Laura Loomer.

Umph, umph, umph.

I’ve noticed a pattern with you. You sure do spend a whole lot of time calling accomplished Black women a whole inventory of racist shit living inside your head.

Let’s see . . .

At different times, you’ve called Rep. Jasmine Crockett a “ghetto Black bitch,” “Ghetto DEI Shaniqua,” “hood rat,” “ratchet,” “Ghetto boo thing” with “Shaniqua nails” who should be “working at KFC.”

You’ve called Congresswoman Cori Bush a “ghetto Black woman who can barely speak English.” While you were cheering former Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee’s death, you called her a “ghetto bitch” and the Somali Congresswoman Ilhan Omar a “Black dog.” You said former vice president Kamala Harris was a “stupid, brain-dead, lying, bitch.” I can’t stand Candace Owens but I’ve never fixed my brain to call her a “nappy-headed Black bitch” like you did.

Have you ever even met attorney Fani Willis? Because while discussing an event for Willis, you said it smelled like “fried chicken and marijuana,” then added, “Stereotypes exist for a reason.” Fani Willis, Kamala Harris and Attorney General Letitia James, you said, are “meritless DEI Shaniquas.” And now, you’ve said Rep. Angie Nixon, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Cori Bush and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson are “ghetto, entitled, race-obsessed, destructive Black bitches.”

Girl, have you met YOU?

Of course you have.

And that’s exactly why not nary a Black woman in America should waste a single solitary brain cell trying to dignify the premise of any of your boolshit. Fuck all that when they go low we go high. No, I am not a child of the holy ghost. When degenerates like you go low on my people, I got to hell and sit next to the devil.

You keep calling Black women out their names because you have the awful burden of waking up every single day of your miserable life to bark into a mirror at a face that is all hostile geometry. Your dark eyebrows look like two ravens perched over a crime scene. Them eyebrows be headed northeast and northwest while your cheeks are located in neighboring jurisdictions with zoning disputes and your lips enter the room sideways. How is that nothin’ on that uglyass mug of yours connects to anything?

And when you smile, Jesus Christ on a plastic Walmart crucifix. Somebody sent out an Amber Alert for a missing MAGA cousin-husband! Because that creepy smile is givin’ the final boss of Spirit Halloween, or Real Housewife of the Waffle House Parking Lot on a good day. No, scratch that. It’s giving Bratz doll that got radicalized in a Haunted Sephora.

You are a walking hot mess, inside and out, which is why calling Black women “ghetto” and claiming they lack refinement is fucking breathtaking. And every time you open that fetid sewer mouth of yours to disrespect Black women, I ask the ancestors why in the hell irony hasn’t filed a restraining order against your racist ass. Have you convinced yourself that you are actually somehow refined? Dignified? Intellectually formidable? Those are rhetorical questions, Laura.

I suspect that what’s really eating you alive is that your old American racial coupon that promised white women cash back for not being Black, hasn’t done much for you. Has it made you more accomplished? Interesting? Intelligent? An attractive or elegant woman? A decent human being? Again, those are all rhetorical questions. And you and I both know that your racial coupon damn sure won’t make you any better than the Black women you spend your miserable days trying to degrade.

I know, that’s gotta hurt. Because what does a racist white woman like you have when you look at all those accomplished women and Blackness no longer automatically means inferior to you?

All you’ve got left is you, Laura Loomer. Only you.

You’ll never admit to it, but Laura Loomer ain’t even enough for Laura Loomer. You’re just a pale, attention hungry meat bag full of envy, insecurity, white grievance, and a bottomless need to feel racially superior. How awful that must be to have to wake up every day and live up to the lies of white superiority. Ugh.

And that’s why you keep reaching for Black women to dehumanize like we’re your damn emotional support animals or mammy dolls. Your vile comments ain’t about us, and you know it! You know that ain’t none of them accomplished Black women are beneath you. None of them. You keep insulting us because somewhere deep in that nasty little racial imagination of yours, you’re scared as hell that they are, in fact, better than you in every way. They should send you a reparations invoice for helping you hold your fragile self-esteem together with duct tape.

