Negroes be running through the block shootin'

Reminiscing about the last time the Task Force flipped

G-packs get off quick, forever negroes talk stuff

I be kicking, musician, inflictin' composition

Laughing at baseheads trying to sell some broken amps

Or either on the corner betting Grants with the cee-lo champs

I keep some E&J, sitting bent up in the stairway

Y'all know my steelo with or without the airplay

Hand me a nine and I'll defeat foes

Bullet holes left in my peepholes, I'm suited up in street clothes

Holding an M-16, see with the pen I'm extreme, now

Of pain, I'm like Scarface smelling amphetamines

Rappers, I monkey flip 'em with the funky rhythm

I don't know how to start this stuff, yo

Where fake negroes don't make it back

Straight out the friggin dungeons of rap

Yeah, it's time man (aight negro, begin)

(Word, it's time negro?)

Yeah yeah, aiyyo black it's time (word?)

NY State of Mind

floating perfectly through the net.

and swiveling back to see an orange blur 

for the game he loved like a country

with a wild, headlong motion

inexplicably falling, hitting the floor

but losing his balance in the process,

against the glass for a lay-up,

by himself now and laying it gentl

in a fury, taking the ball into the air

while the power-forward explodes past them

and commits to the wrong man

until the guard finally lunges out   

a single bounce hitting the hardwood

between them without a dribble, without 

together as brothers passing the ball

and filling the lanes in tandem, moving

the way that forwards should, fanning out

both forwards racing down the court

like a coach’s drawing on the blackboard,

n slow motion, almost exactly

etting the play develop in front of him

of a high, gliding dribble and a man   

in the wrong direction, trying to catch sight

who looks stunned and nailed to the floor

scissoring past a flat-footed defender

n underhand pass toward the other guard   

to the outlet who is already shoveling

and spinning around to throw a strike 

from the air like a cherished possession

perfectly, gathering the orange leather

boxes out his man and times his jump

and for once our gangly starting center

angs there, helplessly, but doesn’t drop

A hook shot kisses the rim and

Fast Break

in the chalk and choke

n the many many mornings-after

in the non-cheering dark,

ultivation of strength to heal and enhance

you. I call for you

what wants to crumble you down, to sicken

Over

ong blows that you want to give and blows you are going to get.

cultivation of victory Over

I call for you

Where it is dry.

Where it is dry.

Under the wolves and coyotes of particular silences.

in the hot paralysis.

in the vertigo cold.

Dark gardening

I call for you cultivation of strength in the dark.

Nor any Placard boast me ‑Itʹs full as Opera

Nor any know I know the ArtI mention ‑ easy ‑ Here

Till I was out of sight, in sound,The House encore me so

I cannot dance opon my Toes ‑No Man instructed me ‑But oftentimes, among my mind,A Glee possesseth me,That had I Ballet Knowledge ‑Would put itself abroadIn Pirouette to blanch a Troupe ‑Or lay a Prima, mad,And though I had no Gown of Gauze ‑No Ringlet, to my Hair,Nor hopped for Audiences ‑ like Birds ‑One Claw opon the air ‑

Nor hopped for Audiences ‑ like Birds ‑One Claw opon the air

And though I had no Gown of Gauze ‑No Ringlet, to my Hair

n Pirouette to blanch a Troupe ‑Or lay a Prima, mad,

That had I Ballet Knowledge ‑Would put itself abroad

I cannot dance opon my Toes ‑No Man instructed me ‑But oftentimes, among my mind

We need to be more thoughtful, more deliberate and more fluid about the many spaces that we navigate, which require different levels of conscientiousness and clarity, so that we aren't misunderstood.

We don't need universal rules around this stuff

In that aforementioned workplace harassment case, Carmona's lawyer argued that black folks use nigger among one another with a specific, affectionate, intra-racial understanding. But that, too, is wrong:

alking about nigger requires us to hold different and at times contradictory ideas in our heads at once. We have to actually acknowledge that we have different histories and live in different spaces

"baby" might be affectionate between two lovers at home but grounds for a sexual harassment complaint if a boss were to say it to another employee work.

Paltrow's music industry friends were more forgiving, but the larger Twitterverse, full of people who have different orientations to Paltrow, was predictably much less willing to extend her the benefit of the doubt.

didn't mean any harm.

When nonblack folks ask why they can't say it but black people can, the question misses the point. Anyone can say it — but that doesn't mean there won't be fallout for doing so.

should be clear, simple rules around its usage, so that we might point out transgressors (and avoid transgressing ourselves). There shouldn't be a double standard, the arguments go. Just one standard.

this is a singularly slippery word, with complicated, ugly histories baked into it.

called another woman a "whore" and dismissed a separate sexual harassment complaint because he said the woman in question was "too ugly" to be the target of such a thing — but most of the attention centered on the act-like-niggers bit.

You and her are very bright ... but y'all act like niggers ... seriously."

It is important to consider the context of the word’s use in these situations. One thing I think we can all agree on is that “n-----” is offensive language. In fact, you could probably make the argument that no one should be using the word. Regardless of your race, I argue that we should be better at policing ourselves with the term if we really want to change what so many complain about.

I argue that if the black community really wants to see the change in others, then the black community needs to make a change too.

Frowning on white people who enjoy listening and singing along to songs with the N-word insinuates that it is only OK for black people to say “n-----,”

he books “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” have been eliminated from the curriculum because of their use of racial slurs.

While I neither believe nor support the notion that the black community should be solely responsible for spearheading the end of the word’s use, I do believe that the black community has a large role to play in the issue.

