For once, I befriended the night's darkness and calm, realizing even the dark carries a light.

My mother fries chicken for dinner

says she hasn’t seen real chicken in America

I have a goal in life—to build the Black community here in America.

Gen Z is not afraid of speaking out against policies; we are starving for justice. 

The story my grandfather told continues to shape me today. 

Dr. André studies the intersection of identity, race, identity—and opera. 

It is our job to be allies and fight alongside Black Americans for equality. 

Discrimination on the basis of class is illegal. Yet it exists and blooms in this environment of hate. 

Discussing racism is of paramount importance; it is also a sensitive and controversial issue. 

Racial disparities in the American healthcare system absolutely exist. 

The scariest aspect of the Bay Area's disparity is just how little acknowledgement it receives. 

We often forget how Black communities and Asian communities have stood up for each other. 

"For many of us, this is not a new moment in time," says the young Māori activist. 

As early as nine years old, I stood in front of my bathroom mirror, poking and prodding at the skin above my eyes to create double eyelids.

They tell us to put our hands up. Then, they ask us why we moved. Sister, that is why they shoot. Because we move.

I wasn't alive in '93, when cryptosporidium poured

through the water like liquid lava

Shirk your sense of responsibility. 

Leave your guilt at the door of progress. 

I believe in justice, 

in our voices, in theirs

You have never known those shores or those 

people or those words that sound like a memory

We come in droves, frothing at the mouth and baying for blood.

Our enemy invisible, stretched across the world like the taut skin of a drum. 

I believe in the power of words to come flying:

swans whooping as they pass

Don't you swat at a fly. 

Don't you mindlessly shoot that harmless creature to the ground.

you have learned there is both good and bad about where you live.

you have learned the stubbornest people on the planet are Southern. 

Negro Swan allows Devonte Hynes to address his struggles as a young black man in the UK. 

the first missile tears through the skin;

skinning the embers of a quenched country

You're deplorable, horrible, despicable, ignorable. You reiterate, evaluate, desiccate . . .

In November 2018, the horrific picture of a migrant mother and her daughters fleeing . . .

The silence can be eerie

Dark, damp and cold

I believe in

People Places,

A Place for every Person to

Teenagers are the ones who change history. They have to be. It’s kids with lumps in their throats, bright blue sparks in their fingertips and purple-braced snarls screaming for equality who are the ones who achieve it, their words the upbeat crashdrum of change.