Note: This is part 4 of a multipart series. Catch up with part 1 , part 2 and part 3.

If I’ve said this before, it bears repeating: There is something to be said about a man who puts actions behind his words.

Y’all know what I’m talking about. We’ve all been talked to death at least once by some dude who had so much to say about all the things he could, should, or would have done—but took little to no action to back those things up.

It’s exhausting, to be honest. Sometimes you have to weed through a few of those before you get to the one who can back it all up, but when you do get the one who can back it all up? It’s heaven.

So when I tell you that this man earned his nickname HDT (He Did That) in more ways than one, please believe me when I say that he did that.

In the weeks leading up to his visit to Los Angeles, he did little things that reminded me how sweet and thoughtful he was, keeping him at the forefront of my mind.

If he had any real competition, he was smoothly sailing by them.

By the time the day of his visit arrived, I was as giddy as a schoolgirl with a crush, and I couldn’t wait to spend the weekend with him. I had gotten all of my nervousness out already, and I was ready to find out if we could spend nearly 72 hours straight with each other without driving each other crazy.

The morning of his flight, he sent me a text before he boarded his plane that said, “This is your last chance to back out.”

“I’m not backing out of shit,” I replied, and I said it with my chest.

I still had to work that afternoon, so the plan was for him to take a ride share to the hotel and then call me when he arrived so I could meet him there.

I had butterflies the entire day. I packed a weekend bag, organized the stories that I would be writing for that Friday night, and waited to hear from him.

He let me know when he was close, and I was waiting for him in the valet when the Uber pulled up.

He jumped out of the car, dropped his bag at my feet, and scooped me up into the biggest hug. All I could do was be taken in by him. I felt myself melting into his arms, and I inhaled his scent.

When we managed to pry ourselves apart, he said, “Let’s go get our room.”

He checked us in, and we went upstairs to be alone together for the first time in weeks.

I started writing my articles for the night while he showered and washed off the plane ride. He promised not to distract me so that I could get my work done, leaving me surprised and mildly disappointed when he actually stuck to that.

He had some minor work of his own to get done, so we both took care of business in a pleasant and comfortable silence.

When I was done for the night, it was my turn to shower while he ordered us dinner and dessert from a nearby restaurant.

That night and the next two days passed by in a pleasurable haze. There was never a moment of discomfort or awkwardness.

We enjoyed each other inside and out. He had me in every way imaginable, and I him, and it was just like I knew it would be. It was rough when it needed to be, but gentle during all the right moments.

There was plenty of snuggling and cuddling, lots of deep conversations, and the kind of laughs that happen in the dark just before the sun rises.

We were smitten.

At the end of the visit, neither of us wanted it to be over. He’d spoiled me for three days straight, and the thought of him being back on the other side of the country filled me with the sweetest type of dread.

I didn’t know if I was going to be able to wait to be in his presence again.

The way we clung to each other, saying goodbye before he took his Uber back to the airport, you’d have thought he was going off to war. He may as well have been. It felt like that type of separation.

We parted ways with sweet thoughts and memories to carry with us through the next few weeks.

That should have been enough, but I know I have been told plenty of times that sex changes everything.

You never listen to those types of warnings until the reality of them is actualized in your particular situation.

That’s the way it was for me. And him.

Sex changed everything.

And somehow, I should have known that was going to happen.

To be continued next Friday.

footnotes, links, and attributions:

• I’m currently revisiting “classics” we had to read in school. Last week, I listened to George Orwell’s 1984 on Audible. The version I listened to featured actors, and it was very entertaining. It reminded me of how much I enjoy a good book on tape.

• I put my mom onto P-Valley, and she binged both seasons over the weekend. She was very into it. I also got her into Godfather of Harlem, and she’s still finishing that one.

  • I’m honestly doing whatever I can to keep her off of TikTok, which I contend is rotting her brain, one misinformed video at a time.

• I got in a car accident last week. There’s some rear-end damage to my vehicle, and I will be dropping it off at the body shop at the top of next week.

• I had an especially good session with my therapist on Monday, and I came to some conclusions about myself, my work, and my life. More on that later.

• I’ve been watching Euphoria since it came back. I don’t know how I feel about it yet.

• I saw Ari Lennox in concert Sunday night. I’m a bit late to the Ari Lennox show, but I’m here now. She puts on a good show, and the crowd in Vegas was loving her. I’ll pay closer attention now.

I was on a high for the entire week after our encounter.

I got back home to Los Angeles and did everything with a grin on my face. I felt like I was walking on a cloud.

He called every morning to wake me up and start my day on a sweet note. We would then text all day long, talking about everything and nothing at the same time.

It was like a high school crush on Dubs—we couldn’t get enough of each other.

He remembered all the little things.

My favorite sneakers are Chuck Taylors, and I have quite a collection. In New York, I told him how I had been hunting down the raspberry color but had not been able to find it in my size.

Days after I got home, a FedEx package arrived on my doorstep, and inside were the raspberry Chucks I wanted.

I told him how I had been so busy at work that I hadn’t had a chance to go grocery shopping or even cook decent meals because I was constantly on the go.

He sent me an Amazon.com gift card (for Prime) and one for Postmates.

He was thoughtful but not corny. He was generous but not a trick.

He just did that, and I loved every minute of it.

He was up front about his intentions and direct in his approach. I have an appreciation for that, because there are so many games being played in the dating world—it can make a single girl dizzy just trying to dodge all the bullshit.

We spent hours baring our souls and confessing our lives to each other. Our likes and dislikes. Our dreams and aspirations.

I spoke openly with him about my nonmonogamy because I didn’t want it to be an issue later. He listened, asked questions, and told me he was OK with it.

He said that he was also seeing other people, and we agreed to keep it open and respectful, but that’s what grown-ups do, right?

When he told me he wanted to come to Los Angeles to see me, I wasn’t surprised. I figured it was going to happen eventually. When I told him I was OK with him coming, he booked his trip right away.

Action. It’s all we ever want, right?

He booked a hotel room in Hollywood and told me that I was free to stay with him or stay at my apartment while he was here. My choice.

Of course, I said that I wanted to stay with him in the hotel suite. No way was I going to pass up an opportunity to stay in a fancy room with a deep bathtub and fluffy, comfy bathrobes, getting all the sex I wanted.

I could always go back to my apartment if things went left, but I seriously doubted that they would.

As it turns out, I was right.

To be continued next week.

Incidents in the Life of a Serial Nonmonogamist

If you haven’t already, you probably want to read part 1.

I was at ease with him almost immediately. All of his jokes (both corny and not) aside, there was something very sincere in the way he spoke to me—a level of honesty was there that stood out and made itself noticed.

He was self-assured without being presumptuous. He was confident without being cocky. He was intense and intentional, direct and laid-back, funny, sexy, and cool—all at the same time.

I liked the way he looked directly in my eyes as he was speaking to me, and when he listened to me speak. I loved the way he used big words in the most unpretentious way.

He bought me drinks but didn’t ply me with alcohol. He let me make requests, but was proactive when it was required.

When my suitor and his brother asked if my friend and I wanted to come with them back to their hotel suite, me and my girl only had to glance at each other to know that we were both saying yes.

It’s easy to throw caution to the wind when you feel comfortable with someone, but just to be safe, we sent pictures of him and his brother to her sister and told her where we were going.

I have heard people say that a woman usually knows within moments of meeting a man whether she’s going to sleep with him—it’s just a matter of when.

I don’t know how true this is for other women, but speaking for myself, I would say that 9 times out of 10, that is definitely the case.

In the case of Mr. He Did That (HDT from now on), I certainly knew before we left the first bar—but I also knew it wouldn’t be on that first night.

We socialized as a group for a little over an hour in the living room of their suite before he took my hand and led me to his separate bedroom.

“We need some alone time,” he said.

We were comfortably numb from all the alcohol. He turned on his iPod, and we lay facing each other on the bed, talking.

After what seemed like hours but may have only been minutes, I could tell we were going to kiss.

Somehow, gravity had pulled us closer together. My breasts were pressed into his chest. His arm was draped around my waist. Our noses were practically touching.

He looked at me—as if checking to see if it would be OK—and in response, I ran my tongue slowly across his lips.

I felt like every nerve ending in my body was on fire. His kisses were gentle but urgent. He nibbled my lips, kissed my neck, rubbed the small of my back, and held me as close to him as possible.

It was intense.

When the kisses got longer and the petting got heavier, we pulled away from each other and took a breath.

“I like you,” he said.

“I like you too, “ I smiled.

He leaned over and kissed my cheek.

I rolled over onto my stomach, my face turned toward him.

He rubbed my back and stared back at me.

“Do you … ”

I didn’t wait for him to finish. “I do,” I said. “But I don’t think we should.”

