76 Search results for "sociology"

Resistance Against White Terrorism: Black gun ownership
by Donnie Moreland The first time I held a gun, I was afraid. The scenario was all too awkwardly cinematic to not be memorable. It was on a vacation with my mother to my grandparents’ South Carolina home. Sitting in their entertainment room, my grandfather entered with two guns. A magnum revolver and shotgun. He […]
Black military men’s bodies are the cost of their patriotism
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 […]
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 […]
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
Reclaiming memory as a Black father and son in the face of cultural and racial traumas
This essay contains discussions of racialized state violence and suicide attempts by Donnie Moreland I have difficulty recalling specific details of my childhood. Trauma has a way of coloring memory. Strangely, the events I sometimes beg to forget are the ones I can see with a clarity the remainder of my youth is never afforded. […]
The Black body remembers our traumas even when we try to forget
By Najya A. Williams Throughout my childhood, my mom always scheduled early morning dental appointments to accommodate the remarkably busy lives we both led. Once I was old enough to schedule my own visits, I unsurprisingly fell back into this familiar routine. I normally don’t think twice about my check-ups, especially if I’m not experiencing […]
Faced with commercialization, the Black Punk community turns to its past for a guide to keep resisting
By Monika Estrella Negra The majority of the Black punks I have talked to were drawn to (or got lost in) the Punk scene in order to escape the rigidity and heteronormative idealism of traditional Black political organizing. This is not to infer that all Black punks identify with far leftist views, nor does it […]
Black women, our closeted emotional needs won’t get met
by Najya A. Williams In the dark of the night, the world had fallen asleep and I was left to the comfort of my favorite recliner and a random Enneagram personality test my friend had shared with me. With the popularity of tests and quizzes meant to predict your life, I held a healthy amount […]
Steve McQueen’s ‘Bear’ is an exploration of intimacies among Black men
by Donnie Moreland Two Black men, their naked bodies shifting in-between spaces where shadows were not obstructed by an abrasive key-light. The slow moving image stripped bare of any noise aside from my own breath. Even still, their bodies colliding, their grunting, their moaning—though I could not hear—shook me as thunder might. I was disquieted, […]
There’s no such thing as a “progressive prosecutor” in a system designed to criminalize Blackness
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 […]
How heterosexual Black men project the psycho-sexual traumas of the plantation onto our queer brethren
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 […]
Between Black artists and Black love
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 […]