By Catherine Saunders

The year is 2015 – 15 years into the millennium and 150 years post reconstruction. This numerical distance between overt racial prejudice and the subtleties of contemporary culture seduces many into the belief that diversity, or inclusion of people of color into traditionally white spaces, is an obligation rather than the unfulfilled expectation it is.

by Neisha Washington

In the wake of last month's Charleston church shooting, in which six women and three men were gunned down mercilessly, black people across the country have felt increasingly unsafe. The event demonstrated the lack of security black bodies have in even sacred spaces. An attack on the black church is an attack on the very heart of black society. It seems there is no place to be safe and black in this country, no place in which we’re free from having aspersions projected onto our melanin.

For the past two years I have been a member of a book club that is the safest, most enlightening and refreshing group that I have ever been privileged to be a part of. We are artists (actors, writers, designers, and singers), legal assistants, speech pathologists, and educators. We are homeowners and apartment renters. We are wives, girlfriends, happily single, and actively looking women. We wear our hair natural, weaved, and wigged. We are devoted church-goers or decidedly anti-established religion and peacefully spiritual. We also happen to all be young(ish) African American women.

by Veronica Agard

Middle school is a pretty rough time for most of us. We’re just beginning to experience puberty—the hormones, our menstrual cycles, and maybe our first real crush. To add to that pressure, if you were in middle school within the past ten years or so, a good chunk of the highs and lows of your middle school experience likely played out on social media. But what happens when you are bullied or targeted and there’s no way to track down who’s behind it?