by Aurielle Marie

It’s 6 p.m. in Olympia, WA, and I am settling into myself in this new space. Your girl is struggling. (Can we say culture shock?) I moved to the pacific north-west after three years of community organizing, both in the #BlackLivesMatter movement, and as a teaching artist and poet. I moved here, to find new ways to advocate for the communities that I love. Communities that are erased, attacked, and silenced in ways that threaten our lives everyday. I moved with confidence. Yet here I am, in this space, waiting for affirmation that this was the right move. It’s been a month and to celebrate I'm cooking healthy shit in this new kitchen I keep having to remind myself belongs to me.



If you know me, you know that I stan for little else other than Beyoncé and avocados. But I've been going UP for Amandla Stenburg lately. Have you seen this girl and her magic? Have you heard the gospel? Are you not amazed?! She's been dubbed Feminist of the Year by Teen Vogue, and I'm LIVING for the article that Solange Knowles so intentionally penned in January about Amandla's resistance against white supremacy, her fervent advocacy for black girls and Our Hair, and the magical way challenging white celebrities on their anti-blackness has opened up dialogue with our faves about the value of black life in pop-culture. While the entire interview is straight flames, check out what quote moved me to tears (literally) during the interview:

AMANDLA: I often find myself in situations where I am the token black person. It can feel like this enormous weight. I have definitely had moments when my hair felt too big or like I needed to make myself...

SOLANGE: Smaller.

AMANDLA: Exactly. Smaller and easier to digest. And that’s still something that I struggle with now, you know?

Whew.

Can we just take a second to praise the ancestors for Amandla, and for "all power" belonging to her? It’s my first month here in Olympia, and I've never felt the weight of my black femme energy so strongly in any other city like I do here. It’s a silent hesitance that snakes its way between all of the moments shaping my experience. The small stutter just before their hello, when I introduce myself as a student to white people. The almost unperceivable frowns of confusion when I walk down an aisle at the Safeway. The shoulder that tensed ever-so-slightly as I passed a woman and her children at the bus stop. Being a big, loud, black girl in an incredibly small, white space is an exhausting endeavor. I've been tired all week, without the language to explain where my energy has vanished. The air here has a way of pushing up against your side, fighting against your gait, almost convincing you to pull your hair closer to the ground or wear less color or speak less loud, less often, from the back of the classroom.

My girlfriend felt my despair, the other day, and reminded me of one of my favorite quotes. "Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you."

Now, in the context of anti-blackness, it seems too easy to say "Be Yourself" in a world where my perception of myself is constantly the refracted image at the bottom of a disturbed pool. But yes, let us black girls choose to be ourselves. Is "being" not an act of political resistance? Isn't it true that existing in this space that was never meant to hold my body or echo my words, in fact shaking the constructs of the supremacy which it was built upon? I think I can answer yes. Even in these moments, when I wait for the bus, with my shoulders hunched, I think I can answer yes.

I leave you with an excerpt of my essay from my first week back in school, entitled On Freedom and Visibility, where I told all these white folks in the room exactly how this learning environment business was going to go down:



"I am a black, queer woman who navigates through this world at the intersections of racial, class, and gender inequity. While it is true that throughout my life I wish to be a tool that helps shape a world where inequality is no longer status quo, I don’t believe I owe this world all of me. Right now, I'm simply a black girl yearning to survive in a world that fervently seeks to destroy me and my magic. White supremacy, anti-blackness, and anti-queer ideology have marginalized the communities I call home since this country was founded, and continue to inact violence in every way that we interact with the system. We, who are poor, who are woman, who are queer or trans, who are exceptionally fat/thick/curvy/round, we who are not white, we experience life through tinted goggles. Further, freedom has never been offered to we who sit dangerously at the intersection of these identities.

The hurdles are high, the hills are higher, and still we are told that the world is a peaceful place where all can sit at the table. In this world, I am taught to deny myself, to limit my full capacity in order to make patriarchy and white supremacy comfortable. I challenge this truth, and dedicate my journey to unlearning the behaviors that benefit whiteness by limiting the size of my presence. I believe that here, my value is not in how well I can fit in and make dominant (white) culture comfortable, rather, my value is linked to how different I am, how my presence and visibility make the dominant culture here uncomfortable, how my ability to speak up and aloud disturbs the surface of the pool. What can I bring? Why, my full self. In every capacity. No matter the discomfort. We will learn and love and grow together. We will challenge the constructs of our conditioning. It will be a revolution of sorts.

