race & politics
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Why You Need To Care About What's Happening To Melissa Harris-Perry
The cover photo from my Facebook profile is a screenshot of my appearance on Melissa Harris-Perry last August. I don’t get anxious much when meeting new people; at least not anymore. But I was anxious then. Partially because it was my first time on national television, and I hoped my dad and my aunts in…
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How To Be Unapologetically Black
On Tuesday, I was at Google’s New York City office for a panel titled “Breaking Through The Noise: Making Our Voices Visible, Scalable And Impactful.” For roughly 90 minutes, David Wilson (founder of The Grio), Tiffany Warren (Senior VP, Chief Diversity Officer at Omnicom Group/Founder & President, ADCOLOR®), Lilly Workneh (Black Voices Editor at Huffington Post)…
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Five Ways Babies Are Basically Tiny Hoteps
1. They always #staywoke…like, literally Pictured above is my three month old daughter. That photo was taken by my cousin while she was visiting us last weekend, and I’m certain she took it some time between 7pm and 10pm. Because that’s when she was visiting us. But, if my cousin happened to visit us at 3am or…
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Want To "Make America Great Again!" But Don't Know How? Easy. Legalize White Slavery
“Make America Great Again!” has been an unquestionably effective, shrewd, and admittedly genius campaign strategy for Donald Trump. Sequencing those four words in that order is a brilliantly succinct way of communicating two separate and equally powerful messages: 1. America was once great, is no longer great, but can be great again 2. America was…
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106-Year-Old Virginia McLaurin Dancing With The Obamas Is The Blackest Thing That Ever Happened This Week
Twitter screenshot via @ObamaWhiteHouse Virginia McLaurin is 106 years old. Which means she was 11 years old during the Tulsa race riots; an act of terrorism that burned the Greenwood District — the wealthiest Black community in the country (aka “Black Wall Street”) — to the ground. 39 people were “officially” killed then. And “officially” is in…
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Underrated Moment In Black History: When Tyra Banks Taught White People How To Moisturize
Black folks as a people have a collective predisposition against ashiness. In concept, this would be something that is not just limited to us, because moisturizing is for the people, just like Wu Tang and hot wings. However, extensive experiences — and by extensive, I mean my anecdotal moisturizing experiences involving White friends, colleagues, and…
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Lessons In Blackness From Yale University's Black Solidarity Conference
(This will be long and yes, that is what she said. There’s a lot to unpack in these words. Grab a seat and come along for the ride. Also, keep in mind, I’m an HBCU graduate so my perspective is rooted in that fact. Perspective is everything.) This past weekend, Damon and I had the…
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Things As "African" As Meryl Streep And Bill Clinton Are All Of A Sudden Claiming To Be
Sometime during an international film festival, in response to an inquiry about a quite caucasian jury being able to evaluate and understand North African films, Meryl Streep decided to go full hotep and inform us that “we’re all Africans really.” That clink you hear is the sound of Lady Meryl officially falling off the list of…
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Why We Need To Raise the Minimum Wage To $15
“Anyone who has struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.” — James Baldwin I’m not poor, but I’m not rich; according to my W2, I’m middle-class. I’ve never had sleep for dinner, but I’m very familiar with poverty because I’ve witnessed it firsthand. In my neighborhood, nobody was “fly on your eyeball,…
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If Beyoncé Has Gone Full Black, I'm Here For It.
Based on the events of the past weekend related to Beyoncé, it’s entirely possible that she’s trolling America, all of it. Beyoncé dropped the video for the song “Formation” on Saturday, converting (my) Facebook into a de facto Beyoncé fan site. “Formation” is an unapologetically black- and Southern-ass song and video. The words to the…