0 2K14: A Critical Fuck U2 Homelessness

 By Tabias Wilson   "A chair is still a chair Even when there's no one sittin' there But a chair is not a house And a house is not a home When there's no one there to hold you tight And no one there you can kiss goodnight" -Luther Vandross/Dionne Warwick  A House is Not A Home It's necessary to begin this manifesto with the recognition that I have spent little time sleeping on the physical streets of America. I'm not well-versed in the act of survival without a physical covering, nor would I feel comfortable identifying as homeless in the public policy notion of the word. This is no means an attempt to belittle the...

0 Reflection on 2013: Being a Walking Contradiction

For most of us 2013 was the year we graduated college and entered the “real world”. For me, this pales in comparison to the larger change in my life this year: becoming a walking contradiction. At our core we are all partial hypocrites. It is a flaw that most people do not acknowledge and can go about their daily lives without problem. We tell ourselves that it is okay to lie, but criticize our neighbor for the same action. We blame our own mistakes on situational problems, but see others’ as flaws of their character. If I am late to a meeting I know it was because of traffic, but if someone else gave the same excuse I would roll my eyes....

0 What We're Reading Today (12-18-13)

Big, big, big ups to Jay for crushing it on his piece about Beyonce.  It's the piece before this one if you, foolishly, have not yet read it. Demanding 'no excuses' of schools and 'grit' of poor children while ignoring the real problem - Atlanta Journal Constitution Maureen Downey Kanye West: The Higher Learning of the College Dropout - Joseph Boston Joseph Two Years Ago, I Saw a Sad Black Boy Named Donald Glover - Gawker Kyla Marshell On Defending Beyonce: Black Feminists, White Feminists, and the Line in the Sand - Black Girl Dangerous Mia McKenzie An Education Anything but Standard - Wright and Left Greg Wright Rinku Sen: What Mandela...

9 To Wake Up Flawless | Beyoncé as Black and Feminist

Before Beyoncé, I don’t think I would ever be a feminist (read: womanist, but let’s stay in conversation). Raised by a queen, I long appreciated women’s strength, their multitudes. I learned their intersections seeing my mother navigate both male and white spaces, seeing her sisterhood from Los Angeles to Boston and beyond, survive. My appreciation though never charged me to jump in and stand with them. I could support from my various places of masculine performing privileges but Beyoncé is the reason I can call myself a feminist now. In reading the growing and mixed discourse since the release of her self-titled fifth album, I realize it...

0 What We're Reading Today (12-4-13)

The Rise of the New Left - The Daily Beast Peter Beinart Yeezus Taught Me - Medium Kasai In Defense of Kanye's Vanity: The Politics Of Black Self-Love - Buzzfeed Heben Nigatu Harry Belafonte was Right About Jay-Z - Our Legaci Jessica Ann Mitchell Kanye's Frantz Fanon Complex - Our Legaci Jessica Ann Mitchell Your Brain on Poverty: Why Poor People Seem to Make Bad Decisions - The Atlantic Derek Thompson Second Class Citizens - Tufts Observer Ben Kurland Substantiating Fears of Grade Inflation, Dean Says Median Grade at Harvard College is A-, Most Common Grade Is A - Harvard Crimson Matthew Q. Clarida and Nicholas P. Fandos Teaching While...

0 What We're Reading Today (11-17-13)

Up in Arms - Tufts Magazine Colin Woodard Foucault Explained With Hipsters - Binary This They Loved Your GPA and then they saw Your Tweets - New York Times Natasha Singer Beyond 'I'm Sorry': 5 Ideas to Help Make Obamacare Work - The Atlantic Garance Franke-Ruta Can the Defense Budget Shrink Without Risking National Security - The Atlantic Eric Schnurer The Grand Old Tea Party - The Nation Rick Perlstein Black Voters, Not Gender Gap, Won McAuliffe Virginia - The Nation Zerlina Maxwell The Ideal Husband - NY Review of Books Susan Sontag Nothing Was The Same: on Drake and the white boy imaginary - The Indy Sam Rosen Richard Cohen in Context...

0 What We're Reading Today (10-5-13): The "Logan Stayed Home Sick" Edition

Italy Breaks Your Heart - New York Times Frank Bruni The Man Who Invented the Calendar - The New Yorker B.J. Novak White Folks Are Telling You to Kiss Their ... - Ebony Jamilah Lemieux Who is Black? - One Drop Yaba The Article that Nails the Arrogance and Stupidity of the Drug War - Alter Net Robert Kahn 'In a Starving, Bleeding, Captive Land' - The Atlantic Ta-Nehisi Coates Homecoming at Howard - New York Times Ta-Nehisi Coates 'What Are Clothes?' Asks Most Delightful Supreme Court Argument in History - The Atlantic Megan Garber Why Are American Schools Still Segregated? - The Atlantic Eleanor Barkhorn 50...

