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A List of All the Fake Shit I’ve Bought (or Convinced My Parents to Buy for Me) to Be More Cool
Wearing them felt like I was wearing a tiny shoebox. I even bought a Superman shirt specifically to wear with it, and I’d walk around the city with my chest out while pretending I wasn’t rocking colorful plywood on my feet. It was all good until the strap disintegrated on me while I was standing…
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20 Questions About Avengers: Infinity War From a Guy Who Just Watched It and Still Might Be Very Confused
(Sidenote: There are spoilers here. Like, literally all of the spoilers.) 1. Why Thanos’ chin like that? 2. Speaking of Thanos, did that nigga really throw a whole-ass moon at Iron Man? 3. How the fuck can you beat someone who throws whole-ass moons at niggas’ grills? 4. How were Spider-Man and Iron Man—who are…
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Kanye Ain’t the Only Black Person Believing and Spreading Anti-Black Nonsense About Slavery
Kanye West is a cornball with low information and high-fructose corn syrup, but what he’s saying about slavery being a choice soaks in the same implicit anti-blackness as “They wouldn’t have been able to keep me in chains.” Or “I wasn’t built to be a slave.” Or “Bury me in the ocean with my ancestors…
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You Can’t Love and Support R. Kelly and Also Love Black Women and Children
For 24 years now (24!), R. Kelly’s behavior has been as essential to his place in the zeitgeist as his music. He married Aaliyah in 1994, which also happened to be my freshman year of high school. The infamous tape was leaked and distributed in 2002, when I was in college. Dave Chappelle’s “Piss on…
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Kanye West Doesn’t Care About Black People
Last year Panama Jackson, a man who, in the 14 years that we’ve known each other, has become one of my best friends, published a piece about his mother’s support of Donald Trump, and revealed how that ruined his relationship with her. Deciding to write this was very difficult for him; we had countless email,…
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Melania Trump Acts Like She Expected Her Old, Rich and Unhealthy Husband to Be Dead by Now
Of course, I’m not suggesting that Melania Trump wants her husband, Donald Trump, the president of the United States of America, dead. I’d never say such a thing! Nor would I say that she is waiting for that to happen with the general countenance of a person who just worked a 12-hour shift and gets…
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How to Be a Better White Person
I am asked, frequently, by people who happen to be white and also happen to read my work (or perhaps happened to listen to me speak) about how to be a better white person. I’m often compelled to answer, “Go to the gym, I guess, and be nice to bartenders.” Which is an adequate answer,…
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Travis Reinking Is What Happens When Black People Are ‘Criminals’ and White People Are Allowed to Be Invisible
A few months ago, during a conversation on Facebook about one of the many mass shootings committed by a white man (I forget which one), the homie Sai Grundy wrote that (paraphrasing) one of the byproducts of the criminalization of blackness is that white people are often able to elude suspicion by virtue of their…
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Kanye’s Politics Are What Happens When You Don’t Read Books
As someone who still owns land on Yeezy Island, I was anxious when Kanye West made his return to Twitter a couple weeks ago. Because as those who haven’t yet sold their Yeezy properties know, every time he opens his mouth, property values plummet. So imagine my pleasant surprise when I saw that his subject…
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200 Words About the Ain’t-Shit Cops Who Were Called on the Black Men at Starbucks
“This is some bullshit” are the four words you’d hope a crowd of police officers—people with actual crime to fight or maybe just actual boxes of doughnuts to eat—would say when called to question and arrest two men whose only apparent crimes occurred when the Starbucks manager decided they were criminals. She literally spoke their…
