During the early morning hours after Christmas, Quintonio LeGrier called Chicago Police three times to ask for assistance to no avail – he was even hung up on once. When his father called from the same address requesting assistance, an officer was sent to investigate. LeGrier was then shot six times –including in the back– along […]
“Well instead of Starbucks coffee on every corner you’ll find plenty of fried plantains.” –Ngozi, “An African City” In 1998, “Sex and the City” kicked off the trend of shows about the complicated lives of professional women.  However, when you watch shows of professional women trying to find themselves, the cast is normally white women […]
I’ve been intrigued by black quarterbacks for as long as I’ve been a fan of football. For me, the golden age was when I first picked up the sport in the early 2000s and Donovan McNabb and Daunte Culpepper were two of the best players in the game. Today, that space is filled by a handful […]
Pretty much everyone already expected the Dolby Theatre to be full of white faces on Feb. 28 for the 88th Academy Awards. There barely being any people of color in the award nominees and the resulting boycotts and public criticisms of the Academy by those same forgotten faces made that pretty clear. But, due to […]
The daily routine of watching Bernie Sanders fans hell-bent on bullying people of color on social media and hopelessly loyal Hillary supporters claiming her campaign an intersectional victory has left me feeling even less apt to cast my vote for either candidate in November. As a young Black, queer woman of middle-class means and working-class […]
After acknowledging the initial horror many experienced when viewing video footage of Laquan McDonald being shot and killed by Chicago police, everyone started to notice the same thing – there was no sound. New records suggest that was more than a mere coincidence and reveals a pattern in CPD officers tampering with dashcams and hiding microphones.
President Barack Obama has announced new rules that will change the way that federal prisons operate. For starters, putting juvenile offenders in solitary confinement has now been banned due to a belief that it is overused and can lead to severe psychological damage.
If you were to ask someone what the biggest problem facing Chicago wass there’s a strong likelihood they’d go for the easy answer of “gun violence.” While it’s definitely a serious issue that needs to be addressed, it should be noted that it’s actually the result of multiple factors, such as unemployment, poverty and access […]
It looks like Flint, Michigan is getting help from nearby celebrities. Big Sean is an active participant in helping the Flint, Michigan water crisis, as he launched #HealFlintKids on Thursday, January 21, 2016 along with donating $10,000.
It’s been two embarrassing years for the Academy Awards on the diversity front. Not only was #OscarsSoWhite a needed slogan last year, but it’s even more justified this year as, once again, no actors or actresses of color were nominated for a single award. To bring some humor to the situation, as well as some additional […]
The original plan was for Desert Vista High School seniors to come together while wearing black t-shirts decorated in gold tape to spell out a perfectly innocent phrase, “BEST*YOU’VE*EVER*SEEN*CLASS*OF*2016.” But there was apparently an additional plan among six of those students to get together for a picture of their own.
I found myself welling up with tears as I chopped potatoes Sunday morning. It wasn’t the onions and garlic. It wasn’t dust in the air. It was the reminder that the breakfast I was making for my family was the same breakfast my father made for me before he passed away last year.
