Welcome to the personal website of writer Skylar Baker-Jordan

Tag: racism

  • Calendars and racist tchotchkes

    Calendars and racist tchotchkes

    That’s the thing about writing professionally no one tells you about: you spend a lot of time not actually writing but rather doing office work.

  • I am anti-fascist. Trump thinks that makes me a terrorist

    I am anti-fascist. Trump thinks that makes me a terrorist

    When Donald Trump was first elected, I joked to my family that should I disappear, they ought to look for me in a gulag in the Utah desert. I was convinced a man with authoritarian leanings would attempt to crack down on free speech, especially from those of us opposed to his racist regime. It […]

  • Words on Walford: Fortnight of 13 – 24 April 2020

    Words on Walford: Fortnight of 13 – 24 April 2020

    Has the pandemic changed the way anyone else watches EastEnders? I used to watch every night, but lately I’ve been saving up four episodes (or what would be a week’s worth in normal times) and binging them at the weekend. In some ways this is nice—Friday night was spent in Walford, for example, and I […]

  • Pete Buttigieg, Hillary Clinton, and who gets to show emotion in American politics

    Pete Buttigieg, Hillary Clinton, and who gets to show emotion in American politics

    I suspect the similar double standard experienced by Hillary Clinton and—it must be said, to a lesser degree—Pete Buttigieg is rooted in the same patriarchal, misogynist notions about how women and gay men behave. It’s why when a straight man gets angry, he’s “passionate,” when a gay man gets angry, he’s “dramatic,” and when a woman gets angry, she’s “hysterical.”

  • This isn’t just about SAE. Greek life has a problem with racism.

    Content warning: racism, racial epitaphs, lynching, and violence against Black people One of my dearest friends, Ethan*, is a Sigma Alpha Epsilon (colloquially known as SAE). He is also a person of colour. So as I watched the Oklahoma Kappa chapter gleefully chanting they’d lynch a Black man before they’d let him pledge their fraternity, […]

  • Skylar’s Naughty and Nice List 2014

    Santa’s going to be coming down (but hopefully not in) a million billion chimneys tonight, and whereas last year I was expecting coal in my stocking, this year I’ve been a fucking saint. Seriously, thanks to the FDA’s reuqirements that gay men only be celibate for a year before they donate, I can now give […]

  • White Privilege and You: A few quick thoughts on Ferguson

    I landed in London this morning. While I was in the air, a grand jury in Missouri decided not to charge an armed agent of the state for shooting dead like a dog an unarmed teenage boy. He is but one of many innocent, unarmed Black people being gunned down by American police every year, […]

  • What if Britain had a First Amendment?

    There’s been so much talk about the importance of a free press and free speech lately that I feel as though I’m at a salon with Milton and Locke. In light of the Royal Charter regulating the press and furor around the Guardian’s reporting on and release of classified GCHQ intelligence documents , there’s been […]