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(12/04/18 5:00am)
On the back walls of my classroom, covering old holes and Sharpie-scribbled hashtags and Instagram handles, my kids hang their social contracts. It’s become a ritual during the first week of the school year to establish some kind of foundation, but one built by the hands of the kids themselves; I exist merely as a moderator for the activity. The contract is a document the class chooses to live by, referencing it whenever one of its core principles is overlooked either in conversation with each other or even by the teacher himself. You’d be hard-pressed to find a social contract on any school campus without words like “respect” or “treated fairly.” Children like it when adults acknowledge their not fully realized selves, and it’s charming to see this awareness manifest in their formative years.
(04/18/18 3:55am)
In a recent interview with Power 105.1’s “The Breakfast Club,” Lena Waithe—creator of Showtime’s The Chi and the first Black woman to win an Emmy for comedy writing—said that she wanted to be the “Kanye West of writing.”
(04/04/18 4:00am)
July 2, 2018, will mark the 54th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which made segregation in public places and employment discrimination based on race, national origin, sex or religion illegal. Considering that the decades following Reconstruction up until about 1957 saw virtually zero civil rights legislation nationwide, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 remains a crowning moment in American history for Black women and men. It started a movement that expanded its reach and influence to other marginalized parts of the country, acting as a blueprint for later efforts like the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and National Organization for Women in 1966.
(10/27/17 6:05am)
If Donald Trump played professional basketball, he would have already established a penchant for traveling, or moving illegally with the ball. Usually a staple in NBA post-game highlights, video clips of players aimlessly moving their pivot foot while holding the basketball are subsequently posted on Instagram and Twitter with outrageous hashtags and plenty of reposts. Post-game coverages even include a “top plays” list of the most foolish on-court moments for the week. February's joint address received throngs of approval, with some of Trump’s most vehement critics calling it a legitimate “pivot.” If campaign rallies press conferences, public addresses with no condemnation of white supremacist terrorists, or tweets threatening foreign countries are any indication, it’s safe to suggest that Trump does not at all pivot as a president. Instead, he himself travels, and does so blatantly.
(10/20/17 4:00am)
Last night the Cleveland Cavaliers and Boston Celtics faced off in a season opener fraught with drama and intrigue; Kyrie Irving, Cleveland’s revered point guard, opted to leave The Forest City for a spot on a franchise willing to invest more into him as its leader. In the summer leading into the 2017 NBA preseason, Irving hinted several times at a trade request back in July, sparking debate over the role he played alongside LeBron James and whether or not it became strained. Short answer? It did.
(10/13/17 4:00am)
Tamir Rice’s mother, Samaria, said after the grand jury’s decision in the slaying of her 12-year-old son that she was “mad as hell”. Pictures of the young boy smiling happily circulated for the months that followed, but little was done to assuage a grieving mother’s anguish. After Trump’s election win, writer and professor Junot Díaz offered some much needed advice on the heels of one of the country’s most disheartening November nights: radical hope is needed to survive the new administration.
(09/29/17 4:00am)
Donald Trump—a person whose influence has proven best in teaching us what not to do—has again mustered up all his strength and vehemence to derail a speech in Huntsville, Alabama. His actions were meant to target, as you may have guessed, more of America’s marginalized community. He commented on the actions of players “disrespecting the flag," saying that owners should get the “son of a b***h” off the field if they so chose. In typical Trump fashion, the parties receiving the brunt of this harangue were not in fact White supremacists, neo-Nazis or foreign terrorists. No, they were the people speaking out against the same kind of disgusting verbiage exercised by the man doing his best not to hide his xenophobic and racist ideas in office.
(09/15/17 4:00am)
When Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain lost to Paul Haggis’ Crash at the 2006 Academy Awards, many sat, blank faced and stupefied by the outcome, in front of their television screens, trying to understand it all. The former’s producer, James Schamus, opened up about the loss to Variety during the 10th anniversary of the film, saying that many people felt Crash established a safer political narrative.
(09/08/17 4:00am)
During one of our lessons on poetry, I was speaking to my first period English class about which kinds of work constitute poetry and which are less likely to be received as such. I started by saying that poetry comes from that place within us where we often refuse to look, but what will not be considered poetry in our class was hate speech. One of my seniors stopped me and asked, “How could that be? Art is subjective, and people who say hateful things are protected by free speech.”
(08/16/17 7:19pm)
Our neighbors in Charlottesville are still reeling from this past weekend’s events turned violent on University of Virginia’s campus. White supremacists and neo-Nazi groups came fully clad in battle armaments and fascist regalia to assert their “Unite the Right” message of the need for an ethno-state, and its aftermath has spawned heated debate over the prevalence of racism, historically racist monuments, and the current administration’s lack of a response to it all. The same day Heather Heyer was killed and several others injured by one of the supremacists in attendance, Donald Trump publicly condemned violence coming from “many sides”, careful not to call out the extremism that came decked out in Swastika gear.
