Brave

Image of Bianca Roberson, a beautiful female presenting African -American teen with long wavy black hair, smiling. She is holding a white rose bud Image Credit from GoFundMe Yesterday, Chester County Police announced that 18-year-old Bianca Nikol Roberson was shot in the head by a white man driving a pickup truck. Her body was discovered by police on Wednesday. They are calling it a horrific act of road rage. The West Goshem Township Police Department has released a screenshot of the suspect's truck from traffic camera footage. The suspect is still at large. A fundraising page has been opened to help the family with burial costs: https://www.gofundme.com/please-help-support-the-family?pc=tw_dn_cpgntopnavlarge_r&rcid=r01-14988364472-b6da4a5ba9614c58 Nabra Hassanen, a vibrant beautiful teen of color wearing a beige hijab laughing with a friend a Snapchat crown of flowers around her head. On Sunday June 17th, Nabra Hassanen was walking home from a...

AP Stylebook 2016 Cover A ny multi-media attack system perfected by extreme groups for the deconstruction of critical institutions, civil rights movements, and fact-based news includes a massive propaganda war that begins with the perversion of a term or phrase, or the rebranding of extremist ideas with new and unfamiliar terms and phrases meant to normalize radical concepts. The introduction of the term "alt-right" by   American Neo-nazi leadership was one such attempt. That attempt, off to a great start when journalists rushed to interview any pro-Trump supporting faction in the wake of the 2016 election slowed down significantly when the AP Stylebook defined and set firm usage standards of the term, and by doing so, slowed the attempted normalization of white supremacist propaganda machine efforts to push their own political agenda into the language of mainstream media. This literally brought equilibrium back in professional journalistic coverage of white nationalism ...

Vista of the Museum from Constitution Avenue, looking across the north lawn to the Washington Monument. Photo credit: Alan Karchmer/NMAAHCcaption W hen the six-month backlog of free visitors passes have ended and all the novelty of having toured the National Museum of African American History and Culture has dimmed, perhaps my family with go there. Maybe by then I'll be able to manage that painful tour. Oprah Winfrey's uttered narrative identifier of the museum as a source of pride and healing thing for us is something I don't entirely agree with. I had pride in myself before  the idea of this museum even existed. So the museum as a pride tool doesn't hold true for me at least. I can't and don't speak for every member of our race in our country. Understand that this is me, Afro-Latina first person singular. I was raised by many mentors to internalize that pride in a period of our history when James Brown could be heard any day on the radio singing Say ...

  THE OTHER AMERICA  A Speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 14 April 1967 Stanford University Dean Napier, Mr. Bell; members of the faculty and members of the student body of this great institution of learning; ladies and gentlemen. Now there are several things that one could talk about before such a large, concerned, and enlightened audience. There are so many problems facing our nation and our world, that one could just take off anywhere. But today I would like to talk mainly about the race problems since I'll have to rush right out and go to New York to talk about Vietnam tomorrow, and I've been talking about it a great deal this week and weeks before that. But I'd like to use as a subject from which to speak this afternoon, the Other America. And I use this subject because there are literally two Americas. One America is beautiful for situation. And, in a sense, this America is overflowing with the milk of prosperity and the honey of opportunity. This Ameri...

I’m here. I’m watching. I’m waiting. The silence is deafening. Answer question Jada Pinkett-Smith, and thousands of other people my color are asking. What happened to Freddie Gray? Credit Twitter & @jadapsmith While many media outlets ignored a week of thousands of people of all races and ethnicities peacefully protesting we kept asking that question. Remember everyone, including a suspect being arrested, has human and civil rights. This is America. We don't execute or beat people we are arresting. Doing so would put us in violation of our own laws. The head of the Fraternal Order of Police stated in an interview that "police don't want bad cops. They make our jobs dangerous." So why aren't you all answering this question? I watched, as administrators and politicians derailed, deflected and ignored the question. I’ve listened to the gaslighting of our people. I heard when peaceful protesters were called a "lynch mob" by one of those who...

Muhammad Ali and  El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz credit Bob Gomel I get particularly annoyed when everyone insists on calling him Malcolm X. Malcolm X was a phase in his life, when he rejected the concept of holding the surname of those who kept his ancestors in bondage. 50 years after his assassination, the biggest insult the public can do is being done. Call him Malik. Call him Shabazz. Call him El-Hajj. Just stop calling him Malcolm X. His true name, like his voice, for some reason terrifies people. An African American male who is not a declared pacifist, who to paraphrase bell hooks, "threw away the master's tools", 50 years on, is still considered dangerous.  Most of this picture painted of the controversial figure  is done by those who don't bother to read what the man wrote or listen to what he said. I do not mean quotes, or bits and pieces or inflammatory rhetoric spouted prior to his split from Elijah Muhammad. Have you ever  just listened to him after he...