Why Black People Empathize With Jason Arday

UPDATE: Nathan Cofnas, a man who advocates for white supremacy in academia and who admits that he plotted Jason Arday’s downfall, has been suspended by his current employer, a university in Belgium.

UPDATE: Someone on Substack mentioned that I didn’t include anything about Jason having autism in this piece. Honestly, I think I just didn’t mention it because I was focused on what I understood the best in his story and what I know the most about. But I do think I could have linked to someone else’s writing. So here is a short piece from a UK scholar that I found. But if you have more on this please let me know. Remembering Professor Jason Arday: The Heavy Toll of Performative Inclusion

The Sizzle…

Saturday, I took my 8-year-old to see Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Don’t worry, comic book nerds. It was our second time seeing it. We are privileged to have a movie theater within walking distance of where we live. It is a decently long walk, and we do it regularly. I like to do it because it is a way to move our bodies and get some fresh air, but I don’t tell my 8-year-old that. I’m not new to parenting. For her, it is a time to check out our favorite front yards to see how they are doing with their foliage.

We left later than I wanted to. It was totally my fault. I just lost track of time. We were going to miss the listed start time for the movie, but I calmed my nerves by realizing that we were probably just going to miss all the stuff they show before the movie. I’m old school. I remember when it was three trailers and showtime! (Yes, I am now BACK IN MY DAY years old.)

We made it to the theater and bought our snacks BECAUSE OF COURSE. My kid was not skipping buying snacks, no matter how late we were. We walked into the screening of Spider-Man just as the lights went down and the opening credits had begun. But there was a problem. I couldn’t see.

My eyesight is bad. Like super bad. Like way worse than most people know. Like, without glasses or contacts, I’m not leaving the house. By the time we walked into the theater, the lights were out and even with my glasses, I couldn’t see where to sit. Like I might have sat on the floor or someone’s lap. If I had a minute or so to let my eyes adjust to the darkness, I could have (COULD HAVE) seen well enough to get to two empty seats, but my daughter wanted to sit down quickly since the movie was beginning. I couldn’t blame her. It is a great film.

So I did the only thing I do in those situations. I pulled out my phone and turned the flashlight on. I KNOW! I KNOW! But I pointed it towards the ground, and I moved it slowly towards the seats. I knew I just needed to see a little bit to find a place for us to sit. I have learned this from watching ushers at fancy plays and Broadway shows.

“TURN YOUR FLASHLIGHT OFF!”

I “looked” in the direction of the voice. I am using quotation marks, because I still couldn’t see. This was just an annoyed disembodied voice from the dark coming down the stairs towards me.

I turn away from the voice in the dark and follow my 8-year-old to some seats. We sit down, but I’m heated. It is weird to be in fight-or-flight mode and also in watch-a-movie mode at the same time. I totally understand that phones ruin movie-going experiences. But I also truly didn’t know how to find a seat. I had assumed that the voice-in-the-dark guy worked in the theater, but if he did, there was never an offer to help me find a seat. Even though I could not see him, I knew one thing for sure. He was a white guy. The timbre of his voice. The demeanor (heavy on the “mean”). The fact that he wanted to scold more than he wanted to help. Although I couldn’t see him with my eyes, I saw him. As my daughter and I sat in the audience watching Peter help New Yorkers of all races, ages, and creeds, I kept looking over to where the exchange with The White Voice had happened. (I had already given him a supervillain name.) The White Voice had left the theater after we sat down, but where was he going? Was he going to get the manager? Was he going to get security? Was he calling the cops? It is 2026 in America. None of that is off the table. At that moment, I wasn’t W. Kamau Bell, Celebrity Jeopardy champion, host of United Shades of America, preeminent Substacker. I was a Black man with his Black daughter, thinking about how to protect us, in the dark… when I couldn’t see. It would have been a great time for my latent mutant abilities to kick in.

Nobody came to get us. Eventually, I settled down and watched Tom Holland, Zendaya, and Jacob Batalon put on a big budget masterclass on how to make a popcorn movie resonate. I was crying at the last scene just like I cried the first time me and my 8-year-old saw it. I also left the theater nervous that this guy would want to continue our “conversation” and I wouldn’t know what he looked like. I held my daughter’s hand.

Here’s the thing. I knew I was wrong to turn on my flashlight, but I also know that his reaction was totally inappropriate and outsized. In other words, it was just another Black day in America.

