82 Search results for "progress narrative"

“What is it you want me to reconcile myself to? I was born here almost 60 years ago. I’m not gonna live another 60 years. You always told me it takes time. It’s taken my father’s time, my mother’s time. My uncle’s time. My brother’s and my sister’s time. My nieces and my nephews time. […]

by Ayika Tshimanga  Before Robyn Rihanna Fenty released her commercially successful project that is popularly regarded as her best work to date, ANTI (2016), she produced an underrated gem that would lay the groundwork for ANTI to exist, Rated R. At the time of Rated R’s release, Rihanna was widely regarded–and arguably may still be […]

In a sign of things to come for Black communities under the new administration, President Trump threatened federal intervention to address the “carnage” that is Chicago’s gun violence in a tweet last Tuesday night: If Chicago doesn’t fix the horrible “carnage” going on, 228 shootings in 2017 with 42 killings (up 24% from 2016), I […]

With the recent release and acclaim of Oscar-favorite 12 Years A Slave, I found myself mentally revisiting Django Unchained by Quentin Tarantino. Not because I think there are any worthwhile parallels to draw between the two films, but rather because the brilliance and scope of 12 Years actually exposed Django for what it truly was, […]

by Alycia Kamil We Speak Our City Back On Language, Gentrification, and Black Presence in Chicago There are stories that arrive already smoothed out. Made digestible for funders, developers, and media outlets. The kind that trades in progress narratives and polished soundbites. This is not that kind of story. This piece opens differently. The voice […]

This essay discusses child abuse, sexual violence, addiction, and extreme weight loss I tell him about my recent trip up to Philly and what happened on the way back. Our Uber driver overheard a conversation between myself, a child of the Carolinas, and my friend, the most Texas Texan I know, in which she told […]

by Tabias Olajuawon This essay contains discussion of anti-Black violences, particularly lynching, and mention of r/pe “… Ancestors, you will find us still in cages,  Despised and disciplined. You will find us still mis-named.   Here you will find us despite.          You will not find us extinct. You will find us […]

Editor’s Note: A version of this piece was previously published on The Each Other Project I learned to swim well before I was 14 by taking classes at the local YMCA in East Cleveland. If that rec center was the only frame of reference, you’d think swimming was an exclusively Black phenomenon, the pool being […]

2008 feels so long ago, and the feelings I had then are so foreign now. But I remember clearly how a handsome, brilliant, and charming Black man once convinced me and so many other Black folks to hope for the world to change. I remember how he assured me that the violence of anti-Blackness I […]

by Daniel Johnson Thurgood Marshall is arguably the most important figure in modern judicial and legal history. Founder of the Legal Defense Fund as well as its first president and Director-Counsel, the first Black judge to sit on the Second Circuit of Appeals, the first Black Solicitor General, and finally, the first Black Supreme Court […]

This essay contains spoilers for Fast Color by Melanie Ojwang Fast Color immediately stands out as different from the comic based blockbusters I’ve grown used to over the past decade. When it was first released, I rushed to see it, fearing that it wouldn’t be in theaters past opening weekend. It turns out that my […]

This essay contains spoilers for See You Yesterday, Siempre Bruja, Mortal Kombat 11, and Kindred, as well as discussions of sexual violence and anti-Black state violence.    I was eighteen, a freshman in college studying film and visual arts, and deeply interested in the history of both. A film studies professor asked the class one […]