Teen Vogue

What to Expect When Visiting A Plantation Where Your Ancestors Were Enslaved

In November 2018, I took a day trip with my father and sister to a former slave plantation in North Carolina. A relative who lives nearby had picked up a brochure from the site and informed us that Black people who shared our last name had been enslaved there and that the site’s curators maintained genealogical records. Given that our great-grandfather had lived in that part of the state before migrating to western Massachusetts, where my father, and then his children, grew up, it seemed worth the trip to investigate potential connections to some of our people.

Before the journey, we imagined ourselves ready for the experience, but the reality of standing on the soil where our direct ancestors were enslaved was much heavier than we were prepared for. It wasn’t merely contemplating our own connection to the site, but also witnessing other visitors’ vastly different relationships to it that made the experience so intense, and at times painful.

After our trip, my father stayed in contact with the site’s genealogist. Through their shared records, he was able to trace our family line back to a woman named Martha Hart. She was my great-great-great-grandmother, and part of the last generation of slaves held on the plantation we had visited.

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📸: Getty Images

MAGA Teen Nicholas Sandmann and the White Privilege of Redemption

In this op-ed, Teen Vogue wellness editor Brittney McNamara explains why a confrontation between the teens in MAGA hats and a Native elder is just a symptom of a larger problem.

When unarmed teen Mike Brown was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson, he was called "no angel."Tamir Rice was 12 years old when police shot and killed him as he played in a park; it took police only two seconds to make a judgment and pull the trigger because they thought he was carrying a gun. These two young people were essentially indicted and sentenced to death without any court involvement, not because they had committed a crime, but because police made snap decisions about who they were. Countless other boys and men of color have died this way, and rather than getting a fair trial, they are often posthumously vilified in the court of public opinion.

But when a white teenager does something bad, he seems more likely to get the benefit of the doubt.

We're seeing this racist double standard play out in real time, thanks to Nicholas Sandmann, who has been given the chance to explain viral images and videos of him and his classmates laughing and chanting face-to-face with Nathan Phillips, an Omaha elder, who stood beating a drum in prayer. The combination of Nicholas’s physical stance, his smirk, and the group wearing MAGA attire sent the story into a viral tailspin, and a he-said-he-said debate ensued. No matter which video you watch — the longer one, or the shorter viral clip — the teens appear to be disrespectful, at the very least, taunting and harassing at worst.

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📸: Getty Images

Is Revolution Possible?

It has been two years since the inauguration of President Donald Trump and the massive, worldwide Women’s March protests that came the next day. In the time since, a capital-R Resistance to Trump, his administration, and his agenda has helped people focus energy on efforts to counteract his political machinations.

“The resistance” has been an important development: It has engaged the public in politics and in protest, raised awareness about the deleterious effects of the administration, and become a go-to phrase to capture a moment. But it has also prompted criticisms of whether it’s enough to simply oppose Trump or if there is a responsibility to address the systemic forces he’s exploited, begging questions of whether or not something beyond resistance is necessary or even possible.

There have been moments that go beyond resistance in recent history. The Black Lives Matter movement and moments like Occupy Wall Street and Disrupt J20 embody a spirit of rebellion. A context of resistance only gives that rebellious spirit room to grow and has given some people the impetus to question the nature of our society and wonder whether revolution — a true change to the systems of oppression, discrimination, and disenfranchisement — is possible, realistic, or too dangerous.

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📸: Getty Images

"If Beale Street Could Talk" Highlights the Power of Love in a World Designed for Black People to Fail

Recently, the work of James Baldwin has regained popularity. It appears to be that as Black Americans begin to explore intersectionality, they’re rediscovering Baldwin's pioneering works on navigating the world as a Black other. As a highly educated, queer Black man in Jim Crow–era America, Baldwin understood intersectionality better than most, even before the term was coined. And some of Baldwin’s most interesting observations include those on Black fatherhood.

In the first major film adaptation of Baldwin's work, If Beale Street Could Talk, Colman Domingo plays husband and father-of-two Joseph Rivers. For Domingo, working on the project was unlike anything he’s ever done.