Photo: DFree / Shutterstock.com

Aurielle Marie is an Atlanta-born spoken word artist and pro-black feminist who identifies as Femme, Queer, and Radical. Her work moves fluidly from the streets to the stage, in resistance of anti-black state violence through her works as a poet and a community organizer. She's currently: addicted to matte lipstick, dissecting Drake lyrics, and trying to adjust to life in Olympia, Washington.

There are many reasons to be skeptical of white allies. While the people of marginalized groups fight to live and thrive, allies often fight for kudos and spotlight. Those who need the most care have repeatedly been burned by the good intentions of people who claim they are here to help. Because of this, the marginalized become tasked with an additional burden of weeding out the self-interested.

We are not only battling apathy but entitlement. Too many well-meaning white folks think that their acknowledgement of a struggle against injustice gives them a right to co-opt it as they wish. They believe their mere presence so valuable that they go on to take up all of the space.
Hungarian journalist Boglarka Balogh called herself bringing attention to the plight of African tribes by having someone photoshop her into their traditional looks including hairstyles, tribal markings, coverings, and jewelry.

The photo series is shocking in its disregard for the significance of these cultural aesthetics. Balogh committed the most fundamental appropriation taboos and claims she is raising awareness of the endangered. That may be her genuine intention, but the project only manages to center whiteness, yet again, in a critical discussion of Black people and Black cultures. She has literally erased the women she claims to serve. This is objectification masked as admiration.

Her feeble attempt to utilize white privilege for good underscores that many white allies have yet to fully grasp the weight of their unearned social position. In typical colonizer fashion, Balogh believes that her white body elevates the cultures—that she can communicate more in the traditional garb of these tribes than the women to whom the heritage belongs.
Herein lies the hollowness of “raising awareness.” If that’s where it ends, it amounts to nothing more than exploitation because, ultimately, Balogh gets to return to the safety of whiteness.

We do not need white people to use their privilege to fuel their own narcissism. Privilege is best used as a bridge between those who have it and those who do not. Laying down is white people’s work.

Cede the floor. Usher those in who are rarely seen and heard. Allow the people who experience marginalization to tell their own stories. These are the first steps in preserving the dignity of a people who are continually overlooked. Our allies should not use the racial empathy gap as an excuse to be the face of oppression.
Marginalized people are skeptical of the privileged when they offer help because we would rather not be pawns in their fits of self-indulgence. And, truthfully, we have got to be better at screening those who desire to do this work before allowing them access to our spaces. Eagerness does not amount to competence. There’s no use in accepting aid and reproducing oppressive dynamics in the process.

In white supremacy, we are socialized to believe that Black bodies need co-signers, but the people of these tribes do not need a savior. Balogh with her resources and whiteness could just as easily have put together a photo series that features the authentic voices and likenesses of the women of these tribes. But she’s used them as props and further stripped them of their humanity.

If you really want to help, remember that your vanity projects are not activism.

Photo Courtesy Boglarka Balogh

Kimberly Foster is the founder and editor-in-chief of For Harriet. Email or Follow @KimberlyNFoster

By Gina Torres

Nicole Arbour’s unfortunate and unfunny viral video Dear Fat People has angered the Gods of the Interwebs. In the video she makes fun of overweight people. She taunts them, convinced that she is immune to repercussions. After all they can’t catch her...right? Sigh. I am certain the dragging she has endured on social media wasn’t worth it.

by Anna Gibson

This week, President Barack Obama came under fire for saying the N-word while guest starring on Marc Maron’s “WTF” podcast. In the podcast, Obama states:

by Leah C.K. Lewis

I actually remember learning about 911 as a little girl. It seemed like some sort of rite of passage because of its weight and gravity. Calling 911 was a very serious matter and not something to do unless circumstances warranted the attention of the police, fire department, or emergency medical services. Dialing those three little numbers demanded sobriety—and it still does.

