United We Stand
No one knows exactly what the next four years will bring. But we are always stronger when we protest together.
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Posts Tagged: #blacklivesmatter
Vince Staples’s Challenge
Vince Staples appeared on Hot 97 recently to deliver a freestyle, challenging #BlackLivesMatter protestors to make the future brighter through positive community action, among many other things. (He also would be happy if his girlfriend looked like M.I.A., for instance.) Listen to the full rap after the jump.
...moreArtists Respond to the Violence
The violence of the past days has left the nation in a state of shock, and citizens are reacting with the full range of human responses to crisis. Many artists can be counted among those who demand we respond as a country to the violence against black bodies. To name a few: The Game and Snoop Dogg organized a protest against police brutality in […]
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The Saturday Rumpus Interview: Darryl Pinckney
If your family or your people are looking over your shoulder, change your seat or push them away. Ask them to trust you with the truth.
...moreThe Man with the Biggest Mouth
“The guys with the biggest mouths are always the most fragile.” –Donald Trump, at a rally in New Orleans, March 4th 2016 Leaving the airplane hangar, thousands of Trump 2016 signs sandwiched under the arms of red, white, and blue t-shirts and American flag windbreakers, I find myself unlucky enough to be walking behind a […]
...moreThe Noise Came From Here
With the recent addition of the album MartyrLoserKing, artist and activist Saul Williams’s versatile body of work shows no signs of slowing its growth. In an interview with The Fader, he talks about technology, #BlackLivesMatter, and his writing process: [E]ven with writing poems, I started writing in nightclubs. My favorite places to write were always […]
...moreComplicating The New Jim Crow
At the New Yorker, Kelefa Sanneh discusses a new provocative book about current racial tensions in the US. The book, Black Silent Majority by Michael Javen Fortner, aims to complicate the idea that black people are disproportionately affected by police violence and incarceration (notably addressed by Michelle Alexander in The New Jim Crow) by talking about the […]
...moreWhen Actions No Longer Exist
Language is a great way to communicate, and an even better way to avoid it altogether. This “Interactive Guide to Ambiguous Grammar” ensures no one will ever decode what you’re really saying.
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The Rumpus Review of [insert] boy by Danez Smith
In this sense, the book is a “coming-of-age” story and “spiritual quest” as much as a seething commentary on the catastrophe effected by the disease of contemporary racism and white supremacy.
...moreAn Anthem for Black Lives Matter
Kendrick Lamar has paired with Dr. Dre to make what may be the #BlackLivesMatter anthem we’ve all been waiting for. On Compton, Dre’s controversial soundtrack to the upcoming N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton, the track “Genocide” says in its chorus: “It’s Murder / It’s Murder / Call 911, Emergency / Hands up in the air […]
...moreYoung Black Writers Reflect on #blacklivesmatter
because I want to not cry because I actually hate crying because none of my tears can offer resurrection none of my poems can offer resurrection none of my image searches can offer resurrection and I want us to stay alive Khadijah Queen and eleven other young writers of color—Roger Reeves, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Rion Amilcar […]
...moreClaudia Rankine and #BlackLivesMatter
The American imagination has never been able to fully recover from its white-supremacist beginnings. Consequently, our laws and attitudes have been straining against the devaluation of the black body. Despite good intentions, the associations of blackness with inarticulate, bestial criminality persist beneath the appearance of white civility. This assumption both frames and determines our individual […]
...moreEvil Loves Tomorrow
What I do know is that love reckons with the past and evil reminds us to look to the future. Evil loves tomorrow because peddling in possibility is what abusers do. At my worst, I know that I’ve wanted the people that I’ve hurt to look forward, imagining all that I can be and forgetting […]
...moreRachel Dolezal: A Rumpus Roundup
Six months ago, Rachel Dolezal, an academic and the president-elect of NAACP Spokane chapter, wrote an op-ed piece piece describing the importance of the #BlackLivesMatter protest movement. On Monday, she resigned her post at the NAACP surrounded in controversy. Dolezal was profiled back in February where she revealed she is a cervical cancer survivor and […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Daniel José Older
Author Daniel José Older talks about his new novel, Shadowshaper, noir influence in urban fantasy, gentrification, white privilege and the publishing industry, and why we need diverse books, now more than ever.
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