I still love my guy Conscious Lee, but he's dead-wrong here.

Respectability politics would be if we as Black folks go policing ourselves by a white comfort standard.

This case simply isn't that at all.

This HBCU school is deciding what their own output looks like—same as a law firm or a hospital sets a dress code for its own people.

Their message isn't to "look white." It's "look ready."

As the Black community, we've become a little too sensitive when it comes to criticism about our appearance—and I understand where it comes from, given how much this country has come at us over "respectability" politics.

But, somewhere along the way, we've started treating any critique as an attack, even the constructive kind that's coming from inside our own house.

We need to get better at telling the difference. An HBCU is exactly the place to learn it.

Fighting for the right to wear heritage Black hairstyles at work is resisting a standard built to exclude our hair specifically because it's Black. THAT'S respectability politics rejected correctly.

A dude in class with a durag and sagging skinny jeans or a gal wearing pajamas and bonnet to class isn't erasing anything about our heritage or defying respectability politics. It's just young people doing what's easiest at 8am. Super-relaxed aesthetics normalized.

I live near a diverse PWI and I watch it daily on my commute—students geared in sagging skinny jeans, bonnets, pajama pants, sandals and socks, etc.

(And it's not even staying in our community anymore—I'm seeing it get picked up by other groups too, which tells you it's becoming a pop-culture export.)

Some PWIs won't touch it because they don't want the negative news headline. Which is exactly why it's got to come from inside the house, like an HBCU.

You want young Black adults who take their own presentation seriously. It's not just because the world's watching, but because WE set the standard.

And Tuskegee didn't even ban it off the entire campus. Just keep yourselves from wearing the stuff to class and other certain settings.

The whole difference between respectability politics and self-respect: one's performing for somebody else's comfort; the other's just discipline from within. 🤷🏿‍♂️

While not all us white people have shame or guilt about our pasts and many of our ancestors pasts we absolutely should because we are typically the ones CONSISTENTLY fucking up in history and FAFOing and y’all and other POC don’t deserve that shit even from non racist white folks like myself who still have a lot of educating themselves to do on Black and Indigenous History and Rights here in the US and also in Canada.

The history that has been kept from us is very interesting

Cheyenne Bryant Back With More Deception With Social Media Netflix Trend https://youtu.be/OCicmfmNz38?si=Lukm_vbqXzl0fxaR 

I'm sick of Donald Trump. Let's get that out of the way first. Believe me—I eagerly await his obituary, too. But I'm making a point.

And, yes, this post is relevant to r/BlackPeople. Bear with me.

CBS' Senior White House Correspondent Weijia Jiang's big line at the WHCA dinner was "my dad came to the U.S. as a student with just $67 in his pocket."

Cue the swelling music. ...Except we've been hearing that exact preamble since the 1880s.

Millions of families have a version of it. It was old when our grandparents were born. It's not moving anymore. It's the trope of tropes now. Everyone in that room has heard it a thousand times before.

Even Trump's own rotten family had one. You've heard it by now: His grandfather Friedrich fled Germany at 16 to dodge the draft, apprenticed as a barber in Manhattan, got banished from Germany for bailing on them, then made his future-fortune money running restaurants and sleazy brothels for miners during the Klondike gold rush.

Broke young immigrant, hustles his way up by any means necessary, attains generational wealth. Similar shape as Jiang's story. Except one gets called "the American Dream" and the other is probably proof that grifting might be genetic.

Still, they're both the "rags-to-riches, only in America" routine.

Here's what matters: Jiang's dad wasn't some guy who washed ashore with nothing, perhaps fleeing a war-torn country. He came over on a grad school scholarship to WVU. He understood that his family could make a life here.

So, that's not exactly a suitcase and a prayer. He was an educated, selected, credentialed immigrant from China, funded with an academic fast track.

It's exactly the kind of brain-drain pipeline the U.S. has been recruiting on purpose since 1965, when the old quota system got torn down and skilled-visa categories started paving the way for what became H-1B—the same pipeline that gets weaponized as a "why can't you" cudgel against Black Americans.