You are pitiful Laura. You need, yes need to call a Black woman a ghetto bitch before you wash your face and start your day. Then another one at lunchtime. And another successful Black woman to hawk spit on before you tuck yourself in bed underneath your musty MAGA comforter to help you sleep at night.

But here’s the thing, the ritual never cures you. It won’t. Because every morning the hate and racial dopamine high wears off again. And there you are again, still Laura Loomer, barking at the woman in the mirror just to make being you bearable. Because at the end of the day, Black women will still be accomplished and the one woman you never degrade enough to finally feel good about is you. You, Laura Loomer. You.

One day you will die, and the final eulogy on your life will be: “Here lies Laura Loomer, the MAGA movement’s racist hemorrhoid who never figured out how to make herself worth a damn because she wasted her whole empty life trying to turn Black women into nobodies and she failed.”

And when the maggots get a taste of your rotten flesh even they will cry: “PLEASE. RETURN. TO. SENDER.”

Thanks for reading. If this piece moved you or made you think, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your subscription keeps my Substack fueled and unfiltered. Paid subscriptions also help me support HBCU journalism students who need laptops, DSLR cameras, tripods, mics, lights, software, conference travel, reporting trips, and even food from our pantry. We appreciate your support!

A NOTE TO READERS: Commenting has recently been reserved for paid subscribers only due to the deluge of racist filth under my posts. So if you want to participate in the conversations here, please upgrade.

THIS CONTENT IS WRITTEN IN THE AUTHOR’S PERSONAL CAPACITY. ANY OPINIONS EXPRESSED ARE THE AUTHOR’S OWN AND SHOULD NOT BE ATTRIBUTED TO HOWARD UNIVERSITY OR MORGAN STATE UNIVERSITY.

The doors of the church are open. Good morning, Saints.

Beloved children of the sun, lemme ask Y’all somethin’ . . .

How many of Y’all in this sanctuary love dogs? Lemme see your hand. Hmm-hmm. How many of Y’all got a dog livin’ up in your house right now? Hmm-hmm.

That fur baby ain’t payin’ no mortgage or vet bills or taxes. Ain’t buyin’ no groceries. Ain’t got no credit score or discernible skillset.

Can’t take out the trash, can’t wash a dish, and can’t help you fold the laundry but is always ready to give unsolicited supervision around the house. Dog parents know what I’m talkin’ about. Can’t read a clock but will give you a whole attitude if their dinner ain’t ready by precisely 6:03 pm.

Can’t read the word “treat” but somehow still knows the word when you say it out loud and now you gotta walk around spellin’ things and speakin’ in code inside the house you pay for. And what gets me, is that most of these fur babies out here have never worked a day in their life but they wake up exhausted as hell.

Why?!

Now Saints, I don’t know why these fur babies be so tired. But Y’all know I love me a dog. Especially one that’s beautiful in the face. Got them old soulful almost human eyes that look right through you. Smells like Bergamot, vanilla, and some berries. Is bougie as hell. Persnickety about her food and yak chews. Wears a different preppy collar to daycare everyday and walks up to the other dogs like, “Good morning, bitches! Pun intended. I AM SOMEBODY!” Yes indeed. My dog be given’ them face, fur, tail, and paws.

I love me a dog that requires filtered water. That demands a temperature-controlled house. A fur baby that must have a fluffed blanket before she can lay down and enter into nightly rest beside her human.

I don’t know about your dog, but my dog Sojourner is blessed, highly favored, and living in the overflow! She knows the Lord is her shepherd and she shall not want. She knows that goodness, mercy, belly rubs, climate control, and treats shall follow her all the days of her life.

Because Proverbs 12:10 reminds us that “the righteous care for the needs of their animals, but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel.”

This kindness, Saints, shows a heart that honors god. And when I say god I mean the animating ethic within us that recognizes all living creatures, human and animal, as worthy of tenderness, protection, and care.

Can I get an amen from all the pet people, dog sitters and walkers, vets, and the farmers in the sanctuary this morning?

