Vanessa Taylor

While Black Muslims develop spaces for ourselves, the unfortunate reality of the internet means that, in most cases, anyone can see what we do. This is especially true on large social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram where privacy is not the name of the game.

While the United States tries to behave as if lynchings are a thing of the past, the very public, and often brutal, murders of Black people continue today. Some may call them "modern day lynchings" and others will argue that lynchings are already modern; that there is nothing inherently "past" about them. Either way, the February murder of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick, Georgia aligns with lynching's violent legacy.

"...recent years have found memes evolving from somewhat harmless entertainment embedded in digital subcultures to instruments of political commentary and power themselves."

...Muslims are feeling the economic impacts of the coronavirus crisis, such as soaring unemployment. However, the pandemic is also changing how Muslims will practice their faith. This year, Muslims in the United States must adapt to a Ramadan under the shadow of the novel coronavirus.

Muslims are coming up with creative, digital ideas to celebrate the month of Ramadan amid the coronavirus pandemic and quarantine.

My New Year’s resolution for 2020 was to no longer be physically perceived.

While BBO takes direction from the Qur’an and other Islamic textual sources, the organization is also drawing from a deeper tradition of Black Muslims’ pursuit of liberation in the United States.

Black Muslims in the United States fear they could be at a higher risk from coronavirus infections, as cases continue to climb and hospitals in communities of colour struggle to flatten the curve with the COVID-19 outbreak.

“'Before the term Afrofuturism was even coined…I could create these imagined worlds where a person who looked like me, who lived like me, who had a history like me, was not abnormal.'”

Finding ride-share horror stories isn’t difficult. Last year, Uber’s first-ever safety report revealed almost 6,000 people reported being sexually assaulted in 2017 and 2018. The same year Uber released its report, Lyft was flooded with sexual assault lawsuits, with one law firm alone representing over 100 cases against both companies.

Both inside and outside of the digital world, Muslim youth are under constant surveillance. The omnipresence of the government's eye can be literal federal agents posted on residential blocks or the quieter work of algorithm programs to surveil social media.

What is the future? Who dreams it? And whose dreams become “natural” human progression, even if the process of building that one precious utopia leaves someone lingering — beyond the wall, within the shadows, on the precipe?

In an effort to correct the narrative that the 19th Amendment gave all women the right to vote, here’s a glimpse into when the (written) law actually allowed other women to vote.

Biometric identification — of which DNA testing is a form of along with fingerprinting, facial recognition, etc. — was not created in a race-neutral vacuum

While touting tech ‘advancements’ as being explicitly based in eugenics or scientific racism may be out of fashion, that doesn’t mean it’s not happening.