Trigger Warning: Discussions of violence Whitepeople believed that whatever the manners, under every dark skin was a jungle. Swift unnavigable waters, swinging screaming baboons, sleeping snakes, red gums ready for their sweet white blood. In a way, he thought, they were right. The more coloredpeople spent their strength trying to convince them how gentle they […]
Category: Race
Say What?: On Speechlessness, Racism and Respectability in #Ferguson
“I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. That the speaking profits me, beyond any other effect. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.” (excerpt […]
Detroit Goddamn
Growing up in the 80s and 90s, I mistakenly thought that environmentalism was something simply to do with saving the rainforest and the ozone layer. “Environment” was a fancy word for places far away from the working class former factory town where I lived. Certainly, “saving the environment” was important for all of us, but […]
Higher Learning: Black Men, Basketball, and the Politics of Education
I grew up in a small town in North Carolina where my sister had a basketball goal connected to a tree and learned how to strategically run around the stumps to avoid falling. She also learned to perfect her jump shot through a conspicuous tree limb and branches that blocked her view like the outstretched […]
Dark-Skinned Blackgirl Visibility: On Gabby and Lupita
As a black feminist I am always here for the celebration of blackgirls, black women, and black wommanness in general (shout out to Dr. Ruth Nicole Brown, arbiter of Solhot, a promise to young blackgirls and women—and others who are doing the work past visibility and towards self-esteem and community accountability). And as a dark-skinned […]
An Ontology of CRUNK: Theorizing (the) Turn Up
For your #TurnUp Tuesday pleasure, I thought I’d do a little Crunk theorizing today. As y’all already know, CRUNK is a generative term, a percussive term that centrally points to the kind of energy generated by putting disparate elements together like hip hop and feminism or black nationalism and feminism or crunk and feminism. […]
Scandalous!
Some spoilers ahead. You’ve been warned. Watching Scandal is a weekly ritual for me. I love to sit back on my couch, phone in hand (cause I gotta get my tweet on), and revel in the ridiculousness of this frothy primetime soap. Shoot, sometimes I bust out red wine and popcorn too. After my tweets […]
Angels and Ghosts
Every day I walk or drive through historic Black neighborhoods in Atlanta, Georgia where upwards of 50% of residential properties are vacant, abandoned and sometimes burned down (but not demolished). I see empty buildings that used to be schools, recreation centers, community centers, and businesses. I see extraordinary flooding each time it rains; rushing water […]
When You’re “the One”
It was the summer of 2004. I was a grad student with experience in resident life and I had taken on a job as co-director of a summer program hosted at my university. The pay was good and it gave me time to read and prep for my first go at teaching that fall. At […]
Fuck Sears, or When Mall Cops Attack
Anyone that knows me, knows that I do not like the Internet. I just don’t trust it. Too much of our personal information is out there and it is completely out of our control. It took me years to get a smartphone because I thought that having a smartphone would jeopardize my already limited privacy. […]