Welcome to the New Black Renaissance

Angela Rye shared a picture yesterday of a black male staring ferociously into the camera against a black background. He is in black and white, and underneath his image reads "PREDATOR; Master Control." In the right-hand corner of the ad is the Adidas logo. She captioned the photo with this: “And now @adidas… this is devastating. à a lot of you are defending this ad by saying the soccer player pictured wears this line of cleats. Where’s the shoe? Do you understand that PREDATOR has a negative connotation particularly when we are talking about the perception of Black people in the world? This is irresponsible and NOT well thought out.” Many comments on Rye’s Instagram page were in agreeance with the activist and her stance on the ad. Plenty of others, down at The ShadeRoom, disagreed. Majority of the comments emphasized how they felt that Rye’s commentary was a reach and that she was trying too hard to force the same racially charged error that H&M made. I ...

I saw this sweatshirt before you. It's apart of a trend that focuses on wildlife, safari colors, and activism (ironic now, in too many ways to explain). I saw this picture, and all I thought was, “oh, shit.” To be CLEAR , I think that the picture is distasteful. I can’t imagine how anyone could see this image and not immediately see something wrong. I don’t understand why this little boy’s parent did not think to step in during the shoot and say something. I’m not sure who oversaw wardrobe on the day of the shoot, but I’m sure they should’ve seen something glaringly wrong when the little boy walked on set. As for the sweatshirt, it’s front print has only evoked anger because a little black boy is wearing it. From a visual merchandiser’s point of view, the sweatshirt color was the perfect fit for his skin tone. The sweatshirt comes in 3 different colors with 3 different prints – an orange with a tiger and the text “Mangrove Jungle Survival Expert," a navy blue ...

Yesterday I attended a vision board party planned by my good friend and aspiring party planner, Saxon Walker. I was excited to attend, it was going to help me in multiple facets of my new year’s resolutions. I noticed before that seeing my vision board daily must’ve subconsciously pushed me towards last year’s goals. The visual representation reminded me of what I chose to accomplish throughout the year and kept me focused on the change that I wanted to see. When I wrote about resolutions before the onset of the new year, I learned that those who share their goals with others tend to hold steadfast towards reaching their objectives throughout the year. The vision board party served as the perfect outlet for finding and becoming accountability partners for all my friends. We all sat down and spoke about our goals from last year and how well we accomplished them. Then we turned our sights towards this year. The most common goals included working out, eating well, traveling, ...

“So I came to believe that if I could be white, or as white as my color permitted, I could be elevated from the degradation of being a ‘nigger.’ I trained myself to talk like white people, to act like white people, to walk and dress like white people. I made every effort possible to belong to white people.” I’d rather be reading A Taste of Power, A Black Woman’s Story by Elaine Brown than cleaning up my apartment. A Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story is a memoir that follows Elaine Brown’s life through from childhood up through her activism with the Black Panther Party. In her earlier years, due to her mother’s persistence, she attended a predominantly white school and becomes friends with Jewish girls. It was there that she understood what it was like to be black, female, and poor in America. She also describes being part of two different worlds. S he'd act "white" while hanging out with her school friends, and "black" when with the girls in her ...

In a world where the black sitcom exists as the black unicorn, The Carmichael Show closely and most accurately depicted the black family of our time. Critics rant and rave about Black-ish , and Empire has been a successful running series out the gate, but they lack in the most important aspect that Jerrod Carmichael gave in every show – raw authenticity. Black-ish follows a family trying to navigate their way through their “white worlds.” The patriarch, with his job where his white colleagues claim to understand the black issues facing society… but they don’t get it. His wife, the biracial anesthesiologist, who can juggle her job and is still able to fulfill her roles as a mother. And their children, who attend private schools with a low percentage of black student population, are assimilating to their social circles. The show is always about the dad trying to convince either his co-workers of the injustices of black people, or he’s trying to teach his family to be “more B...