Two weeks ago the flu colonized my immune system. I lay in bed for what seemed like an eternity. I cried for my mami each and every one of those days. I am nearly 30 years old and I’m not kidding. I cried for my mami…sometimes for hours. This recent incident and the many hours […]
Blogging Against Disablism
I wrote this last year for BADD and it’s still true. I want to highlight it again in light of what’s happening in AZ, the fact that the Atlanta protest had just a handful of black folks and others marching in solidarity with an almost entirely Latino crowd, and the fact that movements really need […]
“Not a Mouthpiece But a Megaphone: Haitian Women and Rape”
*Last week, we cross-posted a piece entitled ‘We Are Not Your Weapons. . .We Are Women’ a harrowing testimony of surviving rape from an American activist currently working in Haiti. While we stand in solidarity with the author, Amanda Kijera, she made some troubling assertions about the credibility of rape claims and the need to […]
How a Big Girl Like it, Daddy?
I was working out earlier this week when a guilty pleasure shuffled onto my iPod: LL Cool J’s “Doin’ It.” As the fresh nineties beat spurred me around the track, I rapped along to every raunchy word. Eventually, the track got to the part where I like raise up my hands and testify. LeShaun, the […]
Hearts led Baby it’s your deal…
Apparently people across the country are outraged by Erykah Badu’s public disrobing. Perhaps this was a matter of timing. Had Ms. Badu waited until this month, April, which is Confederacy History Month in southern states like Texas, it might not have been such a big deal–the War of Northern Aggression being all about a state’s […]
We are Not Your Weapons. . .We are Women.
Two weeks ago, on a Monday morning, I started to write what I thought was a very clever editorial about violence against women in Haiti. The case, I believed, was being overstated by women’s organizations in need of additional resources. Ever committed to preserving the dignity of Black men in a world which constantly stereotypes […]
Do You Remember The Time When You Fell In Love…with Activism
The spring of 2000 changed my life. I was a graduate student in Women’s Studies at The Ohio State University, mildly active with the Afrikan Student Union. One April day an advanced grad student named T.J. reported that the CWA Local 4501 union campus workers were stalled in their negotiations with the University, primarily over […]
ACT like you got some sense, and THINK for yourself!
I wish Steve Harvey would go sit down somewhere and smoke a pipe, because all he’s doing is blowing hot air. And Black women are lining up in droves for a turn on the hot air balloon. Just two nights ago a young undergraduate student asked in a panel on racial stereotypes, “Why can’t Black […]
Looking for Love in all the Wrong Places…
I have no choice but to blame my little brother. It’s his fault that this shenanigan publication finds its way into my mailbox once a month. Something about selling magazines for a band fundraiser. It was either this or a subscription to House Beautiful so I chose the lesser of two evils, or so I […]