Kermit O
Former teacher turned school abolitionist. Writing a dreampunk novel about kids, trauma, and parallel worlds. Light brown. Unapologetically Black. Punches up.

Education for Sustainability

February 26, 2021 • Education, Race and Racism, Sustainability and Regeneration


The moment demands a mass mobilization of people and collective will. Which means bridging gaps: in knowledge, resources, understanding, and empathy. In our conversations, and in our work around sustainability, we have to integrate those things which support and affirm our rights to healthy, dignified lives, so we even have the capacity to take on something so grandiose as “saving the planet”.

education for sustainability, phennd sustainability, philadelphia

Free Speech, Cancel Culture, and the Miseducation of Cousin Miles

July 14, 2020 • Politics, Race and Racism, Society and Culture


Those who benefit from the status quo (and those who aspire to) — by virtue of social, economic, or political power and privilege — would really quite like it, if the rest of you wouldn’t much mind, if we could just keep things “civil”. A premium is placed on preserving the appearance, not just of civility, but of the fundamental “goodness” of those in power.

cancel culture, Cousin Miles, free speech, Thomas Chatteron Williams

The Sacrifice of Ralph Northam on the Altar of Democratic Sanctimony

February 10, 2019 • Politics, Race and Racism, Society and Culture

This whole Virginia drama is revealing something important about the current Democratic establishment, something which has implications for both past and future, including the election of Donald Trump. That something is that Democrats are symbolic politicians, concerned more with the image of doing the right thing, than actually doing it. Where they effect policies that actually make a positive difference in people’s lives, it is usually reactive, a case of them “holding the line” against the worst abuses of the Republicans.

blackface, Democratic Party, Hypocrisy, ralph northam

Black Privilege

June 3, 2018 • Race and Racism, Society and Culture

There has undoubtedly been one person, or ten, or even one thousand black people who have gone through their lives with little to no observable experience with racism, don’t consciously feel its impact, and for that manage to gain some degree of success or wealth or high quality of life. Their experiences do not invalidate the very real existence of systems that make such outcomes more unlikely for the rest of us. Systems that privilege white people at the expense of people of color.

black experience, black privilege, thomas chatterton williams

David Cage’s Long History of Racism

May 2, 2018 • Media Criticism, Race and Racism, Video Games

The recent accusations against Quantic Dream founder David Cage do not exist in a vacuum, nor without precedent. He wants to be judged by his work, and indeed if one looks critically at his games, a theme emerges. People of color are reduced to caricatures, invoke harmful stereotypes, and should remain at the margins, if they appear at all. Even if that means literally erasing them from settings where they predominate. This is not the cross-burning of the past or the anger-marching racism so en vogue these days, but the more deeply entrenched racism underlying all of our media institutions.

David Cage, Quantic Dream, racism

10 Tips on How to Include Black People

June 10, 2016 • Books, Comics, Film, Media Criticism, Race and Racism, TV, Video Games

Diverse representations of black people in media has nothing to do with “political correctness”. It has little to do with fairness, either. This is not a zero-sum game by which black gain equals white loss. What it concerns, most significantly, is the acceptance of this proposal that Black Lives Matter. That Black People Matter. Black representations are a matter of survival. Of casting us as fully-realized human beings with thoughts, feelings, dreams, aspirations, complexity, agency — against a backdrop that explicitly shows and tells us (everyone) that the opposite is true.

Blackness, Media Representation, Survival

Bill Cosby is an Actual Monster

July 28, 2015 • Gender and Sexuality, Race and Racism, Society and Culture


The truth of the matter is that these revelations haven’t tarnished the image of Cliff Huxtable, and changed him into a monster. Rather, the image of Cliff Huxtable was built around an actual monster. A monster playing his best role yet, as a beloved family icon and upstanding public figure.

Bill Cosby, Rape Culture

The Comic Subtleties of Anti-Blackness

October 22, 2014 • Comics, Media Criticism, Race and Racism


Sometimes it’s tucked away, hidden just beneath the tongue, or in the sly twist of the mouth…

Anti-blackness is so pervasive that I think media creators aren’t even aware of how they present it on a regular basis. That’s me giving them the benefit of the doubt, in spite of all the evidence that suggests it’s intentional.

anti-blackness, sex criminals, subtle racism

Black Mandarin

October 11, 2014 • Education, Race and Racism, Society and Culture


A contemplation of the revolutionary potential of teaching black kids Mandarin. Beyond allowing black people to have more mobility within a new power structure, fluency in Mandarin would allow us to spread our own influence. Our revolutionary spirit writ large to resonate with people around the world…

Black Students, Mandarin, Sci-Fi in Real Life, Speculative Fiction

Thomas Jefferson: Father of White Supremacy

August 17, 2014 • Media Analysis, Politics, Race and Racism, Society and Culture


When you hear the name Thomas Jefferson, it is likely followed by “founding father”, “hero”, “patriot”, and other such reverent terms. But he should also be considered one of the Founding Fathers of white supremacy. Nearly every white supremacist idea, claim, or rationale, can be found in Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia…

Rethinking History, Thomas Jefferson, White Supremacy

12 Years A Slave: For Whites Only

February 23, 2014 • Film, Race and Racism, Society and Culture


What does any black person stand to gain from sitting in a dark movie theater—more than likely surrounded by white people—and being psychologically assaulted for two hours? Will we then turn to those white audience members and discuss how horrible it all was, how many tears they shed, and eventually breathe a collective sigh of relief that all that was in the past, and thank God that we’ve come so far?