The Steak…

In 2011, I spent a month in Scotland performing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. For many years the Fringe has been a place where stars were made (but more dreams were broken). Suzy Eddie Izzard is among the now-legendary names who first broke out there. When I was there, I did my solo show, The W. Kamau Bell Curve: Ending Racism in About an Hour. The way the Fringe works is that you do your show in one venue, at the same time everyday, for the entire month of August, with maybe one or two days off. If the Fringe folks like you (i.e. you are famous or have good management), then you get a primetime slot sometime in the evening. But if you are not famous or with the right people, you could literally be doing your show at 10am everyday for a month. Also, the venue could literally be the backroom of a bar instead of proper theater. And the venue could be on the opposite side of town from where the heart of the Fringe was. I was pretty lucky. Since I was an American (which made me special) and had some good representation, I had a real theater and a 9:30pm slot.

I had dreams of being the comedy version of Jimi Hendrix. Jimi didn’t have his big break until he moved to England. Jimi moved to England, made it big there, and then was “exported” back to the states. Some Americans even thought he was British at first. I was hoping to pull off something like that, but there was a problem.

When I got to the UK, I quickly discovered that a Black American talking about American racism was quaint to them. For my first few shows the overwhelmingly white audiences looked at me as a sort of curio. Their whole attitude was You yanks and your “racism.” It is so sad that you lot can’t get over that pesky racism thing like we have done over here. God save The Queen!

Meanwhile, I would turn on the news and some cute old, white English grandmother would say, “There’s too many Arabs moving in and taking over.” This would be her answer to the question, “What are your thoughts on the unseasonably warm weather?” After her racist answer, the news anchors would say something to the effect of, “Nan is making a good point.” I quickly learned that to your average UK white person. Nan wasn’t a racist. To them, Nan was exhibiting pride in her nation. Nan just wanted to Make the United Kingdom Great Again. Basically, I was there for proto-Brexit.

Three days into my month in Edinburgh I was ready to go home. (I forgot to mention that my wife and 6-week-old baby were with me too. It was A LOT.) Then on August 4th, 2011, the English police killed a Black man named Mark Duggan. Some witnesses said that the police pinned him to the ground and then shot him. A couple days after that there were protests in Tottenham, the area where he was killed. Much like we saw in the United States in 2020 with the George Floyd protests, the protests spread across England. Some of the assembled folks caused property damage and five people died. Do I need to tell you that many in the British press (and white press around the world) called these “race riots”? No, I do not. I spent the rest of my time onstage at Edinburgh devoting a portion of my show to calling out the racism in the UK news and the racism in the UK overall. The shows got better (or at least I had more fun). The shows also got Blacker and Browner, as more of my folks started showing up. But by then, the die was cast as far as my UK star being born. Do I need to tell you that I did not become the comedy version of Jimi Hendrix? OF COURSE I DON’T.

In my time there I learned a valuable lesson. Whatever type of racism we have in the United States of America, the United Kingdom’s racism is original recipe™. It is the pure, uncut, unstepped-on racism. England may have perfected the racism recipe. (Apologies to the Germans… and the Spanish.) Then in 1619, British human traffickers used racism as packing peanuts between the bodies of kidnapped Africans before they sent the first murderboat across the ocean to really kick off the transatlantic slave trade. In 2018, UK racism is what fueled this scene in The Black Panther. This scene is why so many Black people came out of the film saying, “Killmonger was right!”

UK racism is why, when I first heard that Meghan Markle (a person I did not know) was marrying Prince Harry (a person that I did not care about), my reaction was a Whoopi Goldbergian You in danger, girl!

UK racism is why, when I heard that Black British actor Paapa Essiegu had been cast to play Snape in the upcoming HBO Harry Potter series, my reaction was, Good for him! Also, I feel so sorry for him. British white people are going to hate this. And he’s gonna have to answer a ton of questions about J. K. Rowling’s rampant transphobia. But good for him… I guess.

In other words, British racism is why we can’t have nice things. The British empire literally tried to British all over the world. Then American racism said, “We’ll take it from here”

The Potatoes…

Last week was when I first heard about Black British academic Jason Arday. At that time, the white British media was having a proper field day going at Jason over the alleged lies they had caught him in. It was British tabloid journalism at its best worst. It was like if Twitter trolls had bigger vocabularies and British accents.

I’m not going to go over the many stories that Jason told and what was believable and wasn’t. Many people have done that, both for good and for grift. Also, it doesn’t matter what he lied about now. Last week Jason was found dead in his home. Details have not been confirmed, but the assumption is that he took his own life. No foul play is suspected. If Jason did take his own life, then without a doubt the British media pile-on was a contributing factor. Here’s a timeline of the important events.

1. In 2023, Cambridge University hires Jason to be a professor of sociology. That makes Jason only the sixth Black professor in Cambridge’s (racist) history. Jason is 37 years old at the time, which also makes him the youngest professor in Cambridge’s history. In telling his life story, as he is often asked to do given his achievement, Jason says things about his life that seem too hard to be true and/or can be easily disproven and/or have no supporting evidence.

