In This Together: Police Brutality Against Black and Brown People

Protesters marching in Seattle for justice for the killing of John T. Williams, 2010.

Native people are the most loving people in the world. And it makes sense—so many of us have seen this movie before. We got our own problems, right? Still, ever since the Michael Brown tragedy in Ferguson, Missouri, I’ve received hundreds of Facebook messages and emails—Native people understanding the connection between black folks’ interaction with… Continue reading In This Together: Police Brutality Against Black and Brown People

On the Cusp of Identity

Johny Pitts in Moscow

Johny Pitts is a writer, photographer, and broadcast journalist interested in issues of Afro-European identity. He won a Decibel Penguin Prize for a short story included in the The Map of Me, a Penguin books anthology about mixed-race identity. He recently collaborated with author Caryl Phillips on a photographic essay for the BBC and Arts… Continue reading On the Cusp of Identity

Brothers, Do You Love Yourselves?

The author at age 19.

Fat faggot was what they called me from eighth through twelfth grades. It had been just plain faggot before then. And sissy and sweet thang and Oreo and mutt and sometimes halfbreed and once or twice even cracker. But it was fat faggot that stayed. It stayed after I had graduated high school and lost… Continue reading Brothers, Do You Love Yourselves?