1500 Search results for "black experience"

It surprises me how much of the city builds a fantasy in a larger reality of racism. Outside of downtown and the “hood” there’s an intense atmosphere of hatred and disregard for people-of-color. Maybe people-of-color provokes the idealistic bubble of a city person; in places like Buffalo, New York the black person is breathing scum […]

What is it about mankind that loves to make difference the most important aspect in social interactions? Why, even when our humanity tells us that we are the same, do we insist on proving the existence of inferiority? It makes me angry. This anger was sparked due to a new endeavor I am about to […]

At 28 years-old, Irving is the first black person, the first Jamaican person, and the youngest person to ever fly around the world on a solo flight. Irving suffered multiple obstacles in his quest to make that dream a reality. But he never gave up.

The winds of change offered us another subtle and elusive breeze on the 4th of July as the nation celebrated another ironic Independence Day. Undoubtedly, many of you have already heard of Frank Ocean’s beautiful tumblr post announcing that his first love was a man. In delicate prose laced in a humble font sans serif, […]

When black men graduate from college, barriers are broken. When black men from poverty graduate from college, systems of power are shifted.  When black men from poverty are the first persons in their family to graduate from college, revolution becomes possible. As I become the first person in my family to graduate from college I […]

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzPhnVaw874 It is always amazing to me when organizations find interventions that can radically change the way young people view their place in the world. As you can see in the video, this is an example of how Chicago Freedom School uses music and chants to build the self-efficacy of young people. There is something […]

A survey of black gay youth reveals that 43 percent of Black gay youth have thought about or attempted suicide; over half of those surveyed fear or have experienced family disownment. Our young people deserve BETTER than this!

Last night Monday I stumbled across an article with the headline, “Man who had 30 kids with 11 women wants child-support break.” Of course the ethnicity of this father turned out to be Black. My first reaction to this story was a shaken head, because Black male bodies seem incapable of accountability. Missing fathers, no […]

In this new data driven society, I fear that in many attempts to track success with numbers, we often lose the qualitative aspects of building strong relationships with black youth.  We see more often business styled reforms being implemented in education systems that prefer to focus on the bottom line of efficiency rather than focusing […]

The sentiment that Blacks “should know better” when it comes to prejudice against other groups is a product of white supremacist thinking. Being Black doesn’t imbue us with special powers to automatically understand someone else’s plight…

Urban schools districts are frequently associated with the idea of failure. These schools, which are nestled in the center of large cities across the United States, are perpetually labeled as unsuccessful institutions. The images of failure take many forms. The most problematic image is when people think of urban schools as places where young students […]

I recently watched an episode of The Cleveland Show, the satirical spin-off of Fox’s hit comedy Family Guy, which centers on the African-American character Cleveland, and his return to his home state of Virginia to be with his new wife and stepchildren. It’s a funny show, just as crude as Family Guy, and inherently problematic […]