"I've always been an avid lover of James Baldwin's text,” Domingo told Teen Vogue. “It always surprised me when I encountered anyone who wasn't familiar with James Baldwin. I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ That's like saying you don't know who Shakespeare or is, or Homer."

Baldwin's words, perhaps now more than ever, guide many Black Americans to think about how they're represented onscreen. Questions of how slavery, Jim Crow, the Prison Industrial Complex, and the school-to-prison pipeline affect Black life have been the central focus of many of the best films to come out of Black cinema in the past decade. Films such as Selma, 12 Years a Slave, and Moonlight all grapple with some of these topics while also tackling Black intersectionality.

If Beale Street Could Talk takes a look at the high incarceration rates of Black men and the impact of that on fathers and families, turning those stories into the film’s central theme when Fonny (Stephan James) is wrongly accused of rape and sent to prison. The film also asks, “How can love prevail in a system designed to see you fail?”

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📸: Courtesy of Everett Collection

We Need to Honor MLK's Real Legacy, Not the One That Makes White Americans Comfortable

OG History is a Teen Vogue series where we unearth history not told through a white, cis-hetero-patriarchal lens. In this installment, writer Jenn M. Jackson explores the radical nature of Martin Luther King Jr., whose legacy, she says, was whitewashed over time.

The earliest lesson I learned about Martin Luther King Jr. was that he had “a dream.” Delivered in his most well-known speech at the 1963 March on Washington, as posed to me and as I understood clearly in my adolescent mind, that dream was a colorblind one.

That manufactured perspective — often told to young children and supported by mainstream, predominantly white commentators — was focused on erasing the divisions between black and white people, not necessarily by blaming white people for their participation in systems of anti-black racism, but by moving beyond racial difference altogether.

But that was never actually King’s dream. His was much more radical than that.

In 1954, King was finishing a doctoral dissertation at Boston University. Soon he was thrust into the political limelight early on in his career as a 25-year-old pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. The political moment necessitated a radical approach to politics — he was pastoring as Brown v. Board of Education was decided, effectively ending legal segregation in the United States.

This monumental civil rights win, and the promise of freedom of public movement for black Americans, signaled an era of struggle and triumph for King and those who believed in his nonviolent cause. On the heels of Brown, King was just 26 when he helped facilitate and lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which started on December 5, 1955, and lasted over a year.

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📸:  Getty Images

Serena Williams in Conversation With Naomi Wadler on Power, Activism, and Black Girl Magic

It’s the last month of 2018, but it’s my first cover as the Editor-in-Chief of Teen Vogue. As a former Teen Vogue intern, I couldn’t be more excited to be helming this great brand and taking it into the future.

When I interviewed for this role with Anna Wintour, Condé Nast's artistic director, she asked me several questions, including what makes me angry — which is a question I’ve spent a great deal of time thinking about. My answer was simple: everything. My career as a fashion editor has been filled with questions about why I can’t just stick to pretty things and why I have to make so much noise.

As I wrap my head around what it means to be the youngest black Editor-in-Chief at a major publication, at 28 years old, I can’t help but think how fitting it is that my first cover is a conversation I had with Serena Williams and Naomi Wadler at our recent Teen Vogue Summit. As I stood on that stage with the inimitable, 23-time Grand Slam champion and mother, and with a passionate and relentless 12-year-old-activist, I realized that though we are worlds apart, all three of us as black women have had to reconcile our anger with our identity. I also realized that all of us were working to use our voices to make change.

My mother once told me that to sustain myself in this industry, I would have to be what I needed when I was younger. So here we are — Serena in cornrows for the first time on a cover, in conversation with two young black girls just trying to figure out our magic.

Transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Lindsay Peoples Wagner: There are so many things I want to ask both of you, but one of the immediate things that comes to mind is how you’ve both taken a lot of risks in your personal and professional lives. Why have you been so willing to take risks and speak out, whether about activism or being a woman of color?

