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Revisiting Anita Hill: On Racism, Stereotypes and Respectability Politics
âThe more things change. The more things stay the same.â My 7th grade English teacher, the black woman who taught me how to write, said that quote in class on a cool spring day in March 2006 and looked at us to explain what she meant. Loads of us scratched our heads in that, âWell,…
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It Be Your Own People: On Universal FanCon and the Perversion of Community
My mother, God bless her (sheâs still around, but still), grew up in a certain village in rural Nigeria. And to survive this upbringing, she had to adopt some beliefs, behaviors and coping mechanisms that would seem paranoid to untrained and Americanized eyes like mine. One of these behaviors was continuously forbidding me and my…
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The Nonapology Guide: Black-Woman Edition
Since Cheeto Grease the Tyrant fumblingly assumed office thanks to the Assorted Colonizer Coalition of America at the conclusion of 2016 and the beginning of 2017, something interesting has happened: I mean, one doesnât have to look too far for examples of this, especially this year. With chosen champions like Lena Waithe, Tiffany Haddish, basically…
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On the Duality and Double Consciousness of Black Panther
Through my multiple viewings of Black Panther (four so far), I become aware of certain traits of the characters, their ideals and how the actorsâ portrayals of them shed light on the struggles that black people and the world at large experience with tradition vs. technology, and other dichotomies. They stand out to me because…
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On Black Panther, Black Leopard and the Politics of Being a Black Superhero
In approximately three weeks, on Feb. 16, the biggest and blackest movie extravaganza that we have seen since the turn of â00 will finally be hitting theaters. Itâs funny, really. The premiere of Black Panther is so close and yet so far away. But thatâs not stopping all of the buzz thatâs abounding. Everywhere you…
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The Black Womanâs Tale: Why Margaret Atwoodâs Espousal of White Feminist Beliefs Shouldnât Surprise You
2018 is off to a pretty interesting start. At the conclusion of the painful year that was 2017, various women of assorted celebrity backgrounds assembled to simultaneously weaponize their privilege and latch onto the momentum and resurgence of Tarana Burkeâs âMe Tooâ movement. This gave birth to a new movement on Jan. 1, 2018: #TimesUp.…
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Top 10 Disappointing Moments Black People Experienced in 2017
I donât have to tell you how supremely tough 2017 was to deal with. Like, Iâm sure we all could go on and on about how terrible this year truly was to each and every last one of us. Still, the year had some high points, which we pointed out earlier this week, but in…
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Top 10 Moments Black People Won in 2017
2017 has been, how do I put this succinctly, a fucking shit year. From the plagues of biblical proportions that this administration keeps trying to drop on us to the fact that Mother Nature is sick of the bullshit and has been trying to finally kill us all via hurricane, 2017 has not been skimpy…
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Girls and Gays: On the Tenuous Relationship Between Black Women and Queer Black Folk
This past weekend, I was winding down after a fairly long Thanksgiving weekend by engaging in one of my guilty pleasures: The Real Housewives of Atlanta. After a long day, I was ready for some petty, funny mess. What I was not ready for was being blindsided by a transphobic âread.â The read in question?…
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6 Ways to Make Your Thanksgiving as Unproblematic as Possible
Ah, Thanksgiving. Everyoneâs favorite official-yet-unofficial holiday. Retailers donât really know what to do with it, since they tend to jump from a Halloween marketing blitzkrieg straight into Christmas marketing overexposure, but that doesnât matter right now. All that matters is that Thanksgiving is that in-between holiday that chiefly exists for us to nearly and unabashedly…
