"what you doing with all that vax? just double vaxxed up on a thursday afternoon...the sun is out"
mango habenero freestyle
eid mubarak for islam gang, blessings to all of us, two eids apart i miss worrying if someone is gonna jack my shoes during prayer 🇲🇷
love to miriam who drove two hours to kick it with me in ohio so we could live mas 🌮
so good to see you jean b, been a minute since we worked together at every woman’s house but we kept the same energy and big ups to the new consulting firm gig ⚡️⚡️⚡️
big ups zahir, ‘queens’ get the money (triple entendre, don’t ask me how) 💰💰💰
shout out ashley for the fire kicks game, the custom uptown connect for sure 👀
shout out [redacted] my plane buddy this month, i hope you and your family enjoy montana and you listen to the indie up and comer artist i suggested french montana *hahhhhhhhhh* 🛩
shout out mikey and ana for their baby girl elia, love y’all ❤️
shout out the college of wooster doing extreme makeover school edition while draggggggin on getting some black professors…looking shaky….I dunnooooo 👀
shout out bria, twan, joy, and leah for being consistent with keeping the pressure on wooster 🙏🏾
shout out aida, my lil sib, on locking down a lead role in an hbo show ✨
shout out joey aka lil gabbagoolito aka yung caps lock out here twitching and pooping his way to fame 🙏🏾
SHOUT OUT THE 4TH SEED NEW YORK KNICKERBOCKERS ALL CAPS SO YOU KNOW IT’S REAL 🏀
big ups lili, stand in your truth, stay your course, you’re doing amazing fam, my yes and laughter lab grandbaby (keep the blanquitas in their place) ⚡️
big ups karen, i love you sis, truly so proud to know you and see the growth and that dog is named pastelito in my mind, i’m sorry 🌱
wedding bells for kev and ari in june…mad, love y’all so much (kevin, how dare you put a 400$ le crueset pot on your registry, lemme introduce you to tj maxx) 🤵🏾♂️
as always, mi amor maria for showing me around florida and always being a real one 😘 (had me out here with my thighs out)
eid mubarak for islam gang, blessings to all of us, two eids apart i miss worrying if someone is gonna jack my shoes during prayer 🇲🇷
love to miriam who drove two hours to kick it with me in ohio so we could live mas 🌮
yooooo tawny and jimmy, excited to hear set is going well now that joke terrorism is at an all time low 🚀
big ups zahir, ‘queens’ get the money (triple entendre, don’t ask me how) 💰💰💰
shout out ashley for the fire kicks game, the custom uptown connect for sure 👀
yo peng dang, i don’t know you but shout out to you for having the mental and moral fortitude to call out that racist dude who looks like a long pinky toe with hair, mad respect ✊🏾
no shout out to the academy who let my son [redacted] buy an oscar based on [redacted] buuuut what else is new? 📺
big ups petey on working on his book about diversity and inclusion, you doing the work, we see you ✊🏾
free palestine. full stop. if you don’t know, you should know. if you don’t wanna know, log off and do your googles. ✨
and shout out my moms (both here and in mauritania and mali - tantes ba diallo, ma, mariam, marie, marietou, asta, and the list really don’t stop), love you, thanks for raising me, so glad I could spend some time with you for eid, the trucks soon come ok??? aw ke yafama, barra be’n bolo yanno sisanno mais yanni annee prochaine ke ban, n’be segin so 😘😘😘
talking to my therapist about letting myself be angry and not bottling it for never and lemme tell you the day soon approaches where i give someone the paws shirtless outside a le pain quotidien
bae are you ok, you haven’t rawr XD’d in a while
i learned i have a degree of separation from someone who got locked up because of the capital riots lmaooooookillmeooooo
y’all between better leave laci alone on icarly on god
my body’s a temple, not a skate park
chance: this is my part nobody else speak
us: …
chance: I LOVE MY WIIIIFE AIGH
reclaiming my time from 2020 like vaccine waters
if you don’t like that silk sonic track with bruno mars and paak, you’re a pure hater
🎶looking for reveeeeeenge all summer vaccine🎶
“from miramax pictures, a story between two white people from different countries that used to own black people who meet in another country that used to colonize black people to answer the question “can we find something in common outside of the fact that we both are white?“ a love challenged, by how boring these two motherfuckers really are. delight as we follow their romantic exploits as they do stock caucasian activities that they then call “love.” from director a white guy and the people that brought you every other Caucasian dating story with unrealistic expectations on what your (yes your) relationships should look like.”
