Category:

Opinion

On Media Literacy and Misinformation

by Nadine Melanesia Black 05/16/2025

written by Nadine Melanesia Black

With an increase in people getting their news from biased sources through Instagram, X (formerly known as Twitter), TikTok, YouTube, or podcasts, there has been a dangerous wave of misinformation throughout the country.

Relying on social media platforms as one’s main source of information makes us fall victim to dangerous echo chambers and biased media. Social media is inherently designed to continuously push content that it believes the user would want to engage with. When we only engage with content that satiates our agitations within the world without understanding the context and accountable actors that contribute to our dissatisfactions, we are no longer useful to our communities. Social media pushes us to see the worst within ourselves and to further look to scapegoat tokens of the oppressive empire and entertaining characters as opposed to forming a deep analysis of how every institution, political actor, and community member contributes to the state of our current world, including us. Social media pushes massive amounts of content to individuals in very short spans of time, designed to make people addicted to the dopamine rush they get from scrolling through potentially 15 minutes in just 5-10 minutes. We are intentionally being made ill and reliant in the face of our digital escapes.

Social media has also made it increasingly harder to get younger generations to turn to legitimate and factual news sources for information. The reality that it is incredibly easy to just turn to TikTok or X for quick “facts” from random accounts is ruining people’s media literacy. Hardly do individuals fact check information, especially if it aligns with what their previously held beliefs are, validated by social media posts. These platforms are specifically created to distract audiences through pushes of biased, shallow, and often falsified information.

Social media also makes it incredibly easy for individuals to become isolated within their own echo chambers, constantly intaking political information from people online. This gives the illusion of communicating with people, leaving no incentive for some to engage in real-life community building.

Our inability to withstand the gruesome and often prolonged task of having researched and learned independently the realities of the world in which we live makes us ill-equipped to combat misinformation and form sustainable solutions to our transgressions. Furthermore, the internalization of instantly available and gratifying information leaves us vulnerable to manipulation by the empire. Through this lens, we understand how media literacy is imperative in navigating the terrains of ideological warfare and political competence. We are responsible for challenging ourselves to become more willing to take time in the slowness of learning through this world, we are accountable to truth and to the time it takes to uncover it.

05/16/2025 0 comments

Opinion Political Education

The Theater of Political Pessimism

by Xavier Adams 05/16/2025

written by Xavier Adams

While reflecting on the upcoming 1956 election, W.E.B. Du Bois pinned the following:

“In 1956, I shall not go to the polls. I have not registered. I believe that democracy has so far disappeared in the United States that no ‘two evils’ exist. There is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected despite all I can do or say.”

The repudiation of the primary channel for political change coupled with the lack of a definitive alternative path: Du Bois’s message amounts to an image of pessimism that Afrikans acquainted with the American political theater are disposed to. Opposed to the hopeful optimist who would readily subscribe to the offered channel of political change, Du Bois takes on the role of a man who, having fatalistically resigned from their post of a prominent activist, waning in their permeating despair, offers nothing but a paralyzing pessimism in the linear path of material progress. This scene of pessimism feels even more familiar when considering the recent refusal of the Black left to vote, similarly rejecting the ‘lesser of two evils’ argument.

This scene of paralyzing pessimism is undoubtedly what is conjured in one’s mind when one hears a pessimistic style of politics, with its merit invariably stamped out and run into the ground. This style of pessimism has no seat in the political theater for the hopeful optimist who demands a definitive course of action. However, is this unquestioned conception of pessimism warranted?

Towards the end of the article, Du Bois reaffirms that:

“Stop yelling about a democracy we do not have. Democracy is dead in the United States.”

Without endorsing some of Du Bois’s remarks–to speak of democracy disappearing without it existing in the first place is comical–the role Du Bois plays under a different gaze in the political theater seems promising. No longer does the audience boo at the perceived despair, or walk out on his fatalistic resignation. The audience, as the set designers, have substituted a paralyzing pessimism for a critical pessimism, one that, driven by an intense dissatisfaction, retains a critical outlook necessary to challenge the prevailing structures of power.

