In bringing ‘savage’ into the cultural lexicon, we’ve ignored an ugly history of abuse against Indigenous peoples. It’s early morning. As you walk around your classroom before your day starts, you overhear two boys talking about how “disgusting” they find it that women can breastfeed in public. You give them a cut-eye that you hope […]
If Donald Trump is gaslighting us, are we in a toxic relationship with America? On November 9, I wept. Not just for my own broken dreams, but for what I feared would become of my country. Yet even as I cried, I was determined: I would fight for the country I believed in, even as […]
Black men are often mischaracterized as threats, absent parents, or violence-prone. Older adults can be stereotyped as technophobic, rigid, low energy, and past their sell-by dates. Yet the truth in most cases is the opposite. At first glance, your answer to that question might be “not much.” However, the unfortunate fact is that both groups […]
Take down the statues honoring those who sought to tear apart our country during the Civil War. Take down the heinous Confederate battle flags. They hurt your fellow human beings. I don’t understand why you would need more explanation than that. The school in the small town where I live in Texas serves 305 students. […]
For too long, the dialogue around breastfeeding has been a deeply privileged one that erases and ignores Black women. Racial inequality in the U.S. is so entrenched, so debilitating, that even Black babies—even, sometimes, within their first hours of life—are impacted by it. Consider, for a moment, these chilling facts: The infant mortality rate for Black […]
“If we wait for perfection, we will never break the silence. The cycle of racism will continue uninterrupted.” In the days following the attack on Charlottesville, I wanted to post something on Facebook that spoke out against racism and bigotry. And yet, I could not find my voice. True, I had an unusually busy workweek […]
Racist violence is as American as apple pie. Remember that Donald Trump froze funds that were supposed to go to groups fighting neo-Nazi violence. Remember that the Department of Justice recently announced that its civil rights division will be focusing its energies not on the precipitous rise in anti-black and anti-Muslim hate crimes that followed Trump’s election, but on “affirmative action […]
I spend too many moments of my day reminding myself that every second with my baby boy is one more that can’t be stolen. Today I’m angry and I don’t know why. It could be that I spent my morning trying to figure out how to explain to well-meaning white folks why I don’t think […]
In truth, Whiteness affects everyone. It favors some of us and threatens others daily. In my life, I have argued with, silently resisted, and fled from the police. Despite all that and my general comportment, the latter born from a distaste for authority and the tyrannical attitudes of the particular officers I encountered, I have […]
White people, it would seem, are seriously out-of-touch with the racial reality in America. But why? I grew up five minutes from the Aryan Nations compound in Northern Idaho in the 1990s. At the time, the compound was big news—attracting everyone from the national press to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Its founder, an old […]
“As a black male, there is an expectation for us to be the epitome of masculinity. Living up to that expectation is not only challenging, but it’s also destructive.” The latest fashion trend, the romper for men—or as it’s affectionately called, the “romphim”—has received mixed feedback on social media. Many find fashion flashbacks like this strange, but […]
Sure, we all eat, shit, and die, but the idea that we are constantly connected by our humanity is crap. My eyes are burning from a long night of scrolling Facebook. I curse my contacts and wonder why I haven’t committed to Lasik surgery. Then again, if my eyes are primarily being used for Facebook, […]