(08/04/17 11:57pm)
To briefly celebrate the birthday and influence of James Baldwin, I wanted to borrow from his introduction in “A Talk to Teachers” where he highlighted the significance of education as an integral part of revolution during America’s opposition to civil rights efforts in the 1960’s:
(07/17/17 3:18pm)
Firstly, thank you for upholding the position of Ramsey County District Judge with equity and empathy in mind amidst an uneasy social climate. A few days ago news surfaced of your letter written to the jury of the Jeronimo Yanez case you presided over, reassuring them of the verdict they reached. While uncommon for judges to reach out to jurors days after a given trial, the details of the letter explained how you believed the jury “faithfully fulfilled the difficult task” they were asked to undertake. Other details of your letter go on to assuage any lingering doubts jurors may still have, considering the ensuing public outcry over the verdict. Your reasons included the inner workings of the justice system and the fair and impartial approach you feel the jury took in coming to their decision.
(07/10/17 7:07pm)
In France in the 1930’s, francophone African intellectuals who greatly disapproved of France’s colonialism believed that Africans needed a collective identity, one founded on principles of sentience, independence, and a holistic view of Black bodies as significant, especially in the fields of literature and intellectual thought. Prominent intellects like Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon coined the school of thought Négritude. It was an ideology adopted by women and men of African, French, and Caribbean descent with the hopes that this heightened sense of Négritude would soon result in greater appreciation for Black minds and bodies. If there was any word to define the current trend in the slaying of Black minds and bodies in American streets these past several years—if there was any word that could capture the antithesis of Négritude, that could capture the 21st century fears with regard to policing Black minds and bodies, it would have to be “negrophobia”.
(06/08/17 1:01pm)
I hit the push-to-start button on my Chevy Volt and make my trip to work—I teach high school English Literature, so I make the same trip, every morning. I plug in my iPhone 7 and turn the volume all the way up. The opening to Kendrick Lamar’s "Humble" blasts through the speakers and I bob my head and rock my shoulders. The guy in the car next to me doesn’t like it. He swerves off, Confederate flag bumper sticker in plain view, and I raise the volume louder. Teaching in North Carolina is a unique kind of experience.
(05/13/17 5:38pm)
Well, if you overlook the historic and systemic destabilization of African-American communities in our country pre and post Reconstruction, then by those terms, and by a very warped sense of reality, HBCUs are “unconstitutional." Perhaps the generations following the women and men of Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma found the Higher Education Act of 1965 pointless, after the Ku Klux Klan’s 16 hour riot destroyed their once flourishing neighborhood decades earlier. Perhaps that too seemed unconstitutional. What grows more visible each day is that efforts to vitalize a once enslaved body of people in our country continue to meet opposition at the highest forms of government.
(04/25/17 5:49am)
“Dude,” my brother-in-law said a few years before Captain America: Civil War, “Black Panther…is finally going to be in a movie.” When he said this, his eyes glossed over with a kind of wonder that was immediately contagious, and suddenly we both found ourselves nerding out at the possibility of finally having someone to put on our list of the most iconic and popular Black superheroes.
(04/18/17 4:20am)
Since Christopher Nolan’s reimagined comic book epic released on DVD in December 2008, I’ve viewed The Dark Knight a few times a month without ever second guessing its timelessness. It really complemented anything, like a late-night snack or a rough day at work. (I’m a high school teacher and so I like to think of myself surviving Gotham like the Caped Crusader himself). From Heath Ledger’s Academy Award winning performance, to Hans Zimmer’s harmonic capturing of the dark, gritty heroic tale, the film’s themes of disillusionment, self-sacrifice and love play through regardless of the time it’s being viewed. Like any film, however, I began noting the politically charged commentary hidden in its cracks after all those viewings, and I’ve come to realize that one of its most iconic scenes happens to be playing out in America today.
(04/10/17 4:11am)
I remember back when I played God of War II on the Playstation 2, back before I earned that coveted platinum trophy in God of War III on the Playstation 3 that revealed a teaser website for the next title. I remember licking my chops at finally having another journey to embark on as Kratos, the series' main character, considering how fervidly I played the first installment after an employee at my local GameStop tossed me a demo disc. Greek mythology captivated me in school, so naturally it was easy to pick up a stylized version that allowed me to walk around with Medusa’s severed head, petrifying enemies in their place. Ah, I remember back then.
(04/06/17 10:41am)
I recently had one of my students explain to me why I would never fail him in my class. I teach English Literature to a group of seniors “ready to leave,” but who also possess so much potential to bring considerable hope to an already divisive world. One of my students—we’ll call him “Jay”—was trying to explain to me why I wouldn’t flunk him, despite the amount of work he swears he’ll turn in to me soon.
(03/30/17 6:03am)
It was in the third grade that I received a note from a boy in class. He crumpled the paper up and tossed it to a friend, who he then instructed to pass to me. It said, “I’m gonna’ get you, n****r.” His handwriting was scrawled and I hadn’t heard or read the word until that very moment. “N****r.” Looking back, it didn’t even register that the boy sending the note, the boy who looked at me so angrily, looked just like me. He too was a boy of color, and I had not realized the moment for what it was until much later in my life.