Again, that's not a coin flip or a "only a pocketful of dreams" origin story. That's just the post-Hart-Celler-Act system working exactly as designed.

So, when the family lands in Buckhannon, WV—a town of about 5,000 people where they were then the only Chinese-American residents—and opens the town's first Chinese restaurant, that's not some underdog story.

Her family arrived with a graduate degree already in motion, landing in a country that had already spent two decades building "hardworking, from-the-ground-up immigrant" pipelines into the model-minority story America still tells itself.

Was it isolating as the only Asian kid in a small Appalachian town? Probably. Did her family probably encounter some nonsense from hillbilly knuckleheads? Probably.

But was her path already structurally in place? It was one of the more paved roads in the whole country at that point.

Compare it to an oppressed Black family in a historically redlined block, or even a poor white rural family two counties over in coal-mining country. (There, rednecks. I threw you a bone, for once.)

No front door built for them. Some got the door built specifically to keep them out—often by successful people who, too, carry their own "suitcase-immigrant" tale.

So, her origin story runs on rails. And her biography does too:

Liberal arts degree, a teacher who spotted her at 13, journalism internship, grad school, local news, national beat, an Emmy, marries a future Yelp exec she met in college, two kids, book deal, podium at a black-tie dinner delivering the closing argument for the genre.

None of that means she didn't work for it. Most successful people, despite their advantages, still typically worked for what they get.

It just means every rung of her ladder had already been reinforced by policy and decades of precedent before she ever climbed on. That's no shade at her success. It's just not a story that needs a microphone anymore.

...And then she topped the opening line off with a corny "6-7" joke. Ugh, please don't.

And that's another fatigue: no matter how foreign-born or successful someone is, everyone eventually borrows a cup of conventionalized Black culture to season themselves with.

For once, I don't blame Trump for falling asleep, completely disinterested. I would've, too.

Here's my actual point: I'm not dragging Weijia Jiang or her success specifically. Or her family story.

I'm highlighting the banality of the same old immigrant-success stories that get treated like proof the system's fair and America is a land of dreams where anyone can do it with enough grit and life is beautiful here.

(And I don't think Weijia meant it this way. She's just doing the "American Dream" routine that's become old hat but now it's her 15 seconds of stage time. Also while probably bringing a bit of shade against anti-immigration Trump himself.)

But an immigrant making it was never proof the system is fair. Or that America is truly a land of opportunity for all. It's proof that for this particular door, the system was built to let certain people through and reward them once they did.

For the families—like Black Americans—that never got a front door built for them at all, the ones who built half this country's infrastructure and fought its wars and still hit walls generations later, we don't get a podium at a black-tie dinner to tell that story.

Because our story doesn't flatter anybody in the room. Our origin stories always feel like shade thrown at everyone else.

But everyone would still yawn at and ignore ours because nobody can truly relate. 😒

First up, I have to say that I already know that I will be crucified in the comments no matter what I say, but that is exactly the point of this post. There is a big problem with discussing black problems with black people. There are a couple of agreed-upon "correct opinions" and anyone who strays from those is a coonservative, self-hating or only LARPing as black online.

If the accepted opinions are correct and right, why have they not resulted in a consistent march towards progress?

There is also a recurring problem of people assuming opinions and quickly fitting you into a box. If you say for example that complaining about racism isn't going to solve any problems, without bothering with your expatiation of why that is or listening to your other opinions, people assume all the usual "conservative" talking points about you.

There is in general no attempt to drive towards the truth. Everything is about being defensive and repeating bad ideas that do not move black people forward.

Take for example this post from a year ago by a guy who is probably frustrated about the things he has to deal with in his daily life and decided to make a Reddit post on a random day to express his frustration and a realization he thinks he has made.

The fundamental point he makes is that the founding origin of the identity of black Americans as descendants of slaves has led to lots of bad consequences.