He nodded, knowingly. “Probably not.”

He pulled me closer to him again, in the spooning position.

I could feel his excitement press against me—and truth be told, that got me excited, too—but his breathing was so slow and calm in my ear, I could feel myself melting into him.

We lay there, relaxed, whispering into the early-morning hours.

At some point before we drifted off, he promised to stuff me full of pancakes when we woke up.

He made good on that. My hair was a mess after letting him play in it, plus sleeping on it without a bonnet. I said as much on our Lyft ride to the breakfast spot.

After breakfast, he took me to my hotel to pick up my bags, then he took me to Kennedy Airport in a Lyft to see me off.

He said goodbye to me in front of the terminal with a hug that seemed to go on forever and kisses I wished didn’t have to stop.

“I hope I showed you a good time last night.”

I smiled and kissed him again without saying a word.

Because, yes, he did that.

To be continued next week.

Incidents in the Life of a Serial Nonmonogamist

I wasn’t planning to meet anyone, and I wasn’t planning to like him.

It was late last summer in New York City. I had come for a work event, and ended up with some extra time on my hands in the city.

I should have been on a plane on my way back home to Los Angeles, but the way my airline was set up, they overbooked the flight and offered me a travel voucher plus a hotel room for the night if I took a flight the next day instead.

My girlfriend and I were having a light dinner and drinks at a bar in midtown. We’d consumed plenty of tequila and were laughing and talking when I saw him out of the corner of my eye.

You can always tell when someone is sizing you up—at least, I can. I could feel him looking at me even before I turned to see who it was. His silhouette was already commanding a presence in my peripheral.

I turned, ever so slightly, to glance at him. He was looking right back at me. I flashed my cutest and slyest smize before returning my attention to my drink.

It worked.

He made his way over to us, and I pretended not to notice him as I laughed at something my friend said that wasn’t even that funny. Corny, I know, but that worked, too.

He leaned toward me and said, “Excuse me.”

His voice was deep and smooth. I turned toward him and took a good look at him.

“Hi,” I said and gave him a once-over.

Tall—over 6 feet. Thick, full beard. Bald head. Chocolate skin. A suit that looked made specially for him. A matching pocket square and tie. Nice shoes. An air of confidence that was noticeable but not put on.

“I had to come over here because I spotted you and that lipstick from all the way across the room,” he said, smiling. His teeth were perfect.

I smiled but said nothing.

He leaned a little closer, his voice lower this time.

“I’m not trying to be funny, but you looking like a whole snack. Can I eat you?” he asked.

I laughed and said “Sir” loudly.

My girl laughed. He turned, unshaken, to look at her. He flashed a grin at her, then turned back toward me and looked expectantly.

“I’m the most expensive dish on the menu, sir,” I said. My girl laughed again. This time, I joined her.

Without missing a beat, he said, “It ain’t tricking if you got it.”

The next giggle caught in my throat.

Listen. If you are quick on your feet with the witty comebacks, you are well on your way to winning with me.

He had my attention.

We bantered back and forth for a few minutes. I signaled the bartender for my check as he flirted with me.

He was smooth, and the lines he came with after that first one were clever and flattering. He never took his eyes off me, even when his friend walked up and stood just off to the side of us.

When the bartender put my check down, he immediately snatched it up.

“I got it,” he said. He took out an American Express card and slipped it inside without even looking at the bill.

Me and my girl looked at each other and smirked.

It was a player move. He wanted us to know that the amount of the bill was of no consequence to him; he carries no balances.

We see you, sir, I thought to myself.

“We can pay for our own check,” I said.

“No, please,” he said. “Let me.”

More banter. As we talked, I had my phone in my hand because I was live-tweeting everything that was happening. In that moment, everything is funny.

“Are you texting your boyfriend?” he asked.

I laughed and looked back at my girl again, who was giving me the look. She slowly rolled her eyes to the left, and I took in his homeboy for the first time.

He. Was. Not. Cute.

My girl could tell I was warming up to my guy, and she gave me the look, like, Bitch, you better not.

At the same time, Mr. Man had signed the bill and was already asking me what we were planning to do next.

I made up some vague story about us having another spot to hit, and he continued smooth-talking me and my girl until we were convinced to go along with them to another bar, where we were joined by his brother.

In an effort to both give my girl and me a moment to ourselves and not look like a creep, he arranged for us to ride in two separate Lyfts.

My girl was only slightly annoyed, but she warned me that if his brother wasn’t cute, we were leaving the next bar as soon as we walked in.

His brother was very cute.

We hung out with the three of them until very late, drinking, laughing, listening to music, and having a good time.

Mr. Man and his brother invited us back to their hotel suite. It’s cliché and probably a little dangerous, but we went anyway because it was summertime in New York City; we were buzzed off of alcohol, laughter, and good vibes; and the mood was right.

We started out sitting in the living area as a group, but slowly broke off into pairs.

We lay side by side on his bed, talking about everything from my career as a writer to his lifestyle as a lawyer in Miami.

He massaged my scalp, gave me a back rub, and played with my feet.

I licked his lips, got high off of his scent, and fell asleep with my face smushed into his chest.

And I didn’t drool once, thankfully.

The next day, as we parted ways, we exchanged phone numbers.

He saved me as “To Be Continued” in his phone.

I saved him as “He Did That” in mine—because he did, in fact, do that.

But it would take an entirely new column just to explain how …

To be continued next week.

Return of the Mack: How Does Momo Get Her Groove Back?

Previously, I told you about my ill-fated dalliance with a man I dubbed “Mr. Big.” It started off beautifully, trended toward being something good, then crashed and burned at the end.

I spared you most of the sordid details because, to be honest, I just didn’t have the bandwidth to go into all that was discovered to be wrong there—but believe me, there was a lot wrong there.

This is not to say that everything that went wrong was on his end; I accept my blame for where I went left in that experience as well. And it is exactly at this point that I find myself—in medias res.

“In the middle of things” is the perfect description for where I am in my dating life. In the aftermath of the whirlwind romance, I’m more contemplative than I am anything else. I haven’t wanted for social invitations from men, but I have suffered from a lack of interest in them.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I am over men, but I am not as inclined to say yes to dates and “hangouts” at this time. I recognize that this is a byproduct of what happened with my last experience, and I have discussed it at great length with my therapist. We have come to the conclusion that I am working on creating stronger boundaries for myself before engaging with anyone else.

And this is how Momo gets her groove back, so to speak.

I still love the “comfort” of a man, if you get my meaning. All the things I enjoy about men are still there within me, but there are a lot of things I don’t enjoy from them, and it is those things that I need a clearer understanding of before I am able to translate them for anyone else.

Because it is the translation of those boundaries that is important. It is important to make them clearly defined so there is no misunderstanding.

With every experience comes a new lesson or 10. We can enumerate all the bad parts, or we can focus on the knowledge we gain from the experience—I prefer to do the latter.

Mr. Big crossed a lot of boundaries with me, and it is that part of the experience that bothered me the most—so it is that part of the experience that I am learning from the most.

I know that I don’t want to have that kind of experience again, so I am making concrete promises to myself and mapping out ways to keep them before I move on to anyone else.

There are other smaller changes that I am making within myself. Tempering expectations is a big one. I saw someone on Twitter say that “expectations are disappointments and resentments waiting to happen.” I can see how I made that a truism in my last experience, but there is something to be said for realistic expectations defined beforehand—and that is an important part of the process.

So where do I go from here?

I’m still not sure exactly. I’m a work in progress, and so is my dating life. It’s a journey, not a destination. I’m just continuing along the path until I reach my next stop.

In the meantime, I’m still the same me I always was. Nothing about my spirit has changed.

I’m still enjoying the journey and the things I am learning about myself as I move along.

I titled this post “Return of the Mack,” but the truth is, the Mack never left.

She just evolved and got wiser.

#WhyIDidntReport: A List of Reasons for Some of the Times It Happened

There are a lot of reasons why a woman may not report when she has been sexually assaulted. It does not go without notice that most of these reasons would be completely misunderstood by most men, but totally reasonable to a woman.

If you are a man, you should understand that a lot of the women you know have been sexually assaulted in some way, form or fashion—many of them more than once.

I have been sexually assaulted more than once. Here is a list of the reasons I did not say anything:

I was too young to understand what was happening

I was very young, and my earliest memories of it happening are from around the time I was 3 years old. I remember that he made it into a game, and somehow my little mind translated that into me being complicit as well. He ended every session (it happened repeatedly over a number of years) with “Don’t tell nobody,” and I thought that if I told, I would be in trouble too, so I never said anything at all.

