I’m Not Having a Facebook Fundraiser, So Do Me This Birthday Favor Instead

Choose a day in Gemini season (or multiple days) and find someone to help. Not just any kind of help. Specifically, monetary support. Cash! Take the $14 you would’ve used to buy me a birthday drink, and give it away. Yes, that is a pricey drink, but I deserve the best for my birthday, don’t I? If you’re not sure where to start or what to do, just walk down the street in your city and find someone who is struggling. You will know them when you see them. I ask these things of you as you make your way through the world...

June 3, 2018 0

Philadelphia Starbucks Settlement: Respectability and the Inadequacy of a Symbolic Dollar and a Grant

Nelson and Robinson know how to behave, and for that reason they are being depicted as exceptional negroes. Emphasis is continually being put of the fact that they were at Starbucks for a business meeting, as if that somehow matters. They could’ve been there doing nothing more than using the wifi, and their arrest would’ve still been unjust. Doing nothing wrong isn’t enough, however. If you don’t want to be blamed for your own mistreatment, you have to do enough things right as well. So these two men who look like thugs are “business partners” who were waiting to start a business meeting. It makes them more palatable to the masses, and it's easier for folks jumping on the “woke” bandwagon to get behind them.

May 3, 2018 0

This Is Not How We Make Progress, A Response To Hawk Newsome Speaking At A Pro-Trump Rally

Superficial conversations about injustice is not progress. They do nothing but create a false sense of achievement and make folks feel good about themselves. We do not achieve justice by pandering. Nor by assuaging white guilt or putting racists’ fears of Black and brown people to rest.

September 19, 2017 2

Moana: Healing Te Kā’s in a World Full of Maui’s

Te Kā is so many of us who experience trauma. We don't always express our pain through tears and sadness. Often, we express it through anger. We are fire and brimstone, and we lash out against those who hurt us and sometimes those who are there to help us.

September 15, 2017 0

HBO’s ‘Confederate’: Here’s Hoping It’s Better than ‘Game of Thrones’

The Black community has every reason to distrust HBO, Benioff, and Weiss, but I want to believe that we have reason to have faith in the Spellman’s as well. Tokens or not, I don’t want to assume that they have no agency.

July 24, 2017 0

Let’s Talk About Dave Chappelle’s Netflix Specials

Now, I do firmly believe that no topic is off limits when it comes to comedy. Like the best art, the best comedy holds a mirror up to society and forces us to take a good long look at ourselves. It’s controversial. It makes us think. It makes us analyze. It makes us question. That being said, a good comedian can do all of those things without actively engaging in bigotry. Dave Chappelle fell way short of that goal. In these specials there is little to no analysis or critical thinking when it comes to LGBTQ and trans rights - or at all for that matter. There’s no education. Essentially all that’s left is bullying.

March 29, 2017 0