To commemorate the 153rd anniversary of Juneteenth, Airbnb partnered with The.Wav to host bi-coastal Junteenth celebrations in Leimert Park at J3 Collection Studio in Los Angeles and The Long Gallery Harlem in New York, for an evening of rejoicing and reflection through education and entertainment.The.Wav curated their signature AFROHAUS experience, a group initiative, to provide a platform for artists who are dedicated to celebrating the African Diaspora. The goal of AFROHAUS is to empower diverse voices and create community centered around human expression and acceptance, according to its website.At the Juneteenth events, AFROHAUS provided guests the opportunity to take a journey through the diaspora with live music, poetry, interpretative dance and art with the help of Airbnb Concerts through Airbnb Experiences, a platform that gives travelers the unique perspective and opportunity to live like a local with the help of resident experts.Kelly Brett, the founder, designer and promoter of The.Wav, found it really important to host a Juneteenth concert this year to celebrate freedom with food and cool vibes.“I feel like AFROHAUS has been a part of the community for like nine or ten months now,” Brett told Blavity. “I feel like it's important to celebrate anything that has to do with ‘black’. I'm black, I went to an HBCU, my dad’s from the South, my mom’s from the South and I grew up going to Juneteenth celebrations.”Juneteenth Event in New York (Photo: Kisha Bari)Airbnb partnered with The.Wav for the Juneteenth Concert because of its success as a host on the platform. As a whole, Airbnb Concerts is one of the fastest growing categories within Airbnb Experiences. The concerts offer intimate shows and unique spaces for around 100 people, according to Lamar Gary, music market manager at Airbnb.“Their experience [AFROHAUS] takes you on a musical journey through the African Diaspora, with live music, dance, art, and it's just a fully cultural experience,” Gary said. “Juneteenth celebrates the emancipation from slavery here in the U.S. so it was a perfect fit partnering with The.Wav because of how they elevate the African Diaspora and how they’re curating their show to be inclusive of everyone.”“It really goes back to our mission of belonging anywhere and our commitment to diversity and inclusion,” he added. “We actually say what we mean, and this is one of our ways of celebrating the culture and the richness that comes from it.”There are a variety of concerts on the Airbnb Experiences platform today, according to Gary. Concerts take place in unique spaces from wine cellars to steamships, and are hosted by musicians, gathering places and music lovers in the community. Concerts span a range of genres including Afrobeat, jazz, folk and soul and have specific events catered to Latinx, Asian and LGBT communities.  “At Airbnb we believe that people should feel like they can belong anywhere,” Gary said. “With music, what's really exciting is that it’s a really incredibly powerful way of bringing people together and connecting them with those two things in mind. It really helps us accomplish our goal of helping people belong anywhere because we’re getting people from all cultures and all backgrounds in a room to enjoy live music together.”The Juneteeth celebrations also highlighted The Future Project, a nonprofit organization that directly impacts youth within the community.Gregory Stutzer, a member of The.Wav, said the Concert Series platform has given them a lot more visibility to a greater network of people who are receptive to their brand and style internationally through Airbnb.“It really coincides with our vision of being international,” Stutzer said. “With me being from Tanzania and them having roots in different places, it just made a lot of sense. It really allowed us to connect to more of the people who are receptive to this style of music and this movement that we’re starting.”For anyone interested in learning more about Airbnb Concerts and their mission, head...