I was embarrassed

My uncle was married to a woman who had four children of her own—three daughters and a son. Her son was my age, and because they lived down the street from my grandmother, I spent a lot of time at their house hanging with him and my uncle’s two daughters.

One afternoon, I went down there looking for everyone, and he and his baby sister were the only ones in the house. He said everyone else had gone to Kmart, but they would be back soon, so I figured I would wait there for them to get back.

As I was sitting there, he suddenly came over to me and told me that if I wanted to sit in his room and wait, this was “the pussy room” and I would have to give him some pussy. I immediately got up from where I was sitting and tried to leave, but he blocked my way and pushed me down on his bed.

He then attempted to restrain me and lift my skirt up. I fought him as hard as I could and screamed for him to stop even though no one else was in the house but his baby sister.

It was his baby sister that saved me because she came running into the room and looked at us to see what was going on. He got off of me, and I started to leave the house to go back to my grandmother’s.

As I opened the front door, his mother and two other sisters were coming up the driveway. His oldest sister took one look at me and said, “Monique, what were you doing in the house alone with my brother? Ooh girl, what’s up with you and my brother?!”

Embarrassed, I said nothing and just went to my grandmother’s house. I never told anyone what happened until I just wrote this out right now.

I did tell. No one did anything about it

When I was 17 years old, I awoke one night at my grandmother’s house to find one of my uncles on top of me, rubbing his penis across my bare ass. He had pulled my pants down in my sleep. I jumped up and ran out of the room, and I heard him saying “Monique, I’m sorry” as I hit the door.

I told my grandmother, and she told me that a man is the first cousin to a dog, and a hard dick doesn’t have a conscience. Then she promptly made me leave her house and dropped me off at a family friend's home.

I later told my mother what happened, but she did nothing either. The only person who openly spoke out about it was my Auntie Harriet (RIP), but no one listened to her.

To this very day, I don’t speak to either of the two uncles who put their hands on me.

My body responded naturally to the stimulation

A friend threw a huge party at which I consumed lots of alcohol. So much so that I eventually got the spins and had to lie down. I thought I was going to either pass out or throw up. It was that bad.

As I was lying on the couch, a mutual male friend of ours came over and sat next to me. He started touching me, and in my weakened state, I kept asking him to stop. He managed to wrestle his hand under the waistband of my jeans and into my pants. He fingered me until I came.

And because discussions about rape culture were not as commonplace as they are now, I thought my body responding in a natural way was somehow a sign that I was complicit in what happened, so again, I said nothing.

Writing this now is only the fourth time I have ever mentioned it since it happened.

We blame ourselves. We think somehow we played a part in what happened.

Or we do tell people we think can help us, but they fail us. It discourages us from telling anyone else.

We get discouraged from reporting because rape culture starts in the home, and it is an insidious infection that rots families from the inside out with secrets.

Look at every woman you know in your life. It is highly likely that one or more of them has been sexually assaulted.

Have you made it more difficult for her to talk about it?

Ain’t I a Woman? The Unbearable Whiteness of Allies

Before I even start this, I know that I have to give the usual disclaimers because even though it should be implied at this point, someone will undoubtedly need that extra spoonful of validation and reassurance, so here we go:

Yes, I know not all white women. I know not all white people.

Yet, Thursday night, Bette Midler proved to be the perfect example of all the things white women do when they call themselves “allies.” She went peak white woman.

In case you missed it, Midler paraphrased the misguided Yoko Ono, who coined the phrase, “Woman is the nigger of the world.”

In a now-deleted tweet, Midler wrote “‘Women, are the n-word of the world.’ Raped, beaten, enslaved, married off, worked like dumb animals; denied education and inheritance; enduring the pain and danger of childbirth and life IN SILENCE for THOUSANDS of years. They are the most disrespected creatures on earth.”

Yeah, she thought that was it.

As I said on Twitter, there is no way for “xyz” to be the “nigger of the world” when black people—the original recipe niggers—are still here.

The original quote is offensive, Bette’s paraphrasing of it is offensive and both are dismissive of the ongoing plight of black people in the United States.

Furthermore, are black women not women? Because everything described in that tweet has actually happened to black women and is still ongoing. Can white women in the United States say the same thing?

After Bette sent the tweet, a good number of people—including a large number of black women—reached out to tell her that the tweet was offensive. There were reasoned explanations for why it was offensive in her mentions. You know what Bette did?

She doubled down.

“I gather I have offended many by my last tweet,” she wrote in another since-deleted tweet. “‘Women are the … etc’ is a quote from Yoko Ono from 1972, which I never forgot. It rang true then, and it rings true today, whether you like it or not. This is not about race, this is about the status of women; THEIR HISTORY.”

I told you she went peak white woman. This is a thing that white women (and men too, actually) do when they get called out on being offensive while simultaneously painting themselves as an “ally.”

You aren’t really our ally.

This is all performative. You make these big pronouncements, rail on Harvey Weinstein and his ilk from the safety of your Twitter account, and pretend to be enlightened, informed and part of the resistance. Meanwhile, there’s more “resistance” in a new piece of shapewear.

In this instance, Bette dropped that quote in response to what is going on with the Kavanaugh nomination. She dropped that quote because she knew it would make an impression—on white people.

To white people, that’s a deep comment for Bette to make. “Wow! She said that!” they can cheer and hold her up as being brave for calling it what it is.

And it is only in that one quiet moment of lifting her up that they can tangentially (and silently) acknowledge what black people in this country have been saying all along—we have been mistreated. That has to be true in order for Bette’s “edgy” statement to be true.

It then becomes dismissive when Ms. Midler herself yells that “it’s not about race.” It is entirely about race, and it became about race the minute you decided to use a quote with the word “nigger” in it to describe the “plight” of you and other women who look like you—white women.

You want to co-opt the struggle of an entire group of people while simultaneously erasing their struggle from the conversation and pretending it wasn’t there.

How very white of you.

You know you done fucked up when even nice ass Reading Rainbow LeVar Burton has to roll through and check you, using his slave name to do it.

And it is worth noting that Rose McGowan tried to use this same quote for the same reason almost around this same time last year, and when she got called out for it, she blamed it on weed.

Because the other thing that white people do is try not to take accountability for their actions when called out for things like this. That is getting tired and annoying, too. You said it with your chest: Own it.

Bette later came back to “apologize” for her comments—after deleting the first two tweets.

She wrote, “The too brief investigation of allegations against Kavanaugh infuriated me. Angrily I tweeted w/o thinking my choice of words would be enraging to black women who doubly suffer, both by being women and by being black. I am an ally and stand with you; always have. And I apologize.”

And here is another thing I want y’all to stop doing.

“I am an ally and stand with you.”

You don’t get to label yourself an ally, sis. We will let you know when we feel like you are truly our ally.

It’s such a white woman thing to do, harkening back to slavery, to say you are on our side while continuing to perpetuate the ideologies and behaviors of the white patriarchy that rules this country.

In other words, girl, bye.

Also, being black is not an affliction. We are subject to mistreatment because of our skin color, but our skin color is not the problem. Racism is.

Basically, Bette is not unlike all the other white women who claim to see us as equals but, in action, don’t treat us as such. They easily dismiss us when we raise concerns and put their own egos and needs in front of ours, even as they claim they are helping us.

In short, they center themselves.

It is annoying, infuriating, and insulting.

It is the unbearable whiteness of our “allies.”

Rebel, Rebel: For White Women Who Block Black People on Twitter Because Apologizing Is Too Damn Much

Before this weekend, I never really paid very much attention to Rebel Wilson.

I knew she existed and had caught glimpses of her in a few things. I knew enough to know that her usual schtick is playing the funny, goofy or dorky fat girl in white comedies, but in my mind, she wasn’t as funny as Melissa McCarthy, so I didn’t pay much attention to her.

Last week, she popped up on my radar again when I saw a tweet that quoted her proclaiming herself to be the first plus-sized woman to play the lead in a romantic comedy.

Wilson will star in Isn’t It Romantic, a film slated for release on Valentine’s Day 2019 that has been billed in some places as a rom-com parody.

“I’m proud to be the first-ever plus-sized girl to be the star of a romantic comedy,” Wilson told Ellen during a visit to her show last week.

*needle scratch*

You can imagine my surprise. We’ve all seen Last Holiday, Just Wright, Beauty Shop, and all the episodes of Living Single in which Queen Latifah—as Khadijah James—was the object of affection for men like Morris Chestnut, Cress Williams, and Bumper Robinson. She been there and done that.

Mo’Nique has also already been there. One of her funnier and sweeter movies was Phat Girlz, which followed a larger woman looking for love.

None of these movies was straight-to-video. Even if Rebel Wilson hasn’t watched them, she should know about them, so why she would make the statement she did is anyone’s guess—but she did.

