I’m writing this from a hotel room in Washington, D.C. I’m here for a Q&A and book signing with Franchesca Ramsey Wednesday evening and I’ll also be on Al-Jazeera’s The Stream Wednesday afternoon. Because my day is so busy, I wanted to get here early just so I’d be settled and ready, and my flight from Pittsburgh was…

Editor’s note: This is satire. What is satire, you ask? According to Dictionary.com, satire is the use of humor, irony, exaggeration or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues. Keep that in mind. Thanks. —Mgmt.

As it did for so many folks I know, hip-hop changed my life. I don’t mean in the “It saved my life” way, but when I was introduced to hip-hop, I fell hook, line and sinker into the ocean and never came up for air.

Since my daughter was born, I’ve had two very clear objectives: 1) Raise a good human being who goes to Spelman College, and 2) Turn my daughter (and the rest of my kids) into music heads. I want my kids to be the ones who go to school talking about that new Marvin Gaye Here, My Dear album. I want them thinking that…

As the father of a baby person—and also the uncle of some baby people—I’ve spent a disproportionate amount of time (for an adult) at Chuck E. Cheese’s in the past three years. Birthday parties, potty-train parties, random Saturdays when you’re babysitting your nephew and don’t have shit else to do—I’ve been there…

Editor’s note: Corey Richardson, the author of We Used to Have Money, Now We Have You! A Dad’s Bedtime Story, is a frequent VSB contributor. 

A few months ago, there was an issue with an H&M shirt, a black boy and a monkey. We were all like, fuck yo’ couch, H&M! And then folks shut a few H&Ms down in South Africa, and then H&M was closing down tons of stores (while opening others), and I think Brick killed a guy.

As I noted yesterday, Becky With the Bold Hands went through the entire gamut of aggrieved white weaponry when she was detained by police officers for attempting to pet a black woman’s dog without permission. Tears, kicks, threats, panic attacks smoothly transitioning into lucid vulgarities—it was like watching…

If you cannot afford to give money, your presence is all that counts. And if you can’t afford to give money, but you do crochet and shit, crochet some shit for them. Crochet your happy, crocheting ass off.

Janet Jackson’s janet. could not have come out at a more critical time in my life. It was the summer of 1993 (the album was released 25 years ago today, May 18), and I was 11 years old going on 12, and puberty was having the time of its life in my body. Since this was still a few years before the internet would be…

The news has lately been inundated with examples of white folks (and even some nonwhite folks) doing the ultimate white-folkin’ of calling the police for no reason on black folks who were doing nothing but existing and living their everyday lives.

On the list of “Headlines I’ve always wished to write but assumed I’d never have the chance to,” “White Person Arrested for Petting a Black Person’s Dog Without Permission” might actually be No. 1, narrowly beating “Zimmerman Stampeded in Pamplona; Remains Yet to Be Found” and “Reparations Approved by Congress on One…

The royal wedding is happening at some point this week. I haven’t been following the news blow by blow, but I know enough to know the main characters. Meghan Markle (who I enjoyed on Suits) is marrying Prince Harry (who is a prince). They look nice together in pictures, like the cover models for a pamphlet about a new…

I was introduced to Summer Lee last year by a mutual friend. We met for drinks in the lobby of the Ace Hotel, and she shared her background (Howard University Law grad who recently moved back to the Pittsburgh area), the work she was currently doing to oust racist members of the Woodland Hills School Board (she…

For some odd reason that I cannot quite understand, I grew up listening to a very (un)healthy amount of Kenny G. The track “Songbird”—you know the one—could be heard on any given day throughout my home as a kid. For the life of me, I do not understand why this was the case. Turns out that I was not alone. The…

I have three chirrens. They are ages 9, 3 and 2. At this point, because children are sponges and shit, I am very careful about what I watch and listen to in front of them. The last thing I need is to have my kids absorb some super-profane content and then repeat it. I already accidentally talked my 2-year-old into…

“I dropped it, Daddy! I dropped it!” my daughter exclaimed while sitting on my lap, as the ice cube she held in the palm of her hand slipped from her grasp and crashed on the cement stoop outside our house. Determined to retrieve the wayward cube, she crawled off of me, stood over the ice and reached to grab it. I…

Below, because I know you’re curious, are the five worst places to be elbowed during a basketball game (in reverse order):

I can be prone to hyperbole. I can see proof of it in my daughter, who has adopted my penchant for saying, “This is my favorite song ever” for nearly every song she hears that she likes. We don’t do things small in the My-Last-Name-Isn’t-Really-Jackson household.