Straight Outta Compton is clearly doing the damn thing at the box office. Since its debut about a month ago, the film has become the highest grossing music biopic in history. And no shade, but shade…given the music biopics of late…that Whitney biopic that should have been called the Whitney and Bobby Show, that Aaliyah […]
Category: Race
The Sisters are Indeed Alright
Every day we seem to get more bad news about Black women. We’re ugly and can’t get a date. We’re fat, sick, loud, and bitchy. We’re lazy, materialistic bad mothers. We don’t support our communities’ dreams cause we’re like crabs in a barrel. Does that cover it all? Even if you’re not being inundated […]
The Rage of White Folks
If you let the news tell it, Black folks are rampaging all across the United States for no reason at all. Just looting and bashing police cars and making indulgent, extravagant messes across major urban areas when they should be at home getting their children fathers or learning how to not speak Ebonics. Or something […]
New Series: Dalit History Month – We Are Because He Was
We at the CFC believe that our work crosses issues and borders. We believe that transnational feminist solidarity is a key element of feminist praxis for those of us who live in the US. We have much to learn from and share with feminist thinker and organizers from around the world. Over the month of […]
Teachers are Not Magical Negroes
When I was in the 7th grade, I moved from Connecticut to South Florida. I was a nerdy kid that loved reading, science, and social studies and had been tracked into the gifted and talented track during my years of schooling. But when I got to Fort Lauderdale I entered a middle school where we […]
Serial and the Power of Storytelling
Like so many others, I spent the last few months of 2014 listening – first avidly, then with trepidation and ultimately with disdain – to the hit podcast Serial. The podcast follows a single story, week by week. The story centers on Adnan Syed, a Pakistani American high school student who was accused and convicted […]
Color(ism) Complex(es)
When I heard a documentary called Dark Girls had been produced in 2011 to share the often silenced stories and experiences of dark-skinned women and girls, I felt a wave of emotions and had a range of reactions fluctuating from curiosity and anxiety, to excitement and anticipation. I wrote an ode to dark (skinned) girls […]
Waiting to Exhale
(For Eric Garner, John Crawford, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice and numerous others) Wait. Over the past few days, weeks, and months there have been eloquent words spoken, passionate poems and prose written, and thoughtful commentaries and reflections offered about the righteous rage, indignant indifference, fear, sadness and ambivalence that black folk and allies have felt as […]
New Series: Voices From Inside – Locked Away for a Lifetime: Barred from Becoming a Parent
This week the Crunk Feminist Collective is honored to bring you two pieces from women incarcerated in California prisons and jails. Their stories are here for us to read because of the incredible advocacy work of Justice NOW, an organization that works with incarcerated women by providing legal services, supporting prisoner organizing efforts, working with […]
Words to Live By
I’m ready to say “don’t let the door hit ya where the good Lorde split ya” to the month of October. Is it me or was this past month just extra ridiculous? From the ongoing shenanigans in Ferguson, to the exploits of so-called white allies in the anti-street harassment movement, to the tomfoolery of Thug […]