No, my dog contributes nothing material to my household, but I love her deliriously anyway because she is loyal and every day she gives me somethin’ this world keeps trying to beat out of folk. She gives me uncomplicated tenderness. She sits beside me when I’m sad and doesn’t demand that I explain it. She knows when I’ve got a migraine coming and will snuggle her warm body next to my skin to let me know it’s gonna be alright. She stays next to me through the pain.

Whenever I leave the house, even if its only for just one minute to take out the trash, she rejoices in my presence like my homecoming is a resurrection, or like I’m the prodigal Black mama who survived 40 years in the wilderness! Unlike a cat who will just stare at you like, “Ah, it’s just you again. You survived out there. Now come worship me.”

Every day this dog reminds me that love doesn’t always need language. This loving, tail-wagging ball of fur won’t let me sit in the darkness and carry pain or grief by myself. And because of her I have decided on purpose that I will be even more attentive, more compassionate, and more tender because the way you treat the vulnerable and those with less power says something about the condition of your soul. Amen?!

Brotha Willie, they ain’t ready for this sermon!

Now Saints, the Bible does not give us a lot of favorable descriptions of dogs. Biblical dogs were not treated like our modern beloved house pets. They were considered symbols of uncleanness and predation. They usually appear in stories where they are scavenging, guarding, humiliating, hunting, attacking, or eating people down to their bones.

Dogs are agents of terror that surround vulnerable people. In Psalm 22:16 we hear the cry: “Dogs surround me; a pack of villains encircles me.” In Psalm 59:6 dogs are violent enemies prowling the city searching for their target: “They return at evening, snarling like dogs, and prowl about the city.”

Being eaten by a dog was considered the most degrading form of death because you died without dignity. That’s what happened to Queen Jezebel in 1 Kings 21:23, which tells us: “Dogs will devour Jezebel by the wall of Jezreel.” And then 2 Kings 9:35 tells us that after she was killed: “They went to bury her, but they found nothing except her skull, her feet and her hands.”

There are other stories about dogs prowling and searching for people in communities where state violence and bloodshed has appeared. You’ll see them licking blood and attacking people who were judged and condemned by power.

Which brings me to our modern political moment. I don’t know if Y’all read the news this week. But did Y’all hear that ICE is trying to get approval to spend millions of dollars on mechanical dogs with 360-degree vision that can track people, do surveillance, and even open doors?

A metal animal with four jointed legs, Y’all. No mouth, no breath, no heartbeat inside it, no bark, no fur or eyes you can look into. The thing is a walking camera that can look in all directions and can extend its mechanical arm to open your door. It won’t hesitate or show affection or mercy. All it knows is that the unseen white supremacist machinery of empire has identified a target.

And on top of that, ICE got another big $16 million contract to produce thousands of electric-shock gloves! The government has given these things a name: “Conductive Distraction and De-escalation Device” a.k.a "The G.L.O.V.E.” So when an ICE agent’s hand touches a body, the agent will retain the appearance of gripping their target while concealed shocks send electricity through the body.

Turn to your neighbor and say, “Neighbor, the devil got a damn federal procurement card.”

Saints, these creepy-ass robot dogs and electric-shock gloves are tools of the machinery of an Empire that has already turned its prejudice into dehumanizing language and propaganda, policy, databases to identify people, contracts, and weapons of terror that seize and disappear vulnerable people. So now we might be about to see metal dog feet at people’s doors and electric hands on people’s flesh while the government stands back and calls this dystopian terror “public safety.”

Turn to your neighbor and say, “Neighbor, ain’t nothin’ new under the sun.”

You and I know that empires throughout human history have built evil technologies according to their theologies. Pharaoh had those expensive chariots which were like the armored tanks of the ancient world. Nebuchadnezzar had those powerful furnaces that he ordered heated seven times hotter for anybody who refused to bow to his demands. Rome had crosses, which were essentially state-engineered instruments of torture designed to humiliate and lynch the body to force the public into obedience.

Brotha Willie play your organ.

These regimes had terrifying machinery. But at the end of the day, all three regimes failed.