Public radio journalists and best friends, Hana Baba and Leila Day are talking everything diasporic in their joint podcast The Stoop. From Black immigration to colorism, the two don’t take their duties “dialogin’ about the diaspora” very lightly. "We wanted to create a space where we could combine journalism and storytelling and talk about things that we felt were overlooked," Day, a New York-based podcast producer at Pineapple Street Media, said in an emailed statement to Blavity.The cultural discourse between the two women first began when Baba and Day worked for the same newsmagazine in the Bay Area.“Being the 'onlys' in the news department, we worked at, we would always find ourselves having these side conversations in the kitchen or the hallway about blackness, identity, and recommendations for hair braiders," Baba, a California native who works as a host/reporter for NPR’s Concurrents newsmagazine, told Blavity. In 2016, they took those conversations to another level when “The Stoop” first premiered on NPR Story Lab.The podcast was chosen as one of three to receive funding from the public radio service. And it sure proved worth the investment.In addition to mental health and debunking the “angry black woman” myth, the two also touched on a subject less widely discussed in the community in season one. Whereas Black America has become more exposed to white appropriation of Black culture than we’d ever like to be, the two dove into appropriation among Black cultures — a topic which the two felt needed to be tackled.“Well, in season one we knew we had to go deeper into this debate that we kept seeing come up online about black people wearing African clothing,” Day said. “We decided to go straight to the AfroPunk music festival in Brooklyn to get that conversation going. The episode was called ‘Nice Tribal Wear, Now Take It Off,’ and in it we asked can it be appropriation for black people to wear African clothing? We had some very candid, sometimes uncomfortable conversations with people.”But not all episodes are made the same.“Sometimes, we just want to hear stories that just remind us about love and giving love and feeling it,” Day said. “So we thought about this a lot and one of our episodes is about family love, and specifically black men giving love, it’s called, “Why is it so hard for some black folk to say I love you?”In their second season, they’re looking to dive even deeper. "In season two, there are conversations about colorism, from a skin bleaching kiosk in Sudan, to asking where are the brown bodies in some of these classical ballet companies?" Baba said.“We’re also untangling some of this controversy around the hair chart that was created to help naturals understand their textures, but it’s also creating some tensions about the lack of representation of kinky haired women."  What makes their podcast such an unapologetic gem is that the storytellers are not afraid to try out different ways of conveying a narrative — and they use their difference in cultural backgrounds to enhance listeners’ experiences.“I’m a daughter of Sudanese immigrants, Leila is African-American,” Baba said. “We’d rant, rave, and dissect everything black -about something we caught on Blavity from fashion and style, to the latest study on black mental health, to race, love, both of us being told we ‘sound white’, black immigration - but also questions we had for each other- like : how do I, the African, feel about Leila wearing a Nigerian gele? Is that appropriation? Or - why is Leila being curious if I have natural hair under my hijab?”"There is no shortage of diverse topics,” Day said. “The beautiful thing about the stories is that they’re from very different black experiences. ‘The Stoop’ is more about the people you meet, and the stories they tell. No matter where you are within the diaspora, you can learn something or hopefully challenge yourself to think of something in a different way.”Baba and Day said for their latest season, they’re focused on switching up the narrative."This season is less about how do we make this thing and more about, we’re making it...these stories will be told.”You can listen to season two of “The...

After decades of fighting, ethnic divides between the Fulani herdsmen and farmers erupted in Plateau State, Nigeria, leading to the death of 86 people. In addition to casualties, 50 houses were burned along with 15 motorbikes and two cars, the BBC reports. The two groups have in large part struggled with one another for land, and after the farmers attacked Fulani herders on June 21, the herders responded in what lead to this massacre. According to CNN, the Fulani herdsmen are mostly Muslim, while the farmers are Christian. Their mutual grapples have stretched across Benue, Plateau, Kaduna, Niger, Jigawa, Sokoto, Edo, Delta, Yobe and Anambra. In 2014, the Fulani herdsmen charged into a meeting in Northern Nigeria’s  Zamfara State and killed 30 people. Now, the state fears more retaliation, and so, according to Governor of Plateau State Simon Bako Lalong, a temporary 6 p.m. – 6 a.m. curfew has been enacted for protective purposes. A 6pm-6am curfew has been put into immediate effect to quell the acute part of this horrible situation. The immediate measure is intended to protect the lives of our citizens. We will follow with longer term measures to secure the peace.— Simon Bako Lalong (@SimonLalong) June 24, 2018Nigerian President Muhammadu Bahari publicly expressed his regrets on Twitter, writing, “The previous loss of lives and property arising from the killings in Plateau today is painful and regrettable. My deepest condolences to the affected communities. We will not rest until all murderers and criminal elements and their sponsors are incapacitates and brought to justice.”The grievous loss of lives & property arising from the killings in Plateau today is painful and regrettable. My deepest condolences to the affected communities. We will not rest until all murderers and criminal elements and their sponsors are incapacitated and brought to justice.— Muhammadu Buhari (@MBuhari) June 24,...

