1155 Search results for "brown"

Guns too often become tools of intra-communal violence at the hands of cis het Black men
Trigger warning: domestic violence, gun violence, mention of suicide by Donnie Moreland On April 3rd, 1964 and at the Cory Methodist Church, Malcolm X would give one of his most quotable speeches. The speech was titled, The Ballot or the The Bullet. He began with these words, “The question tonight, as I understand it, is […]
High rates of femicide make it hard to be a Black woman in this world
CW: graphic descriptions of femicide For, while the tale of how we suffer is never new, it always must be heard. -James Baldwin My grandmother once said to me, “the hardest thing anyone can be in this world, is a black woman.” Although I’ve carried these words with me throughout the years, it is now, […]
A self-harm resource list
by Carrie Hawks Content warning: Mentions of self-harm, cutting, and suicidal ideation Not being seen, not being known, and having nowhere to turn to feel safe is devastating at any age, but it is particularly destructive for young children who are trying to find their place in the world. –Bessel van der Kolk As a […]
The world is still inaccessible for us
by Jo (Foderingham) Brown The COVID-19 pandemic has forced non-disabled people to socialize almost exclusively via an internet connection. Suddenly, the IRL — “in real life” — world became inaccessible for people who have never experienced inaccessibility. But the world is still inaccessible for disabled and chronically ill folks. For the last three months in […]
The work must be intergenerational
“Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it’s not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it’s gone, but the place–the picture of it–stays, and not just in my remory, but out there, in the world. What I remember is a picture floating around out there outside my head. […]
Reimaging consent, for Black cis-het men, in a world where touch can kill
This essay discusses sexual violence and mentions r/pe by Donnie Moreland I must have written this sentence ten times before settling on the question of this piece, as the only way to begin—what does consent look like, in a world where touch can kill? This isn’t an universal inquiry, but a meditation on that which […]
Police-Free schools are necessary, as is abolishing the white supremacist state they are rooted in
by Mustafa Ali-Smith As protests continue on both the national and global scale, widespread call-to-actions ramp up. Dismantling, defunding, and divesting from policing and providing police-free schools are becoming a part of everyday conversations. Early educational institutions have even begun to respond to these call-to-actions by ending their relationship with local police departments and promising […]
Police brutality does not end because of a pandemic, it is made worse by it
Content warning: mentions of slavery, police brutality “The buyers paraded them and made them dance. They opened their clothing to check for wounds; they pinched their limbs and flexed their muscles. They searched earnestly for scars, since scars were said to be evidence of a rebellious nature. When they finished their inspections, they posed questions […]
Accessing competent care is another hurdle Black folks shouldn’t have to navigate
Content Warning: Medical Violence My nana, Ella D. Martin, was a nurse from Greenwood, Louisiana who slept with medical books underneath her bed, and sometimes her pillow. And no matter the time of day, Nana would receive medical emergency calls from folks all over the world, well until she was 80. Though she worked in […]
Now is an opportunity for Black folks to reimagine what constitutes loss
by Donnie Moreland My father is a diabetic, with chronic pain and a fragile immune system due to rounds of dialysis, which cause more pain and thus tosses him into the throws of a cycle which is, observably, hell. He is also a business owner, which necessitates an urgency of decision making, that suffers when […]
Black men’s body dysmorphia needs to be discussed more openly among us
by Donnie Moreland This essay discusses body dysmorphia, self-harm ideation, and fatphobia. I remember wanting to drop fire in my belly. Wanting to light a match, open my mouth and drop it in to burn the fat. This was one of the engrossing illusions I obsessed about, from age thirteen until an age very much […]
The endless appropriation of MLK and white supremacy’s need to rewrite historical narratives
Barely a month has passed since I wrote about appropriation and the vampiric nature of whiteness, specifically as it pertains to Black art and aesthetic. My focus was white artists and their simultaneous disavowal and infiltration of rap and hip-hop, and my purpose was to illustrate the pattern of how white society appropriates Black art […]