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How Raising Multiethnic Kids Reshaped My Blackness
My wife is not black. Our daughters, by no choice of their own, are. Not when we’re at home or with friends and family or surrounded by people who know and love them. But when they’re out in the world, with their bronze skin and curly afros, when they’re seen from afar or described by…
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Don't Worry, Y'all. I Solved America's Problems. It's Pizza
Politics, man. If you’re like me and you spend most of your day with your eyes open and in something slightly past a semi-conscious state, you recognize that America is currently facing an era of political discord and polarization unseen since the 1960s, or maybe the Gilded Age, or maybe even the Civil War. We’ve…
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With Allies Like These We Don’t Need Enemies
As part of my day job, I travel a lot for work. I’m one of those semi-road-warrior types who collects miles and points on my weekly trips in and around the United States to sit in meetings where I add marginal value, eat boxed lunches and internally critique PowerPoint font choices. I’m TSA Precheck. I…
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Things We Should Probably Stop Letting White Guys Do
White men are taught to believe that they can do everything, it’s just how our society is set up. But should they do everything? I’ve compiled a short list of things that, while white guys feel totally comfortable doing, maybe they should let someone else try or just stop doing altogether. Needlessly abbreviate words. Not…
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10 More Black-Ass Mysteries You Always Wanted to Know but Never Thought to Solve
Blackness. It’s a dynamic state of interwoven race, ethnicity and culture that’s both unifying as well as mystifying. While being a member of the black community comes with an immeasurable number of intrinsic benefits and inherent perks (see: people assuming you’re cool/people assuming you can hoop/people always asking you to make playlists for their parties),…
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Taking My Kids to See White Santa Might Be My Most Unwoke Parenting Act and I’m Sorry
Please forgive me, for I have sinned. The other night, I participated in an act of personal fraudulence and general unwokeness that has caused me great shame as a black man generally and a writer here specifically. We’ve had a good run here, you and I, over the past couple of years, sharing humorous tomes…
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Racists, Ranked
You know the feeling. You’ve just walked into a fine retail establishment, determined to drive yourself further into debt by collecting more shit you don’t need, when you get that strange sensation: Somebody’s watching you. Really, it’s fucked up for two reasons: the first being that it feeds into the idea that vigilante white people…
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10 Ways A Different World Lied to Us About HBCU Life
If there’s one way I know that the show was a pure work of fiction, it’s that in all the seasons of A Different World, we never saw anyone having to go to the financial aid office and act a straight donkey. There are a few experiences that truly bind those of us who graduated…
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Yeah, We Did That: The 7 Most Embarrassing Moments in Blackness
Before there was bottle service, there was the Bull. There was once a time in black history when we as a people consumed drinks with names like King Cobra, Colt 45 and Magnum voluntarily and without a hint of irony. We’d get loaded on high-gravity malted swill and spend an evening pointing out one another’s…
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What We’re Gonna Do When the Revolution Comes
I’ve recently come across some articles and heard the latest theories about the phenomenon of white anxiety as a precursor to the rise of the era of Trump and Trumpism. Essentially, there’s an overwhelming sense of dread that, based on impending demographic trends, has old white people especially worried about their place in the food…
