Nearly a decade ago, cultural critic Damon Young explored a question that had bedeviled the scientific community for centuries:

Do white people have cousins?

Young ultimately concluded that white people do, indeed, have cousins. Unfortunately, his groundbreaking research failed to explain why Caucasian cousin culture is so underdeveloped compared to its non-Yakubian counterparts. Is it a genetic defect or is it a byproduct of an overabundance of white privilege?

We already know white people don't have ancestors (as we've covered before, they have "forefathers," "patriarchs," and "kinsmen"). But episode six, season three of House of the Dragon just cracked open an even bigger question, one that might finally settle this whole debate once and for all:

Do white people have aunties and uncs?

I know what you’re thinking. But until forensic aunthropologists can confirm the moisture of Beatrice Taylor’s pound cake recipe, Aunt Bee will be categorized as an aunt. Bo and Luke Duke were adults the first time they spent the night with Uncle Jesse, so he doesn’t qualify. (Plus, a real unc would never let Daisy Duke leave the house wearing those shorts).

There’s a reason why white aunties and uncs are as rare as dragons in the Caucasian cinematic universe. It has nothing to do with lineage. While Buckra-Americans retain the option of disowning their kinfolk, Black folk must adhere to a very specific code of conduct to qualify as an auntie or unc. In fact, according to American University’s National Training Institute for the Exploration, Study & Understanding of Nieces, Cousins and Siblings (AUNTIES&UNCS), only 28.6% of parental siblings are board-certified aunties and uncles.

One could argue that this is what makes House of the Dragon so compelling.

Think about it: The whole premise of the show is about a fantasy world where white auntiedom and unclehood actually matter (sometimes a little too much). It’s hard to understand how Alicent let Daeron become a ward of Ormund and Ser Gwayne Hightower…unless you realize Alicent is a single mother who sent her son to “the country” so his uncles can teach him how to fight. It explains why “The Queen That Never Was” died fighting the people who were messing with her niece. Helaena is married to her brother, which technically makes her the mother and the auntie of her unborn child.

No wonder she won’t drink moon tea!

The latest episode of HOTD was so auntie and uncle-centric, it gave us the first opportunity to do something that has never been done before. For the first time ever, we got to rank white aunties and uncs based on five characteristics.

1. Nibling Values: How well do they treat their niblings compared to the traditional values of Black aunties and uncs?

2. Reciprocal energy: What do their nieces and nephews think of them?

3. Conflict: Would adhering to the auntie/unc code of conduct solve their conflict, or would it cause more problems?

4. Spend-the-nightability: Would you let your child stay with them overnight?

5. Characteristics: What is their most auntie- or unc-like quality?

Here is the definitive ranking of the aunties and uncs of the Seven Kingdoms.

11. Daemon Targaryen

What kind of man sneaks his brother’s underage daughter out of the house and takes her to the Magic City of Westeros? What kind of guy hates his nieces and nephews? Then again, what kind of father would send his daughter to live with a crazy white lady with a moon door?

Daemon Targaryen is unquestionably the worst unc in the Seven Kingdoms.

He began grooming his niece Rhaenyra to become his wife when she was just a teenager and loved hanging out with sex workers. Although he is doing better at saying “I told you so” whenever Rhaenyra comes to him with a question, his answers always begin the same way:

“We could kill my nephews…”

10. Alys Rivers

You should never let your kids spend the night with Alys Rivers.

First of all, have you seen how nasty she keeps Harrenhal? Apparently, she can make bats appear out of nowhere, but she can’t even sweep up a little bit. And, considering what the late Ser Simon Strong and his sons were eating when Aemond arrived, you know Alys can’t cook (Although, she apparently makes some powerful edibles).

The only thing that makes her better than Daemon is her ability to nurse sick people back to health. Although her family tree is pretty hazy, we know that she doesn’t have any nieces or nephews.

They definitely would’ve broken one of those dragon eggs by now.

9. Alicent Hightower

Any discussion of Alicent’s auntie abilities must begin with how she raised her own kids.

Aegon can’t even fathom that he is a terrible person, and Aemond hasn’t shown up to work for weeks. Besides pampering her two oldest sons so much that they killed their playcousins (Jace and Lycerys), she sent her son, Daeron, away with one of the worst cousins of all time, Ormund Hightower.

While it’s understandable why Alicent is mad at Helaena’s pro-life stance, her reason eludes logic. Basically her stance is: “You gotta kill this baby so Rhaenyra won’t kill this baby.” Still, my favorite thing about Auntie Ally is her lack of remorse. Every time Rhaenyra brings up her children’s death, Alicent responds in the whitest way of all time:

“My bad.”