When the tweet quoting her surfaced, a number of black women offered corrections and pointed out that Latifah and Mo’Nique had been there first. Rebel Wilson ignored every single one of them.

When she did finally respond to the nudge, it was to a white woman. A white woman, I might add, who is one of my followers and basically said the exact same thing I said, minus the part where I said it was an example of the erasure of the work done by black women. Same message. Same tone.

Wilson responded to her tweet, and she doubled down, saying, “Hey girl! Yeah I of course know of these movies but it was questionable as to whether: 1. Technically those actresses were plus size when filming those movies or 2. Technically those films are catorgorized/billed as a studio rom-com with a sole lead. So there’s a slight grey area.”

When was there ever a question as to whether or not Queen Latifah and Mo’Nique were considered plus-sized? They both identify as plus-sized women. Mo’Nique’s entire comedy career, in the beginning, was based on her size. How was there any question, and more importantly, who was questioning it?

As for whether or not their films were billed as studio rom-coms is an issue about race and the way films with predominantly black casts are categorized in Hollywood in general—and that’s a topic for a different rant.

Suffice it to say that the only “grey area” is the one in Rebel’s mind and the minds of any other white person who basically believes that the work of black women doesn’t count in Hollywood, because that is exactly what it boils down to.

After Rebel doubled down on her bullshit, black women continued to try and educate her on where she was going wrong. It would have been so easy to just say, “You know what, my bad. I misspoke.” That would have been too much like right, though.

Instead, Rebel chose to continue to erase the voices of black women—at least from her mentions and her timeline—by blocking them if they dared speak to her about her comments.

It was her way of putting them in their place. This continued throughout the weekend. Black women reached out to her, and she promptly blocked them. When white women reached out saying basically the same thing, she responded politely, if at all, but she didn’t block them.

Playwright Claire Willett wrote an impassioned thread on Twitter, lovingly explaining to Rebel where she went wrong.

“So. You are frustrated that it feels like women of color are trying to diminish your achievement and how big a deal this role is for you, and you’re shutting down their attempts to explain why, which is Not a Good Look for someone trying to build solidarity among plus-size women,” Willett wrote.

“I think it’s splitting hairs a bit to talk about the way the films are billed/categorized, because that’s a very industry-insider standard that doesn’t necessarily have any connection to the way AUDIENCES view or mentally categorize different types of movies, so let’s skip it,” Willett continued.

Wilson responded to Willett and said “Great points honey, thank you x will address when promoting the film in proper forums. I’m all about supporting plus size women and I work so hard to do so. I never want to disrespect anyone.”

It’s weird because Wilson says she doesn’t want to disrespect anyone, but she continued to block black women who said the same things to her in the same tone.

She blocked black women except for Mo’Nique, who reached out to her on Twitter as well.

“Hey my sweet sister. Let’s please not allow this business to erase our talent with giving grey areas and technicalities. Take a moment and know the history. DON’T BE A PART OF ERASING IT. I wish you the best,” Mo’Nique wrote.

“Hi Monique, it was never my intention to erase anyone else’s achievements and I adore you and Queen Latifah so so much x I support all plus size ladies and everything positive we are doing together,” Wilson responded.

Her words and her actions don’t match up. By early Monday morning, she had blocked so many black and brown people, it became a huge game to see who she would block next.

If Rebel Wilson were truly about the uplifting of all plus-sized women, she wouldn’t be doing her best to shut down the voices of those who don’t have the same skin color as she does.

Blocking all the black and brown voices who tried to reason with her on Twitter reveals the true intention behind her first comment on Ellen and her subsequent comments.

Rebel Wilson doesn’t think black and brown plus-sized women count. They are not in the same category as her. They are different, and in her eyes, they should be treated as such.

And that is exactly what she is doing.

It’s hard to understand how she can think this will bode well for her new film. She is destroying all goodwill towards it with her disgusting actions right now. It has turned into an incredibly dramatic 72 hours for her, and it is only getting worse because she is continuing to make it worse.

She’s doing all of this and building up a bad name and reputation for herself in the process.

All because apologizing to black women was too damn much.

For shame.

Updated: Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2018, 11:30 a.m. EST: It appears that Rebel Wilson’s team has finally wrestled her phone away from her and taken over her Twitter account.

In a series of tweets sent out early Monday evening, the Australian actress apologized for her faux pas using words that were a lot more eloquent and understanding than all of her previous tweets, leading one to believe that the “apology” was crafted by someone else attempting to mitigate the damage caused by her insolent and puerile Twitter rampage in the days prior.

In a tweet containing a lot more awareness than we have seen her evidence, Wilson allegedly wrote, “In a couple of well-intentioned moments, hoping to lift my fellow plus sized women up, I neglected to show the proper respect to those who climbed this mountain before me like Mo’Nique, Queen Latifah, Melissa McCarthy, Ricki Lake and likely many others.”

“She” continued: “With the help of some very compassionate and well-thought out responses from others on social media, I now realize what I said was not only wrong but also incredibly hurtful. To be part of a problem I was hoping I was helping makes it that much more embarrassing & hard to-

“acknowledge. I blocked people on Twitter because I was hurting from the criticism, but those are the people I actually need to hear from more, not less. Again, I am deeply sorry.”

I don’t believe Rebel Wilson wrote these tweets, and I don’t think she is at all apologetic. I truly believe this is a public relations move to save her film—and her career—from tanking.

This is not the first time Wilson has shown that she has racist thoughts and tendencies when it comes to people of color. Check out this clip of her on Ellen in 2013 when she started to make some awful jokes about Aboriginals.

Wilson also seemingly unblocked everyone she had blocked in her fit of angst over the last few days. I discovered this morning that my account had been unblocked by her.

It doesn’t matter. It’s too little, too late.

If you had done this from the beginning, it would be a lot more believable, and we would be more likely to accept it.

Now we can tell you are just pandering to make sure your bag is secure.

In the words of Ira Madison III, “Keep it.”

Before I begin this post, I will once again give my standard disclaimer that says I understand “not all white people” and “not all white women.” It’s annoying that I have to do this every single time, but white people be forcing my hand, so here we are.

I’m going to take the time here to explain that in most cases when people say “white people,” they are referring to the structure of white supremacy and its byproduct, white privilege, as much as they are referring to the people who actively participate in or benefit from both.

When we talk about white women, we are referring to those who choose race over personal interest or the greater good. We are referring to those who claim to be allies but only stick around long enough to vote against the interests of those they claim to support.

There is nothing wrong with holding white women accountable for their actions. In fact, I would argue that it is imperative that we do so. So often, they will commit these offenses and then fall into the white woman victimhood trope when called out on it.

Or not.

Yesterday, a white woman by the name of DC McAllister took to Twitter to announce that she is sick of black women’s shit, and she is not going to take it anymore. From now on, she is going to fight back.

“Anti-white woman rhetoric is revving up by black women and it’s getting ugly,” she wrote. “This was an inevitable outcome of intersectionality. Thing is, they have a surprise coming. White women aren’t going to cower to white guilt. We just see another woman dissing us and we’ll fight back.”

First of all, it is disingenuous to categorize valid criticism as “anti-white woman rhetoric.” It is a dog whistle of the worst type, and is a race-baiting tactic being used to deflect against what should otherwise be considered a plea for white women to get their act together.

McAllister claims intersectionality feeds racism. She said in a later tweet “Identity politics, white privilege, etc etc.—all racist. The claim of oppression by black people in America today is the height of disrespect to their forbears [sic]. Shame on you.”

McAllister posits that she has no white privilege and that anyone who says she does knows nothing about her life.

Except, we know that you are white, ma’am. That in and of itself makes you an automatic recipient of white privilege, whether you want to claim it or not.

McAllister is on Twitter whining about how conservatives are the constant targets of threats and bullying, while somehow ignoring that their rabid fanbase is doing the same to women and people of color. Being able to be blithely oblivious to that is, in and of itself, white privilege in action.

She also told Bree Newsome, the black woman who scaled a flagpole at the South Carolina statehouse to take down a Confederate flag, that she is “not oppressed in America.”

“You have the same freedom from governmental obstacles that everyone has. Stop blaming your failures and lack of personal responsibility on others and labeling them racists when they confront you with the truth that you can’t handle liberty,” she said.

OK, girl.

It is worth noting that McAllister is a writer for the Federalist, so much of this is probably posturing and performative for her audience—but it is also harmful, as it skips over facts to make her sad, dishonest point.

Yes, on paper, black people have all the same rights as everyone else in this country. This is a fact. The problem lies in the exercising of those rights.

We have just seen several stories of widespread voter suppression during this last election. Black people continue to be killed with impunity by police departments that are not held accountable at the local or federal level.

