**Trigger warning for violence** I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around the situation with Kimani Gray, but it just doesn’t make sense. I mean, considering the unceasing frequency of U.S. American police brutality, the story is “simple” enough. Ten days ago, sixteen-year-old Kimani, known as KiKi to his loved ones, was out late, […]
Category: Race
101 Things That Are Not True About The Most Famous Black Women Alive: Alexis Pauline Gumbs on Black Women, Black Feminism, and The Capacity to Love
My favorite biographical description of Alexis Pauline Gumbs is included in her Conscious Campus profile: “Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a queer black trouble-maker and a black feminist love evangelist. She walks in the legacy of black lady school teachers in post slavery communities who offered sacred educational space to the intergenerational newly free in […]
On Azealia Banks and White Gay Cis Male Privilege
Guest Post by Edward Ndopu Recently, the media has exploded with news of a Twitter battle between rapper Azealia Banks and gossip blogger Perez Hilton. After Hilton inserted himself in an altercation between Banks and fellow female rapper Angel Haze, taking Haze’s side, Banks denounced him as a “messy faggot”. She then went on to […]
Django Unchained and Why Context Matters
Some spoilers ahead, but mostly I’m just feeling all my feelings… Growing up, I had to deal with my mother’s love for Westerns. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen The Outlaw Josie Wales. One of the many joys of expanded basic cable (besides the Cooking Channel, of course) is that I get […]
A Theory of Violence: In Honor of Kasandra, CeCe, Victoria, Savita and Anonymous
**trigger warning** A few weeks ago, a young Indian woman went to the movies. On her way home she took a bus on which she was raped and brutally assaulted by six men. We don’t know the name of this 23-year-old student. We do know that she was tortured so badly that she lost her […]
Beat to Quarters*: An argument to register
Guest Post by Pat Hussain The 2012 elections will culminate with President Obama being reelected or replaced as President. Some people have decided to vote in this election; others not to vote. Whatever your decision I urge everyone who is eligible to register to vote by the October 9th deadline. Every citizenship right we have […]
On Anger…
This post does not contain images because I don’t want to animate the stereotype, but in Google image searches for “Sapphire” and “Angry Black Woman,” Michelle Obama was prominently featured. In a brilliantly provocative paper at ASALH this year, Dr. Gwendolyn Pough invited us to rethink the black woman stereotype of Sapphire, the emasculating black […]
Lady Gaga, Beauty, Ugliness and the Call for a Real Body Revolution
Earlier this week, Lady Gaga launched a campaign, via her website, called Body Revolution 2013. An attempt to reclaim the conversation from the folks in the media who were writing about Gaga’s body as seen in a few recent photos, wherein she looks a little larger than she usually does. (I’m not linking to those […]
Starting With A Guide: New models of collaborative scholarship
Back in July, I attended nerd camp, THATCamp CHNM. I learned about the visualization tool Viewshare, created by the Library of Congress. I’m happy to announce the launch of Dr. Stephanie Evans’ “SWAG Diplomacy,” a project I helped her build in Viewshare. SWAG Diplomacy, as described by Dr. Evans, “maps locations of 200 African American autobiographers […]
take a load off family: black women, hair and the olympic stage
I am no athlete. I have not won an individual sports competition since maybe the second grade. I recall Usaining all comers in the 40-yard dash but, as Kasi Lemmons learned us, “memory is a selection of images, some elusive, others indelibly imprinted on the brain” and I might have photoshopped that one. My middle […]