Jordan Sheppard | Staff Writer “Where’d the music go?” This was the question asked by R&B singer Leela James in her 2005 single “Music” from her first studio album A Change Is Gonna Come. In the song, James is questioning the state that music was in at the time and can be used in terms of the music of today. Many mainstream artists are more focused on making money rather than making songs that have meaning behind them. One of the genres that James is touching on is R&B, as she mentions the likes of Gladys Knight, Marvin Gaye and … Continue reading State of Emergency: The current state of R&B

Jamaija Rhodes | Staff Writer Issa Rae, producer and actress for HBO’s Insecure, once said, according to Washington Post Magazine, “Black and awkward is the worst, because black people are stereotyped as being anything but awkward in the mainstream media… Black people are always portrayed to be cool, overly dramatic anything but awkward.” Until recent years, the concept of being both black and awkward has been dismissed and overlooked. As black people, we are oftentimes expected to be cool, knowledgeable on all of the trends, confident and suave. When an individual of African descent deviates from this perception society has created for the … Continue reading Black & awkward

Ryland Staples| Staff Writer In the middle of the afternoon Oct. 11, I was in the library working on a project for my marketing class. Admittedly, I was procrastinating on Twitter when I came across an article from PAPER Magazine on my timeline with the caption, “GOOD MORNING TO OUR KING @emoblackthot.” I blinked in confusion. I thought to myself, “Our king? That’s strange.” I followed @emoblackthot (EBT) for a while, and I knew that according to the tweets that the account made, that she was a queer black woman from Texas that prided herself on uplifting black women and … Continue reading The problem with @emoblackthot

Lindsay Keener | Staff Writer When I think of the Black community, my community, I am often reminded of our resilience, fortitude and endurance. I am also painfully aware that these collective character traits were not sparked by a sudden jolt of strength, but a need to survive.  Survival is not the prerequisite to struggle, it is the consequence. The existence of black people in America begins with the stories of slaves, manipulated into complying with the requests of their slave masters. Thousands of abused men, women and children were forced to remain in a place of pain in fear … Continue reading Is the black community too forgiving?

Jordan Sheppard | Staff Writer On July 14, President Donald Trump went on Twitter, and in a series of tweets, he attacked four politicians of color: Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA). He explicitly told them to “go back” to the “broken and crime infested places from which they came.” Later that day, The Wall Street Journal published an article classifying Trump’s tweets as being “racially charged.” Two days after that, writers for Reuters noted that the comments made by Trump were “racist,” but they had placed the word within quotes. Many … Continue reading More black journalists are needed to tell stories for us, about us and by us