8 Brilliant Blog Posts and Articles by Black Women You Need to Read

Across the web, Black women are producing incredible content on a wide range of topics. We've come across these 8 pieces by Black women that deserve your attention.

Why Natural Hair Wasn't for Me by Deena Campbell

However, slowly but surely, small tasks turned into big ordeals. For instance, washing my hair was the ultimate chore. What would normally take 45 minutes was now a two-hour session.

Then there was the judgment from the natural-hair community. “Oh you’re a straight natural,” they quipped. “Just wear it curly or wear a braid out. Why be natural and still straighten your hair?” And, I could never do enough for my newly brittle hair because there was always some new home remedy that would fill-in-the-blank my hair better. I couldn’t keep up with all the organic products, and baking soda rinses made me gag! 

Is the separation of eroticism and feminism a problem? by Sabia McCoy-Torres

This history, while specific to African-Americans, is translatable to the historic forming of feminist personas as they apply to white women as well. The fight for women’s equality and safety has been closely concerned with tearing down the objectification of women in its many oppressive forms. What has followed in result is a sensitivity to women’s behaviors that can be thought of as coming from our historic objectification and victimization. Sex, eroticism, sexuality, all benefits to men and so frequently at the center of women’s objectification, then are demonized as deriving from a male agenda or seen as a response to the male agenda. The desire to express eroticism and sexuality are inherently a part of women as well and also to our benefit, but history seems to have pitted open expression as taboo and against the feminist agenda.

Women’s History Month: Remembering Pauli Murray — a heroine who fought ‘Jane Crow’ by Blair Kelley

In a manner that echoes the fight against the racialized application of “Stand Your Ground” laws today, Murray organized in support of Odell Waller, a black sharecropper who faced the death penalty in Virginia after killing his white landlord in self defense. Murray’s work for the Waller case drew her further into the public eye as an advocate for the movement, and convinced her that she needed to study law in order to do the work she was called to do. On the strength of her activism and a letter of recommendation from Thurgood Marshall himself, Murray embarked on a legal career at Howard University.

“I Love Being A Mommy!!!” On Shanesha Taylor & Black Motherhood in the Age of Mass Incarceration by Prison Culture

While I had imagined Shanesha sitting in her jail cell missing her children like crazy before, it now feels more real to me. I have seen photographs that appear to be of her children. They are sitting in the middle of presents with a Christmas tree in the background. They are smiling. It appears that she also has an older school-aged daughter. How confused and scared must her children be? Where’s mommy? they must be asking. Every single hour of every single day that she remains locked in a cage away from them is an indictment of all of us. It is simply cruel.

15 BLACK AND LATINA WOMEN WHO NEED BIOPICS ASAP by Starrhene Rhett-Rocque

It doesn’t seem like Hollywood is ever going take the idea of creating more female biopics seriously–unless it’s Cleopatra for the 15th time, played by a woman with alabaster skin (shade). However, there are so many diverse and dynamic women who have impacted pop culture and society in major ways hiding in plain site. They need proper commemoration, damnit! So, here’s our list of awesome women who should have biopics, just in time to end Women’s History Month with a big fat salute!

Interracial Relationships in the BDSM Lifestyle by Valerie_JeanC

The interesting thing about being in "The Life" is you never know who is in it with you. Your Pastor could be a Dom. Your best friend could be a sub. Being such a sub-culture, many in the BDSM lifestyle hide this side of themselves for a multitude of reasons. It wasn’t until I joined that I started dissecting how people spoke and carried themselves. Soon, I was able to correctly guess which of my friends --- and family members! -- were in "The Life". I immediately gravitated towards them, feeling a new kinship and bond. One of these individuals was friend from college, a Dom, who actually had quite a few number of subs serving Him at the time. He was excited (I’m sure for a number of reasons *wink wink*) that I had joined "The Life". He wanted to know who was this man that had done this to me. I pulled up Facebook and showed Him. He sat back in his chair and grimaced.

30 Years a Bitch: Ending a relationship with rap music by Bougie Black Girl

Rap makes everyone dance and smile but was quick to publicly humiliate me and call Black women a bitch or a hoe.  When it did, I purposely ignored it. I reassured myself not to worry, rap music, just like my partner was just kidding. I mean rap didn’t mean to call me out of my name even though it has done it over and over and over again.  It wasn’t really talking about me even though it was talking about me. Because rap loves me, right?

A Nasty Piece of Cornbread: Chait, Coates, and White Progressivism by Tressie McMillan Cottom

This is a turn so common in the long history of black intellectuals and white publics as to be mundane. Black anger about white violence, white racism, and the veneer of white civility is acceptable to white liberals only when it is in service to their role as caretaker. It is a role that requires the illusion of hope. Without a hopeful angry ward, Mr. Drummond is just some weird dude keeping his black adopted sons in a gilded cage. Hope is what transforms the relationship into a cause, a movement, a penance.