Cognize

   ~ For Chris Brown Rape doesn’t happen to men Not even boys if you know how To spin your tale & feather it up You’re from that special, faraway place It’s different in the country Just couldn’t say no to it Kind of, like, hot [...]

I cannot even begin to express how hurt I am as an African American in this country. I cannot express how hurt I am for the families of Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and anyone else who has lost a child at the hands of [...]

Abstract Social and economic disadvantage – not only poverty, but a host of associated conditions – depresses student performance. Concentrating students with these disadvantages in racially and economically homogenous schools depresses it further. Schools that the most disadvantaged black children [...]

“ You fucking stupid bitch,” a man screamed followed by the slam of a car door. Feet thumped and the passenger door swung open. The incoherent pleas of a woman could be heard. Then the loud sound of skin making contact with skin reverberated through [...]

The fourth time a Poughkeepsie police officer told me that my Vassar College Faculty ID could make everything OK was three years ago. I was driving down Wilbur Avenue. When the white police officer, whose head was way too small for his neck, asked if [...]

As a child in South Carolina, I spent summers like so many children — sitting on my grandparents’ back porch with my siblings, spitting watermelon seeds into the garden or, even worse, swallowing them and trembling as my older brother and sister spoke of the [...]

WE MUST BE THE NEW GUARDS: OPEN LETTER TO WHITE POETS "But when a long train of abuses and usurpation, pursing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw [...]

CHICAGO NOVEMBER 31, 2014 — After holding their 53rd Session in Geneva, Switzerland earlier this month, during which the United States was under review, on Friday, November 28tth, the United Nations Committee Against Torture (UNCAT) issued a report titled The Concluding Observations. Leading up to [...]

In 1987, my living room could not have been more minimally furnished. A desk. A chair. A wall of books. Only a few items of visual interest sat on the mantel of my fake fireplace. Among them was — horrific image ahead — [...]