We Can’t Allow Racism To Distract From Adolescence’s Crucial Message About Toxic Masculinity

Incels, Andrew Tate, male rage and the menacing Manosphere: These are the images that come to mind when I think of the prominent themes grappled with in Adolescence — Netflix’s new hit show that has viewers in a chokehold. What doesn’t come to my mind, however, is an agenda to demonize white British boys and men. And yet, despite the series’ growing critical acclaim, countless social media users are in uproar over the series’ depiction of a very young, white male murder suspect — with some even stating that it should have been a Black boy instead. The series’ true message of preventing gender-based youth violence is at risk of being hijacked by reactionary rhetoric.

Written by Jack Thorne and British actor Stephen Graham, Adolescence tells the story of 13-year-old Jamie Miller, a quiet, shy boy from a white working-class family in Yorkshire (played with haunting precision by novice actor Owen Cooper), who, one morning, is unexpectedly arrested on suspicion of the murder of his classmate, 13-year-old Katie Leonard. But unlike most shows centred around a mysterious murder, Adolescence is not a “whodunnit”, but a “whydunnit”, as Thorne describes it, and the aim of the series is to investigate the reasons why a teenage boy like Jamie brutally stabbed Katie to death. 

The four-episode miniseries made its debut on March 13 and amassed 24.3 million views within its first four days, making it the streaming platform’s most-watched TV show in the UK right now. This isn’t surprising considering how masterfully the show explores the impact of social media’s “red pill” content on young boys, shaping misogynistic attitudes towards women and girls.

Adolescence’s message is clear as day. It’s a show about the dangers the digital ‘Manosphere’ poses to the social development of vulnerable, disenfranchised adolescent boys, who are susceptible to being indoctrinated with misogynistic ideas. Writers Thorne and Graham have been very vocal about this, with Graham saying that he was inspired to create the show after reading about two instances of a teenage boy killing a teenage girl. They are even calling for the miniseries to be “shown in schools and parliament” to help prevent the escalation of youth gender violence.

Several UK politicians such as Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Labour MP Anneliese Midgley, and Ireland’s Deputy Prime Minister Simon Harris have endorsed the idea of showing the drama in schools, with Starmer suggesting that this could contribute to wider efforts to tackle the  “abhorrent violence carried out by young men, influenced by what they see online”.

Despite the creators clarifying Adolescence’s hard-hitting message — and politicians (and anyone actually paying attention) celebrating it — some have distorted this valuable, life-saving message into something sinister and calculated.

After finishing the last episode, teary-eyed from witnessing the devastating impact of Jamie’s actions on his family, I was surprised to see social media users criticizing the show. It seems their issue wasn’t with the acting or storytelling but with the decision to cast a white boy as Jamie. Some have claimed this choice was part of an “agenda” to demonize white boys and misrepresent them as the primary perpetrators of youth violence, especially because Graham was inspired to make this show after reading about the tragic 2023 killing of 15-year-old Elianne Andam, who was stabbed by then 17-year-old Hassan Sentamu in South London. 

According to these critics, since Sentamu is Black, the show’s creators should have cast a Black actor to play Jamie to better represent the reality of gender violence trends. What they are omitting, however, is that Graham also said that he drew inspiration from the fatal stabbing of 12-year-old Ava White by a 15-year-old white boy in Liverpool’s city centre. 

Under a Politics UK thread, one user accused the show of portraying white boys as the true threat to women’s safety, instead of “foreigners with machetes”, while another claimed the casting was part of a “racial attack on white Britons”, adding that “the only discussion that needs to be had is why high-crime blacks are in the UK at all.”

One comment, which received over 5,000 likes, came from journalist and former Reclaim Party deputy Martin Daubney, who posted a bar graph from the Centre of Migration Control, which shows the nationalities of sex offenders. He wrote, “If Netflix & the government really want to address toxic misogyny in Britain, make a documentary based on facts?”, citing that foreign nationals were “71% more likely to be sex offenders”.

These claims ignore countless examples of white British men and boys who have committed atrocious crimes against women and girls like 12-year-old Ava White. In July last year, Kyle Clifford killed his ex-girlfriend Louise Hunt, and her sister Hannah with a crossbow after fatally stabbing their mother, Carol Hunt, eight times. Incidents like this prove that gender violence isn’t committed exclusively by men of color or immigrants. It’s a problem that knows no racial or cultural boundaries. What’s frustrating is that, in 2025, we even have to recount such terrible tragedies just to make the point that youth gender violence is a problem across all communities in the UK.

Honestly, who would ever have thought that in modern-day Britain, white people would be complaining about casting a white actor in a protagonist role? Oh, the irony. Wasn’t it just the other day that people were up in arms about Halle Bailey being cast as Disney’s ‘Little Mermaid’? Or that customers threatened Sainsbury’s with a boycott for releasing a Christmas advert featuring a Black family? (The horror!) Fast forward to today, when we have influential figures like Martin Daubney weaponizing well-meaning campaigns for diverse representation against Black people and using them to fuel reactionary politics. So, we can’t play mermaids or fun-loving families, but we most definitely should play cold-blooded murderers. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so dangerous. 

