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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.

CNN hosted a heated debate between host Marc Lamont Hill and retired NYPD detective Harry Houck in which Houck ran up a list of statistics to back his allegation: “Black people are more prone to criminality.” But according to recent studies there are a multitude of factors which lead to black people being arrested and shot by police, and “more prone to criminality” isn't one of them.

I had to learn me because I was never given a chance to. People often act like this is easy or shouldn't be hard to grasp, but when you've literally spent your entire life not even knowing what your real hair feels like, it takes time to get used to that, especially when you have no one and nowhere to go to for solid advice.

I may not be thrilled to vote for her, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let the misogyny and toxic masculinity we fight so hard against control the campaign narrative of the first major woman presidential candidate.

This piece is for you, my non-Black friends, my non-Black family members, my non-Black activists, my non-Black educators, and my non-Black partner. This piece is for you, because whether you know it or not, you benefit from anti-Blackness.

Let me begin by saying a name: Charles Kinsey. Mr. Kinsey is the latest Black man to be shot by police while a bystander filmed the incident with a phone. Unlike so many others, Mr. Kinsey — thank the heavens — has lived to tell the tale.

I find myself in this place again. I am numb. I feel empty. I almost have no words.
In 2012, around the time of the birth of my son, I had a similar feeling. Trayvon Martin was killed. I was pregnant with a black male in a world that was not ready for him.

The reality is that any person I love, including my daughters, can deeply hurt my feelings. Does this mean that I hold my daughters to the same level of emotional accountability as my husband or my best friend? Nope, but for it damn sure doesn’t mean that I morph into some feeling-less version of myself because I’m a mother, either.