Serena Williams is featured InStyle's August "Badass Women" issue because... well, appropriate. She spoke with the magazine about the royal wedding, balancing the roles of wife, champion and mother as well as her future baby plans.Williams recently served us "Black Panther" realness during her much-anticipated return to a Grand Slam match and won, gracefully reclaiming her crown. Williams is arguably the greatest athlete of all time, and folks regale her as a real-life superhero, but she is still human. New parents usually can't even clean up their first spit-up before someone asks if they're having another (generally of the opposite gender), and inquiring minds wanted to know about a potential sibling for little Alexis Olympia.“If I weren’t working, I’d already be pregnant. I hear everyone’s different, but I had a really easy pregnancy until the birth. Not even birth — after,” said Williams, referring to her traumatizing birth experience, which led her to open up about black women's unsatisfying encounters with doctors. But, if she has a baby, she isn't so sure if she'll still want to play tennis after that. “I don’t know if I want to play if I have another baby, but you’re right. I need to talk to Alexis. We need a plan,” Williams said.Williams also gushed about her friend Meghan Markle's royal wedding, which she attended with her husband, Alexis. “It was super fun. You know, I’ve known Meghan for years, so it was good to see my friend happy,” Williams said. I’m really excited to be on the August cover of @InstyleMagazine…such an amazing publication that captures all women so beautifully in all of our diversities. Read the full story by my friend @LauraBrown99. Link in bio. #InStyleBadAssWomenIssue Photography: @RobbieFimmano Styling by @JuliePelipas Hair by @AngelaMeadowsSalon Makeup by @NatashaGrossMakeupArtist A post shared by Serena Williams (@serenawilliams) on Jun 26, 2018 at 4:57am...

Mayor Karen Peconi of Arnold, Pennsylvania, is trying to take us back to 1963, y'all.The mayor of the suburban community outside of Pittsburgh issued an apology Wednesday, June 27, after screenshots of her personal Facebook page urging protesters be sprayed with water hoses surfaced, WTAE reports.  The Facebook post called for "rioters to be destroyed by a water canon [sic]," which, of course, incited anger throughout the black community in the local area and online.The protesters Peconi referred to in the post have been demonstrating in Pittsburgh, seeking justice for Antwon Rose Jr., a black 17-year-old killed by an East Pittsburgh police officer."I love this community, I would do anything for the people here. I don't take my position as mayor lightly and deeply regret the comments I made on Facebook. It was never my intention to offend anyone, and for those who I offended I am sincerely sorry," Mayor Peconi said in a statement.Peconi not only posted her thoughts on water cannons but also made similar statements in other posts and comments. "I'm posting this so the authorities everywhere sees [sic] this ... bring the hoses," read another one of Peconi's Facebook posts. "They don't care about jobs for PGH ... none of them work now. That's how they can do this at 7 a.m. Very sad."The mayor had also reportedly commented on a picture of protesters being sprayed with a large water cannon with, "We need one of these for tomorrow.""I was just flabbergasted. This doesn’t concern us here in Arnold. You can take it several different ways," said Arnold City Councilman Philip McKinley. "When she said, 'Those people don’t work in the morning,' you knew what she was talking about." McKinley further confirmed Arnold is "predominantly African American." Mayor of #Arnold PA #karenpeconi thinks they should hose protesters. Also can’t spell. @pghDSA @ShaunKing pic.twitter.com/uo1X4sISOi— Jason Fate 💬 (@JasonRFate) June 26, 2018Mayor of Arnold, Pa. facing scrutiny from city council after allegedly posting on her Facebook page that Antwon Rose protesters should be sprayed with water canons 👇👇👇Full report on #WTAE at 11pm pic.twitter.com/HWVYU88l8k— Beau Berman (@BeauWTAE) June 26,...