But promising for what? A new consciousness necessary for Afrikan progress. While the hopeful optimist remains fastened to their faith in the existing order of things, convinced that all that is needed is a mere change of moral scenery for political leaders, this critical pessimism, underpinned by a wave of intense dissatisfaction, gives rise to a new subjectivity, a new consciousness necessary for Afrikan liberation. Rejecting the hopeful optimist’s faith, the critical pessimist comes to recognize the power dynamics that drive history, priming one to fundamentally challenge the existing order and the primary channel for political change.

Source:

Du Bois, W.E.B. “I Won’t Vote.” The Nation, 1956.

05/16/2025 0 comments

Arts & Entertainment Black History Culture Opinion Political Education

Uprooting Language

by Xavier Adams 03/10/2025

written by Xavier Adams

*This article provides a detailed guideline in deconstructing language; this is to be used both as an offering to ongoing discussions and as an interpretive tool to reshape how we interact with language*

What is language? As the facilitator at the “social center of gravity,” language functions as an intersubjective process of articulating one’s relationship to the world, thereby producing a unique, autonomous identity–a requisite for resistance.

II.

One remarkable aspect of algorithmic technology is its aptitude to shatter tradition: the amazing pace at which images are uprooted from its soil and spread to a global audience creates a haze of multiplicities that drown out the origin. The doors to the past are closed; shut out, one must start anew.

III.

A walk through modern history illustrates the continuous commodification of afrikan bodies. From the enslavement of afrikan bodies through sharecropping and up to mass incarceration, the physical commodification of the afrikan body is a tale inseparable from the modern era. What about the often overlooked image: commodification facilitated not through physical bodies, but through representations?

IV.

As far as the jurisdiction of digital spaces stretches, the image reigns supreme as the chief manifestation of commodification, whether it be through fashion, music, or, most importantly, language. It is the image of afrikan language, that articulation of a unique existential experience, that becomes commodified in digital spaces. Here, one enters a practice of fetishization–a process of obsessive consumption of images that, while exploiting the represented bodies, simultaneously frames the viewer’s experiences–a natural consequence of commodifying images. The simple act of consuming such images situates the viewer–who may be Afrikan as well as non-Afrikan–as an agent of fetishization.

One does not need to spend much time on social media to get acquainted with the “ironization” of AAVE: between phrases such as “type shit” and “woke,” it is not uncommon to find another deploying such phrases for a purely humorous effect. This “ironization” is effectively an alien encounter: with the pace of algorithmic technologies bent on uprooting, to encounter AAVE in digital spaces is to “translate” it to one’s own language, to attribute it a fresh meaning, divorcing race from language, shattering the tradition of language–that unique articulation of one’s relationship with the world, that autonomous identity melts away (generalized as “Gen-Z slang”), along with the potential of resistance.

VI.

With the doors to the past now sealed, without that autonomous identity offered by language, and without appealing to an origin, how are we to start anew? What new language can be articulated to regain an autonomous identity necessary for resistance? These are the discussions we must enter in our struggle toward reimagining a liberated world.

03/10/2025 0 comments

Campus Commentary News Opinion Political Education U.S.

“The First Become the Last”

by Nicole Crawford 03/10/2025

written by Nicole Crawford

Journal Excerpt: – 9 January 2025

It is Thursday, January 9th, 2025 and more than 35,000 acres of “Los Angeles” is on fire. More than 35,000 acres of Tongva/Gabrielino Indigenous lands have erupted into flames, not due to circumstance, but as a result of the ever-growing expansion of capitalist greed, corruption, and violence throughout the globe. Los Angeles is merely a looking glass. For years, the beast that we call Amerikkka has bombed, robbed, raped, pillaged and abused the lands and imaginations of the Indigenous people of this world. Those in Afrika, the Middle East, Skid Row and the Caribbean have been slaughtered, martyred and erased from our collective memory as a sacrifice for the insatiable thirst that this beast holds for the consumption and conquest of our lands.