12 Years A Slave, Films for White People

Flexuality: The Elasticity of Sexual Norms in the Works of Octavia E. Butler

December 1, 2013 • Books, Gender and Sexuality, Media Analysis, Race and Racism, Society and Culture


An examination of how Butler challenges sexual norms, from the incest taboo in the Patternist series, to interspecies sex in the Lilith’s Brood trilogy, to pedophilia and rape in Fledgling, and arguably all three of these in her short story Bloodchild. These stories show us how norms, particularly sexual ones, are flexible between worlds, cultures, and especially individuals.

Octavia E. Butler, sexual norms, SFF

The Case for a “Mexican Superman”

August 13, 2013 • Comics, Gender and Sexuality, Race and Racism

The obvious reason for more diversity and inclusion in comics is to allow marginalized people to better identify with the characters. For white fans, whether they are willing to accept it or not, the white default actually makes characters less interesting. A bold claim, I know, but bear with me. Superheroes, I think, are more interesting for being more human, for having trauma, hardship, and conflict. To the great extent that white folks – particularly cisgendered heterosexual men – have privilege and power, it further insulates them against the kinds of scenarios that give birth to heroes.

Diversity in Comics, Inclusion in Comics, Superheroes

Exclusion and Fetishism

November 14, 2010 • Books, Close Reading, Gender and Sexuality, Race and Racism

For all “darkness” figures into the thinking of fantasy authors, it is conspicuously absent from the features of the characters. Except the “dark lords” and such, who play off of the fact that darkness equates to evil in the white literary imagination. Tolkien took it a step further, equating not only darkness with evil in the abstract, but designing his evil characters – goblins, trolls, and the like – with Africanesque features…

Broken Kingdoms, NK Jemisin, SFF

Identifying the Indian Killer

October 16, 2010 • Books, Close Reading, Race and Racism, Society and Culture

Alexie points a finger at the self-satisfying ramblings of white liberals, who for all they may understand intellectually, lack any real personal understanding of the Indian condition, or of the fact that there may not even be any such monolithic condition…

Indian Killer, Sherman Alexie

Beauty and Self-Hatred in Flight

October 3, 2010 • Books, Media Analysis, Race and Racism, Society and Culture

In Flight, Alexie seems to be asking whether or not self-hatred can be neutralized through assimilation – that is, can Zits’s hatred of his own Indian-ness be dissolved into a claiming of his whiteness? Indeed whiteness itself is a product of assimilation, with Irish, Italian, German, and other European ethnicities blending within the “melting pot” to create a new racial paradigm.

Flight, Self-Hatred, SFF, Sherman Alexie

Uncharted 2 and the Burden of Awareness

October 15, 2009 • Gender and Sexuality, Media Criticism, Race and Racism, Video Games

Once upon a time, I was able to just play video games and enjoy them. I didn’t see race, I didn’t see cultural issues, or gender issues, or anything. Games, after all, were my escape from such heady things. But now I can’t help but notice them. There is hardly a movie or a game or a book where I’m not looking for and easily spotting a slew of cultural insensitivities and outright offenses that can only be attributed to the obliviousness or indifference of white game developers.

Colonial Adventures, Uncharted, White Gaze

Black, White, and Jade: Race in Video Games

February 16, 2009 • Media Analysis, Race and Racism, Video Games

As technology improves, and as the content of games expands in terms of breadth and depth, opportunities only increase for representing diversity. In the future, it will not be enough for a character to have darker skin, thicker lips, or a different eye shape. We will have to see different cultures and experiences represented as well.

Beyond Good & Evil, Black Video Game Characters, Jade

Ethnic Depictions in Video Games

January 13, 2009 • Media Criticism, Race and Racism, Video Games

Those of us who are not white, but hope to identify with the characters we play in games the same as anyone, find the industry to be deficient. At best we have had to settle for ethnically ambiguous characters, often in non-Earth settings, which while fulfilling an aesthetic need still leave players wanting for a more substantial connection. When characters of non-European ethnicities are depicted in video games, it is true that they are often stereotypes.

Final Fantasy VII, Games as Art, Stereotypes

A dream world shaped by children's desires.
A sanctuary…


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