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Is It Sterling K. Brown’s Personal Mission to Make Us Cry in Every Damn Role He Plays?
The most popular show on network television stars black people and is set in Pittsburgh, but I cannot bring myself to watch This Is Us. I’m sure it’s as compelling as everyone says it is. But the commentary attached to the show—which vacillates from “OMG THIS SHOW MAKES MY EYES SHALLOW PUDDLES OF SALT!” to…
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Pittsburgh Cop Shoots 3 Black People in Less Than a Year, Kills 1
On Feb. 11, 39-year-old Mark Daniels was shot and killed by Pittsburgh police officers after he allegedly shot at and ran from them when they attempted to approach him. The details, reported by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, are somewhat fishy. The police were called to the scene after being “alerted to an actor with a gun.”…
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A List of Things That Are Definitely Racist
1. Pittsburgh potholes (Related: On the way to see Black Panther Friday night, I hit a pothole and got a flat. Fortunately, I was a quarter mile away from a gas station, so I was able to drive there and park my car. From there I caught an Uber to the theater, watched the 2-hour-and-15-minute-long…
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An Open Letter to the Men Whose Girlfriends and Wives Saw Black Panther and Now Want to Move to Wakanda
Like everyone else, you were excited to see Black Panther. You’ve been waiting for it for years, got excited for the trailers and even read all of the newer Ta-Nehisi Coates- and Roxane Gay- and Yona Harvey-penned comic books. And while you didn’t go full Wakandan cosplay for the premiere, you did wear all black.…
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Yet Another Reason Why Shuri From Black Panther Is the Greatest Disney Princess Ever
If “Don’t scare me like that, colonizer” wasn’t already enough to give Black Panther’s Shuri (depicted amazingly by Letitia Wright) the crown as the Greatest Disney Princess Ever—it was, but let’s just pretend that it wasn’t—there are dozens more reasons why she deserves it. In the last half of the movie alone, she saved a…
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Donald Trump Calls Oprah ‘Insecure,’ Challenges Her to Run for President, Has Obviously Lost His Damn Mind
So, Oprah Winfrey is (probably) not running for president. We have to make that clear. She is (more than likely) not running! Of course, she can if she wants to. Because she’s Oprah, and if Oprah says, “Hey, y’all. I want to do this thing,” you don’t say, “No, Oprah, you cannot do this thing…
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We Need to Start Barking at White People Who Speak Out of Turn
Editor’s note: This story contains spoilers for the film Black Panther. Black Panther’s Wakanda is a near-utopic vision of how a country could look; perhaps the best depiction of Afrofuturism ever captured on film. There were thriving and ideologically diverse cities surrounded by expansive and bucolic countrysides. There was modern technology perfectly weaved into cultural…
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Who’s Slept With More Women: Donald Trump While Married or Wilt Chamberlain?
It’s telling how fascinated Donald Trump and the people connected to him seem to be with the suspected sexual prowess and/or deviance of black men. There’s Ivanka Trump’s reported curiosity with mulatto cocks. There’s Sean Hannity, who suspected “secret sperm” in Kehinde Wiley’s depiction of Barack Obama. Which, hopefully, marks the very last time I…
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Whiteness Means It’s Never Your Fault
One of the few somewhat positive aspects of Donald Trump’s presidency (and really, Donald Trump’s entire stint as a political figure) is that he’s an easy example and a synopsis of America’s patent-pending brand of white supremacy—a concept that, even for those who regularly study and speak about it, can be difficult to articulate in…
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Schools Are Supposed to Be Safe
My first job out of college was as a full-time substitute teacher at Wilkinsburg Junior/Senior High School. A week into my time there, the ninth-grade English teacher unexpectedly quit, and I took over that classroom for the reminder of the year. I have myriad takeaways and memories from that six-month stretch and the rest of…
