America. In Black.
America. In Black.
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Being Black in a Newsroom
When most people think of careers in television, their first thought usually goes to someone in front of the camera. I am no different. When I got serious about my broadcast journalism major, I too had visions of being in front of the camera to become the next Oprah. I knew I wanted to be…
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Robert E. Leeās Horseās Ass Made Me Black
For Heather Heyer and her fellow anti-racist protestors, two years after Charlottesville. Thereās a vacation photo of me, all grainy and saturated like the best ā80s snapshots. My messy red āfro is damp, my smiling face is half in shadow, my feet are dangling in glistening water that spreads to the edges of the frame,…
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Straddling Two Worlds: Transracial Adoption and the Authenticity of Blackness
āYou are my worst fear realized,ā a black womanāand complete strangerāsaid to me after I concluded my keynote speech. She continued, āI came to hear you speak, and you have confirmed my worst fears. You arenāt a true black person.ā I am part of the first wave of transracial adoptees (Iām black, my parents are…
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I'm Allergic to Hennessy
I donāt neatly fit into many of the cultural lines set before meāmuch like many black millennials. Itās almost derivative to say I love anime in an age where black peopleās love of anime now spans generations. I grew up listening to Paramore and Van Hunt and Yo-Yo Ma. Itās now Ben Howard and Valis…
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Oloāoruko Mi: Legacy Ponderings of a Nigerian-but-Mostly-American
Iād spent two years on this earth when I met my paternal grandmother Julianna Oni for the firstāand lastātime. As I was her sole oloāoruko miāthe only heir to be her namesakeāshe took an immediate liking to me, often raising my youthful frame in her firm, mahogany arms and chanting āJulie Julie Julie Julieā with…
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You're So Different: OK, But What Makes You Black?
āYouāre so different. Youāre so articulate. Why do you talk like a white girl? Youāre the whitest black girl I know.ā Comments like these beg the question: What makes you black? Is it merely the color of oneās skin? Is it a state of mind? Knowing the lyrics to Cardi Bās songs? It took me…
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Eat, Pray, This Canāt Be Love
John Singleton. Dead at 51. Stroke/Hypertension. Nipsey Hussle. Dead at 33. Murdered. Phife Dawg. Dead at 45. Diabetes. Paul Bromley. Alive at 35. Overweight and spiritually confused. Is my clock ticking? Sounds morbid right? Anxious? Yeah, I know ā¦ As a black man living in America, thinking about my mortality has become a new daily…
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Stepping in IT (Information Technology)
At the beginning of this year, I saw a meme on Facebook where a young man mentioned that over the past year, he had learned to stop āaspiring to sit at tables where he had to bring his own chair, squeeze in between folks and repeatedly convince people that he deserved to be there.ā That…
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Being āThe Black Snobā Was a Joke, Until the Day I Actually Became One
āI donāt know how you ended up so bougie when we came out of the same family,ā said my baby sister, one day over the phone. I was taken aback. Me? Bougie? And yet, I was. Painfully so. And had been, at this point, for several years. But I was still offended. At the time…
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For The Love of Money
My friend Toni and I text a lot and for good reason. We are the same age. We divorced young. We have small children. We work together. The element that makes our black girl magic texting unique is we talk about money all the time. We talk about having it, not having it, hustling for…