Black Studies UT

As a sophomore in college, I took a class on African American Literature and Culture. The syllabus included the usual suspects (Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Lorraine Hansberry, etc.) and I prepared myself for the somewhat familiar run down of Black people’s struggle with racism in the early 20th century. However, I began to notice a trend. Every day I came to class with my reading prepared, but the conversation always took an unexpected turn. My professor, a trans man, insisted that our class think about and analyze the specific ways Black women were presented in our texts. It was his need to guide us to this specific way of thinking that made me realize how when thinking about Black people, I almost always defaulted to Black men. When I presented these concerns to my professor, I realized that it wasn’t a problem only I dealt with. In the media, in academia, and amongst the Black community, Black women were all but invisible.

The Obama’s on their wedding day, 1992.

Poet Taylor Steele captures the problem with appropriating Black slang.

In her poem “AAVE” (which stands for African-American Vernacular English) Taylor Steele explains why appropriation of Black slang is the worst.  African-American culture is being popularized on a daily basis and while Black people are judged and mistreated for using something they came up with ages ago, White people come off as cool and original when they use it.

Full video

Hillary’s white feminism is not just a misguided oversight; it has become a dangerous threat. She has proved again and again her capacity to not only silence woc, but to stand complicit in their deaths. 

A member of the Black Panthers who was convicted in the 1970 death of a police officer has died in prison.

Mondo we Langa, also known as David Rice, died in a Lincoln, Nebraska, prison Saturday night, the Associated Press reported. His cause of death was not immediately known, though a state prison official told the AP he had been treated for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

He was one of two Nebraska Black Panthers leaders serving life in prison for the murder of an Omaha police officer. Authorities said we Langa and Edward Poindexter, later known as the Omaha Two, were responsible for the detonation of a suitcase bomb inside a home, which killed Officer Larry Minard.

The two men always maintained their innocence, saying they were falsely implicated for their political beliefs. Questions surrounding the case prompted Amnesty International in 2009 to call for either their release or a new trial. BuzzFeed News also published a story about the case in February.

Poindexter, 71, remains in prison after he was denied a request for parole in 2014.