17/08/2026
NEVER SEEK VALIDATION FROM A CORRUPT AND RACIST SOCIETY!
Over the weekend, Jason Arday’s death brought me to a point of deep reflection on my own life and journey. It is an uncomfortable journey that at some point, many people of colour in Britain are forced to navigate: the search for identity and a sense of belonging within a society that does not always fully accept you. It is, in many ways, a rite of passage - one that ultimately deposits all people of colour on the same side of an invisible line.
I don’t care whether you are Trevor Phillips, Frank Bruno, Kemi Badenoch or Lenny Henry; you can climb the greasy pole to its summit - British society will never fully accept you as one of its own. There will always be those who view you as nothing more than a circus act - a smoking monkey in a suit. It may appear that doors are opening for you, but there is often a rude awakening on the other side - as tragically Jason Arday was to discover.
What more could a softly spoken, sensitive and vulnerable soul like Jason Arday have done to make himself more palatable, more appeasing, and less threatening to White society? Had he presented himself with greater confidence, he would have inevitably been dismissed as arrogant, menacing or aggressive. There are very few safe grey areas when it comes to navigating one’s “Blackness” in a society that has already decided what it expects that Blackness to look like - and the segregated corridors of institutionalised power that are off limits to it.
I came to this conclusion as a teenager. Fed up with police brutality, racism in the workplace and the stigma that society placed upon me as a Black youth, I decided to extricate myself from the system - to determine my own path, to do what I wanted to do, and to live in a world where I defined the limits of my intellect and what was possible, rather than allowing a racist society to define those limits for me.
The guiding principle was simple: never seek validation from a corrupt and racist society.
It is for this reason that academia never appealed to me. I was not prepared to live my life under a glass ceiling - with gatekeepers determining the optiks through which I should frame the world. When I became a writer, I did so on my own terms. When I became a publisher, I did so on my own terms. When I became a filmmaker, I did so on my own terms. Throughout, I remained determined never to compromise my identity nor to seek validation from the gatekeepers of White supremacy. I have paid the price - and I do not regret it. My soul is not for sale.
The following is a poem I wrote more than 20 years ago. In light of Jason Arday’s transition to the ancestors, I share it in memory of his journey and struggle:
BLACK BOY
A boy came of age in a strange world which the man claimed he owned,
Devoid of the cultural trappings that should have been the foundations of his being,
he struggled to find his place and to define an identify for himself,
An identity away from the one the man had defined for him,
Fighting to express himself whilst discover himself, create himself whilst be himself, he concealed his identity behind his music,
He became a half note scattered without melody,
The drum became his heartbeat, the violin his screams, the trumpet his temperament, the indistinct rhythm his soul.
Lost in this menagerie of sound, madness courted sanity, illusion - reality, depravation - morality.
His violín played the Black man’s solo.
A boy came of age in a strange world wondering why he could not just be!
