811 Search results for "knowledge"

Being a Black teacher is not enough for Black children
By Brittany Willis It took me seven years of teaching before I had the opportunity to work in a school where the student and staff population were both majority Black. I don’t mean “majority” as in just over half—no, literally everybody was Black except two white staff members and three Latinx children who were siblings. […]
My ancestors didn’t die for the right to vote, and we are allowed to question them anyway
“Internalized anti-Blackness has us quick to condemn, erase, and humiliate ourselves and our ancestors more than we do the people who did the actual enslaving” — Chelsea Neason My grandmother lived a long life, but I can only imagine how much longer it would have been without the struggles she fought through. She used to […]
“It doesn’t have to make sense to other people”: An interview with African Diaspora Childfree Sociologist, Dr. Kimya N. Dennis
I wasn’t prepared for the responses to my most recent essay on living intentionally as a childfree Black woman and taking ownership of my womb. I never presumed I was alone in my sentiments on this subject, of course, but I also didn’t expect my words to resonate so deeply with so many people. Writing […]
Queer isn’t who you are, it’s how you reclaim freedom. And even the gayest of us sometimes fail at it
Content Note: This essay contains details about childhood sexual assault My parents didn’t hit me growing up. I know they hit my older siblings, but something had changed over the years before I got here. Maybe they saw it didn’t help. Maybe they even knew hitting children causes significant harm. But I like to think […]
I have a chronic illness, and I’m doing dope stuff at my own pace
by Jamila Mitchell “God, I finally vacuumed.” If you ever experienced an almost orgasmic sigh of relief after doing something seemingly small but necessary, then you are like me. The common necessities to life, like vacuuming, going to the grocery store, or even picking up the phone to text someone, are incredible accomplishments for the […]
To deal with intergenerational Black trauma, we must care for our elders
By Amber Butts As children, we are told to stay out of grown folk business. As adults and elders, we then continue that wheel and narrative, which doesn’t give space for us to build an intergenerational emotional intelligence. What if children were in more “grown folk” conversations? Could we better prepare for it if children […]
The violence of Black fratenities is a Black masculinity problem
by Daniel Johnson James Baldwin’s January 1985 essay for Playboy, ““Freaks and the American Ideal of Manhood”, engages with a discussion on androgyny and the American idea of sexuality in which he raises questions about the American idea of masculinity. In the essay, Baldwin affixes violence as the key to the (white) American imagination of […]
I am a childfree Black woman and I owe my womb to no one
This essay contains discussions of death in childbirth and reproductive violences “Who she pregnant for?” This is how I remember my aunts inquiring about the potential father of any given person’s unborn child while I was growing up. Not “Who are they pregnant by?” or “Who are they pregnant with?” The question was always, Who […]
Men’s lack of respect for women’s sexual boundaries is informed by our lack of care for their sexual pleasure
by Chris Saltmarch Like many of my contemporaries, I never really gave much thought to the sexual desires of women. Much of my life, when I really sit and think of it, I was totally oblivious to the needs and desires of my sexual partners. This was due in part to being raised in the […]
Social media breaks aren’t self-care for Black people who feel isolated offline
By Taylor Lamb Social media has been popular long enough that people are no longer consistently singing its praises. Instead, we’ve collectively reached a point that it’s just too much. People care too much. They post too much. They spend too much time on their phones instead of engaging in person. I feel as though […]
In another story, Micah Johnson kills Officer Guyger before she can murder Botham Jean
“Officer who walked into wrong apartment and killed man faces arrest”. The headline states that the officer who killed Botham Jean mistakenly went into the “wrong apartment” as if it is fact. On the actual page, it adds “: Authorities” so at least you know who is behind what is taken as fact. It’s not […]
My family’s abusive cisheteropatriarchy is destroying my relationship with my brother
by Indigo My younger brother and I are three years apart. Like most siblings relatively close in age, we quarreled frequently as children. When it came to our extracurricular activities we were rivals. He has always been much more athletic than me, and he excelled at sports. I have always been a high achieving student, […]