I will keep this short, because, in all honestly, I am exhausted with this topic. With that being said, there are a few things I feel compelled to say. Well, write. When Meghan Markle and Prince Harry stepped onto the scene four years ago, it was obvious that there was an agenda at play. While…
Category: Pop Culture
A Word on Nancy Pelosi and the Petting Incident…
I admit that I always had an issue with the way that the media treated Gianna Floyd. Nevertheless, I, along with millions of others, watched the interview where a six-year-old Floyd said she missed her father and wanted to be a doctor to help people. Upon looking at Gianna’s face, one could see George Floyd…
The Black Ally: Why It’s “Stop White Supremacy” not “Stop Asian Hate”
Not even a year ago, flames engulfed police cars, and the names Breonna Taylor and George Floyd filled the air alongside the phrase: “Black Lives Matter.” From living rooms across America and overseas, the moment resembled a resurrected and recharged Ferguson. For many, last summer appeared to centralize systemic white terror on black bodies. Yet,…
Malcolm, Marie, and A Hidden Agenda Makes Three
Malcolm and Marie (2021) is the latest portrait of a white director and writer implementing universality behind the ruse of diversity, or what I call cinematic blackface. We encounter the couple after Malcolm’s (John David Washington) directorial debut. Marie (Zendaya) is overtly upset; an emotion made conspicuous as she smokes and makes Malcolm (unbaked) Mac…
Meghan Markle, A Black Female Perspective
Meghan Markle, like Vice President Kamala Harris, became a media sensation because she embodies a ” black” woman in a space previously unoccupied by anyone of African-descent. The issue? Markle, like Harris, wears blackness like a seasonal fashion choice. Their experiences as non-whites in traditionally black spaces engender commentary on what black women experience daily….
Justin Ain’t Sorry, and Britney Ain’t Janet: Timberlake’s Failed Attempt to Manifest an Anti-Black Destiny
My older brother’s reverie for Janet Jackson placed me in front of the television for the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show. I, nor my eldest sibling, liked football, but he knew my love for music would make me a formidable companion for the evening’s events. During Jackson’s performance, he gushed about how Janet moved and…
The Difference between Poetry and Rhetoric: A Black Female Perspective on the Inaugural Poet
When I think of poetry, I think of, in no particular order, Sterling A. Brown, Amiri Baraka, Mari Evans, Lucille Clifton, Nicki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, Countee Cullen, and Langston Hughes. When I think of black femininity as personified in poetry, I depart from Maya Angelou’s gentrified and universalized “Still I Rise,” and ‘“Phenomenal Woman,” and…
The Black Woman and the Mythos of American Democracy
I received several emails, texts, and alerts rejoicing in what the white media calls the first black vice-president-elect. A black female CNN political analyst even called Harris’s “victory” a poetic rebuttal to Trump’s four years. To this, I say two things. The first is that Kamala Harris as Vice President functions a lot like Black…
Evil, A Poetic Rant
Evil Looks like what drives me crazy Don’t have no effect on you— But I’m gonna keep on at it Till it drives you crazy too —Langston Hughes Sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night, I hear George Floyd cry out for his mother. His last words, an eerie longing for…
Five Things the Coney Barrett Confirmation Confirms
Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination, hearing, and confirmation dominated the weeks before what many are calling “the most important election of our lifetimes. ” The process, from its association with what has come to be known as the Rose Garden Massacre to its its hasty process, has proved a national tension that runs parallel to a…
Whispers of a Womanist 