Black people can’t breathe, shop, swim in a pool, go into their apartment building, or sell water to earn money for a trip to Disneyland without white people—specifically white women—policing their every move.

So yes, we are calling you out. And it’s not anti-white women rhetoric. It’s anti-bullshit rhetoric. You know it, I know it, and the whole world knows it. We are simply asking you to recognize the harm you do when you make statements like this, and the harm white women as a whole do on a daily basis through their various actions.

This is yet another instance of something I wrote about at the beginning of last year. What McAllister is experiencing is white fragility, and her white fragility may lead to white violence that will eventually lead to somebody getting killed.

She wrote on Twitter that she’s ready. She has her Glock. She wants y’all to beware.

She’s subtly throwing the violence out there, and she knows what she is doing.

So here I am calling her out on that.

It’s not anti-white rhetoric. It’s not anti-D.C. McAllister rhetoric.

It’s the truth, and sometimes that is a hard pill to swallow.

Especially for white people.

There is a video circulating on social media currently that has people praising Grey’s Anatomy star Ellen Pompeo as our new white shero.

In the video, Pompeo is on stage being interviewed by Net-A-Porter alongside actresses Gabrielle Union, Emma Roberts, and Gina Rodriguez. In the short clip, she is discussing how white people have a duty to help increase diversity in Hollywood.

“This day has been incredible,” she says. “And there’s a ton of women in the room, but I don’t see enough color. And I didn’t see enough color when I walked in the room today. I had a meeting with the director of another endorsement project that I’m doing, and I said, ‘You know, when I show up on set, I would like to see the crew look like the world that I walk around in every day. And I think it’s up to all productions to make sure your crew looks like the world we see.

“As caucasian people, it’s our job,” she continued. “It’s our task. It’s our responsibility to make sure we speak up in every single room that we walk into. That this is not OK, and that we can all do better. It’s our job, because we’ve created the problem.”

Pompeo’s words were lauded across the internet as everyone scrambled to crown her our new woke white queen.

The short clip was part of a larger discussion on wage disparities for women in Hollywood. Pompeo rightly called out the lack of diversity in Hollywood, and everything she said is true—but are we really at the point of handing out coronations for white people when they do the bare minimum that any decent human being should do when they see a wrong being committed?

Black women have been saying this for years, but as per usual, it doesn’t have any “validity” until a white woman says it—and this week, that white woman is Ellen Pompeo.

As the video gained momentum Tuesday, people who remembered a very tense interaction the actress and I had two years ago brought it to my attention.

In December 2016, Pompeo tweeted about a victory she was happy about, and in her celebration of that moment, she used black emojis.

A young Black woman tweeted to her very respectfully, asking why she felt the need to do that. She explained how it felt to see a white woman with white privilege using the emojis just because she could.

Pompeo was dismissive in her response and repeatedly doubled down when other Black women tried to explain where the first came from.

I tweeted at Pompeo and told her that while I didn’t necessarily have an issue with her use of the emojis, I did find her responses to Black women who were trying to speak with her about it troubling.

In a long series of back-and-forth tweets, Pompeo told me that she knows how racism feels because a) her husband and children are black and b) she had been called a white bitch before. She even said that people calling her a white bitch was “reverse racism” and doubled down on that when people called her out on it as well.

My responses to her were reasoned, rooted in fact, polite, and devoid of any name-calling or curse words.

When Pompeo found she did not have any logical responses for what I was saying to her, she immediately went peak white woman and accused me of attacking her and “trying to pick a fight.”

Her over one million followers descended into my Twitter mentions, and I was subjected to harassment, abuse, and trolling for weeks after.

The incident was reported on by multiple media outlets.

Pompeo never addressed me again after that, and somehow, in her newfound wokeness, she has completely forgotten that she, too, played a role in silencing Black women and contributing to their abuse.

So when I said on Twitter yesterday that I was unimpressed with her statements, I meant it. I believe her to simply be parroting things she has heard Black women say while centering herself as some sort of hero for saying them.

All of her statements began with “I.” “I don’t see …” “I want to see …” “I think we should …” It’s as if she feels she is the captain of a movement that has been going on long before she decided she wanted to be a part of it.

Even when she gets to the part where she directly addresses white people, she can’t bring herself to say the word “white.” “As caucasian people,” she said, as though she needed to soften the blow and make whiteness sound like anything other than what it is—a power structure.

When I pointed out what I took issue with on Twitter, I was immediately bombarded with tweets from white people telling me that I just needed to be grateful that someone was saying anything at all. I was told that I needed to be forgiving of Pompeo, even if she had not acknowledged or apologized for the harm she caused other Black women and me that day. I needed to be the bigger person and recognize that she has obviously grown since then. I was repeatedly asked, “What more do you want?”

The bar is always higher for Black women. For white women, the bar is on the floor.

Here is Ellen, getting praised for just being a decent human being. Here is Monique, a Black woman in a crowd of Black women who were harmed by Ellen. We are expected to somehow exceed what is expected of Ellen while simultaneously praising her for something that is well below what we would be given kudos for.

But it’s growth, right?

A huge part of growth is acknowledging where you have gone wrong. If you have harmed others, you need to acknowledge it and make some form of atonement, even if it is just a simple apology.

I was not the only Black woman to express doubts about Pompeo’s newfound wokeness; those observations were widespread across Twitter yesterday.

Her pronouncements were performative in both execution and tone. It was performative because, as she is trying to hold her fellow white people accountable for doing something, she fails to hold herself accountable in those same moments.

I am not expecting Ellen Pompeo to apologize to me. It will probably be easier for her to tweet through this, basking in the praise raining down on her for saying something that has already been said by the people marginalized within the system she claims to want to hold accountable.

It’s too bad that accountability doesn’t start with herself.

I’ve been listening to this Sade playlist I found on YouTube because it’s a good writing and editing playlist. Sade’s music is classical and timeless, and there is something to be said about an artist whose music a vast majority of us know every lyric of.

There other thing about Sade, though, is that she can easily put you in your feelings.

I’ve been digging through the crates, as I mentioned before, and finding old writing and scribbles in notebooks and on hard drives all over the place. I’ve been reading through some of these while the Sade soundtrack is playing, and y’all.

I have been deep in my feelings multiple times in the last few days.

There’s something to be said about muses and inspiration and the feelings and emotions attached thereto. Stick a pin in it, and I’ll come back to it later.

i got a condo

Completely by accident, while looking for a place to rent, I stumbled upon something I wanted to buy, and I am absolutely in love with it.

I still have some of the same complaints about moving, which was an expensive hassle and compounded by the fact that I moved my mom in with me, so combining two households into one has meant a lot of decisions being made on what stays and what goes.

I’m currently in the throes of unpacking and organizing, and figuring out what goes where.

Also, there has to be some symbolism in the fact that this move happened nearly a year to the day I moved out of my place in Cheviot Hills and into the sublet by the beach.

I don’t have time to figure that out right now.

raising teenior citizens

I tell my mom all the time that I’m raising a teenior citizen. She gets a kick out of being referred to as a teenior citizen and refers to me as her daughter-mom all the time. I’m strict, but she’s adapting and adjusting and learning to let someone else be in control, which is a good thing, cause this my gotdamn house.

And because I’m raising a teenior citizen, I’m always cooking to make sure she eats. Remind me to share with y’all some of the amazing one pot meals I’ve been creating.

They are delicious.

footnotes, links, and attributions

• I’ve been trying to come up with the words to describe what I felt watching Benito Bowl, and they are still escaping me at the moment, but others have been able to add to the moment better than I can at the moment:

  • writes, “And please do not miss this: there is a profound and deeply spiritual connection between Kendrick Lamar’s performance last year and Bad Bunny’s this year. The vehicles, the landscape, the storytelling, the dancing, the diversity, the moral and political clarity, the spiritual and emotional roots, the inclusion. It is as if they are telling us that all of our oppression and erasure is connected, and that oppression and erasure is all of our fight.”

  • And then there is , who writes, “But that history also teaches us something else: not all art functions the same way, and not all cultural moments are doing the same kind of political work. There is a difference between art embedded in collective struggle and spectacle produced within the machinery of global racial capitalism. That distinction matters.

  • In “Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl Performance Bridges Culture And Politics,” my girl writes, “Benito didn’t pander with generic statements like 'we’re all immigrants,' opting instead to represent the fullness of the nations and cultures that make up the United States and the Americas. At a time of historic erasure, it gave us what we needed most—community care, family togetherness, and self-determination.”

