culture
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The ‘Affluenza’ Teen vs. the Value of Black Life
As the year crawls to a close, it is fitting that Ethan Couch has been captured. Couch, if you don’t remember, was the teen who, in 2013, killed four people in a drunken-driving crash in Texas and paralyzed another person but got off with 10 years’ probation after his attorneys argued that the wealth he…
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The Moments in 2015 That Made Us Realize Racism Isn’t Going Anywhere
If there’s one thing that 2015 has taught us, it’s that racism isn’t a thing of the past; it’s a thing of the present. The idea of a post-racial America is just that: a novel idea, but one that isn’t going to become reality anytime soon. National incidents and specific people put racism in the…
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Remember When Ralph Tresvant Went Solo?
It was only a matter of time. After Bobby Brown was kicked out of New Edition in 1985 and then put out his first solo record, the road was set for the other members of the group to venture out with individual projects. Expectations were high after Don’t Be Cruel, Brown’s sophomore album, became a…
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My Husband Wants to Stay in for New Year’s Eve. Is It Wrong to Go Out Without Him?
My husband is being difficult. He’s changed his mind at the last minute about going to a party we planned to attend on New Year’s Eve. I want to celebrate and bring in the New Year as a couple, surrounded by friends. Now he wants to stay home. Am I wrong if I want to…
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On Being a New Parent When News Like Tamir Rice Hits
Invariably, among the countless words and rants and tweets and think pieces and blogs and status messages and emails and texts generated whenever another news story breaks about a police-involved killing of a young black person, are the words from parents. Mothers and fathers of black babies, of black boys and girls, of black teenagers…
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No Indictment of Tamir Rice’s Killers Is the Prosecutor’s Failure, Not a ‘Perfect Storm of Human Error’
When prosecutors present a case to a grand jury, they do so solely for the purpose of securing an indictment and proceeding with the case. Period. That is the reason evidence is gathered and carefully presented during the secret and seemingly enigmatic proceeding. Listening to Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty speak at the press conference announcing…
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A Father’s Lifesaving Strategy to End His Son’s Fascination With Toy Guns
The last thing I ever expected to happen during a trip to a suburban-Connecticut pool party was that my son would fall in love with guns. Big, bazooka Super Soaker water guns, to be exact. At the time, my son was a freshly minted 3-year-old who instantly became fascinated with water “gums.” He mispronounced “guns”…
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Nnedi Okorafor Is Putting Africans at the Center of Science Fiction and Fantasy
“In postapocalyptic and apocalyptic narratives when they show the whole world freaking out about something that is happening to the Earth, they never show Africa,” says Nnedi Okorafor, the author of 11 books of science fiction and fantasy, among them the award-winning Zahra the Windseeker, The Book of Phoenix and Who Fears Death. “I wasn’t…
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Started From the Bottom, Now They’re Here: The Winners of 2015
In 2015, black Twitter continued to slay with brilliance like #AskRachel and #ThanksgivingWithBlackFamilies, President Obama ran out of damns and started checking folks who “wanna pop off,” and Black Lives Matter cemented itself as an enduring force with which to be reckoned. Indeed, 2015 has been punctuated with black people being bold, brave and brilliant at…