Front porch with wooden boards and meshed screen housed conversations, revelations, and remarkable storytelling that shaped my world as a young girl child growing up in Wilcox County, Alabama. My mind fancies soul-stirring memories of the gathering of Black women who sought solace on my grandmother’s small porch and the scattered oak trees in the barren yard that danced to the rhythm of the wind. Paint rusting on the rocking chairs as my grandmother, women-relatives, and sister-womenfolk from our small town rocked, hummed, and bared their souls. I remember the inflection in tone and the power and deep affection delicately wrapped around their voices as they shared their stories. My grandmother’s front porch served as a safe haven for a community of women who shared their lived and learned experiences—soul stories that fostered glimpses of freedom, healing, and survival. Those rich narratives told by Black women—who were uniquely similar—are forever embedded in the basement of my mind and etched in the art of my own form of soul-searching storytelling.

by Candace Simpson

A few weeks ago, I sat on the train after a long day of work. I was tired, frustrated, upset, drained. I was kicking myself for committing to more activities than I should. I was running in and out of a revolving door of guilt and shame. I was disgusted with myself. I was mentally adding up my hours for the week and drafting a thought-spreadsheet of expenses. I was overwhelmed. Magically, I started humming a song out of nowhere.

by Morgan Jerkins for The Guardian

The other day, I was walking back to my Harlem apartment when I stumbled upon a very shocking sign in front of a black church. It read:

by Neisha Washington

I know I’m not the only one who went through social network purge following the grand jury’s decision not to indict Darren Wilson for Mike Brown’s death. My social network was flooded with all types of disturbing content posted by people who had at some point offered me a kind word, smile, good humor, and friendship. There were those white and non-black friends who had stuck by me through childhood and teenage years—whom I thought had witnessed the covert and often explicit racial discrimination I experienced—posting their support for Darren Wilson, calling the rioters “animals”, and utilizing patronizing language about how far America has traversed racially. Then there were the “New Blacks” (the “post-racial” kin of Pharrell Williams, Don Lemon, and Charles Barkley) out in full force with their respectability politics. And then, there were others making sweeping generalizations by telling young black men to pull up their pants, focus on “black-on-black crime,” fix the black community, and stop blaming the white man for all their problems.

We waited twelve hours for the Darren Wilson verdict and it was all I could think of, the entire day stretched out into a thin film of anxiety. I wanted my mother. I wanted a hug. I wanted to not know what was happening. I sat in the same seat for those 12 hours and wrote poems and did homework as the world awaited the statement we knew was coming: Darren Wilson would not be indicted for the murder of Michael Brown.

By Valerie Jean-Charles

We live in the age of prosperity preachers: Joel Osteen, Paula White, T.D. Jakes. These well known pastors, along with others, have helped usher an age in the Church where teachings of wealth-building reign supreme. Before I go into why this branch of theology robs congregants of benefits from the institution, it’s best that I provide definitions of what exactly the “prosperity gospel” is.

I remember the feeling of unease. I spent the evening feeling dejected, anxious, and apathetic. It wasn’t the best temperament to have at a finalist weekend for a competitive scholarship.

by Bee Quammie

Elders are proof-positive that time vortexes do exist - possessing a past that is unseen to us, co-existing with us in the here and now, and offering a glimpse into the future at the same time. It’s usually quite easy to dismiss the commentary and counsel from those who were here before we were. We scoff at the “When I was your age” statements because we know that the world has flipped and twisted around itself in the time between then and now. Their attempts to guide us down roads they've already traveled are met with a flippant "Oh, you wouldn't understand" - and the wedge between them and us is hammered into place.

by Candi Marsh

Most have heard of or are familiar with the old adage, “it takes a village to a raise child.” I firmly believe this to be true, as villages serve as pseudo-parents that assist in raising our children. With the high percentages of children being raised in single-parent households, the urgent need for more villages is imperative.

Research conducted by Kids Count Data Center: Project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation concluded that sixty–seven percent of the Black/African American population were raised in a single-parent households while thirty-three percent of non African-American families were single-parent households.

The other day, I was reflecting on experiences I’ve had at the intersections of dominant White culture and my identity as a Black woman. Given my spiritual background (nondenominational Christian), a lot of these intersections have happened at churches. And I can’t tell you how many churches, community groups, Bible studies, and even campus ministries from my college days told me that they wanted to “do life” with me. They wanted to help me grow spiritually. They wanted to offer me a community to grow within.

by Evan Seymour

NEW ORLEANS --This year, Mother’s Day in New Orleans served as a brutal reminder of the violence that plagues this city, and many neighborhoods across America. 19 people were injured Sunday afternoon when shooting erupted during a local Mother’s Day parade in a community known as the 7th Ward. Among the victims were 10 men, seven women, and a girl and a boy, both 10 years old.