• I love it when writes. For ContrabandCamp, she wrote, “Audre Lorde Taught Us: ‘Survival Is Not Theoretical’”

• Speaking of writing on ContrabandCamp, wrote, “Trump Administration Doesn’t Want Us to Call Medgar Evers’ Racist Assassin a ‘Racist’”

• , the genius that she is, wrote Why Black Americans Should Be Paying Attention To ICE Raids And Global Criminal Networks In Oklahoma

• I interviewed Fee and Stix yesterday. Stay tuned for more on that!

• I just finished watching the first three seasons of Dark Winds, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I am now obsessed with learning more about the Dine culture.

• Megan Thee Stallion showed out for Klay’s birthday this past weekend. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with for hers this coming weekend. I love that they are so nerdy and in love with teach other. My makes me smile every time I see them. May Ciara’s prayer bless Megan and Klay as well.

• Here’s that Sade playlist I was talking about.

I’ve been pulling fragments from old journals and notebooks, wondering if I can repurpose them into something else. I’ve been thinking a lot about the Mickalene Thomas “All About Love” exhibit I saw a year and a half ago, and how it made me feel about my own creativity.

Throughout the exhibit, you would sometimes see the same image used in different ways, like she was pulling fragments from her notebook and repurposing them in other ways.

I opened a poem that made me cringe, and I remember letting one of my friends read it; her response was, “What is it supposed to be saying?”

I never opened that poem again.

I did last night.

Not everything is perfect the first go round

And even if we think it’s perfect, sometimes we aren’t finished with it.

Sometimes we want to think about it in different ways. Hear it with new ears. See it with fresh eyes.

Sometimes we need that.

Sometimes I need that.

Last night, I needed that.

Bad Bunny

I spent all day at work today talking about Benito and reading other people’s thoughts on Benito, and I still feel like I need to watch that halftime performance a few more times so I can experience it in different ways.

There was so much there to connect to, and I’m not even Puerto Rican.

I think part of the connection was seeing someone use their art to make an unapologetic statement about the past, present, and future of the United States of America, and as a Black woman, I relate deeply.

A lot of the time, whiteness can only see itself through its own lens, and when we’re filtered through that lens, we don’t fit. I’m OK with not fitting within the white gaze, and I think Benito was last night as well.

I’m still processing it, though, and I’m working on breaking myself of the habit of having hot takes, so this is it. For now.

a fragment

Accountability is like Kryptonite for niggas who mumble their words, give ambiguous answers, and avoid answering direct questions.

If he didn’t say it, then you can’t hold him responsible for it, right?

Dudes who won’t tell you they have a girlfriend unless you ask the question with the exact wording that won’t allow them to lie, either by omission or otherwise.

Niggas who ask you, “What do you mean by that?” when you ask a thing that needs no further interpretation.

The ones who will avoid calling you rather than admit they were wrong.

The dude who gets upset with you when you call him on his bullshit. “Why you bringing up old shit?!”

The ones who want you to make their choices for them.

“Do you want ice cream or pie?” “They both sound really good.”

And any nigga who ever answered your question with another ridiculous ass question.

For these niggas, accountability is like Kryptonite.

I should be in bed, but instead, I’m up doing this. The way my spicy brain works, sometimes the thoughts are moving quickly, and I’m trying to keep up with all of them, but then they go on a side quest, and now I’m on this meandering trail of brain activity that could possibly be leading me somewhere, but the paths keep crossing over each other in weird spaces, and I haven’t been able to figure out how they are all connected, and so here we are.

hello.

King Benito!

I’m not really a football watcher, but I turned the Super Bowl on earlier so I could see Bad Bunny do his thing.

I felt a lot of emotions watching his performance. There was so much meaning in the imagery and the performance itself, I’m probably going to need to watch it more times so I can really digest it all.

I’m glad he was the Super Bowl performer, and I’m glad he made it ethnic as fuck.

King Benito. He did that shit.

late night scribbles

There are days I wake up so in love with this nigga, I feel like I can’t catch my breath.

I won’t text him or call him, of course. I won’t email.

That’s not how the game is played. Or, at least, that’s not how my pride is set up.

Is love really stronger than pride, or did Sade die sing us a beautiful lie?

I find myself poring over every memory. Replaying every conversation. Looking at every intimate picture he sent me. Dissecting every saved text message, searching for meanings new and old.

Is it live, or is it Memorex? Is it love, or is it limerance?

I honestly can’t tell you because I don’t know, but even if I did know, I couldn’t honestly tell you.

I want to believe the beautiful lie.

We hide from the truth because the blur of lies we’ve told ourselves is much more comforting.

When I say “we,” I mean me.

This nigga is like a stain in my brain that I can’t wash out, no matter how hard I try.

Sometimes I’m chasing the memories. Sometimes they are chasing me.

I can still feel his lips against mine. His fingers tangled in my hair. His hand wrapped around my throat. The weight of him on top of me. The things he said in my ear. The secrets he whispered into my mouth. His smell.

I see his words all around me. In the wild. In my memories. There’s always something there, even if I want to forget it.

Even if I want to forget him.

We’re supposed to pretend we don’t care. Like it doesn’t bother us. Like the yearning isn’t there.

Pimps aren’t supposed to get caught up.

Players aren’t supposed to get played.

It’s OK to admit when you’ve been a sucka for love ass nigga.

I’ve been a sucka for love ass nigga.

I’ve been a sucka for love over this nigga.

Is there a way to hold it all inside and still get over it?

Do I want to hold it all inside while I get over it?

Do I want to get over it?

Do I want to hold it all inside?

It all comes back around.

He always comes back around.

We always come back around.

There are days I wake up so in love with this nigga, I feel like I can’t breathe.

But I’m a G, and this, too, shall pass.

Arguments have been made recently that Washington, D.C., Birmingham, Ala., Atlanta, Ga., and Harlem are the blackest cities in America. Those arguments are not without merit. Each of those cities has made significant contributions to black history, without a doubt. I would like to posit that my hometown, Los Angeles, is so iconic, so full of black excellence, and is the birthplace of so many styles, trends, musical movements and black-ass celebrities, we should be the main contender for the title of “America’s Blackest City.”

Los Angeles was first inhabited by the Chumash people around 8000 BC, followed by the Tataviam people around 300 BC, the Tongva Indians around 500 AD, Spanish settlers in 1769, and Mexican settlers in 1781. Among those 44 Mexican settlers, 26 were of African descent.

Pío de Jesús Pico, who was of Spanish, African and Native American descent, served as the governor of Alta California twice and Los Angeles Common Councilman before his death in 1894. Alta California would later become known simply as California, so yes, a black settler in what is now known as Los Angeles was one of the first governors of our state. Blackety-black. Pico Boulevard, one of the longest streets in Los Angeles that stretches from downtown to Santa Monica beach, is named after him.

At the end of the Civil War in 1865, emancipated blacks began moving to the city in significant numbers, and in 1872, the First African Methodist Episcopal Church was established, because you know that wherever black people go they gotta take their church with them.

Not to be outdone, Second Baptist Church was established 13 years later in 1885. It was named Second Baptist Church to distinguish itself from the all white First Baptist Church. The church’s building was designed by Paul Revere Williams, a Los Angeles native who was the first black architect to become a member of the American Institute of Architects. At the time it was built, Second Baptist was the biggest and most expensive black church in Los Angeles. Black people in L.A. have always gone hard, and this was no exception.

Fifty years after establishing the first black church, black people created their own cultural district along Central Avenue in south central Los Angeles.

From 1920 to 1955, Central Avenue was the mecca and the heart of Los Angeles for black people. It was the location of the vibrant Los Angeles jazz scene that attracted such greats as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Bessie Smith. The Dunbar Hotel, which had the distinction of being completely financed and built solely by black people, was the hotel where members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) stayed for their first west coast convention in 1928. Los Angeles was still very segregated at the time, and the hotel provided first-class accommodations. It became known as the finest black hotel in the nation, and it helped drive more development in the area. Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Hern Jefferies, Langston Hughes, Joe Louis, Arthur B. Spingarn, and W. E. B. Du Bois were among other notable guests to stay at the Dunbar.

Dr. Ralph J. Bunche, the first person of color to win the lauded Nobel Peace Prize, grew up in the Central Avenue district, and his home remains a landmark there.

Thomas Jefferson High School, commonly referred to as “Jeff” by Los Angelenos, was a historically black high school in Los Angeles with primarily black teachers for a long time. Located adjacent to the Central Avenue corridor, many of its graduates went on to become great musicians, writers, actors, performers, politicians and giants in the legal field, including Alvin Ailey, Dorothy Dandridge, Mablean Ephriam, Ralph Bunche, Roy Ayers, Barry White, Jonny “Guitar” Watson, and David W. Williams—the first black federal judge from a state west of the Mississippi.

By the 1960s, black people had spread out in south Los Angeles, and Watts also became known for its high concentration of blacks. It was in August 1965 that the Watts riots raged for six days, sparked by the violent arrest of two young black men—Marquette and Ronald Frye—and their mother, Rena.