Naomi Wadler: Okay, so I want to do all of the events that I do right until I am about to go onstage, because that is when I am like —

LPW: You nervous?

NW: It's just great to be able to have the platform that I have, and that Serena has, and that you have, because not everybody has those platforms, and so part of that is being able to lift up other voices, and so that it's not just somebody who is famous, or well known, or just a public figure.

Serena Williams: You put that really well. We're in a position where we have the opportunity to use our status and our social network, and to use different platforms that we are on and that we can talk about it, 'cause a lot of people see what we post and see the things that we write. And although it's so fun to have the opportunity to post lots of fun things, I also find it really important to post and talk about real items that affect us on a day-to-day basis.

LPW: Both of you have a lot of participation in different organizations, and, Serena, you have a clothing line now. How do you manage all of those different things? Naomi, you can start.

NW: Okay, so I am managing it pretty horribly, but I mean —

LPW: I'm sure you're not.

NW: I am. But the key is just to keep going and to recognize that it can only get better from here. Just keeping that mindset of, I'm going to keep going, I'm going to trudge on. It does matter, because it's important work, but it also is just... what's the word I'm looking for? OK, there's not a word for what I'm trying to say, but I want you all to try and imagine.

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📸:  Ronan Mckenzie

Rihanna Reportedly Declined to Perform at the Super Bowl Halftime Show to Support Colin Kaepernick

Rihanna is the latest celebrity to support Colin Kaepernick — with a major decision to turn down one of the most high-profile performance opportunities of the year.

According to Us Weekly, the NFL reportedly asked Rihanna to headline the Super Bowl LIII halftime show. A source told the publication that the singer declined as a show of support for Colin, who protested racial inequality and police brutality by sitting, and later kneeling, during the National Anthem starting back in 2016.

“They offered it to her,” an insider told Us Weekly, “but she said no because of the kneeling controversy. She doesn’t agree with the NFL’s stance.”

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📸: Getty Images

A Black Teen Was Pepper-Sprayed by Police Who Say They Thought He Was Skipping School

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📸: NurPhoto

"The Hate U Give" Reckons With Staying Silent or Speaking Out Against Police Brutality

I was about 10 years old when my mom had “the talk” with me about the police. We were in her car when she suddenly turned to me and said, “If the police ever stop and ask you questions, you say you don’t know anything and didn’t see anything.” Just like that, with no pretext. It wasn’t until some years had passed that I started to reflect on what she'd said and realized that in the eyes of the police, my skin color not only makes me automatically suspicious but a potential criminal, and any mere confrontation could become volatile — even fatal — due to the systemic issue of racist police brutality. My mom was trying to protect me. But what happens when silence is no longer the answer? It’s a reckoning that Amandla Stenberg’s character faces in The Hate U Give: whether she should heed her father’s cautious words or rail against a system that perpetuates unlawful violence at the hands of the police.

Based on Angie Thomas’s stirring YA novel of the same name, the film has a scene at the beginning where Maverick (Russell Hornsby) sits his three young children down at the kitchen table to talk to them about what to do if cops ever confront them: “Keep your hands visible. Don't make any sudden moves. Only speak when they speak to you." Years later, these carefully chosen words help protect Maverick’s oldest, Starr (Stenberg), now a teenager, after her friend Khalil (Algee Smith) gets pulled over by a cop for unexplained reasons, with Starr in the passenger seat. She sits quietly yet fearfully, with her hands in plain sight on the dashboard as the cop demands that Khalil step out of the car. Moments later, the officer shoots and kills Khalil. The cop claims he thought Khalil had reached back in his vehicle to draw a gun when he was just grabbing his hairbrush.

The scene serves as a painful reminder of police brutality and the criminalization of black youth— something that Maverick had prepared Starr and her brothers for when they were children, because she could have just as easily been in Khalil’s position. But as important as her dad’s advice is, there’s an even louder voice that thunders in Starr’s mind as she navigates the aftermath of her friend’s murder. While Starr’s predominantly white classmates celebrate an early dismissal from school as part of a Black Lives Matter protest in the wake of Khalil’s death, she is more concerned with her late friend’s face being plastered all over the news and him being described as a “drug dealer” because he was involved in the neighborhood gang.

