America. In Black.
-
LA Riots, Deportations, N-Word Karens and Other Distractions That Have Black Folks Sleepwalking
While chaos unfolds, Black folks are steered from progress and fed confusion.
-
Being Black in a Newsroom
When most people think of careers in television, their first thought usually goes to someone in front of the camera. I am no different. When I got serious about my broadcast journalism major, I too had visions of being in front of the camera to become the next Oprah. I knew I wanted to be…
-
Robert E. Lee’s Horse’s Ass Made Me Black
For Heather Heyer and her fellow anti-racist protestors, two years after Charlottesville. There’s a vacation photo of me, all grainy and saturated like the best ’80s snapshots. My messy red ’fro is damp, my smiling face is half in shadow, my feet are dangling in glistening water that spreads to the edges of the frame,…
-
Straddling Two Worlds: Transracial Adoption and the Authenticity of Blackness
“You are my worst fear realized,” a black woman—and complete stranger—said to me after I concluded my keynote speech. She continued, “I came to hear you speak, and you have confirmed my worst fears. You aren’t a true black person.” I am part of the first wave of transracial adoptees (I’m black, my parents are…
-
I'm Allergic to Hennessy
I don’t neatly fit into many of the cultural lines set before me—much like many black millennials. It’s almost derivative to say I love anime in an age where black people’s love of anime now spans generations. I grew up listening to Paramore and Van Hunt and Yo-Yo Ma. It’s now Ben Howard and Valis…
-
Olo’oruko Mi: Legacy Ponderings of a Nigerian-but-Mostly-American
I’d spent two years on this earth when I met my paternal grandmother Julianna Oni for the first—and last—time. As I was her sole olo’oruko mi—the only heir to be her namesake—she took an immediate liking to me, often raising my youthful frame in her firm, mahogany arms and chanting “Julie Julie Julie Julie” with…
-
You're So Different: OK, But What Makes You Black?
“You’re so different. You’re so articulate. Why do you talk like a white girl? You’re the whitest black girl I know.” Comments like these beg the question: What makes you black? Is it merely the color of one’s skin? Is it a state of mind? Knowing the lyrics to Cardi B’s songs? It took me…
-
Eat, Pray, This Can’t Be Love
John Singleton. Dead at 51. Stroke/Hypertension. Nipsey Hussle. Dead at 33. Murdered. Phife Dawg. Dead at 45. Diabetes. Paul Bromley. Alive at 35. Overweight and spiritually confused. Is my clock ticking? Sounds morbid right? Anxious? Yeah, I know … As a black man living in America, thinking about my mortality has become a new daily…
-
Stepping in IT (Information Technology)
At the beginning of this year, I saw a meme on Facebook where a young man mentioned that over the past year, he had learned to stop “aspiring to sit at tables where he had to bring his own chair, squeeze in between folks and repeatedly convince people that he deserved to be there.” That…
-
Being ‘The Black Snob’ Was a Joke, Until the Day I Actually Became One
“I don’t know how you ended up so bougie when we came out of the same family,” said my baby sister, one day over the phone. I was taken aback. Me? Bougie? And yet, I was. Painfully so. And had been, at this point, for several years. But I was still offended. At the time…