I recently did a guest-blogging stint over at TheNation.com. Below, you’ll find links to my work.

1/28 – For Black Boys, the NFL — and Traumatic Brain Injury— Can Be Lottery Tickets 

1/29 – Let’s End All Gun Deaths, Not Just Mass Killings

1/31 – On the Routine Criminalization of America’s Black and Brown Youth

2/5 – Michelle, Beyonce and the Fruitless Politics of Respectability

2/6 – Why Ending ‘Stand Your Ground’ Isn’t Enough to Prevent Another Trayvon Martin 

2/8 – President Obama Should Go to Chicago. And Yemen. And Pakistan. And…

2/14 – White People Have to Give Up Racism

Mychal Denzel Smith

Yesterday, I appeared on Al Jazeera English’s The Stream discussing the infamous “n-word” alongside Cornel West, Akiba Solomon, Tim Wise, and Raquel Cepeda. Check the video below.

Mychal Denzel Smith

Last week I was in D.C. to do the season premiere episode of Know This! TV with host Ariana Proehl, co-produced by Campus Progress. We discussed President Obama’s second inauguration and agenda items for this next term. You can check out that conversation here.

I have a few recent pieces up over at Salon, The Nation, and Gawker. For the next two weeks I’ll be guest-blogging for The Nation, so be sure to check there daily for new work.

I’m going to try to get better about updating this site in 2013. But don’t hold me to that.

Mychal Denzel Smith

From my most recent article for the Guardian: 

 For me, another name came to mind when I heard the news of Davis’ death: Oscar Grant. It’s not an exact comparison by any means, but I think of Grant, the 22-year-old black man who was shot and killed by Oakland police officer Johannes Mersehle, because of when he was murdered. It was New Year’s day 2009, a little less than two months after the election of President Barack Obama. Jordan Davis was killed the day after Thanksgiving 2012, not even three full weeks after the re-election of the nation’s first black president. While a country celebrated its achievement, the deaths of these young men offered bloody reminders of just how far we haven’t come in the battle against racism.

Every few months, another young black person makes their way into our lives as a news headline as a result of racist violence, and still, we manage to look the other way. We yet lack the collective will to call it what it is. Whether it’s Davis, Martin, Grant, Rekia Boyd, Ramarley Graham,Wendell Allen, or any of the other black people who lost their lives as the result of extrajudicial killing – one for every 36 hours in the first half of 2012.

We keep looking at their deaths in a vacuum – as the result of one unhinged killer, a lone actor who, once locked away, will eliminate the problem. When do we stop lying to ourselves?

Read the entire piece here.

I also appeared on Uprising Radio (KPFK Los Angeles) to discuss this case. Listen here.

Mychal Denzel Smith

I recently appeared on HuffPost Live to discuss the controversy surrounding ESPN analyst Rob Parker’s comment’s regarding star quarterback Robert Griffin III’s blackness. Check the clip below.

Mychal Denzel Smith

From my most recent piece for the Guardian:

At the end of 2011, it stood that black women were losing more jobsduring the recovery than had been lost during the recession. It’s not hard to figure out why: as the private sector added jobs, more than 4m as the president reminded us throughout the long campaign, the public sector has steadily cut jobs. In fact, there has been a net loss of 1m public sector jobs since Obama took office – the worst three years on record for public sector job losses – as compromises with his Republican opponents have meant the slashing of funds at the federal, state, and local levels.

Not only has this meant a slower recovery, but it has also meant that those jobs that have traditionally been a means for black people, especially black women, to enter the middle class have disappeared. Around 40% of the public sector jobs lost have been in local government education, where teachers, librarians, guidance counselors, administrators, and more have seen their jobs vanish. This is field dominated by women, and has been a safe bet for black women seeking employment.

Mychal Denzel Smith

From my most recent piece for The Root:

It’s funny, but it also serves as a sad snapshot of just how far we haven’t come. Granted, had Obama lost, there would also have been legions of people crying across the country. But the people featured here aren’t crying about a lost election. They truly appear to be mourning the death of a country, or at least the idea of the country they’ve long held to be true.

Obviously, America isn’t dead. But the right-wing echo chamber has so deluded its members into believing that the man currently occupying the White House has a secret socialist agenda — one that he inherited from his Kenyan anti-colonialist father and has been waiting to unleash — that they have concluded that his re-election spells the end of America.

Read the whole thing here.

Mychal Denzel Smith

This week I appeared on two segments for HuffPost Live. For the first, I joined hosts Alicia Menendez and Marc Lamont Hill to discuss the General David Petraeus sex scandal, Republicans and taxes, and legalizing marijuana.

In the other, I joined Marc again as he interviewed the author of a new biography on the King of Pop, Michael Jackson.

Mychal Denzel Smith

October 23rd, I’ll be speaking at an event hosted by Alternatives for Girls, an organization based in Detroit. The event is aimed at ending sex trafficking, and I’ll be speaking about the ways societal attitudes toward women, sex, and masculinity help create the market for sex trafficking and how we can put an end to it. If you are or anyone you know is in the area, come check it out.

If your school or organization would like to book me for an event, visit the contact page.

Mychal Denzel Smith

From my op-ed over at Al Jazeera English:

We can not continue to say that the poor don’t vote if we don’t even know who the poor are. We can not misrepresent a people, purposefully shut them out of the electoral process (via voter ID laws, cutting early voting, and refusing to make election day a federal holiday and day off of work), and then claim they have no voice. The problem isn’t that the poor don’t vote, it’s that the people who vote don’t think of themselves as poor. If we more accurately assessed the levels of poverty in this country, we could no longer say that poor people are not voting, politicians could no longer ignore the concerns of the poor, and as a nation we would be forced to confront one of our greatest moral shortcomings. The official poverty number is too high, but the one we choose not to acknowledge is downright tragic.

Read the whole thing here.

Mychal Denzel Smith