The micro-aggressions Starr used to shake off — like when her teammate Hailey (Sabrina Carpenter) jokingly advised her to treat a basketball more aggressively, “like it was a bucket of fried chicken” — are more pronounced as she reckons with the reality that Khalil’s death proves yet again that black lives really don’t matter. Starr even begins to see her boyfriend, Chris (K.J. Apa), as another white figure of oppression, despite him showing nothing but support for her during this trying time. That is because as Starr finds her voice in the movement, she feels othered by the white faces around her — even Chris’s. She tells him at one point that he doesn’t see her because he “doesn’t see color,” which effectively erases her unique and often challenging experiences as a black girl in present-day America.

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📸: Erika Doss

It Doesn't Matter That Cops Found Pot in Botham Jean's Apartment

Reports of marijuana found in the home of a black man shot and killed by an off-duty Dallas police officer after she says she mistook his home for her own has drawn outrage.

Amber Guyger, a white Dallas police officer, shot and killed her black neighbor, 26-year-old Botham Jean, around 10 p.m. on September 6 after she says she entered his apartment, believing it was her own, and thought he was an intruder, according to the Dallas News. The officer lived directly below Jean. She has been charged with manslaughter.

NBC affiliate 11 Alive reports a police affidavit says .37 ounces of marijuana was found in Jean’s apartment. The discovery drew outrage on social media after media publications, including a Dallas FOX affiliate, focused on the detail in news coverage, a move that comes across as victim-blaming and prioritizing the biased narrative created by government officials.

Jean’s lawyer, Lee Merritt, said the search of Jean’s apartment "highlights just sort of the nefarious nature of their investigation,” according to 11 Alive. "They went in with the intent to look for some sort of criminal justification for the victim," Merritt said. "It's a pattern that we've seen before.”

“We have a cop who clearly did something wrong,” Merritt continued. “And instead of investigating the homicide — instead of going into her apartment and seeing what they can find, instead of collecting evidence relevant for the homicide investigation — they went out specifically looking for ways to tarnish the image of this young man." 11 Alive reports Merritt found out about what was uncovered by the search warrant shortly after Jean’s funeral on Thursday.

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📸: Twitter

People Are Protesting Colin Kaepernick's Nike Ad by Burning Sneakers They Already Bought

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DeRay Mckesson Get Personal In His New Book

When 33-year-old DeRay Mckesson sat down and decided to write his new book, On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope, he was faced with a conundrum: authentically encapsulating his experiences as an activist and educator in a manner that was brutally honest, yet heartening. With over a million Twitter followers, his massive social media presence has elevated the scrutiny of every aspect of his life. But this book still presented a unique challenge.

"If I had written a book two years ago, it would've been about the contours of protest. I was in most of the cities, I've been in a lot of tough situations, I've seen a lot of things. And that's what I would've written about because I was so close to the pain and trauma that I hadn't had the distance to talk about the lessons," DeRay tells Teen Vogue.

But DeRay's story is about so much more than being a noteworthy activist, often seen in his signature blue vest, and his life is so much more layered than a Twitter profile could ever reveal. DeRay provided insight into the book, but also into himself: a high profile, openly-gay black man with more supporters and detractors than he can count, whose past four years have seen great successes, but also controversies.

DeRay sat down to speak with Teen Vogue, and the interview below has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Teen Vogue: Given how public you've been with your life, what inspired this book?

DeRay Mckesson: I listen to a lot of sermons because I think pastors are really good storytellers. I was listening to a sermon that is called "don't tell your story too soon" and I'll never forget it, because I just had to know what the message was, because that's an interesting sermon. [The pastor] said that "sometimes you can tell your story so soon that you only see the pain and not the purpose."