Nearly 27 years later, another uprising would occur after another questionable incident with police.

Commonly known as the “L.A. riots” of 1992 or the “Rodney King riots,” the six days of rioting, looting and burning were a result of four Los Angeles police officers being acquitted of the brutal beating of a black motorist by the name of Rodney King.

In March of 1991, King led police on a high-speed chase through Los Angeles County. He was reportedly intoxicated and uncooperative, so of course the police did the only thing they could do and brutally beat the unarmed man with their batons. They beat and kicked him long after he stopped resisting because that’s what police do and had been doing to black men in Los Angeles for years. Unfortunately for them, a private citizen caught the beating on video camera, and the rest is (repeated) history.

It didn’t matter that there was videotape of the incident. The cops got off, and the city burned for six days—resulting in 53 people dead, more than 2,000 injured, and property damage totaling $1 billion. Many parts of south Los Angeles still show signs of the damage done nearly 27 years ago.

I was born and raised here, as were both my parents. My mother grew up in Watts, and she has told me many stories from her childhood, including what happened during the Watts riots.

I was nearly 21 when the ‘92 riots happened. I watched the Rodney King video get replayed on a continuous news cycle loop and watched my city burning all around me. I was in the car with my mother driving down Manchester Avenue on the afternoon the verdict was announced. We couldn’t figure out what all the traffic was about, and it was only later we realized we narrowly avoided driving directly through the epicenter of the riots on Florence and Normandie because there was too much traffic going up Normandie.

Manchester is the next major thoroughfare just south of Florence.

My grandmother’s house is still in our family and is near one of the blackest intersections in the city—Imperial Highway and Western Avenue. You can see Los Angeles Southwest College—commonly known as the “black” college in Los Angeles—from her backyard.

We are BLACK black, and so is our city.

The blackest person from Los Angeles was really not from Los Angeles at all, but we are going to claim her, because what she did was historic. Bridget “Biddy” Mason was born a slave in Mississippi in 1818. In 1848 at 30 years old, she walked behind a 300-wagon caravan led by her Mormon master from Mississippi to California. Her master was full of white privilege, and ignored warnings by Mormon leader Brigham Young that slavery was outlawed in California.

Along the way, Mason met free black people who encouraged her to contest her slavery now that she was in a free state. She did just that, and in 1856, she won freedom for herself, as well as 13 members of her extended family. Mason would go on to amass a fortune working as a midwife and nurse—work she had done while she was enslaved. She was one of the organizers of First African Methodist Episcopal church (FAME).

Yes. She was very black.

But aside from Biddy Mason, black Los Angelenos have gained fame and made significant contributions to the culture.

We gave y’all Dr. Dre, Eazy E, Ice Cube, MC Ren, Arabian Prince and DJ Yella—more commonly known as N.W.A, or Niggaz Wit Attitudes. Their contribution to the culture was gangster rap. You couldn’t go anywhere in 1988 without hearing a song from either Eazy’s solo album or Straight Outta Compton, the group’s first studio album.

They gave us an eternal anthem to express our lack of trust or faith in law enforcement—“Fuck tha Police.” If that isn’t black as fuck, I don’t know what to tell you.

We also gave you Ava DuVernay, who has created Hollywood magic again and again.

We gave you Fatburger, which was started by Lovie Yancey—a black woman—as a small hamburger stand in south Los Angeles in 1947 and has grown into a large chain after being sold by Yancey in 1990.

We gave you Tyra Banks, Anthony Anderson, Tracee Ellis Ross, Snoop Dogg, The Game, DJ Quik, and too many others to list—all of whom have made significant contributions to the culture.

I love L.A., and I ride hard for my city.

Black people started here, right along with the Mexican settlers, and we will be here until our “little” island sinks into the sea.

When Megan Thee Stallion dropped her diss track “Hiss” at midnight on Friday, Nicki Minaj responded on Twitter (we still not calling it X, so cry somewhere else, Apartheid Clyde) within 22 minutes, and at the time I published my first column about it, she was still going. That was at least 12 hours after the song dropped, but less than 24 hours.

I make a note of the timestamps because Nicki Minaj continued to rant and rave about Megan Thee Stallion for 72 hours with almost no breaks.

She alternated between raging on Twitter and aimlessly rambling on Instagram Live, and during some of those moments, she teased tidbits of the supposed hot diss track she had been holding in the vault for some time, but what she proffered in those moments was akin to Dr. Seuss rhymes about Megan having big feet, as I wrote about before.

She made several disgusting comments about Megan’s mother being dead, which led to people commenting on the fact that Minaj has also lost a parent; her father was killed in a hit-and-run accident on Long Island in 2021, and people who were defending Megan didn’t hesitate to make jokes about that.

The entire time Minaj was ranting, people kept calling for her to release her diss track. She is, after all, the self-proclaimed “Queen of Rap.” Surely she had some hot heat in the chamber for Meg, right?

Y’all, I’m here to tell you that she, in fact, did not have hot heat in the chamber for Meg.

As I type this, she’s still ranting on Twitter, but just 22 minutes before her online spiral reached the 72-hour mark — at midnight last night, she released the track “Big Foot,” and the internet collectively groaned with displeasure at the mid-ness of it all.

Big Foot” is basically a regurgitation of all the aimless rambling she did on IG Live and Twitter, thrown against a beat someone created on a Casio keyboard.

That’s probably because she couldn’t get anyone to let her use a track to diss Megan on.

She initially said she had a track from Lil Ju, but when she asked if she could use it, she was told “no,” and Lil Ju himself put a tweet out that seemed to vaguely reference his stance on the matter.

Ju Ju has done a lot of work with Megan and produced some of her hottest tracks, so it’s understandable that he would stand with the artist who is actively putting money in his pocket.

The lyrics were very simple and unoriginal. There was nothing compelling in the rap, and there was no rhyme scheme. She simply said “foot” a bunch of times and “Megan,” and that was the extent of it. There was a bar in there about Pardi and Trey Songz and Tory Lanez, but the entire song sounded like someone who didn’t really put a lot of thought into what they wanted to say before they said it.

The “Mine Name Is Peaches” rap from “Coming to America” was better than this.

At the end, she goes into a 90-second slurred spoken word rant, and I…

Nicki acted like she had all this smoke for Megan, and in the end, it was imaginary smoke. It was steam and not even a big rush of steam like from a caboose or something. It was that little hiss of steam that came out of your iron when you put water in it before adding that crease to your khakis.

This was her beefs with Remy Ma and Lil Kim all over again. She didn’t have a real answer for them either, and it makes me wonder where is the fabled Nicki that everyone says has a wicked pen game?

Where is the Nicki who allegedly wrote the verse on “Monster” that made us all say that was her song and not Kanye’s?

She claims to have four more songs to release, but if they are anything like this one, she should probably keep them to herself.

Never in my life did I think I would see another rapper kill their career in real time over the internet, yet, here we are.

When it happened with Kanye, it was easy to say that we all expected it at some point. He had been spiraling for a long time, and his behavior was getting more and more erratic as time went on. His ex-wife talked about it on her show, and far be it for me to side with Kim Kardashian on anything, but the one thing we agree on is the fact that Kanye was not well, and it did not seem to be getting any better.

I’m going to be honest and say that I stopped being a Nicki Minaj fan a long time ago.

hate bullies, and her behavior toward up-and-coming young Black women rappers was reminiscent of someone who was trying to assert their dominance on a cell block or a schoolyard. It was born of insecurity and intimidation, and it manifested in ugly ways we all saw play out online.

That’s the thing about social media. It has given us a peek at what our favorite celebrities are like when their handlers aren’t around, and they are allowed to post whatever they are thinking in the moment, unchecked.

Even if they delete what they said, the internet is forever (word to Cardi B), and someone will have a screenshot or a download of the video, even if the celebrity has since tried to erase it from our memories.

Nicki is particularly nasty to the new school of rap girlies, and she adds an extra layer of ick to it by weaponizing her fanbase against them, as well as anyone else who dares to say anything critical about her on the internet.

This is a fact that everyone acknowledges, and it has made her less likable over the years.

As this played out over the weekend, I couldn’t help but repeatedly ask where were her people. Does she have a team? How are they letting her spiral openly like this on the internet without stopping her?

She exists in a vacuum where her every thought is bounced through the echo chamber of her rabid fans, who affirm and agree with everything she says.

When she makes wild allegations about her popularity and success on the charts, she only uses tweets from fan accounts that say favorable things about her.

She seems to be lacking in self-awareness, and she spent a lot of time this weekend blaming Megan for the fact that she wasn’t able to use the track she wanted to use for her diss record.