The transgender community in Jacksonville, Florida, believes a serial killer is targeting it.Three black transgender women have been killed in the city since February, and all three of the murders remain unsolved, leaving the community on edge.“The transgender community in Jacksonville is frightened,” Gina Duncan, a transgender-rights advocate with Equality Florida, told NBC News. “They fear this could be a serial killer or orchestrated violence targeting the community. They do not feel protected on their own streets.”The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office says Celine Walker, 36, was found dead in an extended stay room on February 4. Antash’a English, 38, was found between two abandoned houses with a gunshot wound in her abdomen on June 1 and later died at a hospital. The latest victim, 24-year-old Cathalina Christina James, was found dead at a Quality Inn on Sunday, June 24.The deaths are being investigated separately, and the sheriff’s office said it has no reason to believe the incidents are connected.Page Mahogany, the leader of the Jacksonville Transgender Awareness Project, said the trans community feels “there’s a target on their backs.” She also said transgender people have no trust in the police department.“Every day, there are a lot of crimes not being reported, because when the sheriffs come out, the sheriffs make the girls feel like suspects, not victims,” Mahogany said. “A lot of these girls are being beaten up, they’re being robbed, they’re being assaulted, but they’re not reaching out to the police department.”Duncan expressed a similar sentiment, saying the police have repeatedly used male pronouns to refer to the three deceased women.“By misgendering these transgender women, the JSO disrespects their memory and impedes their own investigations. These are out, trans women, and that is how they are known in the community," Duncan said in a statement.A Transgender Lives Matter rally will be held on Wednesday in Jacksonville to commemorate the women and to acknowledge others who have been murdered or...

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old progressive and former organizer for Sen. Bernie Sanders, defeated 10-term incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley in a stunning primary victory on Tuesday, June 26, in New York's 14th Congressional District, which includes parts of Queens and the Bronx. The moment is undoubtedly monumental. Ocasio-Cortez, a Bronx-born Latina, has been unapologetic about her grassroots movement to support the working class. The first-time candidate's victory, described as the most significant primary upset of 2018, marks a possible political shift toward progressive leftist ideals – particularly as more progressive candidates have recently declared victories in primary elections across the country.Ocasio-Cortez's bid was the first primary challenge Crowley, who is the fourth-ranking House Democrat, has seen in 14 years. The Latina millennial campaigned on progressive stances, like abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency and pushing the Medicare-for-all bill led by Sanders. She has also notably declared the importance of having a person of color represent one of the country's most ethnically diverse congressional districts. In an interview with HuffPost earlier this month, Ocasio-Cortez explained the importance of having an elected official who represents their community, especially in contrast to Crowley who is white and from a middle-class Irish family. "Our district is overwhelmingly people of color, it’s working class, it’s very immigrant ― and it hasn’t had the representation we’ve needed,” she said.It's time for a New York that works for all of us. On June 26th, we can make it happen - but only if we have the #CourageToChange. It's time to get to work. Please retweet this video and sign up to knock doors + more at https://t.co/kacKFI9RtI to bring our movement to Congress. pic.twitter.com/aqKMjovEjZ— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) May 30, 2018Ocasio-Cortez's mom is from Puerto Rico, and her dad is from the Bronx. She graduated from Boston University where she studied economics and international relations. While in college, she worked under the late Senator Kennedy, spent time working with expectant mothers in West Africa and later served as an educational director working with Latino youth.On her Facebook page, Ocasio-Cortez shared that after her father passed away in 2008, she worked as a waitress and bartender to help her family financially. The first-time candidate campaigned heavily on rejecting corporate donations and criticized Crowley for taking campaign donations from companies that have also given to Trump. Crowley raised more funds than Ocasio-Cortez by a 10-1 margin. The child detention camps are here - I confronted the border officers myself.Using their names, I told them exactly what they are responsible for.One of them made eye contact with me.I spoke directly to him.I saw his sense of guilt.We can dismantle this.#AbolishICE pic.twitter.com/QLyc9MAnkt— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) June 24, 2018According to The New York Times, if Ocasio-Cortez is elected, she would become the youngest woman ever elected to...

