america
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Why Is It So Hard for Pundits to Admit That America's Racism Is What's Driving Trump's Campaign?
In terms of campaign strategy, the formula for Donald J. Trump’s presidential bid has been quite clear: Take the themes of racism and nativism once popularized by George Wallace, add contemporary references and essentially tell the electorate, “This is the remix. The jeeps pump this new remix.” From talks of a “big, beautiful wall” to…
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From Mike Brown To Simone Biles: How Yesterday Exemplified Black America’s Complicated Relationship With America
“Complicated” has become a convenient catch-all to describe romantic relationships that seem to defy explanation. So much so that “it’s complicated” has become a popular way to synopsize them completely; distilling months, even years of context down to two words. It’s also frequently misused, as many — and perhaps even most — of the relationships…
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America, The Beautiful Fucking Joke
Moments before I planned on going to bed last night, I checked Instagram to find the source of a few notifications I received earlier that evening. While browsing through my feed, I came across an autoplay video of a man in what seemed to be a blood-caked shirt laying in a car and staring up at…
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An Argument For Why We Need Five PTOWB (Paid Time Off While Black) Days A Year
If you’re Black and in America, there’s somewhere between a 100 percent and a 100 percent chance that the following has happened to you at least once. And somewhere between a 95 percent and 99 percent chance that it’s happened at least once this week. You’re minding your Black-ass business, living your Black-ass life. You…
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Don Lemon: The Troll Who Will Save America
It’s unfortunate that President Obama’s use of “nigger” became the biggest story from his recent interview with Marc Maron, because the reflexively (and grandstandingly) heated debate about that word has obscured a great point. “Societies don’t, overnight, completely erase everything that happened 200 to 300 years prior.” It feels counterintuitive, insulting even, to suggest that…
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The Psychic Toll Of Existing While Black
I’ve never been more conscious of the tenuousness of life and finality of death than I have been since I first considered marrying my now-wife. Bringing someone into my life — a person whose safety and well-being I volunteered to be personally accountable for — just changed things. It changed how I assess the present and conceptualize the…
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Walking 21 Miles To Work Is A Human Triumph. And A Fucking Tragedy.
Unless he wishes to, James Robertson will likely never have to make the 21 mile walk to and from work again. Since his story went national, he’s received hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations — over $200,000 from a GoFundMe page created for him alone — and at least one dealership offered him a…
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Dear America, Where's My Hug?
“…so how you feel? Frustrated, irritated, sometimes I don’t know myself I be too numb, to feel something sometimes…” ~ Khujo Goodie of Goodie Mob, “Thought Process” Soul Food (1995) As the news of Eric Garners murderer – and I use that term with all of the weight it carries considering that the medical examiner…