Jess Hagan

meh.

[Jess Hagan @TheJessHagan]

Wow. What a fantastic article! Thank you @Variety for featuring @angiewamai, @tsukpo, Chantel Clarke & I as we gear up to pitch at @SeriesManiaPro tomorrow. Conference Room 3.2 if you’re around! 🌺

https://t.co/LdGalzwdbW

[Black Media Hub ✊🏿 @BlackMediaHub]

The most beautiful thing you will hear today: Nina Simone plays The sound of silence

[Dr Helen Ingram @drhingram]

Choose any word in the dictionary and prefix it with ‘you absolute”

[jordyn ♡ @jordynceIeste]

this is who they’re trying to portray as this scary, masculine, line-backer built protector

[Jay - Hyphenated History UK @HyphenatedJay]

Just 2 raccoons fighting by the bins

[ben hylak @benhylak]

I actually thought I was losing my mind.

[Jess Hagan @TheJessHagan]

@KOSASI_NAKAMOTO $WKC

[Ty Ngachira @anto_ty]

When Tyla said she is not Black but Coloured, she was not speaking into the American conversation about race at all. She was speaking in the language of her own country, shaped by its own history. Yet her words detonated in America as though they had been aimed there. This is what happens when a nation has spent a century convincing the world that its definitions are the only ones that matter.

America’s greatest export has never been war. It has never been democracy. It has never been freedom. America’s greatest export is the dream of itself.

It is not that the films are inherently better. It is not that the music contains some mystical note absent elsewhere. What America has, and what it has always had, is money, reach, and a machinery built to make its image the centre of the world.

This was not accidental. It was policy. It was the soft arm of empire. To project yourself outward until your face is the first one people recognise in the mirror.

And so the American way of life became the default. Other cultures were filed into two neat drawers: savage if they challenged the story, exotic if they could be sold back to you.

If you are Black, your first cinematic self was likely African American, the rapper, the sitcom character, the hero of a Spike Lee joint. If you are white in Europe or Australia, it was the white faces of American sitcoms and stadium tours. Whoever you were, your first image of yourself came with an American accent.

Over time, Americans began to believe the story they had written. When you grow up in the country that built itself into the cultural Mecca, it is easy to think you are the best simply because you are on top. You forget, or never know, that the game was fixed long before you played it.

But the monopoly is breaking. Nigeria’s Nollywood now speaks across oceans. South Korean dramas leap borders. India’s Bollywood never needed permission to fill theatres. Spanish thrillers keep strangers awake at night. Slumdog Millionaire, Squid Game, Money Heist, Shōgun — all aimed partly at the American market because that is where the money is, but no longer about America.

And here is the thing. Black Americans, who fought to be seen in their own country, became the global face of Blackness. That is a remarkable achievement. It was also made possible by the same system that excluded everyone else. Now Africans, Caribbeans, and Afro-Latins tell their own stories without making room for American centrality, and the absence is noticed.

We grew up watching you. You did not grow up watching us. And now the internet has levelled the ground just enough for others to speak without hesitation. Tyla’s words land differently because the world no longer accepts America as the only arbiter of meaning.

America’s greatest export was never its art. It was the power to decide which art, and which identities, the world would see. That power is no longer yours alone. There is both justice and loss in that.

[awo dufie föfie 🦋 @awo_dufie]

With their permissions and for @MinorityAfrica, I share the story of “We touch bros but we no gay" one community of fraud boys living in Haatso, a suburb of Accra in Ghana’s capital city.

Read more here:
https://t.co/uhgOuwX5nQ (link updated in bio)

[awo dufie föfie 🦋 @awo_dufie]

remain cleansed during periods of their work- an exercise they believe to bring luck, a major requirement for the precarious work of romance fraud and internet scamming.

[awo dufie föfie 🦋 @awo_dufie]

I have spent the last eight months building a close relationship and talking to fraud boys (communities of cyber criminals in Ghana and Nigeria) who regularly have sex with other men and trans women to maintain their purity and -

[Efo Dela @Amegaxi]

Nigerian men have found me from my wife's tweet.

I really appreciate their concern about me doing dishes.

Unfortunately, I actually like doing dishes, especially if I'm using warm water.

I find any chore that involves water very therapeutic.

Except mopping

[Jess Hagan @TheJessHagan]

starving artist szn 🙂

[Scully @isthatscully]

I’m in West Croydon with a Polish man drinking African Fanta

[Financial Times @FT]

Ken Ofori-Atta has had a long career as an investment banker, entrepreneur and until last year Ghana’s finance minister. Now he's a wanted man on Interpol’s red list. https://t.co/TIloiImIqQ

[Film Updates @FilmUpdates]

Ryan Coogler has confirmed Denzel Washington will star in ‘BLACK PANTHER 3.’

(https://t.co/wxFaAuBbUD)

[Jess Hagan @TheJessHagan]

@firstnatbankgh this is a joke. It’s been over 17 days since this apparent migration. When this banking App going to be ready? I have clients and staff to pay.

[𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐳𝐞𝐬🥷🏾 @lordbrazes]

just wasting juice

[I Am The Marketing Plan @JunaeBrown]

The yellow. The cape. The gold fan. The Birkin. QUEEN Lauryn Hill 😭🔥 #MetGala

[Abuja Streets @abujastreets]

Lmao! As opposed to what? Running them over? 😕😕