Pharaoh lost his control over the people. Nebuchadnezzar’s empire fell. Rome became ruins. The machinery made them terrifying but not eternal. The chariots may chase you, but they can’t stop the Exodus. The fire furnace actually killed the men trying to feed people into the flames and it couldn’t force every knee to bow. The cross killed Jesus and many others who were condemned, but it could not kill the justice that Jesus represented.

Beloved children of the sun, what is the lesson here?

If you study history, I mean really study it, you’ll see that every corrupt empire suffers from the same fatal delusion. They think that just because they have the power to exploit, dehumanize, and take the lives of vulnerable people, that means they get to control history. But they don’t. Cruelty and terrifying weapons don’t make an empire immortal. And they can’t manufacture righteousness or save your racist government’s rotten-ass soul.

Beloved children of the sun, the machinery of American Empire does not have to have the last word.

While dogs may not have been depicted as beloved in the Bible, scripture also gives us the famous story of some other dogs that recognized and surrounded a suffering man when other powerful human beings refused to see him.

Do Y’all recall the story of a man named Lazarus? He appears in Luke 16. He’s poor. He’s downtrodden. He’s afflicted. He’s starving. He is lying outside of a rich man’s gate with sores covering his body. The rich man passes by this suffering every day without stopping. He treats him like he’s invisible and worthless.

Luke 16:20-21 says: “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.”

The dogs came and licked his sores. Umph.

Now church, there’s a theological debate about this. Some folks say that the dogs licking the man added more indignity to his situation. Remember, street dos in the ancient world were seen as unclean nuisances. But others argue that these dogs gently licking this beggar’s sores were a sign of compassion. The dogs offered more compassion and mercy than the rich human inside the large house who had status and religion.

The dogs didn’t care about Lazarus’s skin color, country of origin, citizenship status, or poverty. They didn’t ask the man for an ID or to explain his hunger or sickness. Think about it, Y’all. The dogs were demonized. The dogs got no pets and snuggles. They were always living in survival mode themselves. But despite their lowly position, they still had the ability, the instinct to recognize another wounded being while the rich man who had everything just kept on feasting and refused to acknowledge Lazarus’s humanity.

Now Black folks in America know some things about how the state has used dogs as agents of terror. During slavery, some states had slave codes that forbid our ancestors from owning dogs because dogs are loyal, dogs could send messages, and dogs could protect an enslaved person being whipped or chased by catchers. Bloodhounds were used to track our people through the forests and swamps when we committed the crime of seeking freedom. During the civil rights era, we watched redneck assholes like Bull Connor unleash dogs onto our children in Birmingham and elsewhere. And now, what was tested on our people is being turned into high-tech machinery against our Brown brothers and sisters who’ve been dehumanized as prey.

Black Liberation Theology teaches us an important lesson about this kind of oppression. This new machinery of terror won’t stay confined to the border. It won’t just be applied to immigrants being targeted by ICE. America has always rehearsed its experiments and violences on the most vulnerable and demonized groups whose rights have been disregarded. Mark my words, Saints. If there is no radical resistance against this regime, we will see these robot dogs and electric-shock gloves spreading to major cities, other marginalized communities, college campuses, protests, and prisons.

And so, beloved children of the sun, you must decide what kind of human being you will become when you hear the metal dogs showing up at somebody else’s house and turning their doorknob. Will you be like the cold-hearted rich man? Will you ignore the suffering outside your gate? Will you keep on feasting? Will you be too frightened, compromised, or comfortable to resist oppression?

Or will you be a member of the sanctuary?

Will you jam the machinery? Will you burn the contract? Will you put your body between the hunted and the machinery of the state? Will you remember that god is in Lazarus, in the starving, the unhoused, the disabled, the sick, the abandoned, and the migrant being hunted by the state? Will you remember that god is in the gentle dogs reminding us that love and uncomplicated tenderness doesn’t always need language?

Our true liberation will begin when we refuse to let the terrifying machinery of Empire get the last word. Let that promise be our terrible nightmare to America.

And let the church say Amen, Amen, and Amen.

Thanks so much for going to church with me. If this sermon touched you or learned something new, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Paid subscriptions also help support HBCU journalism students by helping them buy books, equipment, software, transportation, emergency supplies, and other resources they need to keep learning, reporting, and telling the truth. Paid subscriptions also help fund my student food pantry. We appreciate your support!

