theory & essay
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I Binged Watched ‘This Is Us’ And My Feelings Are In Shambles. I May Never Recover. ZOMG!
(There are very, very light spoilers in this piece. None of them tell you much of about the plot of the show.) On February 23, 2017, I wrote the following status update on Facebook: Well, I guess I need to watch “This Is Us.” I’ve not intentionally avoided it but have yet to see a…
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Tyrese Very Obviously Needs A Hobby, So Let's Find Tyrese A Hobby!
Empty Stacey Adams shoebox lined with Baby Boy DVDs and back-ordered bigen with sentience Tyrese Gibson is very obviously bored. Because there’s no other reason for a recently married man to hop on Instagram and offer his unsolicited hotepian insights on how the women he’s not married to or even dating or sleeping with (because, again, this…
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Our Unreasonable And Arbitrarily Critical Standards For Women Making An Effort To Enhance Their Beauty
There’s a lot of huff made these days about social media and an alleged rise in vanity and narcissism (despite neither being all that quantifiable). People bemoan Snapchat filters, Facetune, and the heavily glammed up ladies that employ their visual enhancing features. Not surprisingly, this huff is usually directed at women; most of whom are…
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I’m a Duke Fan. Fight Me. Here’s How It Happened.
It’s March Madness time again, America. Office’s across America are bracing for Thursday and Friday’s lack of productivity as we all spend the vast majority of our work days refreshing whatever sports apps or sites we use to keep up with scores if we’re not altogether saying “fuck work” and watching the tourney on our…
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Black, 30, And Finally In Therapy
Do you remember those Cathy comic strips your mom used to have tacked to her cubicle wall or office board? The one’s her and her co-workers would share and cackle and point at while nodding their heads in agreement and uttering ‘Yup, so true’? You’d look at those comics as a little girl with a…
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Yup, I Have My Own Kid Now. And Yup, I Still Believe Spanking Is A Terrible And Cruel Form Of Discipline
I’m going to keep this short. Because I’ve already written on this topic. And because Stacey Patton’s brilliant and searing New York Times piece (“Stop Beating Black Children“) makes the case better than I ever could, tracing the cruel and dangerous and useless practice of beating our own kids into suitable behavior back to slavery, arguing that we’re…
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Beware The Straight Agenda (To Oppress The Queer Community)
Is there really a gay agenda? Are queer folks conspiring to present the world with media and propaganda centered around their experiences in order hypnotize us until we forget that we like the opposite sex? Is the LGBTQIA community holding secret meetings with Missy Armitage where she teaches the latest tea cup stirring techniques? Are…
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The Most Important Parts Of A Good Chicken Wing, Ranked
8. The type of wing (Flats today, flats tomorrow, flats forever.) 7. An appropriate amount of liquid-based white substances to dip them in (For the record, blue cheese and ranch are the only appropriate liquid-based white substances. If you’re eating wings with me and you try to dip a wing in some mayo or some fucking…
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The Distraction Of Racism And The Bipartisan Roots Of Chicago's Black Suffering
There’s a Toni Morrison quote I used to bristle at: “The function of racism is distraction.” I had never read the full context of this quote and initially, I thought this was another attempt to dismiss racism as a primary societal ill deserving of discussion, while prompting us to start paying attention to the “real”…
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Why I’m Not Participating In "A Day Without A Woman"
Today, millions of American women will exercise their right to protest by participating in “A Day Without A Woman” — a strike aimed at highlighting the “value that women of all backgrounds add to our socio-economic system—while receiving lower wages and experiencing greater inequities, vulnerability to discrimination, sexual harassment, and job insecurity” as is noted…