Education is Elevation

Thank you Lynette , Pamela R. Daniels , Carol Phipps , and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. I posted a video this week. It was a simple flex, really—highlighting some of my college policy debate accolades. My partner and I were the first two Black people to go undefeated at the NDT exhibition rounds. We were ranked in the top 20 in the country....

For years, the public discourse has been dominated by a narrative that weaponized the safety of women and children, painting entire communities as threats. But as newly disclosed FBI records reveal, the most credible threat may have been hiding in plain sight—in the highest office in the land. Education Is Elevation is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consi...

Thank you Reda Rountree (she/her) , Under the Golden Boot , M Hope , Evan , Judy , and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. We are often taught that the Civil Rights Movement was a monolithic struggle for “integration.” We are taught that the goal was simply to sit at the same lunch counter, drink from the same water fountain, and be judged by the “...

Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. One of the most powerful parts of traveling and engaging with different communities is discovering the histories that never made it into the textbooks. Sometimes those histories exist right under our noses, hidden in plain sight, buried beneath national narratives that prefer simpler stories. A recent tr...

This piece is Sponsored by Incogni’ #AD When billionaires talk about replacing democracy with corporate governance, believe them. When technologists say consent is inefficient, listen. When investors build surveillance tools, connect the dots. Scifi stories are cool but, this is reality and not science fiction. This is a political economy evolving in real time right before our eyes and algorithm....

Thank you Reda Rountree (she/her) , CH , Deb Schein , Brittney McCarey , Katara C , and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theconsciouslee.substack.com/subscribe

Thank you Mary Lummis , Rebel Guest , LBW , Eric Roth , Sherell , and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. What Malcolm X Understood About Integration That America Still Refuses to Face I’m sitting here watching a Malcolm X speech from the early 1960s. Civil rights era. NAACP conversations. Integration debates. The kind of history most of us think w...

Thank you Reda Rountree (she/her) , Alisha Williams , Gilda Johnson , Kristen , Katara C , and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. “I could have saved more slaves, if only they knew they were slaves.” That quote—allegedly from Harriet Tubman—has been rattling around my spirit for years. Not because I need historical verification (though Dr. Ware an...

Thank you Reda Rountree (she/her) , PJ Schuster , M Hope , Victoria Viste , Dalai Mama 💗 , and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. Let me break this down for anybody who’s confused about how we ended up here. February 28th: United States and Israel, in a joint effort, struck Iran. Donald Trump claimed it was to address their nuclear program. But h...

Thank you Will Fullwood , Mandy Ohman , Seneca Dunmore , Reda Rountree (she/her) , Frank Johnson , and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. I know it’s been a minute since a livestream—about a week and a half, maybe two. But you know the deal: sometimes research requires research. I’ve been on the ground, moving through Detroit, Iowa, and Kentucky,...

Thank you ITS Never Happening… , Jack , Lynette , Shirley Figueroa , Mary Lummis , and many others for tuning into my live video with Andrew Yang ! Join me for my next live video in the app. It ain’t every day you’re sitting in a car in Iowa, snow falling, talking to a man who ran for president. That’s the beauty of this journey—you show up, you ask questions, and the ancestors line up the convers...

Research Over Mesearch is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thank you Seneca Dunmore , Shirley Figueroa , Dalai Mama 💗 , Tung no , Jayme Hightower , and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. It’s February 21st, and we are in the middle of the 100th celebration of Bl...

Huey P. Newton said we must think globally and act locally. Too often, Americans do the opposite. We react locally while refusing to think globally. We talk about freedom as if it is contained inside U.S. borders. We debate human rights as if they are a domestic brand rather than a universal claim. This conversation forced me to confront that contradiction head-on. I recently spoke with Tamara Rud...

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theconsciouslee.substack.com/subscribe

Click here for old digital copies of Black Panther News Paper I have a 1970 issue of The Black Panther sitting right in front of me. Cost a quarter. On the front, the headline screams about imperialism. On the back, there’s an announcement about a free food rally. To the untrained eye, these look like two separate concerns—one global, one local. The Panthers understood something that many of us on...

LeBron. I need you to sit with something for a second. Imagine if somebody asked you about visiting Adolf’s Germany during World War II. And instead of condemning the ovens, the death camps, the industrial-scale slaughter of millions, you said: “I’ve never been there, but I’ve heard great things about it.” Think about how preposterous that would sound. The rest of the entire world is watching the...

You know it when you hear it. That classic jingle, the one promising “style, body, and shine.” Hair “so soft, silky, and free”—that look that’s “totally all mine.” Growing up, that commercial wasn’t just background noise. It was a whole era, a moment that shaped how we saw ourselves, and how the world wanted us to see ourselves. It was “Just For Me”—but who was it really for? Let me tell y’all, th...

Research Over Mesearch is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. The trick of time tells Black people that success requires distance from Blackness. Leaving the hood becomes maturity. Remaining connected becomes regression. Advancement is framed as movement away from Black community rather than transformation of Black...

Trust Black Women Is Not a Negotiation There is still something many people believe they need from Black women before offering trust. There is still a condition. There is still a test. There is still a negotiation. That truth sat heavy on me after a recent interaction. I was wearing a “Trust Black Women” shirt, standing in Houston, minding my business, when a man tried to play me. The question cam...

Thank you Reda Rountree (she/her) , Charlie Rauh , Full Frontal Loeb , Jack , Roni , and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. There are moments when something you learned in your twenties becomes the lens that clarifies your thirties. The Fifth Circuit ruling allowing indefinite detention in Texas triggered a memory from my college policy debate day...

Thank you Moon Mountain Studio , Shirley Figueroa , M Hope , HoneyBadger , nobu , and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theconsciouslee.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theconsciouslee.substack.com/subscribe

Thank you Reda Rountree (she/her) , Full Frontal Loeb , Tracy Mack , Pamela , Paul Smith , and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. You know it when you see it. The sudden outrage. The selective moral panic. The way racism becomes real only when it can be folded neatly into someone’s political narrative and weaponized against the “other side.” What...

Democracy Was Never Neutral — And That’s the Point Every time we talk about democracy, somebody eventually hits you with the same line: “It’s about inclusion. Everybody deserves a voice.” That sounds good. It’s clean. It’s aspirational. It’s also ahistorical as hell. What usually gets framed as a “problem of exclusion” isn’t really about who’s left out—it’s about who gets to define legitimacy in t...

Thank you Turtlegirl4 , Randal Hendee , Ryan Imran Husain , and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. Another day, another issue to worry about when it comes to the Trump man. The orange man doing shenanigans. Because if he shenanigans once, he’s going to shenanigan. And somehow, from the people that voted for him the first time, I guess they was coo...