Mother Nature regains her autonomy in moments like these, forcefully and without remorse. Today, she remembers our apathy to the violence enacted against the poor, the unhoused, the immigrant, the diseased and the disabled. We are all responsible for the pacification and justification of this violence. We are all responsible for our blindness to the gravity of deprivation, dehumanization and disenfranchisement that the most oppressed have faced, and known intimately, for as long as we have lived. This violence is one of displacement, one of hollowed memory, of intentional menticide and distractions to keep us surprised and saddened at the smell of singed flesh. We have tasted and seen ash and coppered blood before, but it is our dishonesty that uncovers shock within us instead of activity and the capability of creating tangible solutions that disentangle us from the dependent, nauseatingly abusive relationship that we have with the state.

Instances like these remind us of who is disposable to the state. Pay attention to the lengths at which they go to erase and minimise the gravity of violence we are subject to. We do not know of the destruction of the most oppressed, we do not understand what it means to feel ash within your every breath with no means of escape or solace, whether this be in Palestine or Afrika, or Los Angeles. Those who are left behind in prisons and on the streets are not an unintended consequence, but evidence of the irredeemability and psychosis of the state. Know your reflections. None of us are immune to this sickness. The plight of the disregarded today, is a warning for what we will all face tomorrow. The first will become the last. Your dreams of falsified allegiance to them will swallow you whole.

“We have nothing to lose but our chains.”

03/10/2025 0 comments

Health Opinion

The Declining Afrikan Population

by Orisha Lamon 11/10/2024

written by Orisha Lamon

The Afrikan population in Los Angeles has been undergoing a decline at the hands of state violence and repression. From suggesting mask bans to the criminalization of unhoused folks it all ultimately impacts the livelihood of Afrikan residents and increases the criminalization of poverty and existence as an Afrikan. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) proposed fiscal budget for 2024/25 is more than 2 billion dollars with a net increase of almost 13% from the previous year. This proposed budget has almost $4 million directed toward “homelessness support” and technology requests that amount to 13 million dollars. Such technologies that are meant to ‘ensure public safety’ are often manifested through the methods of mass surveillance, weaponry intimidation, and violence — virtually having no use in protecting the Los Angeles community from its biggest issues which coincidentally stem from the same structure of municipal regulation. The LAPD budget presents a dramatic disparity between the police entity and social services. The issues that the Afrikan population in Los Angeles County faces come from inadequate health and housing resources that have deprived folks of the ability to survive in the vast geography. It doesn’t help that there are community figureheads spouting capitalistic and white supremacist talking points that infiltrate and convince the greater Afrikan community that racial representation and solidarity are synonymous; a strategic tool to further suppress Afrikan organization and mobilization for better lives and survivable wages, healthcare and insurance, social services and benefits, and true liberation.

The state targets Afrikan existence at all stages of life. In the United States, infant and maternal mortality disproportionately affects the Afrikan community. Afrikan pregnant people are nearly 3 times more likely to die compared to non-Afrikan pregnant people due to birth-related complications. As deadly as childbirth is, Afrikan childbirth and violence against Afrikan mothers in the healthcare system has been historically maintained. The state also outsources its violence against Afrikan and disabled people by using infectious disease as a tool for eugenics. As seen with COVID-19, scholar Maritza Vasquez Reyes presents that “approximately 97.9 out of every 100,000 African Americans have died from COVID-19, a mortality rate that is a third higher than that for Latinos, and more than double that for whites and Asians.” COVID-19 exposure contributes to the decline of elder Afrikan populations and endangers disabled and immunocompromised people as repeat infections and inadequate public health infrastructure lead to the spread of misinformation and violent repression of masking and COVID-19 protocols. As elders wear surgical masks tucked underneath their noses in an attempt to protect themselves, readily available and effective personal protective equipment has been shelved, overpriced, and no longer reaches the communities it needs to without the efforts of community organization.

Possible solutions to these disparities are based in organizational and community efforts that not only reach out to folks but provide material and personally tailored alternatives for communities experiencing the harmful impacts firsthand. Material changes and local impacts can have international implications and reach. Mutual aid and education efforts inform the community and will help us to develop an understanding of the true nature of being Afrikan in Amerikkka. Our collective efforts must focalize deconstructing the ever-changing suppression of the empire which acts as a tool in shaping racial-capitalist infrastructure and systems based upon the depravity of the poor.