Married Virginia couple Jackie and Wayne Carter created a "not reaching" pouch in response to the reported numbers of traffic stops that turn deadly — and to mainly address the racial disparity of black victims and other victims of color in fatal traffic stops.Their website refers to the "not reaching" pouch as a "solution to the fatal traffic stops experienced particularly by young, minority males throughout the country."The pouch was created to contain essential documents police officers typically ask for, including a driver's license, insurance card and vehicle registration. It's also intended to be attached to the vent in the car closest to the driver's side window.In an interview with local CBS 42, Jackie Carter, a local court reporter, demonstrated how a driver could grab the "not reaching" pouch instead of reaching around the vehicle. "Not Reaching! is a revolutionary identification system that allows motorists to remain stationary in their vehicles during a traffic stop by eliminating reaching for identification by the request of law enforcement," the website states in part. "Not Reaching is a start to a safe traffic stop and helps to de-escalate a tense situation."In an interview with local NBC 12 News, Jackie Carter said she came up with the idea for the pouch after interviewing several police officers and after feeling an "unrest" from the countless stories of fatal traffic stops. Research has revealed that police officers are more likely to stop and search black and Hispanic drivers than their white counterparts in the first place. And, as Vox reported, FBI data has revealed racial disparities in how police use force against black people overall.Jackie Carter told NBC 12 News that it's their hope the "Not Reaching" pouch would at the very least "take away one of the reasons" police encounters turn deadly.  "We are in such a tumultuous time right now that we have to be ready and vigilant on everything that we do, including traffic stops," she said. "So, I thought that having the 'Not Reaching' pouch will at least take away one of the reasons why this was happening during motor vehicle...

Recently, the nation witnessed one of the most heart wrenching and, to a degree, mind-blowing events in recent American history. At the southern US border, human beings are being detained in fenced-in cells that some have called “cages.” In addition to the images we’ve seen, ProPublica published audio clips of children who have been separated from their families, crying out with fear, pain, and confusion. The hopes of entering a “land of the free” have been dashed with no clear sign of an opportunity to gain citizenship. Families are being torn apart literally at the nation’s southern border.We’ve seen this before!We, as children of God who have been kissed by the sun and are not melanin deficient, are the descendants (most of us) of broken families, due to the triangle slave trade of the 18th and 19th centuries. I raise this reminder to help contextualize this moment in history for us. We have seen this before. Our people were taken from their native lands and brought into the Western Hemisphere as laborers — as slaves. If our people were fortunate enough to arrive on these shores as a family unit, they still always fearfully faced the auction block, which was notoriously known for sending fathers to one plantation, mothers to another and children to yet another. We’ve seen this before.I’m reminded of writers of slave narratives such as Harriet Jacobs, Frederick Douglass and Henry Bibb. I’m reminded of poets throughout our history such as Phillis Wheatley, Paul Laurence Dunbar and Langston Hughes. I’m reminded of the countless other black writers and artists who penned, authored, drafted and designed their reality in print so that a flawed people in a flawed nation could see, artfully so, the error of their ways. They speak to us throughout history and live through pages of print today. They were able to give voice to their experiences of oppression, disinheritance, dismemberment and disillusionment. We have seen this before.What we have witnessed is a new wave of an old reality. The reality is that our nation is and has been sick for quite some time. This sickness is not due to any political leanings or party affiliations. This sickness is not a failing of some policy or set of policies. This sickness is not the result of any lapse in judgment or change of heart. This sickness is actually a side effect of a disease that has existed in this nation since its inception. Listening to political commentators, the question has been asked, “Where is our moral compass?” The answer is simple. The moral compass of America is built on whiteness and is enforced by preserving the principles of whiteness at all costs. Whiteness, contrary to popular belief, has little to do with complexion or nationality; rather, whiteness is a social construct and manner of being in the world. What I mean here is that there are those in our society and world that benefit from constructing and maintaining the idea that white is right and anything else is othered. This othering sets up and maintains the various dichotomies we see in our nation. In this nation, there have always existed the haves and the have nots, the rich and the poor, the right and the wrong, the privileged and the underprivileged. We’ve seen this before.As I examine what we’ve witnessed recently, I cannot help but hear the clarion call of the writer of Chronicles who states, “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray, turn from their wicked ways and seek my face, I will hear from heaven, forgive their sins, and heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14). Not only do I hear the chronicler, I firmly and fully believe in the power of prayer to change things. So, we must pray! Not only that, the good news is that this sickness does not have to be unto death. In Nazi Germany, those who endorsed and operated the concentration camps were defeated. Yes, many lives were lost, but God brought an end to those heinous designs. This nation does not have to face the same fate. Prayer is a part of the chronicler’s admonition, but what is truly central to accessing the power of God is in the turning. There is a need to turn from idolatry, racism, sexism, xenophobia, bigotry, heterosexism and all other divisive deterministic demarcations we have promulgated throughout this nation’s history. We must turn! We have seen this before.I believe this nation’s failure, shortcoming and sickness ultimately lay in those who are harbingers of whiteness being unwilling to turn due to ego and fear. They are fearful that evening the odds will somehow diminish their capacity to be “white” in America. There is a need, as there was a need centuries ago in Rome, to maintain the American version of Pax Romana at all cost: Pax Romana is directly translated the Peace of Rome. Peace was to be maintained at all costs, even to the point of killing those who did not look like you or have a Roman seal of belonging — citizenship — on them. This nation’s ego is actually edging God out and not allowing God to be God. Until we turn from these worthless things and turn to the true and living God, we will not truly be able to live in harmony. I pray we turn quickly, for the children who are trapped at the border in cages are depending on us. Yes, we’ve seen this before, but now it’s time to be “one nation under God!” How long will it take?#FamiliesBelongTogetherDr. Wallis C. Baxter III (Pastor B) is the pastor of Second Baptist Church SW in District Heights,...