THIS CONTENT IS WRITTEN IN THE AUTHOR’S PERSONAL CAPACITY. ANY OPINIONS EXPRESSED ARE THE AUTHOR’S OWN AND SHOULD NOT BE ATTRIBUTED TO HOWARD UNIVERSITY OR MORGAN STATE UNIVERSITY.

If you recall, Black folks on social media spent much of this summer fiercely debating two of the gravest threats to the future of HBCUs: young women wearing bonnets at Tuskegee University and Howard University students committing the high crime of not having enough money to enroll.

Apparently, those threats were more urgent than a 159-year-old Black university in Raleigh, North Carolina, founded to educate formerly enslaved people, losing its accreditation, drowning in debt, filing for bankruptcy and quietly ceasing to function as a university.

Yes, I’m talking about Saint Augustine’s University, which trained newly freed Black folk during Reconstruction, created North Carolina’s first Black nursing school, operated St. Agnes Hospital during segregation so Black patients could receive professional medical care, educated the feminist scholar Anna Julia Cooper, and produced more than 40 Olympians.

While folks were busy policing bonnets and student bank accounts, on August 20, the university, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy back in April with $74 million in debt, told a bankruptcy court that it would no longer offer classes, certificate programs, or other educational programming this fall. The school failed to retain accreditation, it lost access to federal financial aid, and it suspended plans to generate revenue through online programs.

Though the bankruptcy judge said Saint Augustine’s is “essentially closed,” the university has not formally said it is permanently closed and its leaders say they plan to emerge from bankruptcy and rebuild.

And this is fucking sad, Y’all. SAD!

Because Saint Augustine’s is among three dozen present-day HBCUs, an entire generation of Black institutions, that were founded during that brief window after slavery where this country witnessed the educational infrastructure of Black freedom being built. Saint Augustine’s survived Reconstruction, and like Tuskegee and Howard, Jim Crow, racial terrorism, the Great Depression, two world wars, and generations of deliberate white disinvestment only to find itself fighting for its life under the Trump regime’s white nationalist assault on higher ed.

But where is the national alarm?

Where is all the viral social media outrage?

Where are the demands that that elected officials, philanthropists, corporations, alumni and Black institutions assemble an emergency rescue effort?

Hello, hello, HELLLLL-OOOO?

Ohh, but we saw lots of social-media energy devoting to dragging the hell out of bonnets and broke students and news about Howard offering buyouts to faculty and staff. Folks ate that up because they’re always so eager to call HBCUs raggedy, corrupt and incompetent.

Meanwhile, an actual HBCU is quietly dying.

And just watch, this fall you’re gonna see folks online praising HBCUs as cultural symbols. We’ll be deluged with videos showcasing homecomings, marching bands, Greek life, celebrity alumni, and school pride. As if these schools are not facing an urgent crisis and are at risk of disappearing. I guess folks think nostalgia can rebuild them.

Saint Augustine’s troubles did not begin with Donald Trump’s first or second racist presidency. So we can’t lie about that. Like more than 300 other colleges and universities, Saint Augustine’s had been suffering from years of declining enrollment, debt, governance failures, unpaid employees and accreditation problems. Under Trump’s first president, 375 colleges closed in just three academic years, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics. So far, under his current term, at least 16 colleges or campuses announced closure in 2025 and that number is continuing to rise. I was not able to find an authoritative final federal total just yet.

Most of these closures were for-profit schools, but 64 were private nonprofits and two were public institutions, and since since 2020, dozens more public and private nonprofit colleges have closed, merged or announced plans to close.

Now, I’m not out here trying to argue that the Orange Menace is personally responsible for causing every closure. Many of these institutions were already weak and had been suffering from falling enrollments, debt, COVID losses and years of poor governance.