we need to start bringing back giving people to hands because people are really out here doing the long talk when there really is a short solution
meghan markle could wash kate middleton in a fight
let aoc beat the brakes off of mtg on the chun li level of street fighter 2
bill gates gotta get some drip before he slides into some dms, he dresses like a substitute golf teacher
if you black with only white friends, you’re a non-fungible token
put an immigrant dad in charge of the military budget and we will never buy another f-22 (unless it was 98% off)
i was talking with yedoye about the appeal of white savior movies. and because i'm too busy to actually write the full sketch out, just imagine a world where a upper-middle-class black family takes in a white kid from a low income, drug-riddled old neighborhood and teaches him to be on a debate team or something i don't know nigga, i’m flying. just download the blind side trailer, put it in photo negative and that's basically what i'm talking about i guess. throw in a dramatic “from new line cinema and melanin pictures comes the same old white savior story but with a twist… this time they're black” and throw on a papa roach sounding instrumental cover of gangsta's paradise.
this being said, my biggest flex will be going into a white neighborhood and taking a photo with da likkle white babies and posting as my profile picture for 2-17 years
random: how come unicef don't go to trailer parks? there are poor white people, absolutely. i am not roasting them, but for some reason when white people going to the south side of a town or into a remote village in nigeria, they get to be heroes. when i want to go and help poor white people in youngstown, ohio hypothetically (and possibly cinematically), i'm the bad guy chun-li? nah foh
dasani didn’t really hang out with water growing up but now is mad pro-water, out here false flagging
water shouldn’t have to work so hard to convince me it’s water
offering me dasani is a hate crime.
friendships expire. that’s ok.
young bipoc creatives: your shit ain’t moving because of clout chasing co-opters of color or confused and colluding caucasian interference (or both). keep going.
malignant vs. benign ignorance: much like cancer, not all ignorance is murderous but it all needs to be examined and excised.
much like our issue with people and social media these days, america has a reckoning with its projected image and the truth.
america isn’t known for its hospitality but rather its image of hospitality. community feels like a myth especially when racism, sexism, homophobia, and various phobias, isms, and ists go unchecked, but the moment that there’s a toilet paper shortage, people become animals. people refuse to wear a mask to protect themselves and others, the easiest way to be a hero. people hoard gas at the slightest setback.
white audacity is a renewable resource.
white women be stacking like they playing defensive uno and when they losing, they drop the reverse racism card
as a person who has a history of blaming myself, self sabotage, and overapologizing, sometimes it’s the other mf who has some work to do. ask yourself “did i do my best with the info and options I had?” and if it’s yes, keep it pushing. if no, find ways to make amends.
if prisons are inhumane and prisons are isolationist, then “canceling” is inhumane because it is isolation and calling it justice. not one to one, but canceling is just carcerality without the physical structure and exactly as rehabilitative.
without the time, patience, and work put into restoring and the upkeep of communities with a commitment to transformation, we’re just replicating that systems that we’re fighting
coming up on a year off of social media. some reflections:
there’s a whole tier of friendship that’s purely voyeuristic. dead that; get some mental space back
the brain loves shortcuts and that makes the labeling of social media a goldmine for it. give humans the complexity that you give yourself, resist lazy labelling, ask your own questions
there’s no need to perform your opinion on social media. the real work happens offline.
resist living in victimhood, we are not our trauma and twitter can be a trauma machine.
binary thinking will get you nowhere, stand in your truth as long as it harms the least amount of people
challenge yourself before you challenge others
being “messy” is a bandaid solution to a complex set of emotions
when someone tells you who they are, believe them. can’t be doing the weebay gif when someone been told you their ways
believe half of what you hear and a quarter of what they tweet
finally….
make a plan with your homies for bystander intervention. me and the boys got one, me and maria got one, etc. here’s a good resource, learn about the d’s from…apparently gwen *checks notes* stefani?
i’ve read (and reread) and wrote (and rewrote) a lot since the last knock, but here’s a shortlist of books to read that i dug
we do this til we free us - mariame kaba (abolition)
we still here - marc lamont hill (policies, policing, protests)
border and rule - harsha walia (politicization of borders and their connection to global nationalism)
the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house - audre lorde
notes on grief - chimimanda ngozi adichie
prison by any other name - victoria law
vulnerability time.
the first time i was taken to task about the israeli-palestinian conflict was in a very public way and i think about it a lot as one of the most public ways i was wrong. i was on a panel of muslims with conservative pundit and mashed potatoes that came to life frank luntz. i have been a very vocal racial justice and anti-prison advocate for a lot of my adult life but this was a blind spot for me and in the moment, after speaking so passionately about being black and muslim, i stumbled.
i didn’t know what to say because so much of what i studied and spoke to related to european settler colonialism in africa and the americas but wasn’t inclusive of the killing of palestinians, the shrinking of the palestinian border over the last 8 decades, and entanglement of jewish identity, israeli identity, zionist rhetoric, the lazy lumping of all palestinians and hamas, and the relationship between the u.s. and israel and who gets to tell their story (something that has *always* been important to me).
so i froze. i gave a very lazy response, citing some two-state solution bullshit. at the moment for me, it felt like a get out of jail free card, but upon immediate and further reflection was a band-aid solution to the moment. luckily, frank and his team used another soundbite for the voracious conservative hordes to be mad at but the feeling lingered.
