I was up at 3 in the morning after a heavy conversation with my best, pouring forth my unfiltered thoughts and gutting my heart on paper the stream of consciousness of a deaf, black male who has to balance those two predominant spheres (along with being queer) while battling the never ending introspective thoughts that constantly make me question my self worth and whether or not my friends are REALLY my friends, or just people who pity me and are being polite while I misread all of their cues and tones, all the while addressing the fact that I have avoided confronting the real issue that my disability is an obstacle when it comes to building genuine (ergo, romantic) relationships, while people won’t actually SAY it….we all know it’s there, and it’s great that I’m like this “AMAZINGWONDERFULGENUINETALENTEDFUNNY” guy, but I’m still “too deaf,” “too black,” “too intimidating.” And internalizing THIS message, this stream of consciousness, in a way that people cannot look at me and go, “Nah, you’re being a #paranoidminority” or “you’re #attentionseeking and #playingthevictim” because we are often taught that our experiences are invalid. That it’s all in our heads. But it’s me holding up a portrait of myself that contains fragments belonging to different places while not fully belonging anywhere.
I’m not asking for pity or your opinion. There isn’t a right or wrong. It’s just me. My experiences as the results of biology and fucked up circumstances and being a clusterfuck of star stuff.
STORY 1: CATCHING OUR REFLECTIONS: Mirrors show us how we appear to the world, but sometimes we can be caught off guard by what we see in them. Like the literal mirrors that show us only what’s on the surface, there are metaphorical mirrors all around us—labels, credentials and other people—measuring and reflecting parts of who we are. But they can never capture the whole truth. In this piece, the Nigeria-born, US-educated and Sweden-based author of the forthcoming novel In Every Mirror She’s Black will explore how we react to what we see in those literal and metaphorical mirrors and how we can learn to see that reflection, and ourselves, differently. By seeing ourselves more wholly, she says, we can learn to see others the same way, and find more points of connection to other people and cultures.
By Lola Akinmade Åkerström (National Geographic Traveler, BBC, The Guardian, Travel + Leisure, Travel Channel, Forbes, AFAR)
STORY 2: BRANCHING OUT, LOOKING IN: Travel teaches us about the heart—sometimes even beyond the sentimental sense. During his extended post-college time in Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, our author took a horseback trip through the roadless mountains that taught him how to navigate the watershed following the paths of its streams. Years later, in medical school, that experience helped him understand the movement of blood through the vessels of the cardiovascular system, enabling him to better diagnose and treat conditions like heart attacks and strokes. Expanding on this anecdote or a similar one from his forthcoming book, The Unseen Body, he’ll share how his travels to practise medicine in far-flung spots across the globe are about gaining new perspective, not only on everyday life, but also on the most everyday aspect of life, one that unites us all—our own bodies.
By internist and pediatrician Jon Reisman, M.D. (The New York Times, The Washington Post, Discover)
There is something we have to do in order to support our black communities. Not only is our youth at stake because of the color and skin and features, but are told on a daily what we don’t have or need due to being black. This is rediculous and going too far. Something has to be done to protect our youth from future offensors.
People need to stop suing the police dept and the city and start suing the police union. The reason nothing ever happens most times is cause cops can and do have the union at their defense. If the police union had to start suffering financially due to police conduct and actions they would stop defending so many cops that dont deserve to wear the badge.
Alternatively what needs to be done is cops should be required to have degrees. Too many of these cops aren’t qualified to handle people and the situations they answer calls to. Having more qualified individuals won’t end the systematic racism but it would take those that are unqualified for the job in the first place outta rotation.
