114 Search results for "absent"

Despite being published just a few months after I was born, I first read Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father at 14. It was 2008, and it seemed as though the prospect of electing the nation’s first black president had consumed all of society. It had certainly taken over my family; for some of my […]

    African Americans and Latinos were registered to vote at levels that were below those of white, so the non-profit Third Sector Development started a new initiative to get them registered. The New Georgia Project concentrated on communities of color, and registered about 80,000 new voters. But somehow, only half of them were listed […]

Despite being one of the most active political constituencies in the nation, black women are severely underrepresented in federal, state and local government. That’s the conclusion of a study released by The Higher Heights Leadership Fund and the Rutgers University Center for American Women and Politics, in collaboration with the Center for American Progress.  The […]

  Photographer Zun Lee didn’t set out to create a series that shattered the stereotype of black men as absent black fathers. In fact, “Father Figure,” was meant to show black men in positive relationships with their children as a personal journey. But the project morphed into more than Lee could ever imagine.

The governor of Florida’s chief elections official has issued an order to all 67 elections supervisors. The order imposes new restrictions on how and where voters can return completed absentee ballots.

by Donnie Moreland My grandfather—my mother’s father—participated in the first sit-ins in Greenville, South Carolina. My grandfather is a military veteran. He patrolled the tomb of the unknown soldier, was employed as a manufacturer with the Department of Defense and was a supervisor, in the Pentagon, when Flight 77 made contact with the building at […]

Editor’s Note: June is LGBTQ Pride Month. At BYP, 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. We want to hear from you! Send us your pitches at info@blackyouthproject.com By Jallicia Jolly Amidst the spate of […]

This essay contains discussion of sexual violence, gendered violence, and mention of r/pe   by Sabelo Mtsweni “khanda elixegaxegayo liyofulela abafazi; indoda iyindoda ngokuba umthetho wayo uhlonishwe ekhaya” Loosely translated, this isiZulu idiom means that a man’s authority in a household forms his very essence as a man. Before I read it in Laurence Mabuya’s […]

by Jamila Dawn Mitchell I’m writing this because I need to feel wanted. That’s it. It may sound selfish to most. To a psychologist, though, this makes sense. Most things we do are done in spite of our desire to want to be loved. The sense of belonging is the essence of our humanity and […]

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 […]

By Donnie Moreland It must’ve been 2015 when I first viewed Debbie Tucker Green’s Second Coming (2014). It’s a film which asks the question, what if the nativity story took place between two working class Black folks already raising a little boy in South London.  It’s a mesmerizing dreamscape of rage and longing, orbited by […]

By Donnie Moreland Only on nights like this, could “sweet” be an adjective to describe the air. A prize, really. All those brothers, shoulder to shoulder on the Mall, and you can imagine how much funk can stew in a day. But a soft wind started everyone on their way back from where they began […]