8. Ormund Hightower

Alicent’s cousin is abusive, narcissistic and the kinda crazy. He is using his nephew to gain power by teaching Daeron a version of Hightower supremacy (In white lineage, Daeron is Ormund's cousin, but according to the dictates of Black Cousinology, that's his nephew). But despite being the epitome of evil, at least Ormund isn’t spoiling his nephew. He might be teaching Daeron skills like murdering innocent people, ignoring sexual violence and gentrifying the entire town of Tumbleton, but there’s one thing you have to say about Ormund:

He makes sure his nephew studies those history books.

7. Alyn of Hull

Some might assume that Alyn ranks so low because he was making out with his niece, but that’s just what they do in the Seven Kingdoms. No, Alyn’s unc scale rating is so low because of one thing:

You can’t be an unc without facial hair.

6. Rhaenyra Targaryen

First of all, let’s get this straight:

While Aegon, Aemond and Daeron are technically Rhaenyra’s half-siblings, according to the rules of Black families, those are her nephews. The fact that she has been so reluctant to assassinate them makes Rhaenyra a decent auntie. Plus, she was furious when Daemon murdered her actual nephew, Jaehaerys, and she could’ve easily murdered Helaena’s unborn child, but she hasn’t (so far). In fact, before Helaena tried to escape on the white Underground Railroad, Aunt Rhae-Rhae even allowed Jaehaera to play outside in the Kingswoods.

But Rhaenyra does have some shortcomings. A true auntie would have easily spotted the imposter that Ormund sent to her as Daeron, regardless of how good his dye job was. Now she wants to murder him.

I would argue that Daeron would be more reluctant to usurp his auntie if she showed up to a few birthday parties.

5. Addam of Hull

We first met Addam in Spicetown when he was summoned to fix the alternator on Corlys’ ships. The next time we saw him, he was cooking crab legs, and we know he loves fishing.

Classic unc behavior.

Besides being a good treeshade mechanic and a grill master, Addam is always looking out for his nieces. He is constantly telling his niece Baela to stop hanging out all night and get more sleep. He even took her out to dinner in episode five and promised to rescue her if she ever married a no-good husband. He would probably treat Rhaena the same way if he knew her better.

And unlike his brother, Alyn, Addam refused to change his hair to hide who he is.

He’s a lot like his daddy.

4. Gwayne Hightower

Ser Gwayne is just a decent man.

Although Ser Criston Cole fancies himself as someone who lives by a code of honor, Ser Gwayne is the one who refused to ignore sexual assault. Unlike his cousin Ormund, he knows when his opps are up to something shady. He is willing to protect his nephew and, unlike his father and his cousin, he doesn’t crave power. Gwayne only wants one thing:

To take his horse to Oldtown Road.

3. Larys Strong

I know this one would be controversial, but remember, these rankings have nothing to do with personal ethics or their character as a person. It’s about your qualities as an unc or auntie. And when it comes to Aegon’s adopted uncle, Larys has mastered a skill that might be the most important unc trait of all:

Nobody will lie like an unc.

Besides embellishing stories about how he taught your daddy everything he knows, including how to holla at your mama, an unc will lie to your parents, the police and God himself to protect his nieces and nephews.

That’s Larys Strong.

Like any good unc, Larys taught Aegon how to keep his head down and keep your mouth shut to “keep them white folks off your back.” Anyone would understand why you were depressed about the death of your pet dragon, but only an unc would tell you to stop crying like a bitch. And just as a true unc won’t hesitate to tell you when you’re acting like a punk, Larys told Aegon that he was a terrible king and a terrible man.

Only an unc would do that.

2. Helaena Targaryen

Helaena Targaryen is almost an auntie stereotype.

She gardens. She is very religious. She knits. She is always wearing a housecoat. She dotes over her kids/nieces and nephews. Besides going to church and escaping an assault on the Red Keep, you will never see Helaena in the streets. And, although she might be on the spectrum, Helaena can tell when you’re lying and won’t hesitate to call you out for it.

If there’s one person you should listen to when they say they had a “bad feeling” about something, it’s your auntie who is always seeing “visions.” In Westeros, she’s a seer. But in the Black community, the supernatural abilities that lead and guide Helaena align with an attribute shared by many aunties:

Helaena has the Holy Ghost.

1. Corlys Velaryon

Corlys Velaryon is a living contradiction.

He will show you the highest level of respect, but he will cuss you out and call your children all kinds of names if he feels disrespected. He married a white girl and kept a Black woman as a sidepiece. He will fight for his country, even though he’s not patriotic. He has more money than most of his white friends, but he doesn’t brag about it. He loves when his grandkids come over, but stayed away from his sons for years.

Like many uncles, Corlys has a couple of outside kids that his wife didn’t know about. His unc-centric advice is so good that it helped him become Hand of the King. But the first time Corlys’ white boss disrespected him, he told Rhaenyra to “fuck this job and your bastard kids.” Perhaps the best example of Corlys’ uncledom happened when he whipped his ship through the Gullet between Dragonstone and Driftmark like it was a Cadillac on a one-way street.