Black TV is experiencing a renaissance. Most mainstream television networks are giving opportunities to programs with not only black casts, but black creators, writers and showrunners as well. We’ve seen hit series like, Queen Sugar, on the OWN Network, HBO's Insecure, created by Issa Rae, ABC’s Black-ish and Grown-ish, both created by Kenya Barris, Donald Glover’s Atlanta, on FX, all the shows created by the illustrious Shonda Rhimes and even Netflix exclusives, like, She’s Gotta Have It, Luke Cage and Dear White People, have caught massive amounts of mainstream attention and acclaim.If all these mostly white networks were able to make a splash with series centering on black narratives, why is Black Entertainment Television (BET) seemingly falling through the cracks? Even certain celebs have been absent from the BET Awards for the past few years, denoting a shift in the network's cultural influence. After the 2018 BET Awards, Black Twitter did its thing, expressing disappointment in the networks inability to produce new content that captures the attention of the contemporary black community.BET should really be giving us Black “Say Yes to the Dress”, Black “HGTV” vibes, Black cartoons and kids shows, HBCU football games... but instead we get Baby Boy 838392 times with an hour and a half of commercials. Hire new leadership, writers, etc. PLS. https://t.co/DjUIzbsDRk— Ginger Foutley (@shes_rADIAnt) June 25, 2018 The answer can’t simply be more black people on screen. It is a matter of new leadership and direction. Black millennials have more than proven their ability to be cultural influencers both inside and outside the black community. If other networks and streaming services are willing to invest in young black creators, why not the network directed specifically towards the black experience? The programs that run on BET are not only outdated, but lack diverse black narratives. When it comes to hiring talent, they seem to be stuck in a bubble that doesn’t allow for investing in emerging black writers or producers.There is so much potential for BET to run a range of programming, from reality TV and sports, to movies and children’s shows. So, why aren’t they? BET was bought by Viacom back in 2001 and some think that the influence of the media conglomerate has stifled the creativity of BET programming. Perhaps the network is in need of a new image that appeals to a variety of black audiences. The answer could possibly be found in new leadership and more original content that is allowed to be bold and unapologetic in its...

