This morning, while reading Kate Weigand’s 2001 book Red Feminism in preparation for a book I’m writing, I ran across a fascinating story in her chapter on Black women’s participation in the Communist Party. In 1934, Black female communist organizers asked the Party leadership to outlaw interracial marriages in the Party ranks. Many of the Black men in the Party had married or begun dating white women, and white men were not showing comparable interest in Black women, which severely restricted Black women’s dating options. In response, the Party asked a Black leader named Abner Berry to deal “with the …Read more »

  This week I met a Black girl who doesn’t want to be my friend. Well, let me take that back. We didn’t meet this week. We met a couple of months ago, both of us newcomers to the university where I’m doing a postdoc. My custom in academic spaces is to make sure I meet and try to get to know every sister in the space, because there are so few of us. However, my interactions with this one particular sister have been inexplicably terse and strained. I had hoped we might be friends because we are both junior …Read more »

If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive. – Audre Lorde The last couple of days have been a lesson in my own educational and societal privilege. In my day to day interactions with people on the planet, I’m generally privileged to interact with people who respect my gender and racial identity. Microaggressions happen but for the most part, I can choose to move through the world in ways that limit my contact with people who don’t support or respect my identities. That’s not the case for a …Read more »

Hey World- Moya here. I, along with some other folks who watched the last episode of the Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, my favorite web show, were jarred with the use of a particular slur that’s generally directed at trans women. We wrote an open letter voicing our concerns and I posted it to the CFC tumblr. Since then some folks thought, my bad, that the CFC wrote this letter together. No, just me, forever letter writer, and instigator. You’d think that previous experience would teach me that my critiques of pop culture are often misread and that I should expect …Read more »

I was really moved by CF Eeshap’s most recent post: Conflict is forever: Can we change attitudes about diamonds?  In the post, she explains: I don’t write this post to make people with diamonds on their fingers feel bad. I shop for bargain goods that I know are made in sweatshops. When I purchase produce, I know that it was grown and picked by laborers whose rights are violated. I try to make ethical choices, all while knowing that I am complicit in a world economy that is rooted in human rights violations. Her words made me reconsider my own purchasing …Read more »

So if you need a break from job applications and dissertation writing try watching The Original BET series Reed Between the Lines; it has me hooked. I particularly like the progressive gender politics and the representation of a “blended” family.  Kasi and Kenan are Carla’s teenage twins from a previous relationship and Alexis is the youngest child of Carla and Alex Reed.  As co-producers, Tracee Ellis Ross and Malcolm-Jamal Warner are definitely modeling alternative gender roles.  Carla is a working mother and initially Alex was a stay-at-home/working dad.  For a minute I wanted to be like “Alex you ain’t got …Read more »