.@asiabrown No, thanks and bye. It ain't 13.
— Goldie Taylor (@goldietaylor) March 15, 2013

It happened in the midst of a late discussion yesterday evening, on the popular social networking site Twitter. Upon tuning in after class, I noticed chatter on my timeline surrounding the arrest of three 19-year-old men charged with child molestation of a 13-year-old girl, after their admittances of having sex with her.

As a young girl it bothered me a great deal to listen to my minster preach about the justice that Jesus had reclaimed for African Americans when he died on the cross, but only speak of the heroism of the men featured in the Bible and of the Black men who had courageously fought for our civil liberties. Sitting in church surrounded by a multitude of women who I knew had long ties to the community, who volunteered countless hours at the church, who prepared food and clothing for those in need, acted as secret confidants/counselors to both men and women, and who prayed daily for God’s wisdom, grace and mercy over their lives—I wondered how this “Man of God” could so easily forget them.

“Men do it. Women do it: Whatever It is”, and that is essentially why the battle of the sexes will continue to rage for centuries, unless grown men and women could agree that certain actions, whether infidelity, lying, nagging, stalking, and even domestic abuse are not gender-specific. Adults need to eventually start looking at people as individuals, and judging these types of incidents as the actions of a particular individual; before they start joining in on the chorus of “All men are dogs” or something comparable for women.

As women, we’re subjected to the unsolicited advances of men on the street, in the store, in the gym, etc. You get the point. Basically, we’re seen as fair game to men’s comments in the public sphere. They feel the need to let us know how sexy we are or how we should show them our “pretty smile.” This topic of street harassment has surfaced in recent articles from Jezebel and XoJane.

Like any woman, I receive my fair share of comments from men – trust me. It’s not something I enjoy, but neither am I easily offended. However, perhaps after talking to my white co-worker about being harassed in public spaces I should be more outraged.

(Atlanta Daily World) Six years after I first heard them, the statistics still haunt me: Eighty-six percent of Black children in the fourth grade read and do math below their grade level.

Black girls between the ages of 15 and 24 represent the greatest number of new HIV infections. Homicide is the leading cause of death for our boys. The village is on fire! And our love is the saving, healing water that legions of our children are literally dying for. When we listen we hear their cries rising above the flames. Their voices carry the incendiary pain and humiliation of intergenerational poverty that turns dreams to ashes: days of missed meals, uncertain safety and poorly resourced schools that plenish the pipeline to prison. These are among the many grievous thefts of potential impoverishing the lives of Black children in the land of plenty, a land made rich and powerful on the backs of our ancestors. And it’s happening on our watch.

My father’s skin is a rich cocoa-brown color, and my mother is fair-skinned with light brown freckles, and natural red highlights in her hair. Her great-grandmother, Sara, was the daughter of a slave woman and her master. In a photo I saw of her, she appeared white and had braids that hung down to the center of her chest. Because she married a man who was also the child of his master, her daughter (my great-grandma Ethel) was fair-skinned as well.

When I gave birth to my daughter Khari, I felt intent on mirroring my mother’s method of raising me consciously. My mother prepared me early on that there was racism in the world and the educated mind was the tool for battle. As she greased my scalp and braided my hair, my mother hugged me between her knees as I practiced my growing vocabulary at 8 years old, reading aloud from books the words of great minds like Chancellor Williams and Franz Fanon. I was thoroughly educated backwards and forwards of the trials and tribulations of our ancestors and raised holistically in the footsteps of my culturally-conscious Black mother.

Our goal as a people, I believed, was to overcome racism and become a strong collective that has a stronghold on our interests socially, economically, politically, educationally, etc. Shoot, that wasn’t so far fetched, I reasoned as a youth. I looked and believed that the Chinese people collectively own every carry-out in my hometown of Washington DC. The East Indian and Middle Eastern people own every 7-eleven around and have portions of the city dedicated to their culture. And white people, it seems, own everything else. Why was it unrealistic to set such high goals?

