Dear Demetria: “I’ve been with my boyfriend for almost a year. It’s our first time spending our birthdays with each other. I was planning something for his birthday, but he told me he might go out of town with his friends. I told him it was fine because it’s his birthday and he can spend ...
I knew someone Black was going to come to the defense of former Univision host Rodner Figueroa who was recently fired after he compared First Lady Michelle Obama to Planet of the Apes. I guessed Don Lemon, maybe Stacey Dash. They’ve both made a brand out of going right when all the other black people go left. It ...
Dear Demetria: I did a big chop yesterday. I sent a picture to my live-in fiance, who is the father to my 2-year-old daughter. He responded that I looked crazy and that he doesn’t like short hair. When I got home, he asked me if I was going for the lesbian look. I asked him if I ...
Kids aren’t going to sh-. They’ve been ain’t sh- for awhile. There just weren’t as many cameras around to document it. Like millions of other people, I watched the cell phone footage of a 15 year old girl getting pummeled in a Brooklyn McDonald’s. It’s frightening, deplorable, horrendous, and every other hyper-negative word you can ...
I had a breakdown in Nairobi. Like full-on heaving sobs, snotty tears and all. Don’t be alarmed. I do this at least once every time I travel overseas. I love traveling. I love seeing new parts of the world and meeting new people and learning and appreciating new cultures. As long as I am able, ...
I planned to write an actual Day 4 post, but…. Cousin G and I went to see the elephants in the morning. And on the way back to the cottage, we stopped at the grocery store. And at the grocery store, I bought two big bottles of water, a bug bottle of juice, and ...
So, I mentioned yesterday that I hadn’t seen any white people really, and that it was odd when I did. I was accused of seeming “slightly irritated” that there were none around. Um… not sure where that assumption came from, especially given the crack about gentrified Brooklyn. But for clarity, it was an observation about ...
1. So yesterday, I told you that the first song I head on the radio in Nairobi was Adina Howard’s “Freak Like Me”. It stood out to me because the station didn’t appear to be oldies. The announcer was doing a call-out for women who had given birth at 12/13 and were now raising daughters ...
I’ll tell my random how I got here (as in Nairobi) story another day. It involves a mother being unimpressed by flamingos and over-concerned (I think) about terrorism, me missing a connecting flight in London (thus delaying my arrival by 9 hours) and being temporarily separated from my travel buddies (while chill-laxing at the Hilton ...
The closing scenes of last Tuesday night’s Being Mary Jane threw us all for a loop. After shooing away her ex, Mary Jane returned home and seemed to be in for the night. Suddenly she was getting dressed and heading back out to see a man we were introduced to only as “Cutty Buddy,” her friend with benefits ...
