DNBE - News & Events

Kanye isn't crazy. You are.

2018-05-03T10:38:00-04:00

We weren't going to speak on Yegate, but after watching this interview, it deserves a mention. If you haven't watched this interview between Charlamagne Tha God and Kanye, you definitely should before you speak on the subject. Kanye is operating on a completely different level than most people are even capable of understanding. He's being attacked because the powers that be don't want Black people thinking this way. Best believe if you all stop being drones and start really paying attention to what he's saying, they will try to take him out. This is the type of talk that gets Black people killed.

First, Kanye West is not crazy. Genius looks like crazy to simple-minded, ignorant people. He is growing and developing his own ideas and doesn't have much of a filter, but he's definitely not crazy. Watch the interview and tell us exactly which parts are you think are crazy. It's probably just something you're not capable of understanding yet.

He's talking about building his own, not being controlled, and bucking the system. He's also not perfect. Learn what you can and discard the rest. In the meantime, instead of worry about what he's saying or what dumb-ass thing Trump did today, why don't you go volunteer at an urban farm, help build a house for people that need shelter, or donate to an Afrikan-centered school. The choice is yours.

We can do better for Flint

2018-05-03T10:13:00-04:00

The water crisis is entirely avoidable. Our irresponsible use of fresh water has caused a global crisis. But instead of climate change causing this water crisis, it was cause by criminals in the government. Yes, I said criminals. And stupid criminals at that.

Rather than relying on the government officials to solve the problem they caused (they’re probably not capable enough to anyway), we can start to implement long term solutions ourselves because sending water bottles to flint is a VERY inefficient short term solution.

A gallon of water weighs 8.34 lbs. Will and Jaden Smith have already sent at least 9,200 bottles to Flint and have said that they will continue to make monthly donations. Assuming they are 20 oz bottles, that’s 1,437.5 gallons weighing almost 120,000 lbs. Shipping all that weight releases greenhouse gases, not to mention the single-use plastic waste from all those bottles, most of which will end up in landfills or littered on the ground. The cheapest bottled water we could find online to have shipped was $0.01 per ounce, which would put this Smith’s donation at $1,840. Doesn’t sound like much right? Well, if people only needed water to drink, this might be doable. But we also do things like shower, use the bathroom, and wash dishes and clothes, which brings the water usage for the average American household up to 80 a 100 gallons PER DAY. Let’s say due to the circumstances, people in Flint are only using one tenth of that. First of all, that’s not sustainable. We can’t expect them to live like that forever. Second, the Smith’s donation would only cover ONE household for maybe half a year, so they would need to double their donation to last just one household a year at a cost of around $3,700. Theres over 40,000 occupied households in Flint. If you only took care of 100 families, you’re talking about millions of dollars in water bottles. We can do better.

Old pipes are not the problem in Flint. Lead in the water is not the problem. They are symptoms of the real problem, which is large, centralized utilities. Maybe it made sense at one point, but technology has progressed beyond the need for sprawling infrastructure projects that are vulnerable to all manner of failure points (e.g. lead in pipes).

Let’s make it plain. Where does water come from? The ground and the sky. Pumping groundwater is one of the activities that is causing the global water crisis, so we should probably avoid that. We should leave our rivers and lakes alone. So that leaves the sky. There are two primary ways to get water from the sky.

Collect rainwater
Dehumidification

We can start there. People like to say these solutions are too expensive at scale, but “expensive” is relative, and we’ve already demonstrated that the current method of simply donating water is expensive and unsustainable. Having lead in your water is more expensive if you account for the healthcare costs associated with lead poisoning. But with volunteer labor and using the money that would have been spent sending water bottles, we could create a system that would be cost competitive with the existing system, especially considering that Flint already has expensive water, with the average water and sewer bill around $140. We can do better.

Initially, it would look like rainwater collection and filtration systems installed at churches and community centers that can serve as distribution points. One church has already started, led by Pastor Bobby Jackson, so this is not a new idea. Then you could expand to residential installations. These are relatively simple systems that local people can be trained to build. All you need are barrels, pipes, pumps, and filters; all of which you can get from local hardware stores. You could throw some small-scale solar and wind in there to make the system even more resilient. To be clear, this is not a quick fix, but it is a sustainable one.

A rainwater collection and filtration system can cost between $4,000 to $7,000 plus labor. Say we keep it to $4,000 through the use of some volunteer labor, ingenuity, and donated parts (it could cost that much or more just to connect to the grid when building a house). Ongoing costs for filters and UV bulbs would be about $250/year. Sounds like a good deal compared to that $100/month water bill. The average rainfall in flint is ~31 inches. That means a 1000 sq foot rooftop could collect more than 18,000 gallons.

One criticism is that during the winter, it doesn’t rain as much because it snows instead. Guess what? Snow melts…into liquid water.