But the Trump regime’s assault on federal research funding, student aid, DEI, international enrollment and the Department of Education is hitting schools and especially small, tuition-dependent HBCUs like Saint Augustine’s especially hard. HBCUs, due to chronic historical disinvestment, have far less financial insulation than wealthy predominantly white institutions like say a Harvard which can lose grants, fight the federal government in court and draw upon billions in assets. Small HBCUs operate with little cash and modest endowments, and little political protection so they may not survive a delayed federal payment, enrollment declines or even one disastrous audit.

So don’t look at what’s happening at Saint Augustine’s either as one unfortunate campus or an isolated embarrassment. This is a serious warning that we need to heed. And if we don’t, we will watch other HBCUs close their doors as during this national higher-education contraction.

And what’s especially scary is that if more HBCUs fall, the consequences could decimate the Black middle class which was created and is replenished by these institutions. Research shows that nearly 70% of HBCU students earn at least a middle-class income. Collectively, these institutions generate $16.5 billion in annual economic impact, they support more than 136,000 jobs, and more than 51,000 students who graduated from HBCUs in 2021 are projected to earn $146 billion over their working lives. This is $53 billion more than they would have earned had they not graduated from these schools.

The damage will be inherited by generations. We’re gonna see fewer Black homeowners, business owners, doctors, journalists, alumni and donors who are positioned to finance the next generation’s education. The Trump regime and its evil architects don’t have to stand behind a podium and declare that they are gonna destroy the Black middle class. All they have to do is dismantle the institutions that reproduce it and starve these schools of the economic resources they need to operate.

I hope that Saint Augustine’s can emerge from bankruptcy and rebuild. In the meantime, folks need to stop with all these anti-Black HBCU memes, the viral posts that relentlessly portray these schools as embarrassing, dysfunctional, incompetent, corrupt, and undeserving. Because if y’all keep doing this shit and aiming all this scrutiny at individual schools instead of upward at the racist capitalist overlords destroying every damn thing, this more closures will be framed as some kind of natural Darwinian consequence of Black low-IQ boolshit rather than the culmination of historic underfunding, unequal endowments, predatory financing and present-day political assaults.

If Black social media can mobilize overnight over some damn bonnet and produce this kind of viral humiliation, then surely we can mobilize around the survival of Black institutions, right? Because if we don’t, we will watch another HBCU quietly die, and and more Black futures die with it. And that silence and complicity will be treason against the ancestors who held such high hopes that the education of our people would prove to be a corrective genius to all that this racist system tried to destroy.

Thanks for reading. If this piece moved you or made you think, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your subscription keeps my Substack fueled and unfiltered. Paid subscriptions also help me support HBCU journalism students who need laptops, DSLR cameras, tripods, mics, lights, software, conference travel, reporting trips, and even food from our pantry. We appreciate your support!

A NOTE TO READERS: Commenting has recently been reserved for paid subscribers only due to the deluge of racist filth under my posts. So if you want to participate in the conversations here, please upgrade.

THIS CONTENT IS WRITTEN IN THE AUTHOR’S PERSONAL CAPACITY. ANY OPINIONS EXPRESSED ARE THE AUTHOR’S OWN AND SHOULD NOT BE ATTRIBUTED TO HOWARD UNIVERSITY OR MORGAN STATE UNIVERSITY.

A NOTE TO READERS: This piece was initially published on NewsOne, August 28, 2026

“I WON!”

And she did.

Earlier this week, Karen Attiah announced her nearly yearlong victory against the Washington Post with those two emphatic words followed by a pair of brown-skinned flexed-biceps emojis. Her singular declaration was entirely appropriate because that hard-earned ruling restored her job, full back pay, and professional standing after an independent arbitrator ruled that the Post had fired her without sufficient cause for writing social media posts about the selective mourning of violent white men.

“It’s been a year-long fight, but this is a victory for journalists everywhere.” Attiah posted on Instagram.

So far, the headlines have mostly framed her victory in three celebratory registers: Karen Attiah won. The union worked. Press freedom prevailed.

“This decision is a thunderous win for Karen Attiah, an award-winning journalist fired for doing her job, over Bezos’ Washington Post,” said Norm Eisen, executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund. “The Post tried to pass off retaliation as discipline, but the rule of law has exposed it for what it truly is: wrongful termination. This is a landmark decision for every journalist who refuses to be silenced.”