I'm gay, I've been out for a long time in my life, and people have known I've been gay since early in the protest. But I've never written about it and I wanted to write about it. I've talked about my mother, but I've never written about her. So it was the coming together of all these things that I've thought about, that I've lived through. I was like, “I think I understand what the themes are to me, and I wanna write about it.”

TV: What would you want one of your followers to learn from this book that they don't already know about you?

DM: For as much as I share on Twitter, it's Twitter, right? It's not longform. There's not an exposition on why I think this or that. So, I think there will be a lot of stories [in the book] that, unless you've talked to me before, you've never heard. I wrote about Joan, my mother. I had to process a lot to even write that chapter. I talk about being gay, but I don't really talk about love. Also in the third chapter, about the police, we Campaign Zero, a police reform organization started by DeRay and other activists] have done so much research but we've never written about it all in one place before. I hope people will read that chapter and think about systems a little differently.

TV: The reality of these systems can sometimes leave people feeling helpless. How would you summarize the case for hope?

DM: Hope is the belief that our tomorrow can be better than our today. And I believe that. We engage [in this work] not because we're hopeless, but because we understand that hope is not magic, hope is work. When we fight these structures, when we stand in the middle of the street, when we protest, when we run for office, it's because we know that a better world is possible and that it'll only come forward if we fight for it.

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📸: Jason LaVeris

An Art Project Called Black Teen Wearing Hoodie Has Been Repeatedly Destroyed in Seattle

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📸: Diverse Images / UIG

Jordan Edwards's Murderer, Former Police Officer Roy Oliver, Could Face 99 Years in Prison

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📸: Pool

A Black Student Was Reportedly Sent Home from School for Wearing Box Braids

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📸: Getty Images

Following Antwon Rose's Killing, East Pittsburgh Is Considering Dissolving Its Police Force

Officials in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania are considering dissolving the police department in response to the spotlight placed on it in June, when one of its officers shot and killed 17-year-old Antwon Rose, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Pittsburgh CBS affiliate KDKA 2 reported that the East Pittsburgh Borough Council held a meeting during the evening of Tuesday, August 21, where they discussed plans to get rid of the police department. According to KDKA 2, completely getting rid of the city’s police department was an agenda item for the short session.

“It’s a possibility,” Dennis Simon, the president of East Pittsburgh Borough Council, said of the idea. “We don’t have any definite answers yet. It’s financial, it’s safety, it’s how many patrols, how many calls, things like that. We’ve been thinking about this for years, actually. It’s something that’s been in progress for a long time.”

During Tuesday’s meeting, Erica Yesko, a community activist and resident of East Pittsburgh told the council, “We don’t want any more children being killed by police officers. We want you to listen to us.” To which Simon responded, “I agree. I think we listen more than you think, but we’re going to listen even more now.”

The Tribune-Review reported, that as of now, Allegheny County police or the police department of a neighboring municipality are being considered as options to take over police services for East Pittsburgh.

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📸: Ross Mantle

The Real-Life Story Behind "BlacKkKlansman"

Spike Lee’s latest film, BlacKkKlansman, focuses on the real-life story of Ron Stallworth, the first African American detective to serve in the Colorado Springs Police Department and his infiltration of the Ku Klux Klan in 1970s Colorado. John David Washington plays Stallworth, with Adam Driver as his partner who pretends to be Stallworth in person during meetings with the Klan’s Grand Wizard, the infamous David Duke (played by Topher Grace). The film also stars Laura Harrier as Patrice Dumas, the Colorado State Black Student Union leader and Stallworth's love interest.

Adapted from Black Klansman, Stallworth’s memoir, the film was conceived of by Jordan Peele, who sought out Lee to direct and re-write the film. The film’s release date of August 10 aligns with the one-year anniversary of the deadly white supremacist march in Charlottesville, and includes footage from that tragic day, connecting racially motivated terrorism from then to today. BlacKkKlansman puts an important spotlight on the prevalence of the KKK during the 1970s and Stallworth's work to expose their tactics.

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📸: David Lee