36 Search results for "generational politics"

How Black cis het men’s relationship to our bodies contributes to our violence against Black transgender women
by Donnie Moreland This essay discusses transmisogyny and the murder of Black trans women It’s odd; where the mind of a young man goes in boredom. It’s often sexual—at least in my experience. It’s a lot of thinking about who you’d fuck and how. What’s even more telling is when we commune in boredom. […]
Mental Health Awareness Month shouldn’t be the only time I can talk openly about my mental health
Editor’s Note: May is Mental Health Awareness Month and National Masturbation Month. This is also the month that we celebrate Mother’s Day. At BYP, we will be exploring these topics alongside the theme of Imagination and the Arts, and we are interested in publishing works that address these topics and the things surrounding them. By […]
The silent and sellout: What is the responsibility of prominent Black artists in an unjust society?
by Brittany Kirkland Back in the day, when someone labeled you a “sellout”, there was no mistaking it. You were being called out as a traitor, and it wasn’t something to be taken lightly. What’s interesting is that as unambiguous as the term is, “sellout” is loaded for Black folk. It’s become heavily weighed down […]
‘Sorry to Bother You’ is a study of the Black working class and the seductive appeal of capitalism
by Brittany Lee Frederick This essay contains spoilers for Sorry to Bother You Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You features a “dystopia” that is not at all foreign to working class Black America. Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield), who has just been hired by Regal View telemarketing, is encouraged by Langston (Danny Glover), an older and […]
Reading ‘Black Museum’ and ‘Get Out’ as comparative Afrofuturist zombie slave narratives
This essay contains spoilers for Get Out and Black Mirror S4, E6, “Black Museum” Can we just agree that Get Out is obviously a lost episode of Black Mirror? More specifically, it’s a companion tale to season four’s “Black Museum” (which feels very much like a series finale) that somehow found its way into Jordan […]
The Black church isn’t one-dimensional either: How Gullah-Geechee people subvert Christianity to retain Black history
By Ari Colston-Johnson To many, the Black Church calls to mind horror stories of cisheteropatriarchy and theologies shaped by colonialism, white supremacy, and respectability politics. But coming of age in the Gullah-Geechee African Methodist Episcopal (AME) tradition, the Black Church was a foundation for my radical politics, a space for community and Afrocentric syncretism, and […]
How a Chicago mayor’s proposal to make post-grad plans a requirement for graduating harms Black & Brown students
Not content with over-policing Black folks in the streets and at their schools, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is now extending these practices into their academics. Earlier this week, the mayor shared his bright idea for requiring Chicago Public Schools students to produce a letter of acceptance from a 2 or 4-year university, vocational school, a […]
If Betsy DeVos’ Nomination Tells Us Anything, It’s That We Can’t Wait To Educate Our Own Youth
By: Imani J. Jackson “Make America Think Again,” several protestors’ signs read at a Jacksonville, Florida Sister March to the historic Women’s March on Washington. So far, 673 solidarity marches have been recorded and nearly five million people participated worldwide. The signs, a play on President Donald Trump’s co-opted Ronald Reagan catchphrase, and several Plural-led […]
A Discussion with Mariame Kaba On The #ByeAnita Campaign and Grassroots Organizing
There are very few activists today who can boast the experience and accomplishments of Mariame Kaba. The New York native, whose work brought her to Chicago for over 20 years, is an educator, organizer, and curator whose work “focuses on ending violence, dismantling the prison industrial complex, transformative justice and supporting youth leadership development.” She has worked […]
On Barack Obama, Absent Fathers, And The Jokes That Just Won’t Stop
Despite being published just a few months after I was born, I first read Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father at 14. It was 2008, and it seemed as though the prospect of electing the nation’s first black president had consumed all of society. It had certainly taken over my family; for some of my […]
#Sayhername: A Black Feminist Guide to the Black Panther Party’s 50th Anniversary Conference and Gala
Authored by Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest, Tracye A. Matthews, Mary Phillips, and Robyn C. Spencer This article is a two-part series. Read part 1 here. The Black Panther Party (BPP) 50th anniversary dovetails with the high tide of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. In the context of a police violence epidemic against Black and Brown communities and […]
Trump, Clinton, and A Tale Of Two Racisms
Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee for President, is working tirelessly to distance herself from her (former) friend, Republican nominee Donald Trump. Her method in doing so suggests that she is somehow critically different from him. But, young people of color don’t seem to be buying that claim. This begs the question: Why are her supporters struggling […]