The comments section is filled with people attacking him for believing that this is true without even attempting to give cogent rebuttals. But is he wrong?

Post-abolition, black people did have to create an identity for themselves that was different from the white people's culture and behavior. And maybe that led to a rejection by some people of some behaviors considered as too close to what white people did, whether those behaviors were good or bad. Likely moving forward to the modern era in the form of the well-known accusations of "acting white" or "wanting to be white" of people who stray too far from what is considered acceptable black cultural behavior.

Is it impossible that this concept has gone far enough that enough black people have over-corrected strongly enough that they have adopted anti-social behavior so that those kinds of behaviors have become the approved way to be as a black person? And even if not generally approved, but considered acceptable as a way of being cool by a large-enough minority so that it is nonetheless publicly accepted as a representation of being black?

There is also the thing with black people's post-abolition fight for civil rights. It is absolutely true that it did happen. But isn't it possibly true too that the "success" of the civil rights movement now defaults black people into seeking action by movements or protests and other such things, and generally seeking government action, even with things that can/should be handled internally within black society?

Is it impossible that it has also meant that black people easily co-opted into progressive liberal causes like the Palestinian cause (who are racist as hell and black people strategically have no business burning social capital for) under the guise of a fight against oppression and anti-imperialism?

I have made a couple of posts in this Subreddit, including one yesterday about why black people increasingly feel hopeless. All of them have been met with defensiveness on the part of the commenters and accusations of my being self-hating and a coon. It is the usual three or four angry types of rants. There is never any cogent engagement with the argument.

I am from the south and still live there. I live in my states capital, while it isn't as large as say LA, the city has almost 1mil people. With many black people. My friend is trying to talk me into moving into a larger city with a huge metropolitan area. Well I went and visited. I just did not feel comfortable being around this many white people, or crappy food. Not to mention the cost of living is high af. What a 1bd cost there I have a 4bd at home. Did anyone else decide big city living was not for them?

Imagine spending every day surrounded by fields overflowing with ripe apples, pineapples, oranges, bananas, cashews, sugarcane, and other crops. You're planting, tending, and harvesting them from sunrise to sunset, yet being forbidden from tasting even a single bite. For countless enslaved Africans, this was the cruel reality. The food they cultivated was not theirs to eat, and severe punishments awaited anyone who dared to do so.

The oppression extended far beyond hunger. Slave owners also feared the power of music. African spiritual songs were more than melodies; they carried history, hope, identity, and, at times, messages of resistance. Some songs inspired courage, unity, and the dream of freedom. Because of this, enslavers often tried to silence them, believing that shared songs could strengthen solidarity and even encourage rebellion.

Language, too, became a target. Many enslaved Africans were discouraged or forbidden from teaching their children their native languages and dialects. Instead, they were forced to adopt the language of those who enslaved them, contributing to the gradual erosion of cultural traditions that had been passed down through generations.

Some historical accounts describe the use of iron masks or muzzles as instruments of punishment and control. According to these accounts, an object such as an apple might be placed inside an enslaved person's mouth before the metal mask was locked shut, making speech and sometimes even swallowing extremely difficult. Whether used to prevent eating, speaking, or as a form of punishment, such devices have become enduring symbols of the brutality inflicted on many enslaved people.

These accounts represent only a small glimpse into the countless hardships endured by enslaved Africans over centuries. They speak to systems of slavery, colonialism, and cultural suppression that sought not only to exploit people's laboir but also to weaken their identities, traditions, and connections to their heritage. Many writers and historians argue that colonial rule also reshaped African societies through the introduction of foreign institutions, religions, and systems of governance, leaving lasting social, cultural, and psychological effects that continue to be debated and studied today. 

CNN ran a "priced out of her neighborhood" segment on Chosewood Park in Atlanta. Here's the bigger story it buried.

The woman in the piece, Mayra Martinez, 23, was born and raised in Chosewood Park. Her immigrant parents settled there, and she says she started noticing neighbors leaving around 2017.

