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The Romanticization of Marriage Amongst Black Folks
Every day on social media, Black people bewail the lack of marriage in the community. Folks write think pieces, make podcasts, go live for three hours at a time mourning the “breakdown of the Black family” like they’re standing over a gravesite in a church hat and hard-bottom shoes. But some of these same people…
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Bronzeville: Where the Great Migration Learned to Breathe
There are cities within cities. And then there’s Bronzeville— not just a neighborhood, but a testimony. To understand Bronzeville, you have to walk backward through time, into the long shadow of the Great Migration—that massive, sacred movement of Black folks who packed up their lives in the South and headed north with nothing but grit,…
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A Poem for Malcolm
There are some men history remembers.And then there are men history survives. Malcolm X was both. Beautiful in the way fire is beautiful.Dangerous to touch.Impossible not to stare at. That man walked through Americalike a sharpened blade wrapped in a dark wool coat,all cheekbones, discipline, and fury.A face carved from grief and revelation.A mind so…
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The Policing of Black Female Sexuality: A History Written on Our Bodies
There is something deeply exhausting about living in a world where your body is never simply your own. For Black women, sexuality has never been allowed to exist in peace. It has been surveilled, dissected, judged, legislated, mocked, feared, exploited, and weaponized for centuries. Black female sexuality exists under a microscope built by racism, patriarchy,…
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Solid Ground: What Real Leadership Looks Like in a Man
A healthy definition of leadership—coming from a man who actually understands the assignment—isn’t about being the loudest voice in the room or the one everybody fears. That’s not leadership. That’s insecurity in a suit. A real one leads like this: He takes responsibility before he takes credit.If something goes wrong, he steps forward. If something…
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What About the Children?
When I’m cruising around the social media, I never hear these niggas say ‘Pro Black children.’ Never. Why is that? Because that would require them to actually give a damn beyond running their mouths. Everybody got a dissertation on being ‘pro-Black’ when it comes to policing women, arguing online, puffing their chest out, and performing…
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A Dedication to the Juke Joints of Chicago
They don’t put you in the brochures,don’t line you up along the lakefrontlike polished teeth in a tourist smile—but baby, you are the heartbeat. You are where the city exhales. Down on the South Side,in rooms low-lit and thick with memory,where the floor knows more storiesthan any history book ever printed,you breathe. You hum.You testify.…
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Breaking Up With a Word That Knows Me Too Well
I’ve decided to stop using the N-word so much because, at its core, it’s an ignorant term. But let me not sit up here and lie. I get my sick kicks out of using it. There’s a spark in it for me—something rebellious, something familiar, something that rolls off the tongue a little too easy.…
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Pocket Town
Pocket Town in Chicago is a place name for a very specific little corner of the city’s South Side — it’s not a restaurant or bar, but a neighborhood identity in its own right. This pocket of Chicago life has a rich and complicated vibe, stitched into the larger fabric of Greater Grand Crossing neighborhood.…
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Access Is Not a Right.
Remember earlier this year when folks were losing their ever-loving minds over a statue of a Black woman in New York because she was “fat”? This nonsense popped off not long after the president’s inauguration—right when certain people were feeling themselves a little too hard and decided trolling Black spaces online was a personality trait.…
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The Potty Mouth Granny 