Rebecca Carroll column
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Facing my fear: hearing myself echo my birthmother's judgmental outlookShe demanded deference and fidelity to her prejudiced ideas in exchange for her love. I was horrified when I transferred that self-serving anger on to a friend
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I get why black women support Hillary Clinton – but we should think againClinton enjoys the support of older black women, and she’s seeking the votes of younger ones. But a tone deafness to the issues we face can’t be ignored
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Why did De Niro promote an anti-vaxx film?The documentary posits a link between vaccines and autism in African American boys. It’s a threat to black children, and De Niro should have known better
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People who don't 'see race' are erasing black people and their contributionsWhite people like Bill Clinton can be blind to race because they perceive themselves as race-less; they believe that it’s a boon to offer that to black people
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I thought I was a gorgeous kid until I learned I was just 'pretty, for a black girl'My white birthmother told me that the idea that I was gorgeous was a fiction inflicted upon me out of a sense of white liberal guilt
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#OscarsSoWhite: Hollywood parents must speak out for diversity in awardsWhite Hollywood stars with black children have an important role to play in speaking up against racial discrimination in Hollywood
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I'll never be able to buy a home. The super wealthy broke the systemWe’re not millennials, but student debt, a lack of inherited wealth and the real-estate dealings of the rich put home ownership out of our reach
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Cosby's countersuit against accusers is more evidence that he hates womenHis legal action is an act of misogyny – perhaps the same hatred that might have driven him, as accusers allege, to rape and sexually assault more than 50 of them
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For years the stories of adoptive children were not heard. That's finally changingIntentions behind adoption aren’t always pure. Now, the focus of adoptive parents is shifting to acknowledge the complexities involved in the process
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I'm protective of my blackness because I had to find it myselfI was dogged in my determination to evolve outside the narrow margins of the small white world of my beginning and into another more racially familiar one
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The digital wellness charade: you don't need witnesses to your 'best life'When everything is an aspirational performance, there’s no way to tell who is really confident and happy and who is pretending to be on the internet
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Fear lies at the heart of opposition to 'political correctness'People are afraid of the power that true equality can give the historically disenfranchised and afraid of having been wrong
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I don't act like an 'angry black woman' – but I'm read that way if I broach raceThe trope is alive and well; I’m never just offended, or annoyed, or feeling strengthened by my convictions in the eyes of others
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I love my white family, but there's an elegant joy in a room full of black facesThe power of being surrounded by black people is that the sheer sense of community is enough
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The power of the 'casting couch' is in how it's used to shame its victimsAt 14, all I wanted was to leave my hometown. But when I did, I was assaulted by a famous TV anchor - and learned how we blame young women instead of men
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I drink because I like the way it feels. That doesn't mean I have a problemThere have been times that I’ve drunk too much, and times when I haven’t drunk anything at all. But I finally figured out why I drink, and why I won’t stop
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The Charleston shooter killed mostly black women. This wasn't about 'rape'The motivation for killing six women and three men at church wasn’t that white women are inviolable. It must have been that black women are disposable
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The police hit black women with both racism and sexism at oncePolice officers looked at me in the same lascivious way as they did other women. I learned they weren’t there to protect me as much as watch me.
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Walter Scott's shooting wasn't just a coincidence. America was built on racismThe deaths of so many black men cannot be reduced to ‘good’ white people and ‘bad’. The problem is systemic and ingrained
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Calling out one racist doesn't make white people any less complicit in supremacyYour ‘not all white people’ argument doesn’t dismantle systematic racism. It only reinforces white privilege
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How do you tell who's a real friend and who's just a ‘Friend’ on the internet?
There isn’t always a difference between emotion and emoticon in the digital age, but not all friendships are created equal
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I was six when a man first touched me. I didn't speak up until I was an adultRebecca Carroll: I never felt like a victim, but long after I grew up, every sexual experience brought me back to that winter night I didn’t understand
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How do you go home for the holidays if you're not sure where you belong?Rebecca Carroll: Sometimes, you just have to make your own home
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Can black people really stop white people from using the N-word?Rebecca Carroll: Piers Morgan believes that if rappers cleaned up their language, white people would stop using racial slurs. But black people don’t have that kind of power
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Parents are responsible for teaching our children kindness – even if it ruins the funRebecca Carroll: We should worry more about raising mean kids than whether we feel like hypocrites for asking asking them to be better than us
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Women in Clothes is a banal and stunningly self-important bookWhat could have been a thoughtful exploration of self-awareness and self-design is nothing more than an exercise in narcissism, writes Rebecca Carroll
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Do white people really know how to have more than one black friend?Rebecca Carroll: A system that locks in white privilege does not engender effortless friendships. We know that going in, but white people learn the hard way
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Why are white people scared of black people's rage at Mike Brown's death?Rebecca Carroll: Because ‘working together’ on Ferguson means nothing unless white privilege gets used for change – and defers to the black experience
When Larry Wilmore said the N-word to President Obama, I felt black pride