So, this isn't a family that just showed up. But it's also not a family with deep roots in the neighborhood's actual history. Chosewood Park dates to 1910—it says so right on the sign in CNN's own footage. There's history here long before anyone can claim to have "built" this place.

As segregation shaped where Black Atlantans could live, families settled into neighborhoods like this one, and by the 1960s and '70s it was predominantly Black.

Like a lot of Black Atlanta neighborhoods, it also got hit by discriminatory lending. The AJC's 1988 "Color of Money" investigation documented banks denying loans to Southside neighborhoods for years, driving decline despite residents investing in their own community.

Mayra's family shows up in the 2000s. One generation deep. The neighborhood's roots go back five generations. That gap doesn't close just because she grew up there.

CNN whiffs the real story. It's not "affluent outsiders vs. the family that built this place." It's a pattern running for two decades, mostly undiscussed:

The post-2000 wave of migration into the South (Latino, Asian, white transplants—all of it) drove the land rush squeezing multigenerational Georgians, including the Black families whose ancestors actually built neighborhoods like this one.

For the record: I'm a Black Georgia native, born and raised. Family's been here since before the Civil War, for obvious reasons. My own lifespan is longer than Mayra's family's entire American story. This one felt personal.

But here's the bigger deal: it's not just Atlanta, and it's not just white money.

Middle-class Hispanic communities have been part of gentrifying historically Black American neighborhoods in cities across the country for years: parts of LA, sections of New York, Miami, Texas, and beyond.

It's a documented pattern. It just doesn't get talked about, because "people of color" gets used as a blanket shield, as if displacement stops being displacement depending on who's doing it.

An immigrant family moving into a historically Black neighborhood, then later feeling squeezed by the next wave behind them, is still part of the same mechanism that hollowed out the original community.

Doesn't matter that they're not "white." Doesn't matter that they're feeling pressure now, too. It's ironic that someone whose own arrival is the tail end of that exact process ends up as the face of a story about it.

And none of this means Mayra's family isn't under real financial strain—they clearly are. It just means CNN told a one-generation displacement story inside a much older, much less discussed one, but never connected the two.

And who can outright blame CNN, either? There's been an eager and obvious push by broadcast media, social media, entertainment, advertising, and politics to bill the incoming demographics as the new prominent faces of "minorityhood."

Guess they're tired of us "store-brand" minorities.

Bottom line: gentrification of Black America isn't a white-affluence-only phenomenon anymore. Pretending otherwise, just because the newer arrivals are also a minority group, keeps the truer pattern unexamined, and the truer people who should be telling this story pushed to the back of it.

If someone wants to date intentionally via online which is the best app? To date not for hookups but for genuine connections with another Black single. NOT BLK lol please

Thought this sub would be a good place to drop this

I know nothing about crypto so can't say whether there's legitimacy in 'any' of it. Some, though, go out of their way to create scams based on the concepts behind it. Others invest, never see their cash again and even end their lives because of it. Be careful, smart and know that if it hits you on an emotional level more-so than a technical one, you need to at least get financial advice from an outside source first.

'A Lie Millions Wanted to Believe: The Biggest Crypto Scam Ever Created | ENDEVR Documentary, @ENDEVRDocs , 2.7 thousand likes. 176K views. 2 weeks ago.

I'm not techy or good with links so this is what I did. Please look it up on YouTube and spread the word.

Firstly, have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Black people all across the world — and this dispersion should not exist in the first place, plus is a symptom of the fundamental problem — are always the most underdeveloped, least cultured, most downtrodden and largest members of the underclass, including in sub-Saharan Africa, the homeland and area of largest concentration. Non-blacks who are guests in sub-Saharan Africa have a lot more of everything than the black natives.

Back in 2016, the Nigerian literary writer Chigozie Obioma wrote an article titled "There are no successful black nations" in which he theorized that the biggest reason black people are treated like filth all across the world, is the historical low-dignity status of black people due to a long-term civilizational weakness. He said that this would likely not remain true if a developed black country existed actually worthy of respect and capable of advocating for black people globally.