When it comes to demographic influence over a website, black people have taken over Twitter by storm. Statistics show we’re more likely to use Twitter than whites, Latinos or Asians. And if you scroll through anyone’s Twitter feed, chances are you’ll find at least one popular post from a black user.There are a lot of ideas about what Black Twitter is, but the community has been an observed phenomenon for nearly a decade now, and today it represents a complex constellation of communities, ideologies and identities. There are a variety of reasons why black people today turn to Twitter to communicate.It enables black communities to formWhen Twitter first took off, it had something relatively unique about it that most other major social media platforms didn’t have. You didn’t have to follow someone to find or see their content, which means anyone’s short, easily shareable snippet of conversation could end up on your feed, and if you related to it, you could easily search for more.The other thing that made Twitter unique was that it was best suited to being used on a mobile phone, pretty much from its inception. Since 2000, statistics have shown that black families have statistically been less likely to have a family computer with internet access at home, so when relatively cheap smartphones became accessible, many black internet users found mobile-friendly sites like Twitter easier to use than sites like Facebook, whose mobile apps were clunkier.That meant many black users ended up on Twitter looking for community and interaction. The combination of Twitter’s ease of use on mobile phones and ability to share content with people who aren’t following you meant it was particularly easy for black users to form communities, communities that have developed and grown over the years.It brings black issues to the forefrontOf all the benefits of Black Twitter that draw users in and make it a valuable community tool, none is so important as that of elevating black voices in politics. American history has historically relegated black news and black lives to the sidelines, prioritizing white American history, news and culture as representative of the nation as a whole. Black Twitter has time and time again provided a medium for black conversations to be brought to the forefront of national debate.On Twitter, black voices do not automatically get delegated to alternative newspapers distributed only to black readers. They get shared with all audiences, including white audiences, white politicians and white celebrities, who find it difficult to openly ignore black conversations in a medium heavily dominated by black users.As a result, hashtags related to black lives, like #SolidarityisforWhiteWomen, #BlackLivesMatter, #OscarsSoWhite, #IfIDieInPoliceCustody and #BlackOnCampus gain national attention from major American newspapers and audiences. Not only read by black audiences empathizing with one another, they’re also shared with white audiences who may be exposed to conversations, concepts and realities they’ve never been forced to reckon with before.It gives black users the ability to collaborateBlack communities can often feel isolated or ignored by city, state or national politics at large. Because black communities rarely make up the absolute majority in any particular municipality across the United States, political power may be nonexistent. Individual black people often feel like pawns in a system designed to ignore them as much as possible. Enter Black Twitter, where collaboration and national — or even, international — aid can come to anyone who gets the right audience.Just this past week, #PermitPatty became a topic of national conversation when a white woman named Alison Ettel was named and shamed for trying to call the police on a young black girl, who was simply selling water on a hot summer day, for “making too much noise,” despite the fact that there were no ordinances or laws that would justify calling the police, and despite the fact that her own company, TreatWell Health, is for all intents and purposes, technically unlicensed and illegal.Ettel ended up on national news crying about how she was bullied after numerous companies dropped her products in response to the media firestorm.In other words: thanks to the power of social media and Black Twitter, there were actual consequences for her actions, something that would never have been enacted by the powers that be.Black Twitter provides black communities with a voice and support, for an ability to have a conversation in the public eye and with public influence, something that black people often feel lacking in their day to day lives. It’s no wonder black audiences turn to the microblogging website in drove, posting messages in 280-character bites and developing community-based hashtags to keep the conversation...

Cardi B and Offset are expecting to welcome their first child together any day now, and what better way to prepare for her arrival than with a Bronx fairytale-themed baby shower?The extravagant event took place Tuesday night, June 26, in Atlanta. The very pink, star-studded party lived up to its theme featuring a Bardi Baby Bodega filled with pink drinks for guests to sip on as well as a Bardi Baby Book Library that appeared stocked with reads like The Cat in the Hat, Fox in Socks and Island Born.A post shared by Cardi B Source (@sheiscardi) on Jun 26, 2018 at 8:00pm PDT Based on video clips shared from the event, it seems the 25-year-old mommy-to-be had a blast despite being heavily pregnant. Her growing baby bump couldn't stop her from tearing up the dance floor. Cardi & Hennessy 😍😍A post shared by Cardi B Source (@sheiscardi) on Jun 26, 2018 at 10:00pm PDTCardi B’s Baby Shower: A Bronx FairytaleA post shared by Cardi B Source (@sheiscardi) on Jun 26, 2018 at 9:20pm PDT An extravagant baby shower was always in the cards for the recently confirmed newlyweds. In an April interview with Rolling Stone, Cardi said she wanted to have a "lit" baby shower. “I want a lit baby shower. My baby shower’s not starting at no 5:00. My s**t is going to start at 9 p.m. because that’s how I celebrate, that’s how Caribbean people celebrate," the Invasion of Privacy rapper said. "I don’t like baby showers that be at 5 p.m. in the backyard, cooking, eating hors-d'oeuvres. Nah. S**t, I might even drink some red wine!"We feel you, Cardi. You doing anything that ain't lit doesn't seem plausible.It seems Cardi looked and felt beautiful. Congratulations, you deserve it!She’s soooo happy 💕A post shared by Cardi B Source (@sheiscardi) on Jun 26, 2018 at 10:43pm PDT...