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John McCain Was a White American Hero
John McCain was a white American man, whose whiteness and Americanness and maleness were his most prominent and predictable characteristics. He was also considered to be a hero. Barack Obama spoke on McCain’s “courage to put the greater good above our own.” Joe Biden remarked that McCain’s life was “proof that some truths are timeless.”…
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The First Mystery in Season 3 of True Detective Is WTF Is Up With Mahershala Ali’s Wig?
I did not watch the previous iterations of True Detective. Not for any particular reason, really. I generally like dark and deliberate murder mysteries—I had to resuscitate myself to write this after Sharp Objects killed me last night—but there just wasn’t any room for True Detective on the plate of shows I actively watch. This…
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Why You Just Can’t Trust a Man With Weak Dap, Explained
My answer depends on who asks. If a white person asks, I’d perhaps say something like “It’s a catchall to describe what often happens when black males greet each other with myriad intimate (and sometimes complex) variations of the standard handshake. Also, some members of the Latino community are familiar with and partake in this…
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10 Probably Not All That Interesting Reasons Why I Got the Title of My Book Tattooed on My Arm
Hello. My name is Damon Young. My debut memoir, What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker, is available for preorder. If you haven’t already, go ahead and preorder a few. I am, as you can imagine, excited about this. (Terrified too, for reasons I might share here at some point between now and March, but…
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Why Do Black Republicans Usually Have Such Bad Haircuts? An Important Exposé
Before we begin today, I believe it’s important to make something clear. Bad haircuts/hairdos isn’t the same thing as bad hair, because bad hair doesn’t really exist. Of course, there is black-people hair. And this comes in myriad grades and textures. Certain types of this hair has been (wrongly) referred to as “good.” Naturally, if…
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Racist White Man Allegedly Stabs Black Man to Death, Then Asks Police for a Ride Home
On Sunday, 24-year-old Joden Rocco was charged in the stabbing death of 24-year-old Dulane Cameron Jr. outside of a bar in Pittsburgh. But as details from the incident emerge, a story that initially seemed like just an unusually tragic outcome to a bar fight has been discovered to have serious racial implications. Rocco (who is…
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It's Not Unrealistic for Issa on Insecure to Be 30 With Multiple Jobs and Homeless Because I've Been That Too
The characters on Insecure sometimes make decisions that make me question if they were born on the same Earth that other earthlings inhabit. (For instance, Lawrence in season 2 bringing Aparna to Tiffany’s birthday dinner from hell.) Also, I agree with Vulture’s Jasmine Sanders in that the writers sometimes seem to be too influenced by…
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A List of Ways to Tell If a White Person Has Personally Benefitted From America's History of Racism
I witnessed some very nice white peoples on the internet this week who were adamant that they haven’t personally benefitted from America’s history of racism and also felt that the distinctions between those who have and those who haven’t should be acknowledged. So, full disclosure: I’ve been on a high-fiber kick recently, which has 1)…
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The Most Annoying People on the Internet Are Zion Williamson Highlight Truthers
Zion Williamson currently exists in a strange space of the zeitgeist where you’ve likely either already seen roughly 27,000 clips of him dunking on high school teams stocked with Ansel Elgort doppelgangers or you’re reading this and thinking, “Who is Zion Williamson?” Either you’re almost tired of talking about him or you have no clue…
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I Just Discovered the Container Store and I Think My Life Has Been Changed Forever
Perhaps this is a Pittsburgh thing, or maybe this is just a me thing, but I have a habit of first discovering and/or learning—either through rap music or a thing said by a standup comic—about things that everyone already knows. For instance, although I knew of the Cheesecake Factory, I didn’t know they sold things…