Indeed, this is a significant victory for Attiah, for collective bargaining, newsroom unions, due process, and for journalists’ freedom of expression. But what, if anything, did her victory do for the collective condition of Black journalism? Especially since her lawsuit prevailed through union arbitration. Attiah’s reinstatement is not the result of a corporate news outlet examining its conscience, admitting wrongdoing, repenting, and committing to remedying its longstanding problem with newsroom diversity. At the end of the day, Attiah is not being welcomed back home as an act of corporate enlightenment or racial justice.

Continue reading on NewsOne HERE.

Thanks for reading. If this piece moved you or made you think, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your subscription keeps my Substack fueled and unfiltered. Paid subscriptions also help me support HBCU journalism students who need laptops, DSLR cameras, tripods, mics, lights, software, conference travel, reporting trips, and even food from our pantry. We appreciate your support!

A NOTE TO READERS: Commenting has recently been reserved for paid subscribers only due to the deluge of racist filth under my posts. So if you want to participate in the conversations here, please upgrade.

THIS CONTENT IS WRITTEN IN THE AUTHOR’S PERSONAL CAPACITY. ANY OPINIONS EXPRESSED ARE THE AUTHOR’S OWN AND SHOULD NOT BE ATTRIBUTED TO HOWARD UNIVERSITY OR MORGAN STATE UNIVERSITY.

Good morning Y’all.

School is back in session. Whoot! Whoot!

Today, I’m opening up my classroom and inviting you Beautiful People to come listen to a lecture I delivered to my Multimedia Storytelling students. This is one that extends far beyond journalism.

As you listen, I want you to think about some critical questions: Who controls your senses? Do you take the time to pause and look closely at images? Do you have the ability to stop and listen for more than a few seconds? To think critically about what you see and hear? Is your attention constantly interrupted? Do you find that your emotions are constantly provoked when you’re scrolling social media? Do you feel like your eyes are being trained to constantly move from one visual stimulus to the next or from one spectacle to another before you’ve really had time to understand what you just witnessed?

Well, lemme tell Y’all somethin’ . . . powerful political forces in collaboration with creepy tech bros and professionals who understand developmental psychology and neuroscience are exploiting your senses and managing human attention.

There’s a great deal of talk in our current political moment about authoritarianism and what do we do to fight back against it. You’ll hear folks talking about propaganda, attacks on voting rights, policing, censorship, state violence. But authoritarianism is even more intimate because it also depends on harvesting your attention, sensory overload, distracting you, fragmenting your perception, the constant production of images, memes, villains and caricatures, outrage and spectacle, and exhausting the hell out of you. We’ve reached the stage where we’ve normalized things that once shocked us and far too many people are walking around apathetic, disengaged, and eventually stop noticing what power is doing.

So this is why I love teaching multimedia storytelling. The goal is to train young storytellers how to shoot videos, record audio, compose photographs, and build interactive stories for the web. Yes, they learn about these technologies of attention, but they also learn how to reengage with their human senses: how to see, hear, feel, control their own attention, become architects of story, and make meaning. You can’t tell powerful stories if you’re walking around with numb senses. I believe that digital storytelling is a tool of resistance that, at its best, can help restore attention and help folks sit with reality longer than the algorithm wants them to.

So, if you want to learn how to control your own perception and regain possession over your own mind, come go to class with me and my journalism students.

Listen here.

Thanks for reading and listening. If this audio lecture moved you or made you think, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your subscription keeps my Substack fueled and unfiltered. Paid subscriptions also help me support HBCU journalism students who need laptops, DSLR cameras, tripods, mics, lights, software, conference travel, reporting trips, and even food from our pantry. We appreciate your support!

The doors of the church are open. Good morning, Saints.

Saints, you probably heard the news yesterday. Young Karmelo Anthony’s motion for a new trial was denied by a Texas judge months after the original trial judge said that the jury “got it right.” This new ruling was handed down despite dozens of pages of evidence showing that Austin Metcalf was a v…

Read more

M’kay Y’all, so let’s recap . . .

