29 Search results for "sickness"

When I was a little black girl I would secretly pray to God, the Father, to become sick. You see, when I was sick my non-domestic black mother would cuddle me and become the “ideal mother.” She would busy herself with medicinal concoctions and Vick’s rub. Yes, my mother thought and continues to think; Vick’s […]

Editor’s Note: June is LGBTQ Pride Month. At Black Youth Project, we will be exploring gender, sexuality, transgender issues and queer theory, and we are interested in publishing works that address these topics and the things surrounding them. by Jamila Dawn Mitchell Transgender identities will no longer be considered a mental health disorder by the […]

Marianne Williamson makes me physically ill, and seeing people support her compounds my nausea. The Democratic candidate made waves last week when she delivered an impressive answer about reparations to Don Lemon post-debate:  “[T]here were 250 years of slavery followed by another 100 years of domestic terrorism… given that there were 4 to 5 million […]

*Content Note: Discussion of eating disorders* By Gloria Oladipo I don’t know when my eating disorder began and I don’t know when it will end. An accurate metaphor would be a leech: a black, tarish leach that, under closer inspection, is just a jumble of anxiety, depression, germaphobia, and fear foods. Eating disorders take and […]

by Andrew Keahey When I was young, I would intentionally avoid black and white television, except for The Twilight Zone. The show just hit all the right notes for me, even in my childhood. The wildly fantastic tales hosted by the slick man with the cigarette was part of the reason I got into writing […]

Note: Many articles covering this event note that the men and a few women who are the subjects of this piece were identified as contract laborers, but in this historical and sociological context, these people were enslaved, still doing hard plantation labor with no compensation and not out of their own free will. According to […]

According to Valley News, Dr. Cornel West and other activists came to Dartmouth’s campus as part of a celebration of the twenty-five year anniversary of the release of arguably West’s most important sociological text, Race Matters. During this celebration, West engaged in a spirited debate about the nature of humanity living in a dark and […]

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 […]

Brianna Brochu, the disgraced former University of Hartford student who bragged on social media about contaminating her ex-roommate’s personal items, received a slap on the wrist in court this week. The Hartford Courant reported that Brochu will receive a special kind of probation that could enable her to skip a criminal record. Victim Chennel “Jazzy” […]

by Roni Dean-Burren, PhD  Church makes me sick. Christians make me sick. I really do mean that. They make me sick. Wait. Let me reword that. We make me sick. I regularly attend a church. I am a Christian, but there are plenty of days that I wish I didn’t identify as such. But I […]

When the government cuts corners, it risks the most vulnerable lives. To that end, new research suggests that after Flint, Michigan leadership changed its water source from Detroit-supplied to the contaminated Flint River, reproductive injustice followed. The water change was purportedly undertaken to balance the budget. The decision caused lead exposure increases, yielded decreased birth […]

By Myles E. Johnson “What man wants to lay down and watch the world burn in his bedroom?” – Warsan Shire Often I gaze at myself in the mirror to ensure that I am present, that I recognize the face looking back at me, that I haven’t acquired any new scars, and my face hasn’t […]