anything that suits the West’s understanding of the Middle East more than… Read More

Cultural Appropriation: The Fashionable Face of Racism

by Chimene Suleyman There is a painting in my parent’s house that my mother made. It is a self portrait; green eyes looking back between the black cloth of the headscarf painted around her face. It is a beautiful painting, carnal even. The assigned image on my phone for my father is a photograph taken… Read More

Framing Transnational Migration: An Intervention

by Sara Salem The last few weeks have seen at least three major incidents of migrants[1] dying at sea—two off the coast of Italy, and one just off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt. These incidents have received much coverage in the media, but the framing of transnational migration in much of this coverage has been… Read More