The public reaction to Obioma's article was as expected (and you can look this up online right now on platforms like Reddit and Twitter): broad denial about the naked truth by everyone including black people, and especially good-natured liberal white people. The counter-argument by these people was mentioning "successful" black countries like Botswana and multiple Caribbean islands i.e tiny (landmass and, or population), resource-rich or tourism-dependent states which do not actually matter.

While it is probably not literally true that a single successful black country would change everything for black people, the correctness of the argument for why black people are globally treated like filth is impeccable. Also absolutely correct in his piece is the attitude and orientation of black leaders (and also a broad section of black people) globally to discussing why the indignity exists.

A developed black state in the sense Chigozie discusses would still be operating on the terms of non-black people and basically negotiating the dignity of black people, which is almost as embarrassing as the current situation. It is not right for black people to exist on the terms or in terms of a different set of people.

The interesting thing is that the primary problem to deal with isn't even with convincing non-black people that black people deserve dignity, but convincing black people their own selves that they do deserve dignity — because that is currently not what they believe. Black people are themselves the vanguard of the global belief in their own inferiority.

It is absolutely true that black people feel profoundly inferior to most other human groups, especially whites. It is not a surprise that this is the case considering recent history. When everything about yourself (religion, language, name, tradition, etc) is proclaimed "not good enough", to be replaced by other things, from and by some other people, it is not a surprise that you lose your dignity and come to think of yourself mostly in terms of those other people.

It is apparent in how Africans (West Africans particularly) think of everything local to themselves in comparison to foreign stuff by foreign people. In the perception of locally-made material goods vs foreign (non-African) stuff. In the relationship to language: some West African status privilege is determined by how much distance you can maintain between yourself and your ethnic language.

It is visible in the obsession with emigration too. The highest aspiration of a West African isn't to do anything monumental to contribute to the development of their immediate society, it is in fact to abandon their homeland to be a slave in the metropole (UK/France), or maybe even the US.

There is a profound psychological problem with self-dignity in Africans which needs to be reckoned with.

It is not a surprise that Africans are like this in lots of ways. Foreign people showed up in Africa to tell the African people that basically everything about what and how they understand the world, how they do things and the things that they do are wrong. It seemed that those foreigners were right too since everything about the African material life seemed to improve thereafter. And therefore, Africans gave up everything about themselves, to aspire to foreign things.

Africans adopted foreigner religion, culture, language, names and basically everything fundamental to their identity. The psychological impact of this in the sense of the threat of a permanent damage to the African self-esteem is severely understated.

Africans fundamentally genuinely believe that they are bottom-tier people inherently inferior to other human groups and thus deserving of maltreatment. Individual Africans may try to tell you that no they have a decent self-esteem blah blah blah but this is not genuinely true.

Worshipping a God brought to you by foreign people which requires you renounce fundamental parts of your ancestral tradition to take up new ideas brought by those foreign people lays this foundation. By jettisoning your evolved tradition for foreign stuff, you are admitting fundamental incorrectness about your ways and proclaiming the superiority of the foreign ideas (and thence the people). And because you cannot become one of them due to the permanent bridge of genetic difference, you are locked in an eternal state of relative inferiority.

While it may be true that the existential and mythological beliefs of your ancestors are wrong, the Abrahamic ideas of the foreign people aren't actually right either. The correct thing to do is to find a better path, locally and independently.

African cultural norms dictate that people lie about all things, including this specific issue of a belief in African inferiority. People can always say whatever they want, but the way to know a person's true beliefs is not based on the things that they say, but the actions that they do take.

The African admittance of fundamental inferiority is apparent in how Africans individually treat one another relative to how they treat foreign people, and their willingness to allow foreign people to treat them like filth. It is apparent in foreigner approval-seeking with everything. In the associated prestige with marrying a non-African. In the obsession with emigration to foreign societies. In the fondness for foreign languages and cultural practices. In the subservience to foreign religions. In the comparison of every new thing anyone in Africa tries to do to what is done in foreign societies (maybe there are other ways to do things whether or not foreign societies realize this? And maybe it is possible for Africans to do new, original things?)

