identity
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Another Drag Story Hour Targeted by White Supremacists
New York Attorney General Letitia James hosted the NYC event, which ended with one protestor walking bloodied and bruised.
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The Unbearable Blackness of Being
Shortly after I entered the world via Detroit’s now-shuttered Grace Hospital one summer day in 1981, I set upon what was an unmistakably black-ass upbringing in one of America’s chocolatiest cities. That which we refer to as “black people shit” as an adult was simply childhood by default: a quarter for a baggie of assorted…
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The Mama Dilemma: Adoption, Racism and the Search for Answers
Eight years ago I got a Facebook message that said, “Do you remember me?” I was prepping for a staff meeting and couldn’t place the name or the blond woman in the icon. I shot back a quick sorry that I didn’t remember her and turned my back to the computer. When I turned around,…
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Now That I’ve Gotten My DNA Results, I Don’t Know Who to Root for in the World Cup, but Cameroon Makes the Best Jollof Rice
2017 and 2018 have been years of exploration and discovery for me so far. I’ve taken time to examine a lot about my identity as a black biracial dude and started to look into family dynamics and how they relate to that identity politic. To up that ante, I’ve also begun digging into my ancestry…
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Am I Actually a Southerner? An Examination
I was recently profiled for AL.com, the digital outlet for three of Alabama’s largest newspapers: the Birmingham News, the Huntsville Times and Mobile’s Press-Register. During the course of the interview, Roy Johnson, the story’s author, noted that it was interesting that I identified as a Southerner, considering my transient background: It’s intriguing that Jackson so…
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Watch: ‘Yo Soy Afro-Latina’
If there is one thing that Sammy Sosa, an Afro-Latino man, and his skin-bleaching fiasco has taught us, it’s to be proud of who you are. The term “Afro-Latino” (or the gender-neutral “Afro-Latinx”) is used to refer to African descendants from Latin America. For many growing up, being black and Latinx was not always beautiful.…
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Raíces Latinas: Conversations With My Grandmother
“No te olvides que tienes raíces Latinas.” (“Do not forget you have Latin roots.”) My grandmother, or “Abuelita” (as I refer to her), often said this to me. This time, she was seated in her reclining chair. Through her silver-rimmed bifocals, I saw her penetrating eyes. “Of course not, Abuelita,” I said with a cooing…
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African-ish: Can You Pass Citizenry Down Through Generations?
When I was watching the first episode of Black-ish, I felt a certain level of understanding of Anthony Anderson’s worry of his kids retaining their culture/identity/hood pass, as I’m sure most of us did. For me though, it extends beyond the “black in America” experience. As a first generation child of East Africans, what becomes…