Race

Africa is a Continent, the United States of America is a Nation, but Blackness is My World

by | February 9, 2021

“African” and “American” do not define me. The words “African” and “American” seemed to be at war with one another. When I became a teenager, I started referring to myself as Black. Not African American, not Black American, just Black. To be Black is to be my own creation.

Black woman with sunglasses

Sandwich Expert David Brooks Weighs In On the Education of Black and Brown Children

by | February 2, 2021

Elitist sandwich expert and NYTimes columnist David Brooks writes that the desire of public school teachers not to die of covid is a disaster for children. Myriam Gurba disagrees.

Sylvie’s Love is Pretty as a Picture

by | January 5, 2021

Sylvie's Love relegates whiteness to its rightful place: This isn't Harlem gentrified by our concepts of unity twenty years into the 21st century.

Sylvies Love

Hilaria Baldwin & the Perverse Myth of Reverse Body-Shaming

by | December 31, 2020

Eating while beautiful isn't heroic. Neither is rubbing glitter into your butt's stretchmarks: Myriam Gurba on the weaponization of body positivity by Hilaria Baldwin and others.

Hilaria Baldwin - Shutterstock

When You Can’t Claim It, But You Can’t Escape It

by | December 15, 2020

Revisiting one of our favorite pieces from Tasteful Rude: “Are you Black?” my first crush, a white boy, asked me as we played together in the sandbox at school. I wasn’t sure. I thought of my nickname “negrita” but I didn’t know how to explain that I’m the darkest in my family or why it seemed perfectly natural to be identified by my pigmentation. When I couldn’t answer, he ran away from me.

Jessica Hoppe