As a British Nigerian, born and raised in London, I’ve always felt like my race supersedes my nationality. This country sees me as Black before it sees me as British, and that is a reality that I’m all too aware of. We saw indicators of this during last summer’s anti-immigration riots. Although far-right leader Tommy Robinson described the chaos as a result of “legitimate concerns” about migration (which, of course, isn’t exclusive to migrants of color), how come it was simply Black and Asian Brits — many of whom were born in this country — who bore the brunt of the violence through senseless mob beatings and Islamophobic attacks on mosques?

The interchangeable use of race and nationality is a tactic that is commonly used by bigots to vocalize their racism without the contemporary fear of being labelled the unutterable r-word: “racist”. To avoid being tainted with this forbidden word, they conflate race with nationality to disguise themselves as “true patriots” who are simply concerned about the socioeconomic effects of migration on their beloved Britain. We saw this play out after the tragic 2023 killing of students Grace O'Malley-Kumar and Barnaby Webber, and school caretaker Ian Coates in Nottingham when people took to social media to complain about the killer’s migrant background, while also making explicitly racist comments in the process.

In a debate on GB News, former Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle clashed with Martin Daubney, who claimed that Adolescence shouldn’t be shown in schools because it promotes the idea that “white working-class lads are rapists waiting to happen”, which, according to the bar graph from the Centre of Migration Control, he said was “far from the reality”. Russel-Moyle rightly called out Daubney’s interchangeable use of nationality and race. He said: “That graph has got nothing to do with race. White is a race, not a nationality. Get your facts right. Something like 95% of people in this country grew up in this country and go to the education system in this country, so these [migrant sex offenders make up] very small numbers in terms of the absolute numbers.”

He was right. If the argument is that immigrants are more likely to commit violent crimes against women and girls because of their lack of socialisation into British culture, then surely the emphasis shouldn’t be on the colour of Jamie’s skin, but on his nationality? By this (equally problematic) logic, Jamie’s character could have been written to be Polish, Turkish or Greek. He didn’t have to be Black, as many have suggested. Last year, Spanish-Brazilian national Marcus Arduini Monzo callously killed 14-year-old Daniel Anjorin in a horrific sword attack that shocked the nation, yet his migrant background was barely highlighted in news reports and on social media. Why? Because he is white. 

Beyond the obvious theme of murder and the suspenseful one-shot format (each episode was impeccably shot in a singular continuous take), what makes Adolescence feel incredibly chilling is the implausibility of a seemingly innocent Jamie being a cold-blooded killer. Spoiler alert: We find out at the end of the first episode, through damning CCTV evidence, that Jamie is guilty (as I said, the show is definitely not a whodunnit). But, up until that point — and honestly, I’m ashamed to admit this — until episode 3, there is a part of me that believed that he didn’t do it and they got the wrong guy. This obviously seems ridiculous, given that a figure who happened to look exactly like Jamie was caught stabbing Katie in 4K. Stupidly, I guess, I bought into his pleas of innocence in episode 1. I mean, he seemed so innocent and so sincere.

But that’s what makes Adolescence so powerful. It shows how commonplace youth violence, and in particular youth gender violence, can be in a society where boys and young men constantly have red pill content and narratives promoting toxic masculinity shoved down their throats by the Andrew Tates of the online world.

In 2023, a Sky News investigation found that social media algorithms were pushing Andrew Tate’s videos onto teenage boys. Tate is notorious for being vocal about his misogynistic attitudes online. For over two years, Tate has faced rape, human trafficking and sexual misconduct charges in the UK and Romania. The notion of algorithms pushing red pill content like Tates’ is even alluded to in episode 4 by Jamie’s dad Eddie Miller (played remarkably by series co-creator Stephen Graham), who says that he came across red pill content just by looking for videos of exercise routines online.

There are valid concerns that online incel forums filled with red pill content are breeding grounds for terrorists and mass shooters, with one example being the 2021 Plymouth shootings, where 22-year-old Jake Davison, who was active online shot himself after killing five other people, including a three-year-old girl.

Preventing incidents like this is what we need to refocus our attention on. Youth violence is not an ‘us vs. them’ problem. It’s a societal problem that impacts people of all races and cultural backgrounds. By entertaining harmful anti-immigration rhetoric and false narratives about white victimhood, we risk not only a repeat of the violence against people of color during last summer’s riots but also the continued killing of young people, irrespective of the color of their skin. Now, this would be the real tragedy.

In a video about the making of Adolescence, co-creator Jack Thorne said: “We’re not trying to give answers. We’re not trying to lay blame particularly. It’s a really complicated time but we need to be talking about these things.” I think this is a key takeaway.

Contrary to what right-wing extremists would want us to believe, Adolescence is not trying to blame or “demonize” white boys. It brings to light a real issue with devastating real-life consequences for the families of both victims and perpetrators. It doesn’t claim to have all the answers, but at least it’s started a much-needed, long-overdue conversation. Now, all we need to do is keep it on the right track.