73 Search results for "ideal woman"

I always think of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) whenever someone pretends to be a Black woman or disingenuously evokes our aesthetics. While there are many who outright pretend to be Black women, there are also those convinced that they can somehow actually become Black women and others who simply benefit from appropriating our […]

Art and life reflect mutuality. Tracy Lynn Garner, a woman convicted of depraved heart murder for administering buttocks implants to a Georgia woman, has also died. Garner was 58 and had not yet served four years of her life sentence. This scenario parallels a story-line in Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It reboot. There, a […]

It’s an odd experience when two seemingly unrelated stories subtly and symbolically collide. In one corner, Michelle Obama wowed audiences with her speech at the Democratic National Convention two weeks ago. In the other, Karen Lewis, head of the Chicago Teachers’ Union, led Chicago Public Schools teachers into a fight with Mayor Rahm Emanuel, when […]

by Christian M. Ivey “What We Carry” is a powerful coming-of-age story that follows Drew, a young Black college student grappling with grief, anxiety, and the long shadow of racial trauma.  Get yo ass up, Drew! My alarm rang, a nasty, raggedy rang, almost soundin’ like it was yellin’ at me. Get yo ass up, […]

By Tonya Pennington Every now and then, I’ll hear a news story about a mixed raced person that makes me sigh. This was the case recently with chef and entrepreneur Ayesha Curry, who discussed her experience with her heritage on The View. Since her mother is Jamaican-Chinese and her father is African-American and Polish, Curry […]

By Monika Estrella Negra The majority of the Black punks I have talked to were drawn to (or got lost in) the Punk scene in order to escape the rigidity and heteronormative idealism of traditional Black political organizing. This is not to infer that all Black punks identify with far leftist views, nor does it […]

By Naomi Alexis The so-called “father of modern gynecology”, James Marion Sims, trafficked in enslaved Black women, likely impregnating them through rape, in scientific experimentations for the purpose of advancing his career in medicine. When experimenting on these enslaved women, he did so without anesthesia. He developed tools through trial and error and repeatedly performed […]

by Avery Ware Writer Darnell Moore delineated how objectifying thoughts of oblivious passersby is rooted in “ sexist, misogynistic, and patriarchal ways of thinking — and being.” He further makes the connection to men in queer communities, and how this school of thought is ultimately linked to politics of desire: “if a femme person is […]

I am tired of thinking about and talking about and writing about gender. In fact, sometimes, I wish gender didn’t exist at all. This is an unpopular and unexpected thing for me to say, given the work I do and my background in Gender Studies. Still, it’s true. I don’t want to have to spend […]

by JeCorey Holder

by Boké Saisi Large corporations that own brands such as Victoria’s Secret, Revlon, Old Navy and McDonald’s have come under public scrutiny for using Black and racialized prison labour to manufacture their commodities. Little attention, however, has been paid to Big Pharma’s predatory profiteering from prison labour and the practice of incarceration itself. The Prison […]

by Donnie Moreland  This essay mentions domestic violence.  August Wilson once noted, “The blues are important primarily because they contain the cultural expression and the cultural response to blacks in America and to the situation that they find themselves in.” I believe this to be true, in so far as the Blues may no longer […]