Culture
Soft Serve Racism & The Cowardice of the Hood Prank
Twitter leads you to terrible things. Some of the most racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, and homophobic thoughts find themselves in its ethereal pool of consciousness. Still, I found myself taken aback by one in particular. This video known as Nerd Raps In The Hood. The reason why it even caught my eye is due to the […]
Are We Witnessing The Return of Black-ish TV?
From the 1960s to around 2006, when The WB and UPN network merged, finding Black majority shows, on network TV, wasn’t that hard. Nor finding diverse depictions of Black people. You could find Black people living upper crust lives on The Jeffersons, The Cosby Show, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and Girlfriends; Middle Class […]
A Glimpse into Black Art
It was Sonia Sanchez who said, “The black artist is dangerous. Black art controls the “Negro’s” reality, negates negative influences, and creates positive images.” Black contemporary art has met resistance from the white dominated art world. An arena that limited itself from a diverse aesthetic of culture and vibrancy. Galleries of “white walls, with white […]
(Video)A Dark-Skinned Girl’s Response to Lupita’s Oscar Win
Long after Lupita Nyong’o won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in 12 Years A Slave I lay in bed awake. Although she was most deserving, past experience has taught us not to anticipate the recognition of talent if possessed by a person of color. We’ve learned to expect very […]
African Americans and the Labor Movement
The Black Labor movement has remained in the shadows of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. The erasure of the labor unions role in civil rights is most apparent when The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom Unions is simply referred to as the March on Washington. However, Black membership played an important […]
The Heist: Macklemore’s Hold on Homosexuality in Hip-Hop
“If I was gay, I would think Hip Hop hates me.” Not quite, Macklemore. People still hate you. Sunday night’s Grammy Awards sparked an uproar as breakthrough rapper Macklemore and producer Ryan Lewis’s seven nominations landed them four wins. Taking over the music industry with their 2012 album The Heist, selling over 1.5 million records, […]
Racial Profiling is Real and So Are Its Lingering Effects
I had just finished browsing the merchandise of a popular retail store. I had in my hand a plastic shopping bag. It wasn’t from the store and I was worried. As I sometimes am when leaving department stores. There was a white girl some distance ahead of me. The bags she carried crunched together as […]
Black Culture Book Club: Sonny’s Blues by James Baldwin
It was Mary McLeod Bethune who said, “The whole world opened to me when I learned to read”. We vehemently believe that to be true. We are constantly opened to worlds past, present and future through the writings of Frederick Douglass, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and Octavia Butler. There is a diversity and complexity of […]
Point to Your Land and I’ll Point to Mine
Point to your land and I’ll point to mine. Our land was stolen. We had 200 acres of land in Linden, Alabama. My ancestors became very wealthy growing cotton and corn for the market place. My great great grandfather, Richard Howard (Cherokee) was killed by a group of European settlers around the 1870’s in […]
Dominican Republic: Valuing Haitian Labor Over Lives
Ever since European haphazard “discovery” of the Americas, violence has been an integral part in the construction of identity in colonial lands. Indigenous and African peoples enslaved, murdered and abused for the greed of nations still profiting since colonization ad nauseum. This same abject subjugation thrives among Afrodescendants to discriminate against one another. On […]