Sorius Samura has directed a new documentary for channel four called Living With Illegals. It documents his experience living among illegal immigrants from Africa as they cross from Morocco into Europe for month, under dangerous and gruelling circumstance, for a chance at life in the West. By documenting this for a reality tv audience, he attempts to displace the vision of the voyeur by placating his own self - i.e. the viewer - into the lives of those he chooses to document - ironically those without any documents.

Najla Said, daughter of the late Edward Said, is on the last stretch of her 13-week off-Broadway, one-woman show “Palestine”. First - the name, second - an unrecognized nation, and third - the “one-woman” performance surely add a lot of baggage to a single story.

Spotted via Africa is a Country: Die Antwoord - a trio from South Africa that happens to be the hipster obsession du jour, has previously been referred to as a “wild and savage rap group from the deep, dark, …

One Month before Haiti’s tragic earthquake, one month before the world suddenly woke up to the country’s plight - Haitian life and art were captured poetically in the first ever Ghetto Bienniale. The townships of Port-Au-Prince transformed into urban art landscapes, showcasing the dynamic visual artists in an aptly titled, “A Salon des Refuses for the 21st Century”. Asking the question, “What happens when first world art rubs up against third world art? Does it bleed?” The Bienniale hosted artists and academics from countries like Jamaica, Venezuela and Columbia to respond. This feature in Dazed Digital magazine captures some of what there was to say.

We interview Steven Salaita, the author of The Uncultured Wars, Arabs, Muslims and the Poverty of Liberal Thought. Through witty humour and incisive essays, his book critiques the American liberal-left’s complicity in perpetuating anti-Arab, Islamophobic, and imperial modes of thought. In doing so, he raises important questions about the nature of race relations and the manifest Orientalism in American political discourse today. His target is not the neoconservative right who are blatant and easily identified in in their dogmatic doctrine of the war on terror and in their racist caricatures of Arabs and Muslims. Rather, he sounds the alarm on the misrepresentative ideas of the liberal left, passively justifying the sensationalized excesses of the right.

Report after report and survey after survey repeatedly indicate that Islamophobia in America and Europe is on the rise, not on the decline. America can elect a Black president and delude itself into believing a post-racial society has suddenly replaced one erected on racist legacy. America does have a history of tolerance and acceptance, but an accepted discourse of Islamophobia relinquishes any hopes conjuring up “post-race” America.

Is ethno-techno the new turn in appropriated world music? The sounds are widening in their scope and popularity but usually thousands of miles away from the subterraneans producers who unleash the source of these mixes. So, asks the Guardian, is the ethno-techno trend just another form of neo-colonialism?

This one comes via MTV Iggy. Hollywood with an international tilt usually comes with a butchered foreign accent, Chinese takeout and a hand full of ignorant claims about countries they can’t even pronounce correctly. The Whilred Interactive team put together an amusing project called “Let Hollywood Teach You Geography” poking fun at Hollywood’s ignorant social and cultural geography through mashing up over 40 clips from sunny Hollywood productions that mention countries the producers probably couldn’t even place on a map.

Lately, Japan’s reinterpreted the Dancehall music craze that’s swept the country in the footsteps of an already popular reggae fanbase. According to the Guardian, there’s less than a sizeable Jamaican population in the country, but Jamaican dancehall is very popular - obscure club nights and all - around the country. But it’s not the Jamaican artists that have helped spread the dancehall bug - there’s an authentic Japanese form of dancehall that’s growing in popularity, where it’s not unheard of some Japanese dancehall artists selling out stadiums.

As a child, I was drawn to Cookie Monster’s manic love for baked goods, but my most vivid recollection of Sesame Street is Gordon. I can’t remember when I first saw him, whether he was having one of his chats with Oscar about O’s grouchy outlook on life or whether he joined in a song urging us to do something good for ourselves, but I do recall his presence: warm, joyful, thoughtful and firm. Not a caricature or stereotype of a Black man, Gordon represents Sesame Street’s greatest value for me as a father—a world where people of color are celebrated without being tokenized, satirized or exaggerated.