Head coach John Sung extended his apology for the team’s actions

the team received immediate backlash

It is also worth noting that in order for Lil Dicky to use “n-----” in the song, it was necessary for him to bring in a black person to be the one to sing the word

Freaky Friday” by Lil Dicky featuring Chris Brown, which uses “n-----” in the lyrics. The song tells the story of a white man, Lil Dicky, who switches bodies with a mixed man, Chris Brown, and then asks if he can say the N-word now since he is black

peek into the world of what it means to be black

“N-----” is, undoubtedly, offensive

He argues that white people can’t seem to accept this because of white privilege.

has led to some white people also saying the word

African-American rappers.

He asserts that white people have been raised in a society whose laws and culture communicates that “everything belongs to you

“If the word is so offensive to the black community, then why does the black community still use it?

friendly when used by the black community and derogatory when used by non-black people.

word has re-emerged

white people branded Africans with the term and used it to abuse and belittle them for decades

I don’t agree with the argument that use of the word niggerat this social stratum of the black community was an internalization of racism

Black people cannot drive without fear of being pulled over or even killed by police

Because to be black is to walk through the world and watch people doing things that you cannot do.

everything belongs to you

white trash

My wife with her girlfriends will use the word ‘bitch

while it is OK for his wife to refer to him as “honey,” he noted, it is probably not cool for a strange woman walking down the street to do so.  

Words don’t have a meaning without context

For him to delight in blackness, even in the ways that were really kind of pushing it and that made people uncomfortable, is liberating for me

He was a white man with a passion for blackness.

It's shocking that he didn't realize how unmoored some people would become. W.E.B. Du Bois said the title was "an affront to the hospitality of black folk." That response really unnerved him, and I think he came to regret the title late in life.

racial slur

Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance: A Portrait in Black and White."

mind too strewn

Sisyphus

Most of my own poems are racial in theme and treatment, derived from the life I know. In many of them I try to grasp and hold some of the meanings and rhythms of jazz

Now I await the rise of the Negro theater

against an undertow of sharp criticism and misunderstanding from his own group

A colored man writing poetry! How odd!

But she told me a few weeks before she would not think of going to hear "that woman," Clara Smith, a great black artist, sing Negro folksongs

Negro artist can give his racial individuality, his heritage of rhythm and warmth, and his incongruous humor that so often, as in the Blues, becomes ironic laughter mixed with tears

for the American Negro artist who canescape the restrictions the more advanced among his own group would put upon him, a great field of unused material ready for his art.

jazz is their child

hey do not particularly care whether they are like white folks or anybody else. Their joy runs, bang! into ecstasy

A very high mountain indeed for the would-be racial artist to climb in order to discover himself and his people

And in the South they have at least two cars and house "like white folks.

Don't be like niggers

Negro middle class

And I was sorry the young man said that, for no great poet has ever been afraid of being himself

I want to be a poet--not a Negro poet

The tallest tower Can tumble down If it be not rooted In solid ground

A joker was lucky To be alive. But Booker T. Was nobody's fool: You may carve a dream With an humble tool

He built a school With book-learning there And the workman's tool

On this foundation we may build bread winning, skill of hand and quickness of brain

Higher Education

If we make money the object of man-training, we shall develop money-makers

The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men

approved

approved him and not simply because he was a great singer

Then a foreign land heard Hayes and put its imprint on him and immediately America with all its imitative snobbery woke up.

true of the white world it is infinitely more true of the colored world.

ability and genius

We have had many voices of all kinds as fine as his and America was and is as deaf as she was for years to him

After all, in the world at large, it is only the accident, the remnant, that gets the chance to make the most of itself

the accidents of education and opportunity have raised on the tidal waves of chance

few recognized and successful Negro artists; but they are not all those fit to survive or even a good minority

artists we face our own past as a people

the Negro youth, is a different kind of youth,

Who shall let this world be beautiful

What is it

what the world could be if it were really a beautiful world

what is it that you would want?

We want to be Americans

You and I have been breasting hills; we have been climbing upward; there has been progress

struggling for the right of black men to be ordinary human beings

I hope we shall not remain at this negative pole

Should we not then have a journal of free discussion, open to all sides of the problem

We need, I suppose in addition to art some substitute for propaganda.

The three journals which have been vehicles of most of our artistic expressions have been the avowed organs of social movements and organized social programs

To date we have had little sustained art unsubsidized by propaganda;

Hughes’s essay delivers a lesson

With a focus on increasing authentic representation of people of color, Milestone Media created a world of splash pages and panels that is both inextricably bound to the music, politics, and energy of its time—much like the Black Arts Movement

“My problem—and I’ll speak as a writer now—with writing a black character in either the Marvel or DC universe is that he is not a man. He is a symbol. Like Wonder Woman—if you write Wonder Woman, she is all women

felt the paucity of characters of color, queer characters, and women characters within American comics needed to be addressed

Black artist downtown became more and more isolated from that so-called ‘mainstream’ by the growing need to fully express [their] soul and mind connection with Black struggle in [their] art and in the street”.

If white people are pleased we are glad.

Be stereotyped, don’t go too far, don’t shatter our illusions about you, don’t amuse us too seriously. We will pay you,’ say the whites.”

The Negro artist works against an undertow of sharp criticism and misunderstanding from his own group and unintentional bribes from the whites.

no great poet has ever been afraid of being himself

the young poet tells Hughes that he wants to be “a poet—not a Negro poet,” which Hughes takes to mean that, at best, the young poet seeks to downplay his race