88 Search results for "respectability politics"

by Tanya Fields On a daily basis, I have to quiet the voice in my head telling me that I ain’t shit. It constantly compares me to all of the fabulous Black women whose lives I get to witness snippets of on social media and beyond. Women with the alphabet behind their name, posing for […]

The violent arrest of University of Virginia student Martese Johnson, has set off a wave of conversation about police brutality and respectability politics. It’s clear that no black body is safe from police violence.   How’s that “black thug” excuse for denying police brutality working for you now? #UVA #JusticeForMartese pic.twitter.com/k5UCXv51DS — Tess Millennial (@TessMonet) […]

This article was originally posted at Water Cooler Convos and has been reposted with permission.   One of the most irritating byproducts of this new era of being “woke” is the increased numbers of people who read one Martin Luther King, Jr speech or saw one thing Angela Davis said that one time or found […]

“What shall I tell my children who are black, of what it means to be a captive in this dark skin? What shall I tell my dear one, fruit of my womb, of how beautiful they are when everywhere they turn they are faced with abhorrence of everything that is black. The night is black and so is the boogyman. Villains […]

By Maya King For more than two centuries, religious institutions have sat at the intersection of pain and liberation within African-American communities. Churches like Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist and Atlanta’s Ebenezer exemplified this, giving birth to the people and movements that defined the Civil Rights Era while providing political capital and a sense of stability […]

By Jay Dodd On a fairly warm November night, my two best boys and I were walking across campus from their apartment to my house, in an attempt to satiate our cabin fever from spending all day inside. It was oddly nice out for the season and we stopped underneath some streetlights to take selfies. […]

Building a culture of consent is imperative for preventing violence in our communities.  When you hear the word consent, do you automatically think about sex? Maybe you took one of those awkward seminars or workshops in college where you saw students act out being drunk at a party, and someone was unable to consent to […]

by Dr. Chaz Barracks In the early 2000s, as a little Black boy with ‘two much sugar’, I received my first durag from my favorite cousin’s boyfriend. While babysitting me, just him and me in the house, it was a rare occasion to be alone without any other kids around; he gave me a fresh […]

By Amber Butts Every day I’m resentful of capitalism. And when I say capitalism, I don’t mean the binary, often well-meaning but willfully simplistic response of “Well, you have an iphone don’t you?” (I do not, but that’s besides the point). I mean the ways capitalism and its siblings (environmental and medical racism, antiBlackness and […]

By Brittani McNeill By now, we’ve all seen the news about Jay-Z’s new partnership with the NFL. The rap mogul, through a deal between the league and his company Roc Nation, will serve as an advisor, helping to select music for NFL events, including the Super Bowl, and lead conversations about “social justice.”

Editor’s Note: This month at BYP, we will be exploring Black Liberation & Organizing, and we are interested in publishing works that address these topics. How do we hold politicians accountable to Black communities? Is that even possible? What should be our role in the electoral politics? What does abolition look like in practice? What […]

Whether we want to admit it or not, there’s a superficial boundary between professionalism and unprofessionalism that undergirds constant productivity, capital and unhealthy notions of self worth. This boundary exists to reinforce white supremacy, carcerality, punishment, policing and surveillance. The structures that legitimize this faux boundary do so in service of themselves always. All the […]