america in black
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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,…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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For The Love of Money
My friend Toni and I text a lot and for good reason. We are the same age. We divorced young. We have small children. We work together. The element that makes our black girl magic texting unique is we talk about money all the time. We talk about having it, not having it, hustling for…
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Black in Boston
I’m from Boston. Boston doles out its racist vitriol like paper-cuts. It’s not Confederate flags on mud flaps and SS tattoos (unless you date white girls from New Hampshire), it’s smiling pastors’ wives telling you how scary you look until you smile, days before your 14th birthday, when Rubik’s cubes make more sense than girls,…
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How I Got My Black Card
I stand before you today a black woman with a shocking secret: I wasn’t born black. I know what you’re thinking (#NoDolezal). And I assure you that on a frigid winter day in the early Reagan era, my parents did indeed bring home a peanut butter-colored baby. But the Council of Negrotude (AKA my extended…