43 Search results for "clean record"

by Amber Butts How many Black and Brown women have been asked to hold something so everything else can keep going? Nightmares—living ones—are why many do not come forward, especially in movements that keep the abuser’s name, knowingly or not, as part of how the work understands itself. What was done stays, and the weight […]

by Donnie Moreland  This essay contains spoilers for Patrick Chamoiseau’s 1997 novel, Slave Old Man The final words of Patrick Chamoiseau’s Slave Old Man read, “Brother, I shouldn’t have, but I touched those bones.” Those bones being, “The clavicles. Some vertebrae. A few formless bits. Porous things. And a broken tibia…” Those bones, as are […]

by Donnie Moreland  One of the most haunting images to come out of the Reconstruction Era, for me, is that of the 1872 Harper Weekly engraving entitled “Visit of the Ku Klux.” It’s a crude image, taken up mostly by the figures of a Black family—a mother, her daughter and an elderly man over a fireplace […]

White supremacy is a series of unending violences. As a massive system designed to privilege and preserve whiteness above all else, it requires these violences to keep itself alive, and whiteness must define itself against Blackness to achieve this. Black folks respond to, subvert, and resist this in a myriad of creative, warm-hearted, affirming, ingenious, […]

by Khaaliq Crowder Growing up, my pop culture interests were always unapologetically aligned with everything Black. From owning CDs by late 90s/early 2000s artists such as Destiny’s Child, Aaliyah, and Janet Jackson, to watching marathons of sitcoms like Moesha and Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, to being introduced to the classic group The Jackson 5 via […]

Serena Williams is distinguished as one of the best athletes to ever live. She has broken multiple tennis records that for many has enshrined her as the GOAT. However, Williams is also distinguished by being the most frequently drug tested top tennis player.

by Josie Pickens I first met my good friend—my sister—Hadeel through another mutual friend some years ago. Around that time, I was researching Black American towns destroyed by White vigilantes, and who were often aided by local and national governments.   She was a shorty like me, of five feet and a few inches. Wild, […]

The video game Watchdogs 2 opens with you having to hack into a server and wipe your criminal record clean so the police can’t use a predictive algorithm that predicts future crimes based on past actions. The algorithm leans heavily on using facial recognition databases to keep tabs on citizens. Of note, the protagonist is Black, […]

by Victoria Collins Though she was absent of critical acclaim in the very beginning, Janelle Monáe set in motion the narrative of a dystopian reality that would serve as the backdrop for a decade-long narrative of freedom, love, and acceptance with her 2003 self-released album, The Audition. In 2007, she followed her debut album with […]

Even people who do not believe in the effects of global warming and ratcheted-up weather events can understand when increasingly routine events run up a tab. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recently announced that 2017 weather and climate disasters cost the United States $306 billion. Last year was also the third warmest […]

Anthony Scaramucci, the former White House Communications Director, has been fired 10 days into his new role. The move was reportedly the call of John F. Kelly, Trump’s new chief of staff, who was looking to start his own position with a clean slate. 

By Zoé Samudzi Since the beginning of 2017, and most notably since the Women’s March, we’ve seen the pussy hat skyrocket to visibility as a totem of the mainstream feminist movement. Inspired by a resistance to President Trump’s endorsement of sexual assault via his recorded “grab them by the pussy” comment, the hat––as well as […]