Last night while we were all still trying to get our lives after the Scandal Season Finale Part I, Beyonce’ stealth dropped a new self-titled totally unpromoted album. The fact that she managed to pull that ish off undetected means we can conclude only one thing: #BitchBad! Yes, I said, […]
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The Western Gaze: On Photography in the Two-Thirds World
A note on the title. [1] A young guy with a sandy brown mop of hair, t-shirt, khakis, and sneakers crouched about 10 feet from where I stood in Dilli Haat, an outdoor crafts market in New Delhi, and focused his telephoto lens. My eyes followed the direction he pointed his camera, where I saw it […]
Fuck Sears, or When Mall Cops Attack
Any one that knows me, knows that I do not like the Internet. I just don’t trust it. Too much of our personal information is out there and it is completely out of our control. It took me years to get a smart phone because I thought that having a smart phone would jeopardize my […]
On Black Men Showing Up for Black Women at the Scene of the Crime
Two nights ago I showed up to the Brecht Forum in Brooklyn ready to have a conversation about what we mean when we say “ally, privilege, and comrade.” I showed up to have that discussion after months of battle testing around these issues in my own crew. Over these months I’ve learned that it is […]
De-Tangling Racism: On White Women and Black Hair
Pictures from a new exhibit by photographer Endia Beal called “Can I Touch It?” showcase several white women, all corporate execs, who agreed to get a “Black hairstyle” and then have their portrait taken. Apparently, this very quotidian fixation with Black women’s bodies and Black women’s hair is now the stuff of art exhibits. This project […]
Twerking Makes the Oxford Dictionary on the Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina
What do twerking and Hurricane Katrina have to do with each other? Absolutely everything. I know that y’all have been inundated with discussions of twerking since Miley’s unfortunate, insidious, and downright bad performance at the VMA’s earlier this week. There have been some really great pieces about all that is wrong with her performance here […]
Moving Forward
Dear Readers, We have been moving through a season of transition here at the CFC. We are choosing to be transparent with you, our community of readers, about these transitions because we are accountable to you, not only for what we say publicly but for the integrity that undergirds our message. Some members have formally […]
Trayvoning and Distance: Whiteness and the Problem with Pronouns
He distinctly remembers, some decade or so ago – much younger, more rigid and sanctimonious then – saying, “we do not want them to think we accept their sin.” New Spirit of Penn, the University of Pennsylvania’s gospel choir – but what was really, in his mind at least, his choir in the way he […]
The Time Isn’t Right, But It Is Now: Processing Our Anger for Trayvon the Black Feminist Way
I am still angry that Trayvon Martin’s murderer is a free man. I know many of you are still reeling, too, and that you share my sense of despair and helplessness. Every time I see George Zimmerman’s defense team, Mark O’Mara and Don West, give another interview and brazenly suggest that it is Zimmerman who […]
Reproductive Injustice and the ‘War on Women’ or, An Ode to the Intersections
These days, it’s hard to read something in regards to feminist activism without hearing the phrase “war on women.” Despite important and sharp critiques regarding the limitations of the phrase, it continues to hold cache as a means to characterize the depth and fortitude of the conservative legislative attack on women’s reproductive rights. This attack, as […]