So, traipsing into the “new world”, as I called life on my own, I felt pretty prepared to meet head-on the racism I knew would be awaiting me -- the racism that had peeked out of pockets in my all-black neighborhoods as a young child, blossomed into closed minded professors and racist rhetoric in college newspapers when I spent four years at the local university and plucked me incessantly when I was reminded how offensive I could be for simply existing when I was denied interviews based on my strong African-Islamic name (you don’t look like a “Khadijah” I was told once.)

Racism, ha! It was no match for me at all. My mother talked about all with me before-hand. But what she really didn’t spend too much time on, I realize now is the area of relating.

My personal experiences with relating with others in our community have always worked best on the superficial level, teetered if challenged and crumbled at the first effort to move past the superficial. From the men who would rather be “friends with benefits” than friends who discuss politics, the spirit and a commitment, to the girlfriends who pledge forever friendship until a man comes on the scene, my personal life has been challenged with the idea of relating.

Our failing ability to relate to each other on an intimate level in our own community is something we rarely talk about but can be so painful and soul-toxic that it runs like poison into the relationships we form with each other as adults, the relationships we have with our offspring and the relationships we build with others outside of our community.



We can talk about the surface issues of someone being jealous or someone not having self-esteem or having commitment issues, but we don’t discuss it in depth with each other, the people involved, the reasons we are uncomfortable and how to turn the situation into one where understanding and acceptance are the goal. Some say that it depends on whether you were raised in a single parent home or two-parent home that dictates how you will relate to others. To that, I totally disagree. I’ve witnessed children turned adults who come from two parent families who are even more clueless than I about what it takes to make a relationship between two people work. They’ve been raised by two parents who are still together, but don’t necessarily talk to each other, listen to each other or demonstrate acts of kindness and communication.

Beyond racism, beyond sexism, we have reached a critical stump where relating to one another and communicating beyond simply talking is difficult for some and unattainable for most. Adults have fallen so deep into a trend of looking the part that the substance inherent in intimacy building and basic empathetic conversation has diminished. We have taken a value system of education, extended family, oral history, traditional honor custom, elder revering and rites of passage and replaced it with ideals that value money lording, “baby mama/fatha” drama, fashion idolatry and glorified entertainment. One set of values that uphold relating and sharing, replaced by values that promote separation and self.

And maybe it’s easier. Maybe it’s easier to focus on the superficial if it means not rocking the boat and at least giving the appearance of everything being okay. I know personally that it is easier to watch MTV with my daughter’s father and smile and grin and get along rather than discuss with him how it really bothers me that we don’t talk about anything that isn’t on television.

But it does something to me at a soul level when I don’t speak to him. It disturbs me on a soul level when I don’t speak up when someone has hurt my feelings and been insensitive and it hurts me, almost irreparably, when someone considered a friend, finds it easier to choose to disassociate with me or act passive aggressively rather than address personally what it is that I’ve done that has hurt them. So, as I feel my soul aches, I venture to wonder, how many others are out there aching as well. How many, I wonder, yearn to relate and shed our present state of separation and get together to share, really share, listen and love?

So, as two-year old Khari learns to speak paragraphs and identify her shapes, colors and numbers, I follow in my mother’s footsteps and strive to raise her conscious. Coupled with her legacy of black self-knowledge, I promise her as well that, as I learn and grow, she will also be taught and know the gift of relating.

- Khadijah Ali-Coleman, Khadijah Online

Khadijah "Moon" Ali-Coleman is editor of the anthology, Liberated Muse Volume I: How I Freed My Soul and founder of So Our Youth Aspire (SOYA). She is contributing editor atSoulBounce.com and manages the blog Transforming Places Into Art Spaces. She hails from the Washington DC 
area. Visit her website at www.KhadijahOnline.com and follow on Twitter @KhadijahOnline.

It’s a shame that in 2011 race is still an issue in the United States. What’s even more of a shame is that Black people are still finding ways to tear each other down, ridicule each other, and find ways to separate us, based on skin color, our neighborhoods, and our familial backgrounds. I’ve come across multiple articles within the past week that discuss race within the Black community. A few weeks ago, my book club read “Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America” by Eugene Robinson. I’m sure we’re all familiar with the comments Jalen Rose made regarding Grant Hill and other Duke University basketball players during the documentary “Fab Five”. “Clutch” magazine had an article titled “What Kind of Black are You?“. And lastly, “Coco and Creme“, another on-line magazine, had an article titled “Do Mixed Chicks Hair Care Products Make Light Seem Right?”. Because I have a lot to say, this will be (at least) a two-parter.

