culture

The summer before I went to college, I stopped getting relaxers because they damaged my hair, and as a result, my self-esteem was in the dumps. This decision may seem uneventful now, but this was 2002, and I was living in the Midwest. The natural-hair movement, which is now on track to be a $500…

My first real job out of college was working for People magazine. In the early 2000s, I was a stringer for the mid-Atlantic region. The fun part of my job description was running around Washington, D.C., attending events and asking well-known people about their latest project or intimate nuggets about their lives. The grueling part…

Janet Mock’s advocacy and activism. Laverne Cox’s rise to fame in Orange Is the New Black. Even Caitlyn Jenner’s recent Vanity Fair cover. All eyes are on these trailblazing transgender women who have helped to highlight the people and issues surrounding the trans community. But what about the often less visible faces of transgender men…

Even though I can’t physically be at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., for Friday’s funeral service, I am there in spirit—through a connection planted deep in my soul from an early age. My father, Charles, and grandfather, known as Shep in an abbreviation of his middle name Shepherd, were both pastors at the AME Church. My…

Dalijah Franklin’s move to New York City almost sounds textbook. The Warren, Ohio, native planned to become a commercial dancer in the Big Apple, and after graduating from Ohio State University with a Bachelor of Science in nutrition science, she made the move to pursue her dreams. However, her journey in artistry unfolded in an…

Nina Simone was one of a kind. Her voice, a striking, resonant contralto, could convey a clarion call to action or a deep reservoir of emotion. Her music is cherished by nearly everyone who knows it, but her legacy, well, that’s a little more complicated. Simone, who died in 2003, lived a tumultuous life. She…

The third season of the ancestry-research program Finding Your Roots, hosted by Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., has been postponed by PBS after a determination that an episode of the program featuring actor Ben Affleck violated the network’s standards. In a strongly worded statement, PBS announced that the network is “postponing the scheduling of…

Celebrity privilege, white privilege, black privilege—all the same. They are all conditions that allow people to believe they are better than others, can act in a way others cannot, and can be afforded luxuries and benefits reserved for those in that privileged class.  Taken to an extreme, privilege often has you thinking that you can…

My long-distance significant other and I have been dating for a little over two years. It’s serious. Ring shopping has happened; he’s met my dad (no man in my life ever gets to meet Dad). Anyway, his daughter’s birthday is coming up, and we agreed that I would be attending this year. I couldn’t last…

Some of us have had that experience of awakening to what’s going on in the world. Whether it’s from watching a movie documenting the civil rights movement or reading about the life of Malcolm X, there comes a point in time when young black Americans “wake up” and start reading and researching about the issues…