As the media continues to highlight cases of police brutality, I have been captivated by how 911 calls initiated the events that eventually led the deaths of Black men, women, and children. Particularly, Tanisha Anderson, a mentally ill woman; Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy in Cleveland; and John Crawford III in Beaver Creek, Ohio outside of Dayton.

Recently, I read an article by Shannon Nasah-Miller, Ph.D., in which she describes an incident where her 15-month-old daughter fell off a stuffed lion rocker eighteen inches to the floor while she and her wife supervised. During thrift shopping at Goodwill, her precious daughter was instructed to get off the lion and in typical childish defiance, baby girl went limp in full tantrum mode. As a result of this scene, unbeknownst to the child’s mothers, someone called 911 seeking unneeded medical attention for the toddler. As is typical, police arrived along with the ambulance, and a conversation ensued between an officer and one of the moms. Thankfully, the matter did not escalate into anything violent, but it easily could have.

Then there last weekend’s occurrence at the Craig Ranch subdivision in McKinney, Texas, where video shows overzealous police officer Eric Casebolt running amok, pulling a gun on teens, only corralling the youth of color and manhandling Dajerria Becton, a teenage girl in a bikini. In this case, officers were called to attend to a well populated end-of-school cook-out hosted by Tatiana Rhodes, a resident of Craig Ranch, after two adult white women and one man allegedly engaged African American teenagers with racial slurs and ignorant, lowbrow dialogue (“go back to your Section 8 housing”). A woman named “Kate” is accused of actually slapping Tatiana in the face.

Reminiscent of the Jim Crow era, there is the appearance that callers utilized 911, desirous of a “whites only pool,” as a means to extract the children of color from the recreational facility and the subdivision. One video shows the confrontation involving two aggressive white women, one white man, Tatiana, and her friends. Police were called, ten units total, and an unhinged Officer Casebolt confronts the young people who appeared a mixture of calm, rational, concerned, confused, and fearful.



All the victims I have mentioned were African Americans (with the exception of those involved in McKinney, Texas where people of Mexican and Arab or Persian descent were also accosted).

In the case of Tanisha Anderson, her family called seeking aid. Because of Tanisha’s death, her family deeply, deeply regrets making that call. Presumptions have been made as to the ethnicity of the callers in the Tamir Rice and John Crawford case. It has been presumed by many that the callers in these two cases were also white.

In the extraordinary case of Charlene Cook, we know that the person who initiated that 911 call was a white woman. She was body-slammed by police in Barstow, California while eight months pregnant. This occurred at her second grader’s school after she and the caller had a disagreement and confrontation while in the drop-off line.

Our emergency notification system is becoming a method for executing mayhem and murder in the lives of African Americans. The travesty is further exasperated because there are no consequences for callers who set off the chain of events that lead to the deaths, assaults, and general violations of people’s rights, where the human subject of the call proves to be innocent of the allegations or concerns enumerated by callers.

John Crawford was standing in a Walmart, on a phone, holding a toy BB gun sold by Walmart. Tamir Rice was playing with a toy gun in a playground. Charlene Cook was standing at her child’s elementary school and merely refused to give officers her name all while they acknowledged that no crime had been committed. Shannon Nasah-Miller’s fifteen-month-old daughter fell off a toy eighteen inches to the ground. Dajerria Becton was not part of the instigating confrontation in McKinney. Tatiana Rhodes, for goodness sake, simply wanted to have a celebratory cookout in her residential community.

Tanisha Anderson’s family, like so many others of mentally ill people called for aid, not destruction. She was agitated and unarmed. Even so, there was distress. Calls pertaining to mentally disturbed men, women, and children merit a response from specially trained police officers and EMS workers.

There is a part of me that remembers the rhetoric and propaganda of “Officer Friendly.” There remains the knowledge that some good officers do in fact exist. So, when we perceive danger, it is reasonable to seek the aid of police. Yet, we must acknowledge that whenever police are called to a scene, the potential for escalation exists. Where police are, there are guns, tasers, and other weapons. This is a precarious combination. If possible, calling law enforcement should be a last resort.

