A guide to writing while Black — To be a race writer is to be a fraud. It is, as Olúfémi Táíwò put it, “to be given authority regardless of what you do or do not know, or what you have or have not experienced.” It is to inherit the struggles of millions of people, not because…

The late visionary lived an impossible life — and inspired Black creatives to do the same — In 1965, James Baldwin, writing for the New York Times, opined that “unless we can establish some kind of dialogue between those people who enjoy the American dream and those people who have not achieved it, we will be in terrible trouble.” In other words: Unless we figure out how…

A year of dieting, exercise, and mantras proved one tragic idea. — I called my best friend Anwar in November of 2020 to deliver the news and come up with a plan. He is a fitness expert, by any measure, but his most official credential is his body, near 40 and as chiseled as he’s ever been. Most of the men I…

Community is the superpower of Black personhood that White supremacy can never access. We need to lean into it. — I woke up at 5:30 this morning to see my favorite hellsite transmitting White supremacist trash. Twitter Spaces was hosting a room called “Are there too many Black women in public?” The host was White. I was on the shitter. At the time I took a snapshot of the room…

Ahmaud Arbery’s murderers being brought to justice is a small victory in a never-ending fight — This Thanksgiving, I’m thankful that three men who decided to hunt and lynch Ahmaud Arbery for the crime of jogging while Black in America can still be found guilty by a mostly White jury of their peers. (No anti-lynching bill has been passed by Congress into federal law. …

It’s on woke White folks to affect change during family time — So it seems that most Americans would rather gargle gravy or take a can of that cranberry shit to the head than have a conversation about politics. In a new Quinnipiac University poll released on Monday, 66% of adults said that they are “hoping to avoid” conversations about politics at…

The Kyle Rittenhouse verdict re-establishes a dangerous precedent—and sends a terrifying warning to the rest of us — It must be nice to know that you can carry an AR-15, shoot three people, claim self-defense, and then be acquitted by a nearly all-White jury of your peers that also features “a Black, the Black, the only Black” jury member. Kyle Rittenhouse, now 18, exited a courtroom today as…