1844 Search results for "because of them we can"

Welcome Home to the Black Youth Project
by Jenn M. Jackson, PhD Almost a decade ago, I said goodbye to my editing position here at Black Youth Project. I was 33 years old, working on the final edits of my dissertation at the University of Chicago titled “Race, Risks, and Responses: Mapping Black American’s Reactions to Policing in the United States.” My […]
What We Carry: A Coming-of-Age Tale of Grief, Therapy, and Reckoning
by Christian M. Ivey “What We Carry” is a powerful coming-of-age story that follows Drew, a young Black college student grappling with grief, anxiety, and the long shadow of racial trauma. Get yo ass up, Drew! My alarm rang, a nasty, raggedy rang, almost soundin’ like it was yellin’ at me. Get yo ass up, […]
We Speak Our City Back: A Series on Gentrification
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 […]
‘Fast Color’ was snubbed by Hollywood’s white male gatekeepers because it doesn’t fit their worldview
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 […]
Dear Inbetweener: Finding my place as a bisexual biracial man
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 Andrew Keahey When your whole life is in the inbetween, you see things that other people […]
Linda Fairstein will always feel justified because there’s no accountability for the violence of white feminism
By Émelyne Museaux White women’s sovereignty has always been inextricably linked to the subjugation and exploitation of Black people. Research shows that 40% of slave owners were white women during US chattel slavery. According to history professor Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers, most of these white women inherited slaves from their fathers and retained ownership of them […]
The internet, as a digital looking glass, can normalize violence for Black boys
by Donnie Moreland I’m entering my apartment lot, around 9:45 PM, having returned from the gym. My vision often obscured around this time, I’m hurried to brake as two figures creep along in front of me. The two feel my headlights on their backs, thus they oblige my curiosity, and turn around. They are Black […]
We are more than just good or bad: How the God of the Binary fails Black people
By Itoro Udofia I grew up under the tutelage of The God of the Binary. He was forever in opposition to a ubiquitous outside force. He was the Good opposed to Evil. The Strong opposed to Weak. Right opposed to Wrong. There I stood, an eager and inquisitive girl child, making mistakes and looking for […]
We shouldn’t be surprised by Jay-Z’s NFL move. He’s always been a capitalist & this is what capitalism looks like
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.”
We need LGBTQ history in schools because the queerness of Black icons has always been obscured
We’ve already been taught LGBTQ history. Unfortunately, too many of us don’t even know that we have been. We’ve already heard countless lectures about icons who happened to be queer—learned about their lives and work, read their words, recited their speeches, seen them remembered through art and poetry, and heralded them as some of the […]
Black men – we need to take the racist online harassment of Black women more seriously
by Donnie Moreland “I get harassment as a woman and I get the extra harassment because of race and being a black woman. They will call white women a ‘c*nt’ and they’ll call me a ‘n*gger c*nt’.” – Imani Gandy, Rewire.News “You’re a fucking fat ass nigger. Hang yourself bitch.” – Anonymous
We can’t ignore Marrianne Williamson’s fatphobia and ableism just because she supports reparations for slavery
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 […]