It’s that time of year again. Halloween already got white people trippin. This email is chock-full of Peak Caucasity, so hold onto your butts.
WHAT HAD HAPPENED WAS
- On Monday, an Xavier University student snapchatted a picture of herself in blackface with the caption, “Who needs white when black lives matter?” Eh. Cliché.
- Achievement Unlocked! ^This same student had a dashiki’ed skeleton hanging in her dorm room with a noose around its neck. Shout out to Ross for those $10 dashikis. Y’all making it too easy for white folx in October.
- Years after Daniel Pantaleo choked Eric Garner to death on Staten Island, the Justice Department might finally be ready to hand down an indictment. Erica Garner said in a statement, “I think this is a step forward in my father’s case.” Indictments aren’t justice, but they’re a start. Until then? No peace.
WHAT’S REALLY GOING ON?
- Hari Ziyad recently served up some ***scalding*** tea on BYP100’s blog, coming for folks who describe “not voting” as an exercise of privilege: “It is a privilege to pressure those for whom violence will rain down unimpeded, regardless of who occupies the mansion at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, to do something that may benefit you but won’t do anything for them.” BLOOP.
- Level up your life like the #WeBuiltThis fam! Get our profile badge and show your support by pledging on Facebook or Twitter.
BLACKITY BLACK: EXCELLENCE, JOY & MAGIC
- Musa Syeed is about that life. When he set out to make a feature film about Black Somali-Muslims in Minneapolis—A Stray—he stumbled upon a uniquely collaborative process. In a recent interview, he emphasized the need for authentic storytelling: “However hard it was to hear at times, filmmakers need voices that do not ask to be given their humanity, but demand that we all bear witness to it.”
- Ariell Johnson—the only Black woman running a comic book store on the East Coast—is going to to appear on the cover of Marvel’s “Invincible Iron Man #1” next to Marvel superhero RiRi Williams. We see you, ma! And when we see ourselves, we realize new ways to be ourselves.
We’ve loved you better than your own kin did.
For freedom,
#WeBuiltThis
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