41 Search results for "spirituality"

Melanin by Penelope French
Week One: Penelope French Introducing Penelope French — the gypsy soul healer and Soul Empress whose sound continues a long lineage of music shaped by Black struggle, memory, and imagination. French’s work sits at the intersection of storytelling and sonic experimentation, drawing from traditions of soul while bending genre boundaries to create something distinctly her […]
Black Resistance: Examining the “1st” Free Black Town in the Americas
By Teju Adisa-Farrar When God made mountains He made runaway slaves — Nikki Giovanni, Chasing Utopia We were not supposed to survive. in 2018, AfroPunk published an article about Argentina’s genocide of their Black populations. Unsurprisingly, Argentina is not much different from other countries who have tried to erase their Black populations or their impact […]
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 […]
Used in a relentless pursuit of the elusive middle class, side hustle culture is killing Black folx
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 […]
African Traditional Religions prepared me to grieve my mother
I’ve learned it’s best not to try to control how the memories of my mother show up, or what emotions they are wearing when they enter. This one is dressed in a rare crossbreed of inconsolable laughter and a stabbing sob, and it’s seeping out of my iphone from wherever the speaker is located on […]
Comic: You Chose Your Christian God, Now Let Us Chill With Ours
by JeCorey Holder It’s the winter holiday season and you know what that means, my darlings! Time for your favorite internet gay cousin to low-key cyberbully some lane-crossing Christians into leaving the rest of us happy heathens the fuck alone! Since I refuse to let this fuck up my Energy, I will try to keep […]
When the Ancestors tell you to go to therapy
There aren’t enough accessible therapists to go around. I met this reality after an Ifa divination that I got while I was in Cuba, and my dreams for an entire year afterward, told me that I needed to focus on my mental health. My ancestors were LOUD about the mental work that I needed to […]
Comic: We don’t want to learn about our own cultural practices from white people
By JeCorey Holder Is it just me or is it super fucking weird that white people insist on teaching whole classes on cultural practices that aren’t theirs? Yoga, African dance, Black/PoC Spirituality… White people will make their daily coffee money off of someone else’s entire closed practices while still pretending TO YOUR FACE not to […]
Exclusive Interview: Hari Ziyad reveals the cover of their memoir
RaceBaitr editor-in-chief and writer Hari Ziyad describes their upcoming book Black Boy Out of Time (Little A, March 1, 2021) as part memoir, part social commentary, but its ambitions push it beyond even this genre-bending interpretation. What began as an attempt to detail their life as a Black queer person growing up with 18 siblings […]
Mental health treatment is a Black tradition, white people just took credit for it
by Imade Nibokun Black people invented mental health treatment before the “pray it away” stigma and the white supremacy that produced it. While Black folks continue to address the stigmas attached to mental illness, we must also acknowledge that Black mental health practitioners existed first. The first known physician in history is an Egyptian architect […]
Millennials aren’t skipping church, the Black Church is skipping us
Washington Post columnist, Christine Emba, published a piece on Oct. 27, titled Why millenials are skipping church and not going back. Emba declared millennials were interested in gaming, ambitiously building their careers, or just too busy to make time to attend service. While Emba isn’t necessarily wrong in her assessment, I couldn’t help but notice […]
What Future’s fear of admitting his sobriety says about our unhealthy expectation for Black pain
By Arielle Gray Dana Schutz’s “Open Casket” is hard to decipher at first. Its textured and abstract strokes make it difficult to discern the image. But the more your eyes linger, the more easily the distorted face, rendered in geometric simplicity, and the brown coffin outlining the body become clear. After a second lengthy look, […]