November 8, 2016: The Week After

I cried when I found out the results of the 2016 presidential election. I cried hard. I fell asleep the night before quite early, because I was tired of being bombarded with political ads and the disgusting hate that I would see every day on Facebook. I went to bed early believing that I would wake up to Hillary Clinton being our next president. It didn’t happen that way and the several paragraphs that were posted by each person on …

Read more

They Say History Repeats Itself….

It seems hard not to write a blog post reflecting on the events of this week. Donald Trump is officially our president elect, and there’s so much that could be said about it that I don’t even know where to begin. On Tuesday night, I refused to watch the live coverage with my roommates because for some reason I just had a horrible gut feeling about the results. I went to bed early, scared of who our country would decide …

Read more

Trump-isms: What’s Next?

I write this on November 2nd, less than a week before the presidential election. I choose to write this now for multiple reasons: 1) it’s becoming pretty clear who the next POTUS will be, and 2) I’m honestly afraid of what the consequences will be. This evening in my Facebook Newsfeed, towards the bottom of the trending bar, was the label “Black Church Burned” (The Atlantic, 2016). Immediately I felt my stomach sink, and when I clicked on the link …

Read more

Caffeine and a Call for Unity

I’ll admit it. I’m a coffee addict. It’s gotten to the point where I cannot make it through the morning without a headache if I don’t have my coffee. I got a Keurig machine for my birthday and cried. I know it’s bad, but when it comes to drugs of choice, I could be worse off. On rare occasions I will treat myself to the capitalist franchise of Starbucks. Something about their coffee gives me a jolt while also feeding …

Read more

It’s Just Business

  David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the KKK, narrowly reached the 5% voting support he needed to be considered a legitimate candidate for Senator of Louisiana. Although according to his numbers he doesn’t actually stand a chance in winning the seat, it’s horrifying to realize that a substantial number of people are voting for him. What’s even more disturbing is that he was now allowed to participate in the November 2nd debate which was to be hosted by Dillard …

Read more

From Blackface to Blaxploitation: Racism and Representation in Entertainment

At some point this week, I came across a BuzzFeed post entitled, “The BuzzFeed Black History Reading List,” which included a series of essays and articles reflecting upon the end of Black History Month. One of the articles in this post shines an accusatory spotlight down on Hollywood’s use of Blackface today. After some initial disbelief and some precursory digging, I found the amount of performers who have performed in blackface appalling and the names I cam across equally as shocking. …

Read more

A Sobering Experience

WARNING: extremely offensive, racist language is used while quoting someone else (as well as cursing) A few weeks ago, I was hanging out with a few friends and acquaintances – we were talking, laughing, and having a generally good time.  We were sitting in a circle of various couches and chairs surrounding a coffee table.  Then, someone at the party (let’s call this person J) got a text from another friend saying that a third friend (we’ll call this person …

Read more