0 What We're Reading Today (10-6-13)

Studying How the Blind Perceive Race - NPR Kat Chow No More Allies - Black Girl Dangerous Mia McKenzie "Scandal's" racially charged motto: "You have to be twice as good as them" - Salon Neil Drumming "Twice as Good": Channeling Black Parenting on 'Scandal' - NewBlackMan (in Exile) Mark Anthony Neal Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei Eyes US Shutdown, Expresses Doubt Over Nuclear Negotiations - The Daily Beast Christopher Dickey Mexico's Female Vigilante Squads - The Daily Beast Katie Orlinsky A Few Words on The New York Times's Few Words on Afros - Observer Rebecca Carroll (New York Times' words on afros) 1 in 3 Black Males Will Go to...

0 What We're Reading Today (9-28-13)

Yeezy, Drake, TFA, AmeriCorps, Rich folks, Chicago, Education Why Kanye is Right, And Kimmel emblematic - Storify Ayesha A. Siddiqi (@PushingHoops) The Worst Part Of the Kanye-Kimmel Saga? It's Hardly Surprising. - Huffington Post Kia Makarechi Kanye West Isn't Joking Anymore - Pitchfork Ernest Baker Watch/Listen: Kanye West's Full Interview With Zane Lowe - Pitchfork Evan Minsker and Jean Pelly I Quit Teach for America - The Atlantic Olivia Blanchard Plutocrats Feeling Persecuted - New York Times Paul Krugman Breaking the Cycle of Anger - The Nation Marie Myung-Ok Lee The Young, Low-Wage, Temporary Disaster Relief Army - The Nation Max...

0 What We're Reading Today (9-25-13)

Today is a day of cultural awareness, and creative intrigue. Some collections of music and visuals and interviews from Kanye to 80's Graffiti. Also my girl Solange makes a cameo. Listen, look and feel. The 50 Best Rap Album Covers of the Past Five Years, Dale Eisinger et al., Complex 'It Could Have Been Me': The 1983 Death Of A NYC Graffiti Artist, Erik Neilson, CodeSwitch “I’m Just A White Girl In This World” — On Hip-Hop’s White Girls and Internet Novelty, Kendra James, Racialicious Gender Bending, Genre Mashing, Elvis Geisha, Lady Man, Andrea Mary Marshall, Dodge and Burn Kanye West's Zane Lowe Interview, Michael Hann, The Guardian...

0 What We're Reading Today (9-22-13)

Sorry for the long wait.  Teaching is.... hard. New York Times: Voices for Equality - New York Times The Reality of Black Male Privilege - The Grio Theodore R. Johnson In Which You Have No Idea What They've Endured - This Recording Alex Carnevale When Your (Brown) Body is a (White) Wonderland - Tressiemc When Peace Becomes Obnoxious - MLK and the Global Freedom Struggle Martin Luther King Jr. Rosen: The 2013 VMAs Were Dominated by Miley's Minstrel Show - Vulture Jody Rosen How school privatization hawks Teach for America promote Israel - Electronic Intifada Max Blumenthal [ENOUGH] Keep Chicago Out Your Mouth - Ebony Joshua Adams Are...

0 What We're Reading Today (8-24-13)

College Football's Most Dominant Player? It's ESPN - New York Times James Andrew Miller, Steve Eder, and Richard Sandomir Taking Middle Schoolers Out of the Middle - New York Times Elissa Gootman Thriving on Chaos, Manziel Shocks a Traditional System - New York Times Campbell Robertson Profiting from Racism? Reflections on White Allyship and the Issue of Compensation - Tim Wise Tim Wise How my white mother shaped me into a black man - Melissa Harris-Perry Albert L. Butler The Economics of Hook-Up Culture - Policy Mic Michelle Juergen An Intimate Look at the March on Washington- The Atlantic Garance Fanke-Ruta Which Colleges Should We Blame...

0 What We're Reading Today (8-17-13)

'Dropping Science': Profile of the Science Genius Program - NewBlackMan (in Exile) Mark Anthony Neal The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries - New York Times Dave Eggers and Nínive Clements Calegari When the Lights Shut Off: Kendrick Lamar and the Decline of the Black Blues Narrative - LA Review of Books Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah Bill De Blasio's Vision - New Yorker George Packer The Betrayal of Helen Thomas - Counterpunch Barbara Lubin and Danny Muller This Week in 'Nation' History: James Baldiwn's Four Decades of Prophecy, Confession, Emotion and Style - The Nation Katrina vanden Heuvel White is the New White - The Nation Aura Bogado Black...