11/10/2024 0 comments

Arts & Entertainment Black History Culture Opinion

FETISHIZATION & INTERRACIAL DATING : DATING AS AN AFRIKAN WOMAN AT UCLA

by Nyomi Henderson 03/06/2024

written by Nyomi Henderson

Dating as an Afrikan woman is comparable to competing in the Olympics; both are strenuous. Forbes recently classified fetishization as “the act of making someone an object of sexual desire based on some aspect of their identity.” Understanding the role of fetishization in our dating experiences, I want to emphasize that the humanity of Afrikan women deserves to be valued with the same regard and reverence as everyone else’s.

The combination of boredom and loneliness lures us to seek pleasures of external validation where we easily become dependent on the number of matches we get, entertain pointless conversations, and subject ourselves to fetishism.

Online dating apps like Hinge, Bumble, Tinder, and Grindr are more than familiar to students on campus. Suggestive messages like:

“Tbh girl you got some big (insert cherry emoji) I like that”

AND

“You got a voluptuous (insert peach emoji) and I’d like you to suffocate me with it”

from Bumble Member #4 have become a norm and even an expectation within the hypersexualized culture of dating apps.

It was comments like these—comments about our bodies, how dark we are, and if that is really “our hair”—that led me to understand that there was a layer on the dating fields we were experiencing as Afrikan women that our white peers didn’t.

Indy100, an online news site, recently wrote an article on a study by William J. Chopik. It quickly became even more apparent that “participants were 2.3 to 3.3 times less likely to swipe right on a Black person than a white person.” With swiping left meaning they were completely uninterested, it just wasn’t their “preference.”

While these statistics are jarring, it would be wrong to jump into the current issues of finding companionship as an Afrikan woman on dating apps without discussing some of the history and social factors that play a role in these conditions.

During slavery, there was a lack of autonomy over our relationships. We didn’t own love and we most definitely didn’t own ourselves. Love was a hard thing to pursue while balancing the multitudes of instability created by dehumanizing tactics and oppressive systems. From the selling of our children to not having the right to say no, in addition to the institution of marriage being nothing but a fleeting dream, we were often left to cut our losses.

And while we developed traditions of resistance like jumping the broom, we were still limited in our emotional freedoms, and that didn’t stop post emancipation traumas from occurring.

In “MAMIE BRADLEY’S UNBEARABLE BURDEN”, Koritha Mitchell summarized it: “Black coupling was non-existent and… white households were in danger, mobs “ku-kluxed” black homes, often raping successful black men’s wives.” White terrorists destroyed Black domestic and intimate success while insisting it never existed. Throughout history, both the relationships and the people experiencing Afrikan love have been rejected, neglected, and forgotten.

So when we ponder why Afrikan women, who are members of a highly stigmatized population and are considered the most unattractive race to date within the hierarchy of dating apps, we find our answers here.

White features have always been the main standard of purity and beauty. So, it made “sense” economically and politically for Black men to start dating outside of the community. They would soon start the search for someone they could show off to society, someone who allowed them to benefit from the external gaze and validation of others.

By others, I mean the very same white men who dehumanize them.

Afrikan women never had that privilege, nor did they benefit when it came to interracial dating. After the Jim Crow era came media tropes like the Mammy caricature where Afrikan women were portrayed as unattractive,

boring, and “motherly.”

This was a huge difference to Afrikan men who were fetishized as strong, manly, and “beasts” in bed. While both forms of fetishization are harmful, one has allowed for more social mobility than the other, even if misguided. Outside of the media’s influence on how Afrikan women are perceived by the rest of society, we still struggle to find love.

At UCLA specifically, the heterosexual male-to-female ratio is disproportionate, with the Afrikan male-to Afrikan female ratio being even more disparaging. It even led one to wonder if modern-day interracial dating has become the only choice left for cisgendered heterosexual Afrikan women seeking relationships on campus.

Second-year psychology major Ryen Clark shared her experience dating interracially. She says that after her interracial relationship (while still open to interracial dating), she felt more inclined to date within her race. It was exhausting for her, having to constantly explain her culture and deal with a multitude of microaggressions from her partner.

