490 Search results for "lack of evidence"

Charges dropped against cop who shot Jonathan Farrell 10 times due to ‘lack of evidence’
Yesterday we broke news that a North Carolina police officer who shot and killed an unarmed man 10 times as he sought help would not be indicted. At the time, there was not an immediate explanation available for the grand jury’s decision, but we have now learned that a lack of evidence was cited as […]
Black conspiracy and skepticism persist because we believe the evidence of our experience
by Donnie Moreland There is a whispered binding between Black folks and the truth. Less truth, in that meta-ethical way we discern the spiritually evidential as Black folks, but truth telling. The expressions, negotiations and altercations with, and of, “facts.” How we tell the truth, digest it and confirm that truth as just that; gospel. […]
Why Black pain will never disarm white supremacy
A nursing book was recalled in 2017 because of the racist way that it discussed pain; how it is felt, how it is interpreted, and how it should be understood by physicians, and therefore, how it should ultimately be treated. This entry, entitled “Cultural Differences in Response to Pain,” included sections on “Arabs/Muslims,” “Asians,” “Blacks,” […]
The Black Lunatic
A history of forced institutionalization in service of white supremacy
How theology based on a “one true god” cuts Black people off from necessary indigenous practices
By DJ Ferguson My mother, no stranger to emotional blackmail, had no hesitation in using it on behalf of her god in an attempt to reconvert me. “Don’t you think God (Yahweh) ever mourns?” she asked, hoping to get me to feel sorry for the possessive West Asian shepherd god whom I no longer worship. […]
Reclaiming memory as a Black father and son in the face of cultural and racial traumas
This essay contains discussions of racialized state violence and suicide attempts by Donnie Moreland I have difficulty recalling specific details of my childhood. Trauma has a way of coloring memory. Strangely, the events I sometimes beg to forget are the ones I can see with a clarity the remainder of my youth is never afforded. […]
How heterosexual Black men project the psycho-sexual traumas of the plantation onto our queer brethren
This essay contains discussions of racialized sexual violence and mentions r/pe by Donnie Moreland There is this thing with us, as Black men. This war. Well, less war and more an inter-communal pogrom, wherein any Black man who shows no desire to lay with women exclusively is designated a cancer, subject to extermination. The prevention […]
Guns too often become tools of intra-communal violence at the hands of cis het Black men
Trigger warning: domestic violence, gun violence, mention of suicide by Donnie Moreland On April 3rd, 1964 and at the Cory Methodist Church, Malcolm X would give one of his most quotable speeches. The speech was titled, The Ballot or the The Bullet. He began with these words, “The question tonight, as I understand it, is […]
Testing HydroxyChloroquine on Black COVID-19 patients is more medical racism
by Ivory O. My two younger sisters and I were on Facetime with our mother recently, discussing the current state of the world. My youngest sister was making fun of our mom for freaking about HydroxyChloroquine. Apparently, my mother had been distressed since the president announced that researchers are looking into using HydroChloroquine, famously known […]
Now is an opportunity for Black folks to reimagine what constitutes loss
by Donnie Moreland My father is a diabetic, with chronic pain and a fragile immune system due to rounds of dialysis, which cause more pain and thus tosses him into the throws of a cycle which is, observably, hell. He is also a business owner, which necessitates an urgency of decision making, that suffers when […]
Steve McQueen’s ‘Western Deep’ is a counter memory for Black miners during South African Apartheid
by Donnie Moreland Steve McQueen’s Western Deep is a horror film. Though McQueen’s 2002 dual video installation (presented with Carib’s Leap) is, in form, video art, I feel it is possible to understand Western Deep as genre cinema. An exploration into the TauTona Mine Shaft No.3 of South Africa—also known as Western Deep—it is a […]
Protecting Black children should never mean re-injuring them, owning them, or denying their sexual autonomy
by Donnie Moreland This essay contains discussions of domestic violence and sexual assault Ruminations of my daughter’s hypothetical death play on repeat, ever since her birth. I’ve accepted them as inescapable conditions of parenthood—Black parenthood especially. I also believe the story of Julia Martin’s death in 2016 partially informs my anxieties in raising a daughter. […]