Trigger Warning: Some language about sexual violence to follow. The following post is a crunk public service announcement for our own post most racial times. For the record, being a white ally means… Not expecting your friends/colleagues of color to do the heavy lifting around your own privilege… Not recentering the conversation back to yourself […]
Category: Race
Throwback Thursday: “You’re Pretty for a Dark-Skinned girl!”
Today, I am revisiting the first blog I wrote for the collective in 2010. I can’t remember why I wrote about colorism, but it feels as fitting and relevant today as it did two years ago when I first found the words. I wrote about how “You’re pretty for a dark-skinned girl” is a backwards pseudo-compliment […]
Coming Out Stories: On Frank Ocean
By Summer McDonald Original Published at The Black Youth Project I’ve spent the last week treading in the liquid of a queer-flavored ambivalence, trying to determine why the Anderson Cooper and Frank Ocean coming out announcements mean less to me than other people. I have seen enough episodes of Coming Out Stories and foolishly subjected myself and […]
Blue-Eyed Jazz & Love: 3 Blackgirl Lessons I Learned From Toni Morrison
As a writer when I feel the pull of creativity it is as seductive as the lure of a would-be lover, arms outstretched with whispers in my ear as sweet as honey mixed with molasses. It is enough to keep you up all night and daydreaming throughout the day imagining the next thing to say […]
Interrupted Attachments: On Rights, Equality and Blackness
Remaining attached to certain ideals even when – and sometimes, most especially after – privileges that accrue to such concepts have been pointed out and problematized, should force us to ask some serious questions about the relation of citizenship and subjectivity, the relation of citizenship as subjectivity, to ongoing processes of exclusion and violence. The […]
Apocalypse Now: Some Thoughts on Race at the End of the World
Last March, Crunktastic and I were in Atlanta for the Southeastern Women’s Studies Association conference when a man approached us and handed us pamphlets that declared the end of the world was fast approaching. In fact, the pamphlet urged us to get our affairs in order so we could be ready by May 21, 2011. […]
Box Out: On Brittney Griner and Women Who Ball (Better Than You)
Guest Post by Summer McDonald Cross posted from Black Youth Project. I have beef with Brittney Griner. It’s not because the Baylor University women’s basketball team she leads beat Notre Dame in the women’s NCAA Division 1 championship a couple of weeks ago, and I like an underdog–even if it is Notre Dame. It’s not […]
Reconciling the Non-Profit “Post Industrial” Complex with Black Girls in Mind
Who is Anna Julia Cooper? Click here to learn more. Awesome FIRST wave Black Feminist. On Monday, I went to visit the Score Small business mentoring office to learn about the benefits and limits of a 501 (c) (3) versus an LLC or a conventional corp. #planning. #wingsup. I was REALLY surprised to learn that […]
Why I Supported the Hoodie March and Not SlutWalk
Nearly two Wednesdays ago, after a long day in the office, I frantically drove home, donned one of three dark hoodies that I own, hopped a train to NYC from Jersey, met another Sista Prof friend and made it via taxi to Union Square just in time to participate in the first One Million Hoodies […]
On Appropriate Victims: More on Trayvon Martin and Other Names You Need to Know
Part of the reason folks rallied in reaction to Trayvon Martin’s murder has to do with ideas about who is an appropriate or worthy victim. He was shot by a vigilante, he wasn’t armed, he was a good student, had some class privilege, he was doing something mundane, simply returning from buying Skittles and ice […]