She claims Megan and Roc Nation are conspiring to block her from success because Megan is afraid of her, and the funniest part about all of that is that Megan dropped that track Friday night and dipped.

We haven’t heard a peep from Megan since. The only tweets and posts from her were posts to amplify her song “Hiss,” and honestly she didn’t even need to do that because Nicki Minaj was Megan’s one-woman PR team the entire weekend the way she kept Megan’s name in her mouth.

It’s a sad state of affairs and an unfortunate thing to watch, but it’s also an example of how some people live in a constant state of lack and believe that a win for someone else means a loss for them.

The world doesn’t work like that.

In this world, there was room for a Megan and a Nicki, but sadly, Nicki couldn’t see that, so through her words and actions, she has made it entirely Megan’s world at this point.

Do we have a new “Queen of Rap”? Possibly.

I can’t see any way for Nicki to redeem herself after this. She has come completely undone and unraveled in front of the entire world.

Let’s pray that she gets back on her good foot, cause this ain’t it.

Sunday marks the sixth anniversary of Kobe’s passing, so this Throwback Thursday, I’m sharing something I wrote about him two weeks after his death.

I was not a Kobe fan, but I used to be. I have always respected his game and admired his determination and dedication to his craft, and I have been a loyal Laker fan all of my life, but it was the 2003 sexual assault allegation that made me see him differently. As a woman, the entire situation felt wrong, even though I didn’t yet have the language to explain why. So I kept watching him, but I was wary.

After the allegation and the creation of the Black Mamba persona, he became otherworldly. I saw someone who I felt was full of himself—perhaps rightfully so, given what he brought to the game, but it was a turnoff, nonetheless.

I know for sure I didn't see Kobe clearly until after he died. His death weighed on me heavily in the initial days after, and I could not explain why. I didn’t even particularly care for the man, so why did I get a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes with every mention of him?

Maybe it was because his daughter went with him. Maybe it was because of all the other people who perished with him. Maybe it made me consider my own mortality.

As I grappled to make sense of the senseless, I noticed myself getting upset every time I saw a microphone being shoved into the face of someone who knew him as they were asked to talk on the spot about a friend they had just lost. It felt wrong. When I saw people bringing up the 2003 allegation, that felt wrong, but as a journalist, I understood why the question needed to be and would be asked of people.

We have the tendency to deify those we lose. Suddenly every bad thing they did goes away, and we only remember the good. We only talk about the good, because to talk about the bad feels like a betrayal.

It felt wrong to talk about the sexual assault allegation, but I began to realize how much of an important part of Kobe’s legacy even that incident was.

It was important because Kobe seemingly grew from it.

As The Glow Up Managing Editor Maiysha Kai put it so beautifully:

Kobe Bryant wasn’t a god. He wasn’t a superhero; though his athletic prowess was often otherworldly. Kobe was a man—a ridiculously talented basketball player, yes; but also a son, a husband, a father, a teammate, a friend, a philanthropist, and a person as flawed as any of us. By all accounts, he didn’t live in denial of that fact, so why should we?

Kobe issued a statement after the incident, acknowledging that although he felt the encounter was consensual, he could see how the young woman did not. He was contrite and repentant. He changed after that incident in more ways than one.

His basketball game became fiercer. We never heard stories of him cheating on his wife or being involved in an alleged sexual assault again. He began advocating to make the world better for women and girls. He did the work.

It is in that reconciliation work he did on his own that I can see Kobe fully. I had stopped paying attention to anything about him other than basketball. I didn’t want to know.

Now, I do.

I want to know that Kobe tried to be a better person. I want to know that he learned a lesson about consent. I want to know that he tried to make things right after the fact. I want to know that he grew from that and became a better man because of it.

I want to know that the redemption so many are seeking for him posthumously is something that he had already carved out for himself while he was still living.

It was his greatest effort, and even without saying it, that’s why so many people love him so much. Kobe was a hero.

This makes my grieving make sense. It’s the parts we don’t want to talk about. It’s the parts we should be talking about.

I still don’t want to see microphones shoved in the faces of people who loved him, but I understand it.

I understand that speaking on the allegations may make some people uncomfortable, and there is a reason for that, which may lie completely outside of Kobe himself. We often run away from self-analysis, and it is when looking at the mistakes of others that we feel the need to flee most strongly. Looking at Kobe as a whole means looking at ourselves and understanding that, just as we are not perfect, neither was he.

Kobe took his flaws and used them to make himself greater. That is the greatest testament to who he was as a man and a human being.

I can sit with that and grieve him and know that he was still living his life to the fullest, especially in those last moments as he shuttled the daughter who was following in his footsteps and her teammates to their game via helicopter.

He was being the best Mamba he could be.

He will be missed.

I Played Grand Theft Auto V Nightly for 3 Years. Here’s a List of Things I Never Did as a Result

In trying to shift the blame of white domestic terrorism from the actual white people committing it and the “president” who champions and enables it, there has been a lot of talk about the dangers of video games.

Listen.

I played one of the most violent video games, Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto V online, nightly for three years. And when I tell you I played? I fucking played. I was a troll. I’d get on there and grief people regularly if I wasn’t doing missions, selling dope or playing survival with my girl Carter.

As violent as the activities that I virtually participated in were, I somehow managed to play the game and never do any of the following in real life:

I have never stood on top of the Beverly Center and used a rocket launcher to take out the police and their helicopters.

I have never stood on the pier at Santa Monica beach and sniped people with a long-range rifle.

I have never blown anyone’s car up.

I have never blown open an armored truck with a sticky bomb and then stolen all the money inside of it.

I have never randomly walked up to a stranger on the street and stabbed them multiple times for no reason.

I have never led the police on a chase that resulted in the armed forces getting involved with tanks and shit.

I have never escaped said car chase by pulling into a body shop and having the color of my car altered.

I have never robbed a bank.

I have never stolen a helicopter, flown it over the city and randomly blown people up for no reason other than my own petty amusement.

I have never even had the thought of committing a mass shooting in real life no matter how entertaining it is when I do it with video game characters.

I have played every iteration of the Grand Theft Auto franchise since the first one came out. I have never even been tempted to try and steal a car.

In other words, your “president” and everyone else using this as an excuse is full of shit.

Thirty days after the murder of George Floyd at the hands of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, it seems white people are still slowly coming to the realization that AmeriKKKa is racist as fuck.

It’s not just the overt racism that is out there, but all the little microaggressions and insidious ways it has crept into American culture.

White people say they want to help, and we appreciate that because it is definitely on the backs of white people to fix these problems that were created by their ancestors in the first place, but that help should not come by way of them expecting Black people to validate them every step of the way.

This week, I am taking the time to give our white friends some dos and don’ts for allyship.

Happy New Year, and welcome to the first Throwback Thursday post of 2026.

It feels weird starting the year off with a throwback post, but it’s Thursday, and I don’t make the rules.

Have I ever told y’all how blessed I am to be working at The Root?

People who criticize us always start with “Y’all are owned by white people” to try and take us down.

Listen. Yes, we are owned by white people, but my workplace is black as fuck.

Yes, the company that owns The Root is white, but The Root has editorial independence, and we make our own decisions here. Every decision about what to run on the site is made by a team of Black women: our editor in chief, Danielle Belton; our managing editor, Genetta Adams; the managing editor of The Glow Up, Maiysha Kai; and me, the news editor.

Our writers are black. Our video team (Hey Ashley! Hey Felice! Hey PJ! Hey Jessica!) is black. Our social media editor, Corey P. Townsend, is black. It don’t get no blacker. Our freelancers are black. We write about the black experience. We talk about things from the Black perspective.

Our work Slack is black as fuck. We joke on each other. We discuss current events and popular culture in our black ass voices. We argue things like which joker is the big joker (for the record, it’s the Guarantee because that’s a guaranteed book, niggas) or whether or not deviled eggs should have relish in them (they should, niggas), and the greatest argument ever: flats are superior to drums when eating wings.

I told y’all. It’s black as fuck here.

But what about people who don’t have the privilege of working in an all black environment? What about those who have to navigate whiteness as they earn their paycheck? Should they be seeking out an all black workplace as well?

This is the topic of this week’s Auntie Unfiltered.

Whenever the topic of discussion turns to white people and the bullshit they pull against Black people, there will always be a few white voices that want to disrupt what could be a productive conversation with that old white people spiritual refrain:

“Not all white people.”

I’ve written about and spoken on this topic before. It’s nothing new.

Not all white people is a deflection. It rhymes with “I’ve always been good to you people,” and it is in the verse after “Some of my best friends are Black.”

It’s a defense mechanism that white people use when they feel affronted.

On this episode, I discuss why white people need to stop doing this.