Then you have dehumidifiers and air-conditioners. This is a more energy intensive way of collecting water, so it should only be used when there is excess power available (like from solar or wind power without battery storage or net metering) or if the rainwater system is running low. When you run the air conditioner, it creates condensation that is usually just wasted and drained outside. Same thing goes with dehumidifiers.

You can get a 9-gallon dehumidifier from Amazon for $220. It uses about 600 watts of electricity, so if you ran it 24/7 (unlikely you would actually do that) then it would cost $1.97 per day to run with the average electricity price in Flint being 13.71 cents per kWh. That’s $720/year for 3,285 gallons of water, or 21 cents per gallon. This is relatively expensive, but you can get that cost down if you can get cheaper power, like from donated solar panels or generators hooked up to the bikes in spin classes that are so popular now, and it’s only a backup option if rainwater isn’t enough. There are also some new lower cost ways to pull water from air that could be used.

Now, we’ve dealt with the supply side of getting water without going through the water company, but there’s a huge issue with the demand side…inefficiency. Everything about the way we use water in our houses is inefficient and we could easily cut our consumption by over half if we built our plumbing systems properly. We can do better.

Water Saver #1: Greywater recycling

Why would you put drinking water in the toilet just so you can defecate in it? Makes no sense. You can use unpurified rainwater or slightly filtered shower, dishwasher, or laundry water to fill up your toilet. With a high-efficiency toilet using 1.28 gallons per flush, if you use the bathroom just twice a day, that’s 934.4 gallons per year you’re saving. With a family of 3, each using the bathroom twice a day, that’s 2,803 gallons per year.

Water Saver #2: Recirculating showers

The average American shower lasts about 8 minutes and uses 17 gallons of water. That means showering daily uses 6,205 gallons of water. There are recirculating showers that reuse and filter the water several times during a shower session, for a total of only 1 gallon used. That would be an annual savings of 5,840 gallons. PLUS you save power by not having to heat all that water because the water retains a lot of the heat as it’s being recirculated, providing up to 90% energy savings.

Water Saver #3: Ventless clothes dryer

When you dry clothes, you pull moisture from the clothes. That moisture usually gets drained. With a ventless dryer, the water is collected. You can empty the water from the collector into the grey water system. Easy.

These are just a few ways to save water at home without sacrificing a lot of convenience.

In the meantime, people still need water while all these systems are being set up, but we’ve already shown that sending bottled water is not a good idea. So what to do? Filters.

There was some information going around that filters don’t remove lead. That’s true for Brita filters and such, but there are plenty of other filters that do indeed remove lead, and they’re much less expensive than buying bottled water (the bottled water companies probably just use these filters to filter tap water anyway). You can get a whole house filtration system with a UV purification upgrade for about $1,200 (without the UV purifier, it’s $600). Yikes! Sounds expensive.

But wait, this system is good for 600,000 gallons. That much bottled water even at $0.50/gallon, which is very cheap, would cost $300,000. Even at 10 cents/gallon, it would be $60,000. Not to mention the expense and environmental impact of shipping that much weight. If you really want to help Flint right now, we should be sending filtration systems and helping people install them. If we’re installing rainwater systems eventually, then people would need these filtration systems anyway, so this could be phase 1.

Whew, that was a lot of math. Even if our assumptions are off and everything is twice as expensive, it still makes sense. How much is safe water worth to you?

So we’re looking for people and organizations to lead this effort. Specifically, we need people to donate money, filters, rain barrels, and plumbers to help install these systems and train other people to install them. We will get the DNBE community involved, help design the systems, and help raise money for the effort, but we don’t have the resources or manpower to do this alone. When it works in Flint, we can expand to cities all over the country that have contaminated water. Fill out THIS FORM if you want to get involved.

StyleBlazer Man: 5 Statement Making Tees from Dangerous Negro (Tell Us How You Really Feel!)

2012-05-22T11:17:20-04:00

dN was recently featured on StyleBlazer...feels good to be loved! Check out the feature HERE.

dN Interview

2011-06-30T19:21:17-04:00

dN|Be's CEO & Creative Director was recently interviewed by The LI$T, an up-and-coming blog helping college students navigate their way to graduation. Check out the interview HERE.

Fresh Goods

2011-06-22T12:25:33-04:00

Click images to view product pages and purchase:

"Like" for a Cause

2011-05-01T13:45:54-04:00

Instead of paying for online advertising to try and promote dN|Be we figured why not let the people promote us and give the money to a good cause instead. So we're gonna try this little experiment and if it works we'll do it with a different non-profit every month. Since the PROPER education of our children is very near and dear to our hearts, the first organization to benefit from this experiment will be Kamali Academy. We'll donate 10 cents for every new fan we get at facebook.com/dnbeapparel from May 1 - 14, 2011.