2. In June of this year, “academic” Nathan Cofnas publishes a piece accusing Jason of plagiarism. Jason had been accused of plagiarism before this, but this time the accusation catches fire. This is probably because of the messiness of the accuser. Cofnas had received his Ph.D. from Cambridge and was a postdoc there until a blog post that he wrote advocating for “race realism” created so much controversy that he stepped down from his position at Cambridge. “Race realism” is to racism what Coke Zero is to Diet Coke. Effectively the same shit, different label. Despite being Jewish, Cofnas has openly professed to being a fan of eugenics. In 2024 Cofnas wrote that if he had his way, “Harvard faculty would be recruited from the best of the best students, which means the number of black professors would approach 0 per cent.” The nicest thing I can say about Cofnas is that he looks like he needs a hug, but he also looks like he’s never had one. Cofnas’ blog platform of choice, you ask? Substack. BECAUSE OF COURSE IT IS.

3. In response to Cofnas’ blog post, the white British press goes to town on this story like it was a leaked King Charles sex tape featuring his polo horse. Dozens and dozens of “news” stories are written about Jason Arday. Many of the stories blame D.E.I. for getting Jason promoted so quickly and for ignoring the questionable parts of his story. News segments are filled with white Brits celebrating this as the end of D.E.I. On August 5th, Jason resigns from Cambridge but admits no guilt. The press can’t let the story go, and reportedly 188 articles are written about Jason Arday even after he resigned. The white British press still want their pound of flesh.

4. On August, 14, 2026, Jason is found dead in his home. The white British press get their pound of flesh. But even after Jason’s death, the media is still coming after him. They still want more of his flesh.

Whatever you think about Jason’s story… whatever you think about plagiarism in academia… whatever you think about liars (both the white liars and the pathological ones)... whatever you think about racism (I sincerely hope you are against it if you are reading my work.)... whatever you think about any of this… I hope we can agree that Jason Arday should still be alive. He was a father and a husband, and he actually had some valuable things to contribute to the discourse on racism. Way more valuable than Cofnas’ “race realism” bunkum, which is still platformed on Substack. The white British press bullied him and harassed him and his family, and it seems like Jason only saw one way to end the harassment. But again, it hasn’t stopped.

In the days since Jason’s passing, many, many people (including white ones) have pointed out examples of white academics who were accused of plagiarism, harassment, and worse who didn’t end up on the business end of the British media. Some were forced to leave their jobs, but most kept their jobs with little or no serious consequence.

The main differences between Jason and these other academics is his ability to tell a tale and the color of his skin. The color of Jason’s skin is what turned Nathan Cofnas into his enemy. The color of Jason’s skin is the reason the white British press attacked him with such glee. It reminds me of the crowds of white Americans who watched the public lynchings of Black Americans.

We’ve seen those pictures. We’ve seen the visceral thrill in their faces. It is the same white supremacy. It is just that when the Brits do it, it is pure and uncut. Maybe Jason Arday was wrong, but Nathan Cofnas and the greater UK media were much worse.

I leave you with some wise words from Jason Arday.

I feel like Jason would have helped me find a couple seats in the movie theater.

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I’m so happy that Rosa Alicia Clemente is now on Substack. She is an important voice in movement work overall, but a critical voice in how we should think about Puerto Rico. I talked to her in the United Shades of America episode that was about Puerto Rico. She is Puerto Rican, herself, and has much pride in her island and her people. She also has much criticism for how the United States has historically and continually exploited and taken advantage of Puerto Rico. Read this piece. Subscribe to her Substack.

She also has a weekly Zoom seminar entitled The Black Puerto Rican Radical Tradition.

On today’s episode of my podcast WHO’S WITH ME? my guest is my former CNN coworker Sara Sidner. Sara has been a staple at CNN for years. She is currently the cohost of their morning show CNN Central News. Before that we sorta had similar jobs, traveling around the country and talking to people of all kinds.

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In the last few years Sara has been very open about her breast cancer diagnosis. She is currently cancer free (YAY!), but this public journey has connected her to people in a new way. She is also now an advocate for breast cancer research with the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. Also YAY, SCIENCE!

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Here are the upcoming tour dates:

September 25 & 26 - Stamford, CT, The New York Comedy Club

October 1 - Palo Alto, CA - Stanford University, Memorial Auditorium

February 20, 2027 - Bellingham, WA, Mount Baker Theatre

8 days ago a storm hit Gary, Indiana and the surrounding areas. Over 25,000 people are without power in Gary, and over 85,000 people have lost their power in the surrounding area. Gary is a predominantly Black city; so while the Northern Indiana Public Service Company says their power will be restored by Friday, August 21, there is legitimate fear that these folks won’t be given the resources they need to recover. days is 8 days of expired groceries. 8 days of homes without power at night. 8 days of people who need power for their accessibility equipment going without. 8 days without schools having power. I say this video from Ernest Crim III. He explains it and how we can help.

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