45 Search results for "intelligent life"

Ava DuVernay and Lupita Nyong’o are two of the most talented people in today’s film industry, one a director, the other an actress. Fortunately for many of their fans, they’re both also black women and are great representations of what can be accomplished with opportunity. The two may now be coming together to work on […]

Editor’s Note: *I AIN’T THE FIRST PERSON TO EVER THINK OF THIS SHIT. To be Black is to live outside of the ways the world makes sense of itself. Outside of the gender binary, or how men and women are forced to occupy distinct roles, but Black men aren’t given the power patriarchy affords to […]

  Sports commentator Charles Barkley hasn’t come across a sensitive topic that he will not touch, and now he has voiced his opinion on what he calls a “dirty, dark secret” in the African-American community. During an interview with a radio station in Philadelphia, Barkley expounded on claims that Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson was […]

Jasiri X after performing at the historic Apollo Theater (Photo by Paradise Gray) It’s been a great last few weeks for fans of conscious Hip-Hop music. Nas just dropped “Life is Good”, which is universally being regarded as a modern day classic.  Killer Mike’s “R.A.P. Music” made several mid year lists for best album of […]

“I am intelligent, I am intelligent, who are you? Because I am intelligent” These were the words I told an 8-year-old boy to repeat as I helped him with his homework at a community center for HIV/Aids impacted communities.  He spoke about how he really wanted an X-Box for Christmas; I just wanted him to […]

Many years ago, when I was younger, less pessimistic, and even more obnoxious, the local black newspaper decided that I, along with some other black students in the area, was respectable and scholarly enough to feature in its annual round-up of ostensibly intelligent high school seniors.  Someone called a friend and me to the guidance […]

Concrete Jungle stuns, inspires and enthralls from beginning to end, and confirms without question that Nneka has the potential to be among the most vital and fascinating voices of pop music in the years to come. Believe the hype.

 by Inigo Laguda  This essay contains spoilers for Another Life (2019) and Annihilation (2018) For a writer, I read astonishingly little. I chalk my aversion up to over-inundating myself with books as a boy and filling all my curious voids with grand words and fantastical tales. It’s almost like I nauseatingly engorged myself on literature […]

by Hess Love Sometimes I feel like a motherless child… a long way from home- Negro Spiritual Sunday is Mother’s Day. And the grief of losing my mother regularly brings me to my knees. I don’t imagine this day being any different. Sometimes my grief is a distant shore, sometimes the water of it wades […]

As HBO gears up to release its documentary Say Her Name: The Life and Death of Sandra Bland on December 3rd, more information is coming to the forefront regarding Sandra Bland’s death in a Waller County, Texas jail cell. And in a recent profile by Essence magazine, her sisters revealed new issues with the case that […]

by Briana L. Ureña-Ravelo Content Warning: This essay mentions of r/pe of a child I just read Junot Diaz’s essay about his childhood rape and the years of sexual, romantic, and relationship trauma and toxic patriarchal behavior that followed. I applaud him opening up and owning to some really deep, dark trauma on a significantly […]

There were no windows in the high school classroom, only unnatural lights that left your head pounding by the time the hour was over. But on this day and many others like it, my head would be left even more tense and excruciating by a fellow student whose pale skin seemed to welcome the sunless […]