We must have our own schools, centered around our culture, and providing an education to benefit and empower our people, not just educate them for jobs being servants of other people. The founder of Kamali Academy, Brother Samori Camara, can explain it better, check the video.

Fresh Goods: Pen Sword

2011-04-28T17:55:36-04:00

After about a year in the vault, we're bring back this design with a Limited Edition RBG color scheme. Only 50 made. (click images to purchase)

Fresh Goods: Guerrilla Republik

2011-04-25T22:10:08-04:00

We've recently decided to start selling other conscious brands on the site...first up Guerrilla Republik. Read the mission statement on the back of the shirt to see where they're comin' from. "Only the realist feel this." (click images to purchase)

Fresh Goods: New Gangsta, Don't Believe, DOA

2011-03-25T17:38:42-04:00

Just got some new colors in stock. Check 'em out (click images to purchase):

Fresh Goods: Liberate ATL

2011-03-17T22:07:16-04:00

ATL is our HQ and where most of our fans live, so it was only proper that our first tee in Liberate [insert city name] series show love to the A. More cities to follow, but for now help us liberate Atlanta by buying this fundraiser t-shirt. $5 from each shirt sale will go to various causes in the city, which will rotate over time. Right now we're starting with HABESHA and 10-10-50.org.

10-10-50.org: The purpose of 10-10-50 is to spark and stimulate power building activity by a large segment of the African (Black) Community in America and beyond.

10: Each person of African descent who would consider himselfor herself seriously concerned about the plight of African (Black) people must commit a minimum of ten (10) hours each month to a community based organization or institution concerned with the uplift and improvement of our people. This means dedicating yourself to the excellent performance of your chosen organization or institution and helping to make your chosen organization or institution the very best that it can be. – We must build strong organizations and institutions --- none of us are justified sitting on the sideline complaining about what others are not doing.

10: Commit a minimum of $10 every month to help fund your chosen organization or institution. Make a conscious effort to choose an organization or institution that needs your help.

50: Transfer or redirect, at a minimum, an additional $50 from your monthly budget to support African (Black) owned and operated businesses. $50 a month should not be the total you spend, but use your creativity to find ways to spend an additional $50 each month. – Make it known to these businesses that you support 10-10-50. Demand that they give good service and that they reinvest in our community.

10-10-50.org is sponsored and hosted by the African Community Centers for Unity and Self-Determination, Inc. (ACCUSD). ACCUSD is a non-profit and tax-exempt corporation with the single aim of helping to develop and maintain "Functional Unity" among African (Black) people in America and throughout the world.

HABESHA, Inc: a Pan-African organization that cultivates leadership in youth through practical experiences in cultural education, sustainable agriculture, entrepreneurship, holistic health, and technology. HABESHA is a volunteer-based non-profit organization founded in 2002 that is committed to the education and upliftment of youth of African descent who live in areas where there is a high rate of poverty, crime, violence, and who may be at risk because of environmental or other circumstances. It is our wish to assure the spread of education among Africans throughout the world. In the education and training of the younger generation lies the hope of African peoples and the keys to our future.

dN|Be Speakers

2011-03-01T15:57:14-05:00

In partnership with Great Black Speakers Bureau, dN|Be is pleased to present a select few talented African/African-American speakers that share our mission of Black empowerment. We work very closely with our speakers and clients to ensure that they receive the best experience possible. The speakers we represent are very well trained in their craft and are able to provide keynote speeches, workshops and seminars, panel discussions, as well as conferences. Check out the links below for more info:

Find a public speaker

Become a public speaker

Fresh Goods: Hip Hop 2.0

2011-02-06T21:19:09-05:00

Check out this remix of our Hip Hop is a Weapon design. Also, just a reminder about our Black History Year sale going on until Feb. 14th, use discount code bhy10 at checkout (not available in design-your-own store). Click image below to purchase.

Fresh Vibes: dN|Be Music

2011-01-23T12:41:00-05:00

Where do you go to find conscious music? ...We'll wait...exactly. There's nothing you can say is like "the iTunes of conscious music." Our goal is to create that place. The soft launch of dN|Be Music begins with the introduction of albums from Skipp Coon & Mr. Nick, Soul, and Marcel P. Black. Click the images below to listen. Our goal is to make dN|Be Music the premier source for conscious urban music on the internet in an effort to pursue our goal of disseminating positive propaganda through fashion and entertainment. If you are an artist that shares our mission and vision, please submit your music to info@dnbeentertainment.com.

Fresh Goods

2010-12-19T23:49:15-05:00

One new design and several new colors for existing designs available on the website this month. Click images to purchase:

Fresh Goods: Rated R

2010-10-27T21:29:18-04:00

Books now available at dangerousnegro.com

2010-10-14T18:59:29-04:00

We're constantly recommending books to our fans, so we figured we might as well sell the ones we're recommending. You can find them right here

The #1 must read for the newly conscious would definitely have to be Know Thyself. It's short, simple, and very eye-opening. It allows you to get in the right mindset so that you can continue your conscious journey and start uncovering truth.