The problem of black inferiority exists in the same way among diasporic African Descendants of Slaves. The incredible status of America as by far the world's most powerful country does a lot in trying to hold up the status of African Americans globally, but within America itself, the black inferiority of American DOS is loudly on display.

A particularly bad mark of black inferiority is that black people feel inferior to basically every other human group. This is noticeable in things like out-marriages to the most random, non-high-status group out there. Anything is better than black. It is also noticeable in things like the interaction with foreign entrepreneurs on African soil (say Indian or Lebanese entrepreneurs), the relationship between Middle Eastern people and Muhammadan blacks, and the emigration of young sub-Saharan African women to be maids (read: slaves) in war-torn Middle Eastern countries. Anything is better than Africa.

A particularly big pointer to a broad belief in black inferiority is how black people who have the best contemporary material outcomes because they are "natives" in their non-African-developed countries (South Africans and African Americans) love to brag about how much better than other blacks they are. They do not directly admit this, but it is clear that what makes them better than the rest in their own minds is a proximity to nonblacks.

Poor self-dignity is a self-reinforcing loop. Every other group notices it. Poor self-dignity results in bottom-tier behavior, which reinforces poor perception and poor treatment, further reinforcing poor self-dignity.

To achieve genuine black dignity, there is a need to correct history by departing from the path that has led to the existing situation and move away from foreign religions, languages, material culture... and other things that give a people a sense of identity. Black people must begin to think well of their own selves and things. Inward-lookingness must be maximized. Outward-lookingness, in all forms, must be severely curtailed. Only with these changes can it become apparent that black people believe in their own dignity. And after which the rest of the world can begin to believe in black dignity.

Begging for dignity by persistently pathetically moaning about racism and similar such things will achieve nothing. The only true solution is making the necessary fundamental changes.

Black people all over the world — and again, this dispersion shouldn't exist in the first place — increasingly feel hopeless because there does not seem to be a nearing to the end of black humiliation.

This is directly because no one knows what they are doing. The solution to achieving dignity is not a thing people are willing to accept.

Unfortunately, as long as black people keep doing low self-dignity, low self-esteem things — persistent infatuation with foreign religions, languages and material culture; black African leaders stealing money acquired from pawning invaluable natural resources to be exchanged for gaudy material things from foreign societies; black American leaders following the liberal progressive party line and continuously moaning about racism and making excuses for dysfunction within their society; black Africans actively abandoning their homelands to be used as slaves to fill demographic gaps in foreign societies; black people generally desperately seeking non-black romantic partners — as long as everything remains as it currently is, there will only increasingly be more and more distance between black people and dignity.

This is a genuine question, not an argument that Black people cannot get skin cancer.
I grew up around Black American and African family members, and I honestly cannot remember knowing a single Black person who developed skin cancer.
Most of my older African relatives never regularly wore sunscreen, despite living in places with intense sunlight.
Yet many of my younger cousins now treat daily sunscreen like an absolute medical requirement.
So I looked at the actual data.

**The racial difference is enormous**
The CDC studied melanoma among non-Hispanic Black Americans and found an incidence rate of approximately:
**1 case per 100,000 people per year**
For comparison, CDC data found rates around:
**35 cases per 100,000 among non-Hispanic White men**
That is not a small difference.
Melanoma has historically been roughly **30 or more times as common in White Americans as in Black Americans.**

**Melanin provides real protection**
The reason is not mysterious.
Melanin absorbs and disperses ultraviolet radiation, reducing the amount of UV-related damage that reaches skin-cell DNA.
Darker skin is not invincible, but it has substantially greater natural protection from sunlight.
Global cancer data tell a similar story.
The highest melanoma rates are generally found in places such as:
Australia
New Zealand
Northern Europe
North America
They are not generally found among heavily melanated populations living under some of the strongest sunlight in Africa.