this last week, i watched celebrities stay silent (either because they don’t know what to say or they don’t care their takes sound be social su*cide for them) or try and both sides the conflict (much like i felt i did all those years ago with lower stakes) because they also don’t know what to say but, with their heart in the right place, want the fighting to stop. ultimately we get to this point: stop listening to fucking celebrities and either (a) find the activists, academics, and scholars who actually do the research and work or (b) use option (a) and form your own take with the best information.
i love rihanna so much but if it ain’t learning about my fenty shade or how to not release music (we waiting sis), i’m keeping her opinion pon di shelf. that being said, why waste precious time and frustration on someone
gal gadot is one of the most visible israelis in hollywood; her statement didn’t even once mention palestine and she served (as is custom) in the idf (google it). maybe just maybe, perchance and perhaps, this may be a happenstance of a smidgen of bias, no?
nick cannon (from last year)…i mean look at a textbook example of not knowing but also, i hope he educates himself (as he’s promised he is)
i’m lucky that I have steve g as a homie because she put me straight and gave me a very good explanation and a safe space to ask questions when she educated me on the conflict as a jewish person who is critical of israel
there’s so much info out there, yes, but here’s just some historical things to keep in mind/questions to ask when reading about something that doesn’t feel or sound right coming from the trades:
history is told by the victors and they yada yada the gross parts because that doesn’t serve a nationalist narrative. always ask “who has control of the narrative? how? why?”
much like hearing white people talk about race on cnn, ask “are members of the community who is being harmed being heard?” don “chile” límon might have gotten spicier in the last few years but i still wanna hear from palestinians.
follow the money: who has what to gain from what allyships? what are the patterns in who gets the resources and aid? who is getting heard and who isn’t? (hint: america being involved ain’t always good)
follow what happens to dissenters. people who disagree with powerful people often get put on a pedestal but get too powerful? get disappeared. look at russia, china, look at the philippines, look at israel, look at america (yeah that's us too, right, dr. king? chairman hampton? malcolm x? every leader from the ferguson protests?)
not saying i agree with hamas, but evicting people from their homes and bombing everything under the guise of “stopping terrorism” is not an israeli no-knock warrant to murder hundreds of palestinian civilians (or america to go into afghanistan or iraq) and self-defense is not throwing the first stone. if you believe in free speech, you believe people have the right to protest unfair conditions especially if those conditions perenially, redraw border lines, block you from resources, and decisions surrounding when/if you should get those resources. palestine (according to the present and historical united nations and british intervention) is an occupied territory (before you yell, do ya googles), it is an open-air prison in a lot of ways and the u.s.’s allyship to israeli interests often makes any stretch towards freedom complicated. not only that but the tangle of zionism, settler colonialism, and israeli governmental choices being confused with being the worldview of every jewish person in the world makes this a sensitive hare-trigger topic without the historical context, every pov from this conflict being represented and (most importantly) heard at the table, and parsing through every detail with a fine-toothed comb.
being critical of israel is just like being critical of america; both countries suppress the needs of the individuals to support the needs of the nation-state, atrocities can get carried out in the name of “protecting borders,” both countries refuse to truly engage with the ugly parts of their history, and both countries pull-out game is trash (america’s democracy baby in afghanistan will be officially old enough to drink next year but that’s haram so…). numbers don’t lie and the moment you can defend the deaths of children as acceptable losses…well, you’ve lost me (but you’d probably love alex jones and the current roster of the gop).
in summary: we ain’t gonna solve this in 280 characters and an infographic. don’t enter the octagon and join a fight that has been going on for a century armed with only your opinion (or a celebrity’s).
it’s scary to “not know” in a culture that tries to shame you for not knowing, just know, it’s ok if you don’t but educate yourself (heavy emphasis on “yourself”). forward, always forward.
given the current conflict, it’s ok if you don’t know the history of the region (what american k-12 school is really teaching this type of news) now but if you can recognize that you don’t know, it’s now your responsibility to educate yourself (or whatever uncle ben said). here’s that radical fact pack about palestine:
palestine: a socialist introduction - sumaya awad and brian bean
freedom is a constant struggle - angela davis
on palestine - noam chomsky and ilan pappé
before the next bomb drops - remi kanazi (poetry)
boycott divestment sanctions - omar barghouti (strategies)
i’m still educating myself and i’ll continue to, just know that in order to normalize a growth mindset we have to have space to grow, time to grow, and i’m only here because i learned an important lesson about my own growth recently but that’s ***extremely terrance howard voice*** next time, baby.
i was recently talking (and writing) pretty spicy about a former coworker and i just want whoever actually reads this to know that that beef continues 🙏🏾🙏🏾
custom kicks gang gang
You continue to inspire/amaze me!!!!