Audrey Ohwobete, a freshman at UCLA says, “It’s nice to talk to people and get to know everyone, but in college, people aren’t looking for relationships. Just vibing, no titles.” Third-year communications major Ayiana Scott follows that same concept by saying, “Dating within hookup culture is neither hard nor easy. If you like it, good for you, everyone should at least give it a try.”

From the Afrikan women interviewed, it seemed that there was a mixed review of what dating is like on campus. Many of us are like Ryen and Audrey. With Afrikan women being the most loyal to dating within their race, interracial dating has always been a hot topic within our community.

This doesn’t excuse the category of people who hide behind terms like “preference” and “attraction” to continue having misogynistic and eurocentric views on the type of women they choose to validate.

But I do believe it’s time we broaden our horizons beyond the Afrikan community at UCLA. It’s not worth being alone because we fear how we will be perceived. There needs to be a change in the way Afrikan women are approached and treated not just by Afrikan men, but by ALL men.

Dating in this society IS racialized. While we can’t control systematic conditions, we can control what we allow. We create safe spaces already by calling out and challenging inappropriate behavior from our peers.

This looks like no longer embracing the colorists, sexists, and racists in and outside of our community, friendship circles, and families. Taking time to delve further into the history and roots behind the divisions in our community is important when we are all searching for some form of the same thing: love.

The goal of this article is to first bring awareness to the dating climate of UCLA while also humanizing Afrikan women and validating the experiences and struggles we face dating within a predominantly white institution. To everyone reading, you are more than just your body, more than your looks, and you are definitely more than your dating experiences.

Sometimes we think that the things we go through are unique to us, but these experiences are universal to everyone. So block that man who commented on whether or not that “nyash” is homegrown and seek the love and pleasures in life that should be given to you as a human being.

Afrikan women aren’t a commodity.

Afrikan women most definitely deserve love.

03/06/2024 0 comments

Black History Culture Lifestyle Opinion

“Onwards and Upwards”

by Xavier Adams 03/06/2024

written by Xavier Adams

It is no secret that peering into the past affords us a more illustrative picture of the present and allows us to grapple with pressing issues of change, liberation, and one that I find particularly interesting, progress.

My enthusiasm may then come as no surprise once I was granted access to NOMMO’s historical archives which date back to half a century ago. The burning question in the foreground of my mind was: How does the past compare to the future?

As I dug through the archives, the headlines read: “The Perpetual Rape of Africa: The Scramble Continues” “Gates Wants it All: Battering Ram Not Enough” “The Coming Racial Struggle and the Crisis of Capitalism” “Radio Stations Refuse Airplay of Anti-Apartheid Single” “African Self-Determinism Through the Arts”

Not to mention a flier that read, “We are Promoting the Complete Unification of All Africans. We Understand this to be the Prerequisite to Liberation.”

Although these articles were published decades ago they are, in a sense, uncanny – all too familiar despite the celebrated notion of progress.

Here we witness calls to end colonial rule throughout Africa, South America, Asia, and the Middle East; editorials concerned with the increasingly repressive police apparatus; unrelenting social and economic racial disparities under capitalist regimes; popular media, grounded in a white standpoint, refusing to shed any spotlight on the subjugation of the subaltern; the need for independent Pan-Afrikan voices to reveal the gravity of their own oppression; and calls for nation-building through the unification of the Afrikan diaspora.

Decades have passed and yet these issues reverberate perfectly in today’s world. Neo-colonialism is well alive (a struggle that especially resonates in Palestine, the Congo, and Sudan, whose people routinely suffer from atrocious acts of injustice). Mass incarceration and police violence as instruments of oppression are well alive. The social and economic inequalities wrought by capitalism are well alive. The widespread neglect of the marginalized experience is well alive. The need for independent Pan

Afrikan voices is well alive. The fragmentation of the Afrikan diaspora is well alive.

The notion of progress within the Pan-Afrikan community is a slippery one: it is widely assumed that we have significantly – though gradually – progressed toward freedom, effectively severing ourselves from 20th-century ills. Yet, it must be asked: how much progress have we enjoyed?

To my disappointment, this all too attractive idea of significant progress is, for the most part, a

mistake. The present is marked not by linear and gradual progress but by its absence.

The ills of the 20th century are the ills of today.