To be frank, African Americans are tremendously reluctant to call for police assistance due to our understandably uneasy history with law enforcement. African Americans know the history of the slave patrols called “paddy rollers.” Officially, it was U.S. Marshalls that enforced the indignity of the Fugitive Slave Act. Every generation of African Americans can cite examples of police brutality. There is literally no era in American history where African Americans have been able to live peacefully without some major violations of human rights, dignity, civility, or sanctity. From the imposition of slavery and Jim Crow, to the destruction of thriving all-African American communities and economies like Greenwood, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Rosewood, Florida. From the brutal murder of Emmett Till, to the framing of fourteen-year-old George Stinney and his execution for a crime he did not commit, and the plethora of contemporary abuses, African Americans are extremely hesitant to call upon the first-line executors of a legal system that has yet to grant us the basis of justice we ought to be afforded as citizens.

For the greater part of its existence, law enforcement in the United States only served the interest of whites, particularly those who were wealthy or land-owning. Their financial and social interest was, and remains, the sanctity that law enforcement generally seeks to maintain. Today, pernicious whites utilize this historical advantage to terrorized African Americans, other people of color, and poor whites who have also been disenfranchised. They use 911 as a means to exercise white privilege in a manner that exploits taxpayer dollars. Mean-spirited and devilish people of all ethnicities employ 911 to invoke danger, as opposed to stopping or preventing danger. Such a practice is egregious, especially where innocent people are harmed.

Policy-makers must develop protocols and legislators must institute laws that stem the tide of abuse, should the assault on African American lives persist due to ridiculous and unwarranted calls to 911. I already hear the chorus of, “Better safe than sorry.” And, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of a cure.” I agree, but #BlackLivesMatter more than these adages ever will.

Photo: iStockPhoto

Leah C.K. Lewis, J.D., M.Div., D.Min., (ABD), is a minister, councilwoman, author, animation producer, and literary activist. She recently completed her dissertation on sex and sexuality in the African American Baptist Church and a manuscript on legal, religious, and political rhetoric pertinent to “race.” Follow her @HumanStriving and on SoundCloud.com/Reverend-Leah-CK-Lewis. #BlackLivesMatter #StayWoke #HumanStriving #RighteousvRacist

by Inda Lauryn


Any pop culture enthusiast or critic who pays attention has noticed that the 2014-2015 television season brought more black and brown faces to the small screen. While many of us celebrated television’s acknowledgment that this diversity brings in viewers, white women seem to have gone into a tizzy. In March, Deadline op-ed writer Nellie Andreeva published the article “Pilots 2015: The Year of Ethnic Castings -- About Time or Too Much of a Good Thing?” in which she muses that “the pendulum might have swung a bit too far in the opposite direction” from television’s mostly white presence. (The article has since been retitled “Pilots 2015: The Year Of Ethnic Castings,” as the previous title “did not correctly reflect the context of the article.”)

by Shae Collins

“Your resume is too black,” my cousin told me after reading it over.

by Porscha Coleman


For much of the last 72 hours, the news cycle has been dominated by stories about the protests and uprisings in Baltimore. As a result of the surge in news coverage and opinion on social media, there has been a flood of white and non-black people of color entering the conversation. Some of those entering the conversation may be genuinely interested in engaging in dialogue, but have no idea how to address the issues of police brutality, race, or what they are seeing happening in Baltimore.

by Anna Gibson


Ben Affleck has been under fire, for actions he took in response to finding out one of his ancestors owned slaves on the PBS show about genealogy and family history, Finding Your Roots, hosted by Henry Louis Gates. Upon learning that one of his ancestors was a slave master, he asked the network to remove this segment from the aired version of the show, and they complied. The email in which he made this request was released on WikiLeaks, and many people are furious that he would do something like this.

by Stacey Patton


From looters to those disrupting traffic, from those dying-in at shopping malls to those wearing tee-shirts that say “I Can’t Breathe,” from those chanting “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” over Christmas carols to those venting and grieving on social media, the punditocracy has once again characterized protestors as a criminal element.