I know it's racist

The room

This is the first real question of the first video I ever made for YouTube. Early April 2021, London, a PlayStation on the table as bait for subscribers, the interviewer holding the cards. The camera had already caught me restarting the intro more times than I want to count. I had rehearsed that part. I had not rehearsed this.

The interviewer asked whether I felt the UK was a racist place. I corrected the verb before I answered the question: not feel — know. Then I did what I have kept doing ever since, which is to set the two countries I am always measured against side by side. America at least says it out loud. Here we pretend it isn’t, and I said that was worse. A lie told politely is still a lie; it just lasts longer.

Later that year I sat alone in front of a 4K camera and made a whole video out of that answer. It is here too, as its own reel: VERDICT. I did not know in April that I was writing its first line. The receipt predates the argument.

People have told me since that the gap between thinking and knowing is arrogance. It isn’t. It is the gap between an opinion and a record, and I have been building the second since this video.