03/06/2024 0 comments

Black History Culture Lifestyle News Opinion

The Sexualization of Afrikan Girls

by Nyomi Henderson 03/06/2024

written by Nyomi Henderson

Because we are simultaneously Afrikan and woman, we have become accustomed to our natural bodies being oversexualized in society. Since the beginning of institutionalized racism and the colonial empire’s enslavement regime, Afrikan women’s bodies have always been associated with the idea of a promiscuity that was foreign and erotic. Institutionalized racism is defined as: the perpetuation of discrimination based on “race” by political, economic, or legal institutions and systems like education and the legal system. Now, some could argue that as a woman “lucky” enough to be living in a society with things like the #MeToo Movement and Title XI, the treatment of “colored” women has come a long way. I beg to differ…

While I want to acknowledge the work of Faye Wattleton, Elaine Brown, and so many others who were pioneers of social justice and advocates for the reproductive rights of Afrikan women, it doesn’t erase the violence we have endured. There will never be a justification for forced reproduction for profit and pleasure or the immoral study of the female anatomy through dissection and nude physical auctions.

To ground our discussion on the sexualization of Afrikan women, I want to remind of us Sarah Baartman and how her body, to this day, is still fetishized and sexualized. The constant violation of her rights and autonomy throughout history challenges us to consider how sexual violence is used as a tool of colonial power, intimidation, and dehumanization. In an opinion column done by Hope Moses titled “Oversexualization of Black Girls and Women Must Stop,” they hit the nail on the head by mentioning how:

A 2017 Georgetown University study discovered that Black girls as young as 5 years old are already seen as less innocent and in need of less support than white girls of the same age. This presumption leads teachers and other authority figures to treat Black girls as older than they are and more harshly than white female students, with the disparity being vast for 10- to 14-year-olds.

Focus on the phrase “less innocent.” Most people tend to associate that phrase with immorality, or the quality of being impure and sinful. Through this language, we begin to understand how sexualization functions to erase and delegitimize the innocence of Afrikan girls—the very same innocence our white peers gain by simply being alive. In a theory I heard from one of my favorite video essayists, Tee Noir, called the “Pink Nipple Theory”, she discusses the difference in how white womanhood is received in comparison to Afrikan femininity. In essence, white women expressing sexuality and sensuality is deemed acceptable, as their sexuality is understood as separate from their identity. This wildly contradicts the rhetoric formed around Afrikan expressions of sexuality, which is seen as less of an act and more of an identity. This creates a world in which Afrikan women’s bodies are weaponized against them through institutions of white supremacy. We are hypersexualized as a condition of the violence used to justify and aid in institutionalized racism.

So when we start to think about the adultification of Afrikan women at a young age, it’s easy to see how girls as young as 5 years old are being dress-coded and sent back home for not wearing “appropriate attire.” These institutions of racial violence cause young Afrikan women to experience a different childhood than their peers, lacking the freedom that comes with acting their age, without hyperawareness of their sexualization.

Our families can also function as institutions of violence because they foster our primary socialization. This is important because our parents can indirectly and directly internalize adultification, whether it’s by punishing us or by making side comments about our bodies and our intentions, on the basis that we should “know better” or just want to “act grown.” Even the textbooks we read in school fail to mention the historical menticide and generational traumas that have impacted the way that we see our bodies. As a result, structural violence against Afrikan women has become the status quo.

I couldn’t relate more to the feeling of being seen through someone else’s eyes. This is why in the Afrikan community it’s so important to challenge the normalization of sexual violence in our society and investigate how impunity is often grated to perpetrators of violence against women, men, and nonbinary people. It can happen to anyone, at any time, yet the punishment and repercussions are low. As more and more of us realize our autonomy, we recognize that this has to change as we, in our essence, are inherently valuable.

You are more than your body and what you “bring to the table.” You are whole and flooded with adoration. You are someone worth getting to know, not because of how you look externally but because of the traits and quirks you have that you think no one else sees. If this message triggered anyone, I would like to drop some resources such as the National Sexual Assault Hotline, which is available 24 hours at 1-800-656-4673. I also encourage mental health practices, such as journaling, community circles, and therapy.

You are more than your story, you are more than your abuse, you are loved.

03/06/2024 0 comments

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