Related Reading: Authentically Relating: Building Strong Bonds in Black America

First, let’s discuss what is Black. Black is beautiful, successful, strong, educated, resilient, historic, amazing, wonderful, insightful…I could go on. What I don’t understand is why we, Black folk, continue to find ways to divide ourselves. Some think you’re not Black enough if you use proper English. Others think you’re not Black enough if you do well in school. You might be too Black if you wear your pants hanging from your tail. Too Black may include having locs or being natural. All of these things are ridiculous. Growing up, most of my friends in school were white, and I got ridiculed by some of the Black kids; I got told things like “You talk like a white girl”, “Is everything all white?”, and my personal favorite (a message in my middle school yearbook) “Oreo, I hope you unlock the magic this summer.” Yes, kids are cruel, and we hope they don’t grow up to be cruel adults. Having an education has always been synomous with being an “Uncle Tom” or acting white or not being Black enough. Why is that? Why is it cool to not do well in school? Although Southern parents divorced when I was young, both parents were, and still are, involved in my life and made sure I did well in school. Both parents are college educated so going to college wasn’t a question for me-the question was, “Where are you going?” But I digress…

Why must we separate ourselves? The author of “What Kind of Black Are You” and Robinson address the various “sub-groups” in Black America, those Blacks who are from the Carribean or Africa. I strongly believe in embracing your culture and your country of origin if you’re not American, but why must we belittle others who aren’t like us, which happens at times? Black people come in all hues, shapes, sizes, cultures, and the like, so we should embrace our differences, but not go so far as to demean someone who’s not EXACTLY like us. I love my Southern heritage, but embrace those Blacks who are African, Caribbean, Northern, and wherever else they may be from.

What do you guys think? Why are we still finding ways to separate ourselves as Black people? Is this all this still relevant in 2011 or should we find ways to bring ourselves together as one race?

LaToya Grant is a Government contractor, beauty artist, and freelance writer that currently resides in Washington, DC. She is a true Southern Belle that shares her life experiences on her blog Southern Girl in the City (www.evolvingelle.wordpress.com). She is an optimist, reality TV junkie, beach lover, Black History buff, daughter, friend, and appreciator of life. LaToya can be found on Twitter as Evolving Elle at www.twitter.com/evolvingelle.

I don't subscribe to the notion that there are "no good black men out there". I know that there are, because I know good black men personally, and I see them in my day-to-day life. I know that there are, because I was raised by a good black man, because my black male friends are good black men, because my girlfriends are being loved by good black men and because I have dated good black men.

I think some women get tripped up because they confuse "perfection" with goodness; or because they confuse material possession with goodness. We have to be careful about determining someone's worth based on what they have acquired, as opposed to what they inherently have inside. Being a good man is not always about having things or giving gifts, but it’s also about giving time, love, respect, esteem, etc.--the non-tangibles that frame a loving, healthy relationship.

We must also have enough clarity to recognize a wonderful man when we receive him, no matter what the label in his jeans reads, the type of car he drives or the title on his business card (if he even has one). I’m not saying not to have preferences surrounding such things; I am simply nudging you to look a little deeper.

It is important, nay paramount, that we remember that we receive what we call into our lives through our own words and actions. If you say "there are no good black men" you will not attract good men. If you lower your expectation on what constitutes good behavior, the men in your life will lower their behavior to fit the bar that you've set. If you excuse the behaviors of men who are of poor intention because "there are no good black men" anyway, they will continue to behave poorly because they can.

I am raising a young black man and I refuse to tell him that he can't be good because he is black and black men are not good. I'm going to continue to show him how to respect and treat a woman and continue to help him to aspire past being just good, and onto being great.

I recognize that there are larger issues at play here—issues that are rooted deep in the psyche of the black race and embedded in the history of this country. I've seen and heard the statistics on the number of black men in jail, and I'm aware of the uneven ratio of black men to black women in the U.S.

I understand that, if you're still single, finding your good black man might be more difficult than it has been for others. My point here is that it's not an impossible task, nor do any of the hurdles to their coupling with black women negate their existence. I just can’t hop on the black male bashing bandwagon when I know so many intelligent, creative, honest, respectful, educated and responsible black men--whether they are available or taken--and I tip my hat to them for being more than a statistic, more than a stereotype or a generalization and for being even better than "good".

Kim Jackson currently works in the marketing and promotions arena. She co-authors a women’s empowerment blog, Peace Love and Pretty Things, is a contributing style and fashion writer for Examiner.com, and she pens fashion, beauty and lifestyle articles on her personal blog, Chic Mommy, Cool Kid.

(Photo Source)