Category: KOLUMN Magazine

Local entrepreneur empowers people for success   — Claire Tighe, WMAR-2 Baltimore RANDALLSTOWN, Md. — The last eight months have been difficult for many people, both financially, and emotionally, as well as physically for those who’ve contracted COVID-19. However, there are some bright spots in the year 2020. Though the non-profit he founded, a local […]

These businesses stabilize communities, but structural racism makes their struggles harder, and the pandemic forced many to shutter   — Michelle Singletary, The Washington Post Dear Reader, I’d like to share with you why Black businesses matter. In particular, I want to tell you about James Brodie. Brodie, as all his customers called him, was […]

The UK BBSTEM initiative hopes that helping Black researchers to connect and support one another professionally will boost their representation in academia and industry.   — Virginia Gewin, Nature Black people are seriously under-represented in UK academia. Of more than 21,000 professors across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2018–19, just 0.7% identify as […]

Descendants of enslaved members of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation have been in a decadeslong fight for recognition after they were told they could no longer call themselves members.   — Claire Tighe, NBC News When Rhonda Grayson was growing up in Oklahoma, summer visits to her grandparents’ house in Wewoka meant time spent in the […]

— NIARA SAVAGE, ATLANTA BLACK STAR An Oklahoma officer who sustained burns across his body in the process of rescuing his two children from a house fire last week was hospitalized but is recovering. Corporal Anthony Louie of the Seminole Police Department responded to a house fire on the morning of Friday, Nov. 13, and […]

The antebellum series serves as a case study for properly retelling Black liberation by avoiding White messiahs — TIRHAKAH LOVE, LEVEL In Hollywood, White people love casting themselves as heroes, historical accuracy be damned. You’ve seen the trope before: the White saviors in film and television who, in one way or another, always manage to swoop in and […]

— TAMARA PRIDGETT, POPSUGAR When Sophia Chambliss, Kennedy George, Shania Gordon, and Ava Holloway learned the Robert E. Lee statue located in Richmond, VA, would be removed, they put on their black leotards and tutus and headed to the statue for a photo shoot. What resulted was a symbolic message of resistance, change, and hope. They […]

Many blame classism for housing displacement, but gentrification is racist at its core — PARIS, LEVEL (MEDIUM) I’m a native San Franciscan. Born and raised in Frisco (that nickname never bothered me) or the Sco (that’s that new shit) or whatever you wanna call it, I’ve seen its metamorphosis over the years from seemingly free-spirited […]

— JOHN MCWHORTER, THE ATLANTIC, NEWS BREAK Amid the prevailing sense of horror that so very many Americans pulled the lever for our incompetent-in-chief is a persistent strain of confusion that a not-insignificant number of Trump supporters were Latino or Black. Most ethnic minorities, unsurprisingly, did not vote for Trump—but then some people wonder why the number who […]

Through work that confronts history and illuminates the Black experience, Kaphar is breaking the mold for art nonprofits at his organization, NXTHVN. — TIANA REID, WSJ MAGAZINE “I felt horrible,” says artist Titus Kaphar, describing his raw emotional state after one of his paintings appeared on the cover of Time magazine, accompanied by a highly […]