Southern Virginia is the country. Cotton fields, pork and chicken processing plants, wide open spaces with grazing cows and horses and one-lane dirt roads make up most of the scenery. This is where I spent a lot of my time growing up. This is where I spent my weekend, driving through Smithfield and Waverly on dirt paths lined with dead leaves, dead cotton and Trump-Pence campaign posters. It was honestly one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Unapologetically
My Ancestors Require That I Rebel
justJolie at ‘The Birth of a Nation’ red carpet screening
Last week, three people touched my hair without my permission. Two of them were complete strangers. One of them I knew. All three were not Black and my reaction to each incident was exactly the same.
The first hair touching occurred in Baltimore on a Monday. I was waiting for a bus to New York in a gross-ass Greyhound station, looking at the TV monitors trying to distract myself from the sneezing, coughing, piss smells and various other scents and sounds typical of a gross ass Greyhound station. All of the TVs were showing news reports of the then developing story of Terence Crutcher, an unarmed Black man in Tulsa, Oklahoma who was shot by a white police officer in the middle of the street. Continue reading