Black Women Demand Reparations & the Right to Live Free BIPOC women leaders have for centuries been stitching our community stories into the US tapestry to correct the white-washed narrative and reveal this nation’s bloody history. Black women have labored to produce and reproduce generations of possibility and freedom dreams, while countering the nonsensical myth-making […]
Category: Gender
Intersections of Justice in the Time of Corona Virus
By Cara Page and Eesha Pandit Opportunity for A New Frame This moment asks us to consider how we might pivot and adapt in a way that centers collective care, safety, and protection for each other. This is a good time to re-examine our relationship with vulnerability. Many of us are feeling vulnerable ourselves, while […]
Crunk Love Letters for Stacey Abrams
It is our tradition at the CFC to write love letters to comrades and friends-in-struggle. Stacey Abrams is certainly that. And because she is a Southern Black girl and the CFC began as a Southern (ATL-based) feminist project, we thought it befitting to send some CRUNK love her way. Dear Stacey, Two years […]
Biological Clocks and Balldrops: A New Year’s Reflection on Black Women’s Time
I spent New Year’s Day re-reading A Wrinkle A Time, a book I first encountered in middle school. I have been invested in re-reading the book both because I’m eagerly anticipating Ava DuVernay’s forthcoming rendition of the movie, with a mixed Black girl as protagonist. But I also wanted to read it because I have […]
Connect The Dots: For Korryn Gaines, Skye Mockabee and Joyce Quaweay
Since Friday, there have been stories of three Black women killed by acts of state-sanctioned and intimate partner violence. Those are just the three we lost this weekend, that we know about, but I’m sure there are others. On Friday in Philadelphia, Joyce Quaweay’s partner stripped her, handcuffed her, and beat her to death while […]
On Becky, M.I.A.,and the Problem of that “Good Hair”
It’s a ‘do you remember where you were when…?” kind of event. Years from now, I’ll say, “I was at a friends birthday party where some of us gathered around the TV, shushing the others, to watch Lemonade premiere.” It was a warm, April evening in Houston and I got to the party with about […]
Lemonade, Sweet Tea, and Dirty Laundry on the Clothesline
Homemade lemonade was relief from the humid heat of North Carolina summers. Sweet and sour lemon water always tasted better after it had been sitting for a few days, bathed in the sun so the sugar syrup could fully absorb the lemon pieces floating at the top of a see through pitcher, like a see […]
Newtonism: Notes on Cool Masculinity and the Fear of Black Genius
“I do not expect the white media to create positive black male images.” –Huey Newton It is the Friday before the Super Bowl and for the last two weeks there has been much ado about the anticipated performance of frontrunner for the league MVP, and star quarterback of the Carolina Panthers, Cam Newton. And […]
Love, Hip Hop, and Ratchet Respectability (Something Like A Review)
In a recently published book chapter called, “Brains, Booty, and All Bizness”: Identity Politics, Ratchet Respectability, and The Real Housewives of Atlanta, I define ratchet respectability as “a hybrid characterization of hegemonic, racist, sexist, and classist notions of black womanhood,” which allows black women to combine ratchet behaviors (generally linked to race) to the politics […]
The Bold and Beautiful Possibilities of a Transgender Storyline on Daytime
Soap operas have been an on-again-off-again part of my every (week) day life since I was a little blackgirl trying to keep up with conversations in my mama’s living room. All the grown women in my family watched “the stories,” whether it meant having them on while they cooked and got ready for a second […]