Fresh Goods: Nice Guy

2010-10-10T20:52:03-04:00

This design was inspired by one of the fans on our facebook page, Barry Kelley, who posted a comment replying to our question asking the ladies what they're looking for, since there is supposed to be this shortage of "good men." To quote part of the comment:

"...ladies stop dating goons. All dudes wanna be like the dudes that get the women. Ya'll start reading black enterprise and start talking about the ceos you wanna be with and see if you don't see an uptick in dudes that wanna get educations. Dudes buy ugly watches and big chains trying to impress ya'll by emulating the guys you are impressed with. You start being impressed with dudes who read and making that the popular thing to look for among young ladies, and dudes will fall right in line. even in ignorance young men are not without aim."

"... in short, good guys are in short supply cause we haven't been raising em in large numbers, and cause it hasn't been advertised very well that good guys could be are the guys to be. Lotta self described goons soldiers and hustlers, very few of us self described nice guys."

Fresh Goods: United States of Afrika

2010-09-23T20:47:29-04:00

United States of Afrika...let's make it a reality. The six stars represent the 5 regions of continental Afrika and the 6th region being the Diaspora.

*Available in men's and women's sizes.

(click image to purchase)

Fresh Goods: Fall 2010

2010-08-01T23:31:38-04:00

Just got a huge shipment of new designs and colorways, now available for purchase. Check it (click images to buy)...

Fresh Goods: Huey P

2010-07-18T12:38:20-04:00

Click image to purchase.

dangerousNEGRO Photo Contest

2010-07-05T23:45:44-04:00

dangerousNEGRO Photo Contest

Take a pic, win a tee

SUBMIT ALL PICTURES BY JULY 25th, 2010 to info@dnbeapparel.com,

subject line: dN Photo Contest - [Your Name]

Take a picture of someone wearing a dN tee that is currently available on the website (or just the t-shirt itself like in the above pic) in a dangerousNEGRO situation. Something that you think reflects what it means to be a dangerousNEGRO....like at a library, in front of the Great Pyramid, at the shooting range, in an urban/community garden, reading your favorite book, etc. Get creative with it. Random is good. Controversial...even better. Hi-res pics please, so your raggedy 1.4 MP camera phone probably isn't the best look.

Deadline for submissions is July 30th, 2010. We'll pick 15 winners by July 30th. All winners get a free dN Definition tee. The top 3 winners get an Annual Membership Package, which includes 3 tees and discounts on future orders.

Fresh Goods: Intellectual Warfare

2010-06-01T14:01:32-04:00

click image to choose options for purchase...

"The more invasion is accentuated and those invaded are alienated from the spirit of their own culture and from themselves, the more the latter want to be like the invaders: to walk like them, dress like them, talk like them." -Paulo Freire

El Che Album Release Party

2010-05-26T18:47:19-04:00

Malcolm X Day

2010-05-19T12:21:17-04:00

Brother Malcolm would've been 85 today. He's not with us physically, but his spirit and his mission lives on.

Dangerous: 5-18 Mixtape

2010-04-08T15:59:38-04:00

Our other business, dN|Be Entertainment, just dropped a new FREE mixtape from our flagship artist, Rhymefest. Check it out HERE

Fresh Goods: (R)evolutionary

2010-03-25T11:27:12-04:00

Ideas are often labeled as “revolutionary” when they’re really just driven by common sense, human decency, and principles that governed indigenous societies for thousands of years. A few examples would be reparations for descendants of Afrikan slaves, sustainable/communal living, universal health care, REAL democracy, etc. So yes, we’re revolutionary in the sense that we want to fundamentally change the status quo from a culture of death, destruction, and domination back to a culture of cooperation, sustainability, and compassion, but we’re evolutionary because these things are necessary for us to evolve human society without destroying ourselves and other species in the process. When you have a world where a few people are seriously messing it up for everybody else, then it’s time for a r|evolutionary change.

New Year, New Site, New Strategy

2010-02-07T18:28:40-05:00

The new site is fresh right? But it’s not just a cosmetic makeover, we’ve made a couple other changes as well:

1) Getting more in touch with our social enterprise roots, we’re donating 5% of all proceeds to various causes that are in line with our mission of Black empowerment.

2) We’ve added a membership package for our most loyal fans that just can’t get enough dN. This should save you some money as well as help us to connect and collaborate more with our best customers.

3) We’re shifting more of our products to Made in Africa shirts. The color options are limited right now, so that’s why we’re not moving everything over immediately. Our goal is to have all of our products manufactured in Africa from 100% African cotton.

4) More products for the ladies, finally…because we love you and it makes us feel bad when you yell at us for not having enough options for you.