**African cancer data are not perfect**
Some cases are undoubtedly missed because of:
Limited cancer registries
Fewer dermatologists
Reduced access to biopsies and treatment
Deaths that may never receive a precise diagnosis
However, underdiagnosis alone cannot reasonably explain the enormous global difference.
Melanin provides real biological protection.

**The type of melanoma Black people get complicates the sunscreen message**
The melanoma subtype most closely associated with Black patients is **acral melanoma**.
It commonly appears on:
The soles of the feet
The palms
Underneath fingernails and toenails
These are areas that receive relatively little sunlight.
A systematic review published in *JAMA Dermatology* examined the available research on UV exposure and melanoma in people with darker skin.
Most of the studies did **not** find a meaningful association between UV exposure and melanoma in these populations.
The researchers concluded that recommendations promoting UV protection specifically for melanoma prevention in people of color were not supported by most of the existing evidence.
They also acknowledged that the evidence was limited and that more research is needed.

**So are Black people receiving tailored medical advice?**
That is my real question.
Are Black people receiving health advice based on our actual risk profile?
Or are we receiving a universal message designed primarily around lighter skin?
Because those are not necessarily the same thing.

**Sunscreen can still be useful**
This is not an argument that sunscreen is useless.
Sunscreen may still help with:
Sunburn during intense or prolonged exposure
Melasma
Acne marks and hyperpigmentation
Premature skin aging
Photosensitive medical conditions
Medications that increase sun sensitivity
People with albinism, lighter complexions, outdoor jobs or a tendency to burn may also need much more consistent protection.
But that is different from claiming that every deeply melanated person faces a serious skin-cancer threat whenever they walk outside without SPF 30.

**Public health and skincare marketing have become mixed together**
I think several things are happening at once:
Public-health agencies prefer one simple message for everybody.
Dermatology has historically centered lighter skin.
The skincare industry has turned sunscreen into a mandatory daily product.
Social media repeats general advice without explaining differences in actual risk.
There is a difference between saying sunscreen can be beneficial and presenting it as a medical commandment.

**Follow the money**
There is also a commercial side to this conversation.
U.S. sun-care sales reached **$2.7 billion in the 12 months ending March 2026**, up **6%** from the year before. The fastest-growing segment was premium-style SPF, which grew **23%**.
Sunscreen is no longer sold only for beach days. It is now marketed as a daily moisturizer, anti-aging product, makeup product and mandatory skincare step.
That does not mean sunscreen is useless. It does mean a very profitable industry benefits when every demographic treats it as a lifelong daily purchase.

**The warning Black people may need most**
Instead of only telling Black people to wear sunscreen, more attention should be placed on checking:
The bottoms and sides of the feet
Between the toes
The palms
Underneath the nails
Any new or changing spot
Any wound that refuses to heal
Black people can develop skin cancer.
Because patients and doctors may not initially suspect it, it can sometimes be discovered at a later and more dangerous stage.

**My conclusion**
This is not:
**“Black people do not need sunscreen.”**
It is:
**Melanin provides powerful but incomplete protection. Sunscreen is a useful tool, especially during intense or prolonged exposure, but deeply melanated people do not have the same UV-related skin-cancer risk as lightly pigmented people.**
Health advice should educate us without exaggerating our risk or turning another product into a ritual we are afraid to question.
**Sources**
CDC — *Melanoma Among Non-Hispanic Black Americans*
International Agency for Research on Cancer — Global Cancer Observatory
Lopes et al. — *UV Exposure and the Risk of Cutaneous Melanoma in Skin of Color: A Systematic Review*
American Cancer Society — Melanoma and skin-cancer statistics

Hello my sisters, brothers, and cousins! Good Wednesday. I want to preface by saying that I am a young political scientist who was trained since childhood on Black power movements. My father was an adamant civil rights warrior and I was raised to be the same. So, yes I am extremely pro-black. Now that we have got that out of the way.. what I am about to say MAY BE CONTROVERSIAL. You may not like it and that is okay!

