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Binge Drinking by Women Does Not Cause Rape
Instead of blaming the victim by telling women to stop binge drinking to avoid being raped, Mychal Denzel Smith argues at the New York Times, society should tell men to stop committing rape. Binge drinking is not good for you. I don’t know that there is a person alive who would argue otherwise. People should…
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Philadelphia Cop Video Shows Problems With Stop and Frisk
At the Nation, Mychal Denzel Smith says that a viral video of white Philadelphia police officers harassing black pedestrians highlights the inherent problems in stop and frisk and underscores a larger problem in America — racism. This video was recorded on September 27 and uploaded to YouTube a few days later. It has recently made…
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Violence Against Black Women: When Will It End?
In the aftermath of the shooting death of unarmed Miriam Carey by police, The Nation‘s Mychal Denzel Smith writes about how America routinely condones unchecked violence against black women. The US House of Representatives applauded the death of Miriam Carey before they knew who she was. They didn’t know about her postpartum depression, or that she talked…
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Transgender Women and Male Desire
The recent headlines about DJ Mister Cee illustrate why we need more descriptive and inclusive language to talk about male sexuality and masculinity, Mychal Denzel Smith writes at Feministing. My hope is that, along with becoming more accepting, this pushes, not just hip-hop but the wider culture as well, to develop a more useful and…
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Will Sybrina Fulton Be Remembered?
Mychal Denzel Smith writes a penetrating piece at the Nation about black women activists, through the prism of Sybrina Fulton and her life after George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the shooting death of her 17-year-old son, Trayvon Martin. In the country’s effort to “address the problem of anti-black racism, we neglect to consider the experiences of…
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Trayvon Martin: How Does Justice Look?
In a piece at The Nation, Mychal Denzel Smith writes that imprisonment for George Zimmerman wouldn’t be fair punishment or even justice for Trayvon Martin. The system is broken, and Zimmerman would be just one more person languishing behind bars. The pursuit of justice “needs to be more proactive,” he says. The murder trial of…
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How I Knew the 'Dehumanizing Stare' Belonged to a Black Kid
What can you count on with the regularity of the sun rising or a new Chief Keef arrest? According to Mychal Denzel Smith at the Nation, the answer is racism. So when he heard about a teen, Tremaine McMillian, violently detained by Florida police for giving them a “dehumanizing stare” while feeding a puppy, he…
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The Origin of Male-on-Female Violence
Some elementary school pranks, like boys pulling girls’ hair, seem harmless, but as these boys become teenagers, the actions escalate. As Mychal Denzel Smith writes at Ebony, he didn’t fully grasp the consequences of his actions, which he assumed were playful, until he was nearly a grown man. I [pulled hair] until I hit high…
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White People Mourning More Than Romney
(The Root) — The 2012 presidential election was historic, not just because of the re-election of the nation’s first black president but also because it became the first “meme” election. Over the course of the excruciatingly long campaign, the Internet responded to every noteworthy gaffe and unintentional revelation the candidates made by creating viral memes…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