For three whole weeks legions of people around the world watched former Cambridge sociology professor Jason Arday get hunted, humiliated, and dragged through the digital streets. Those bloodthirsty, racist right-wing ghouls gleefully watched his fall and destruction like serialized entertainment and they absolutely enjoy…

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The doors of the church are open, good morning Saints!

Beloved children of the sun, our scripture today comes from the King Jeans Version, the Book of Cardi, chapter 69, verse Bronx: “And she said unto the Lord, I used to boost jeans from Old Navy, but now this bad bitch is they whole marketing strategy. Look at gawd.”

Turn to your neighbor and say, “Neig…

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Hey Y’all,

Look at that thing up there!

It was published on Tuesday but I didn’t find out until late last night. I opened the link and was like, “Oh snap! Publishers Weekly reviewed Strung Up.”

That’s a pretty big freakin’ deal because it is one of the strongest prepublication endorsements a book can get.

But then I was like, “Oh snap,” again because i…

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A NOTE TO READERS: This piece was originally published on NewsOne on August 11, 2026.

White supremacy in this country is so damn evil that it will summon old diseases defeated generations ago just to poison the inheritance of Black and Brown children who represent the end of white America’s presumed ownership of the future.

On Monday, the Trump regime sig…

Read more

Hey Y’all,

I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but yesterday Nancy Mace, a sitting Republican congresswoman published a dangerous essay in the racist right-wing rag Daily Wire, declaring that liberal white women are a “national security threat” because they’ve been socialized to show too much “pathological empathy” to immigrants, trans people, and other grou…

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Y’all . . .

I just heard some funny shit on Martha Stewart’s internet. White grievance in America has officially entered its lace-front era and discovered a new form of . . . wait for it . . . wait for it . . . “Black privilege,” chile.

That’s right, “Black privilege.”

I need somebody to call Rev. Al, Attorney Ben Crump, the NAACP, and the Urban League b…

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In August 1982, my biological mother wrote a note on a sheet of lined paper. The last sentence read, “I don’t hurt anymore. Goodbye.”

She tied a bedsheet around her neck and hanged herself from a heating pipe inside her sister’s house in Montclair, New Jersey. It was a private act that her family has been grieving for more than four decades. Yes, my…

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A NOTE TO READERS: This piece was originally published on NewsOne, August 5, 2026.

Do y’all remember back in 2007 when then-presidential candidate Barack Obama said, “We have more work to do when more young Black men languish in prison than attend colleges and universities across America?”

That emotionally powerful statistic went viral and kept being repe…

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Have Y’all ever read Charles Dickens’s famous novella A Christmas Carol?

I mean, lots of people have seen the film adaptation which airs every Christmas season, but they haven’t read the book. If you have, do you remember that part in the story where two men ask Ebenezer Scrooge to donate some money to help the poor?

That ole gaunt coin-clutching pasty…

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The doors of the church are open. Good morning, Saints.

Beloved children of the sun, today I wanna bring all the gods into the sanctuary. Yes, let’s bring ‘em in.

Come, Yahweh. Come, Allah. Come, god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Come, Krishna, Shiva, and Vishnu. Come, Odin. Come, Zeus. Come, Waheguru. Come, Buddha. Come, Wakan Tanka, Ahone, and Taio…

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Hey Y’all,

This is my last day here in Montgomery and my final audio reflection. As I moved through all the legacy sites this week, I struggled with this question: how do you face evil and still have faith in the unseen?

I also struggled with the notion that we should be trying to save democracy or preserve aspects of it. Or, reimagine a future built on p…

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Hey Y’all,

Good morning from Montgomery, Alabama. Today’s audio reflection highlights one of the most breathtaking memorials I’ve ever seen in my life.

There’s an installation here that contains hundreds of glass jars that have been filled with soil collected from lynching sites across America. I probably student at this installation for a good 30 minu…

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Hey Y’all,

Welcome to my third installment of audio notes from Montgomery, Alabama. In this reflection, I want to tell you about a street sign located near the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, and how its location opens up a much harder question about coalition politics among the left.

Here at the Democracy Defenders Summit, we’ve been calling o…

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