Let’s Not Be So Quick to Deify Angela Davis

We should be wary of deifying Angela Davis. Deification strips people (but particularly Black people, and especially Black women) of our humanity. “Why?” I’m like 99.9% sure this is what you, dear reader, thought as soon as you read this title. But,

Jun 30, 2020

News & Politics

We Fight Together: 17 Black Anti-Imperialists to Radicalize You

White supremacy compels us to analyze how anti-imperialism is a necessity in our resistance against oppression. All of our struggles are intertwined. We are living in a particularly radical time right now. Seriously. I feel like everyone says that every couple

Jun 22, 2020

Culture and Entertainment

60 Books J. Cole Could Have Read Instead of Writing That Goofy Ass Song

It's not that hard to read. Here is a list of books that J. Cole should have read before he opened his fucking mouth. This essay mentions sexual assault. Jermaine Lamarr Cole is an odd nigga. A perplexing negro. A puzzling,

Jun 18, 2020

Race

Surveilled and Harassed For Playing Malcolm X Speeches: Mikisa Thompson’s Resistance

"I’m just trying to survive as Black woman who wants to do the work to help dismantle white supremacy," says Mikisa Thompson. Content note for anti-Blackness and descriptions of police surveillance and harassment. “It seems like we cannot do anything that brings

Jul 31, 2019

Culture and Entertainment

You Cannot Be Pro-Cop and Pro-Black: How ‘BlaKkKlansman’ Fails Us

BlacKkKlansman isn't a story of infiltrating hate, but a harsh reminder of how easily pro-police propaganda can disguise itself in radical Black aesthetic.

This essay contains spoilers for Spike Lee's “BlacKkKlansman” and mentions of racist violence, police brutality, sexual assault. By Vanessa Taylor With the tagline “infiltrate hate”, Spike Lee’s latest joint, “BlacKkKlansman”, boldly burst onto the scene this summer with a marketing campaign that focused on its basis as a true story. At its simplest, that is true. “BlacKkKlansman” is a biographical dramedy based largely on Ron Stallworth’s 2014 memoir, Black Klansman. However, to say that the movie adaption holds completely true to either Stallworth’s memoir or the history it draws from would be a lie. Although adaptations often take liberties and make changes when bringing true stories to the big screen, “BlacKkKlansman” and the way it treats this particular story brings up questions about what kind of responsibility adaptations such as this has to its subjects as well as its audience. The film follows Ron Stallworth, the first Black officer to work for the Colorado Springs Police Department. Stallworth is able to use his position to launch an investigation of the Ku Klux Klan, assisted by fellow officer Flip Zimmerman. As a Black man, Stallworth can only infiltrate the KKK via phone calls, so Zimmerman is the one who portrays him in any face-to-face interactions with the hate group. To understand the criticisms which cite the film as cop propaganda, it’s necessary to parse out fact from fiction. In Slate, writer Jasmine Sanders breaks it down for us. The film very briefly touches on the issue of anti-Blackness within the police force, but largely portrays the problem as belonging to one cop, Landers, who shot and killed a teenage boy prior to the film’s beginning, harasses Kwame Ture, and sexually assaults Stallworth’s love interest, Patrice.