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Photo by Force Majeure on Unsplash

Why I Refuse To Keep Paying The Unacceptable Cost Of Being A Black Woman In America Today

As a Black woman, I don’t have the luxury of not caring what others think about me.

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If I couldn’t find clothes that fit me while I viewed the Eiffel Tower sparkling at night or sipped on a proper cappuccino in Milan, was the world really mine to occupy?

Shopping Abroad Is Tough When You're Black And Plus-Size

If I couldn’t find clothes that fit me while I viewed the Eiffel Tower at night or sipped on a proper cappuccino, was the world really mine to occupy?

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Image: Annette Richmond

10 Questions You've Always Wanted To Ask Your Black Friend

I recently went tubing with a new friend. We met at our seasonal summer job and decided to spend the day floating down the Green River.

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I was angry and felt defeated. I also knew deep in my heart that this would have never happened if I were white. Image: Thinkstock.

Using Uber While Black

I was angry and felt defeated. I also knew deep in my heart that this would have never happened if I were white. I had been using Uber for over 2 1/2 years and never came across anything similar to this.

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"I spent quite a few of my preteen and early teen years enjoying taking pictures. But because of the combination of racism, fat antagonism, and lookism, I wasn’t always comfortable getting in front of the camera." Image: Thinkstock

The Right To Be Ugly: How Lookism Affects My Ability To Be Carefree

[W]hy must the acknowledgment of my beauty be predicated on how well and how often I contort to attempt to fit into some kind of ideal? Why can’t I be all the iterations of me and still be beautiful?

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We are all different, as we come from different backgrounds, experience different hardships, and come to have different perspectives on the world. Image: Thinkstock.

Saying “We Are All The Same” Will Not Unite Us

As much as you want to believe people are all the same, we don’t have the luxury of being seen as the “default” in the same way white, straight, cis people often are. We don’t have the luxury of dismissing our painful history and systemic issues for the sake of everyone getting along, because we’re still in the middle of them.

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“The police shooting of ‪Charles Kinsey last week [as of writing] exposed the myth of policing as a viable response to crisis scenarios in the United States.” Image: by Daniel Arauz/Flickr.

Not Everyone Thinks Funneling More Resources Into Police 'Training' Is Solution to Racist Violence

Some human rights campaigners argue that now is an important time to scrutinize federal funding of highly-militarized police trainings in the Miami area that may contribute to surrounding police agencies’ aggressive tactics.

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"We’re painfully aware of the fact that we’re “the only one” in the room, or one of very few. Don’t make it worse." Image: Author

3 Ways To Avoid Tokenizing People (Because I'm Sick Of It)

It’s like being a deer in the headlights. You’re in imminent danger. You know it. But you can’t move. You can’t speak. No reaction whatsoever. You just stand or sit there, frozen in time, waiting for the crash.

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