200 Search results for "english"

By Mwende Katwiwa “I am a Black poet who will not stay silent while this nation murders Black people. I have a right to be angry” Poet and political activist Amiri Baraka once said, “the Black artist’s role is to aid in the destruction of America as he knows it”. In a recent piece penned for The […]

By Dominique Hazzard This is me trying to process, trying to share what I witnessed yesterday in Baltimore, trying to amplify voices. Mostly what I saw were young black people overflowing with pain, exasperated at their core, keenly aware of the structural violence they have been subjected to for their entire lives, and willing to […]

By Annie Alexandrian “We must leave evidence. Evidence that we were here, that we existed, that we survived and loved and ached. Evidence of the wholeness we never felt and the immense sense of fullness we gave to each other. Evidence of who we were, who we thought we were, who we never should have […]

The 1983 United States invasion of the small Caribbean island of Grenada won’t be forgotten if filmmaker Damani Baker has anything to do with it. Baker was nine years-old when his mother moved him and his sister to Grenada during the nation’s revolution. His film, The House on Coco Road, is the story of family, history […]

From The Root: Pussy Riot, the Russian feminist punk rock band that constantly pushes back against its government, has released a new single in English titled “I Can’t Breathe,” inspired by Eric Garner, The Guardian reports. According to the report, the song is the first one from the group performed in English. Its members, Nadya Tolokonnikova […]

From Colorlines: Stewart Ferrin, a 25-year-old Arizona State University police officer, resigned Monday after a lengthy controversy following his violent arrest of ASU professor Ersula Ore last May, the Arizona Republic reported. And he did so in dramatic fashion. In a letter he wrote to ASU police chief Mike Thompson, Stewart wrote that the 7 1/2 […]

By Rana Zoe Mungin The key, ultimately, is to blend. Granma speaks Spanish, but she’s dark enough that no one asks, just assumes, really, that she’s the same: black, Afro American, whatever you’re willing to say. Her people are from PR, but she was born on St. Croix, the only kid with a different daddy, […]

“Majority culture’s adoption of the word, stolen from African American vernacular, distorted it to the point of misuse and meaninglessness,” writes Robin Boylorn for the Guardian.

In a piece for Daily Dot, Derrick Clifton calls out the dominant culture that simultaneously appropriates and demonizes black culture. Although many people and brands love adopting African-American Vernacular English, it’s often denigrated and denied the same regard as any other words and phrases borne of popular culture. Unfortunately, the cultural backlash against “bae” reflects how mainstream […]

  The follow piece is from Gawker. It was written by Kiese Laymon. The fourth time a Poughkeepsie police officer told me that my Vassar College Faculty ID could make everything OK was three years ago. I was driving down Hooker Avenue. When the white police officer, whose head was way too small for his […]

  The following piece is from the Atlantic. It was written by Jessica Lahey. By: Jessica Lahey “Education,” Horace Mann declared in 1848, “is a great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance wheel of the social machinery.” But increasingly, the condition of American children—and even their eventual role in society—is determined well before […]

At just 9-years-old, Justus Uwayesu became an orphan and street beggar in Rwanda. He had not bathed in more than a year when an American charity worker, Clare Effiong found him. Fast forward 13 years and Mr. Uwayesu isn’t just living in a different world, but rising through the academic ranks of not just his […]