I was so young when they took my tongue away. They needed no scalpel to silence me, only the sharp edge of their judgment. The worst part was, I let them.
*
“Where are you from? No, where are you really from?”
We’ve all read stories about changelings, how they’re replacements for the true human children who will ultimately come back…
By now everyone has heard of Columbusing, the act of “discovering” something that has already existed forever, named after the explorer credited with finding the “New World.” Here are my predictions for The Next Big Thing (that has already existed forever) to hit mainstream white America.
This is Nichole Perkins' first essay for The Toast. Her previous work for The Butter can be found here. My ringtone is the theme from the Lynda Carter-led Wonder Woman series. The journal I use for ideas and outlines features a comic version of the heroine looking prettily from the corners of her eyes. I have several sets of Wonder Woman underwear that I put on when I want good luck or good…
I was Tituba. Or at least, everyone thought I was. During my freshman year at a small liberal arts Christian college in Wenham, Massachusetts, my lifelong fascination with the Salem Witch Trials and an empty bank account prompted me to apply for a job as a historical reenactor. For nine dolllars an hour, I dressed in heavy cloaks, long skirts, and leather boots with golden buckles. I revived the past as a member of the…
1. At first it’s probably not obvious that you are their only nonwhite friend. Maybe you can’t remember them hanging out with any people of color except for you, but you don't know all the people they know. All those tiny thumbnails of white faces, commenting on their political status updates and praising their selfies on Facebook -- that’s Facebook, what can it really tell you about someone's life? Sure, you might go over to your friend's place for…
"Several Detroit City Council members slammed the state’s management of Belle Isle…after hearing the city clerk was pulled over by a State Police officer who claimed he was keeping ‘riffraff’ off the island.” –Detroit Free Press, April 30, 2014 Belle Isle rests like a pendant charm where Lake St. Claire narrows into the Detroit River. Both banks widen as if to accommodate this island suspended within a subversion of our understanding of the world—the one…
You may have already heard about this week's bomb attack on the Colorado Springs office of the NAACP - there's been a bit of local and national coverage, though it's paled in comparison to coverage of the attacks on France's Charlie Hebdo magazine. Here are a few places I've found that have covered America's latest terrorist attack (feel free to add to this in the comments if you know of anything I've missed).
1. Dental hygiene was a self-directed exercise in my household, which meant it didn’t happen. Unused toothbrushes sat stiff-bristled and impeccable in cups on the sink. I only ever noticed a smell on my father’s breath, though: an alcoholic bitterness. The smell usually corresponded with the subwoofer trembling at midnight, spitting out Bonnie Raitt and other smooth-voiced saints of heartbreak. I separated my father into two entities: the one who drove me to basketball practice…
On a Saturday morning in September, 2010, my younger brother Austin took out a handgun I hadn't known he owned, told his wife to call the police, and gave her a special password with which to identify him. "They're coming for me," he said, "but I'll keep you safe." At least, that's the story his wife told us at the time. From there, details get a bit hazy, but the facts are these: my brother…
The first time I saw Love & Basketball, I was convinced that tallest-girl-in-school-but-still-not-an-athlete me could be the female Magic Johnson. To this day the friend who first taught me to play marvels at how I could have possibly thought to shoot the ball and then jump. But Love & Basketball taught me to believe in my own ability, questionable court skills be damned. I saw myself in the precocious, ambitious Monica. She was committed to…
Maya Schenwar is Editor-in-Chief of Truthout, an independent social justice news website. She has written about the prison-industrial complex for The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Jersey Star-Ledger, Ms. Magazine, Prison Legal News, and other publications. She is the recipient of a Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Chi Award and a Lannan Residency Fellowship, both for her writing on prisons. Prior to her work at Truthout, Maya was Contributing Editor at Punk Planet magazine…
"White people are often sincerely and greatly pained by racism, but rarely are they pained enough. That is not true because they are white, but because they are human..."
From the New York Times:
A Staten Island grand jury has voted not to bring criminal charges against the white New York City police officer at the center of the Eric Garner case, a person briefed on the matter said Wednesday