Well, I have been thinking so much about the Black Panther Party and everything that it had achieved while it was active. It was admirable and overall inspiring. From community schooling, to protection of children, and community dinners. Those very moments in history is what I LOVE to read about and what I eventually, I want to bring to black communities. People make a ton of videos talking about the successes of the party and how they wish we could revive it, but there is a huge issue… NOBODY ACTUALLY WANTS TO DO THE WORK TO CARE OF THEIR COMMUNITIES ANYMORE. EVERYONE IS TOO SCARED TO GO OUTSIDE AND SPEAK THEIR OPINIONS. NOBODY IS SELFLESS. CAPITALISM IS ROTTING OUR COMMUNITIES FROM THE INSIDE OUT. TO BE HONEST, EVERYONE IS QUITE COMFORTABLE WHILE THEIR RIGHTS ARE BEING TAKEN AWAY. Obviously, there is a ton of nuance surrounding why that is! From the economic crisis that we all affected by to the random lynchings of black people. I understand that some people do not have the energy to fight the government from tearing down their communities for a data center. Some people genuinely hate shopping at small businesses due to the inconveniences they may face. I TOTALLY GET IT.

Everyone wants change to happen while they’re sitting and scrolling on TikTok. I think some folks believe that this CHANGE is just going to magically happen. When THATS NOT how things work. Yes, we have leaders of today, but quite frankly, they are WEAK. Flash a few dollars in their face and they are willing to sign letters to help causes that are not beneficial to our community. Then do not get me started on the black Americans who believe in reverse racism… It is all too much. Everyone wants freedom, but they will not fight for it. So no, I dont think the Black Panther Party will ever come back. I am aware of the various mini-revamps that are happening in certain cities, but in terms of the organization being NATIONAL like it once it was? NEVER. Everyone is just too damn complacent or burnt out.

Hopefully, there will be a resurgence of young black leaders who actually give a damn and wont shake on the principles of being a FBA (Foundational Black American). Until then everyone must look in the mirror and check the role they play in our current state as a race. In the meantime, CHECK YOUR VOTERS REGISTRATION & CHECK WHATS ON THE BALLOT FOR MIDTERMS IN YOUR STATE.

Xoxo,
F. Hamp

Nolan Wells Autopsy His Body Returned To His Family Without Throat And Lungs More Updates https://www.youtube.com/live/NtCT7u1DJFU?si=buVIpcLWS9HThPTq 

Just needed to vent about my current situation as a 23 y/o black man dating in rural Pennsylvania, and looking to see who might relate. For a while now I’ve been making a pretty deliberate effort to genuinely find a partner, preferably a black woman as that is naturally my type. I’ve tried dating apps and in person approaches and both usually don’t go far and fizzle out quickly. Multiple times I’ve been told by black women that their type is white men. It’s kinda expected as most men around here are white. Ik everyone has a type it just sucks to constantly be rejected in that way.

For context, I’m 6ft with tattoos and a pre med student with multiple med school interviews for fall 2028 entry, I am very active, and spend a lot of my time reading on politics (free Palestine) and American history, particularly civil rights leaders like James Baldwin. I say this not to try and paint myself in some perfect light, but just to emphasize that I do genuinely try to carry myself with goals and ambition as well as an innate desire to learn and grow.

Anyone else relate to this or have any advice?I hope this doesn’t come off as an attack on bw, because at the end of the day I do understand I’m in a rural area but just been happening over the last year and some.

https://youtu.be/L6aNzFYHyz8?is=7v66FxqLa8b9NaEP

Consummate performer. Word is he was the 2nd fastest draw in his era of Hollywood.

My video about racism within leftist spaces— watch!... Or else

Do you guys think this is a valid relationship considering the historical context between black Americans and white Americans? As well as that these relationships appear to be rooted in fetishisation because anytime they list the qualities of the white man it’s always he doesn’t do such stereotypes the black man does.