Also, he can fight.

But Corlys isn’t perfect.

He tried to hook up his underage daughter Laena with Viserys when she was still in single digits. He was willing to work with the cops. In fact, the only reason Corlys Velaryon is (probably) dead is that he ignored the No. 1 rule of unc-hood

Stay out of white folks’ business.

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I have not spoken to a single Black person who is not suspicious about what happened to Nolan Wells.

Most of us felt the same thing at the same time, and we did not have to compare notes to arrive there.

A conspiracy has to be constructed. Familiarity just arrives. It shows up in the body before the mind catches up, the way you know a song from two notes, the way a smell puts you back in a room you have not stood in for 30 years. Nobody has to be convinced. You already know.

We know this one. We have known it for a long time.

We are recognizing it now, in a season when the anti-Blackness is not whispered anymore. When it comes down from the highest offices in this country with a podium and a seal behind it. Our children are watching. So are the people who decide how hard to look when one of ours turns up dead. There is no vacuum. There never has been one.

What We Recognized

Nolan Xavier Wells was 18. He played wide receiver at Southwest Mississippi Community College. He went out to Horn Island for the Fourth of July with friends, and he was the only Black kid in the group. His friends came back. He did not. Two days later, a park ranger found his body in the water.

Two days after he was last seen, before the autopsy, before toxicology, before some 60 witnesses had been interviewed, the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department said, “no foul play was suspected”.

That is the moment. Not the drowning. The sentence.

I am not saying anyone lied. Investigators have said drowning appears to be the preliminary cause. The independent pathologist the family hired ruled cause and manner undetermined. He does not know. Neither do I. What we recognized was the direction of the reassurance. That statement did not promise a grieving community that every stone would be turned. It told the public there was probably nothing here.

We know what a white child’s disappearance sounds like. Press conferences. Task forces. Federal agents inside of a day. Nobody stands at a podium suggesting everyone relax. That is how it should be, and every family in this country deserves it. Nolan did not get it. Not a plot. A difference in default, which is a far more ordinary thing and a far more permanent one.

This Is Mississippi

We cannot pretend the ground under this case is neutral ground. Mississippi carries the highest documented lynching count in America, an estimated 581 people, according to the Equal Justice Initiative. Emmett Till was 14, and the men who killed him were acquitted and then sold the story of how they did it.

My father was 11 years old and living in Mississippi when they killed Emmett Till. It changed his life. He never fully felt safe in his home state again. He vowed never to raise his children there, and once he left, he never went back. He died in Arizona in 2023.

Here is what actually protected those killers. Not the violence. The cleanup.

A sheriff who did not look hard. A coroner who wrote what was convenient. A prosecutor who did not press. A grand jury that did not indict. A newspaper that called it a tragedy and turned the page. The killing was the crime. The cleanup was the system.

The cleanup is what survived, because racism is not a feeling. It is a power structure. It does not run on sentiment. It runs on an order of value set long before any of those men showed up for work, and in that order, the protection of white people sits above the life of a Black child.

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Every summer, educators attend conferences, training sessions and workshops focused on the newest developments and research in their fields. Some teachers attend because they are genuinely interested in being better educators. Some only go because their school systems require teachers to take a certain number of continuing education classes to maintain their teaching certificate or their employment.

In many cases, school districts, individual schools or the state education department actually foots the bill for the registration fees, travel and expenses associated with these conferences. In fact, some states funded education conferences specifically for this purpose. The practice was never controversial; everyone agreed that students benefit from teachers constantly expanding their knowledge.

Until Black kids started benefiting.

When states began passing laws banning the white definition of “critical race theory,” these events were the perfect scapegoats. Apparently, the “woke” teachers from all around the country were dedicating their summers to making Thomas Jefferson look bad. They were destroying the legacy of the greatest white icons right under our noses. Even worse, they were doing it with white people’s tax dollars. Something had to be done!

In 2021, right-wing “anti-woke” agitators began targeting schools, attendees and the institutions that sponsored continuing education conferences focused on Black history and education. And because anything Black could be considered CRT under the intentionally hazy legislation, many public education systems used the new anti-Black laws as an excuse to back away from their responsibility to Black students. Their teachers could still attend; they just had to pay their own way. Their districts banned the curricula and the praxis they learned from their peers. In some cases, the very conferences themselves were deemed illegal.

Slowly, many of these events evaporated into thin air.

This is the danger of this current white nonsense movement. They’re not just targeting museums, textbooks and curricula; they’re trying to kill Black history from the source. Fortunately, there are thousands of teachers and hundreds of institutions that are willing to resist this latest development in white nonsense.

That’s why ContrabandCamp decided to take the Wake-Up Call regulars on a field trip.

Each year, hundreds of teachers convene at the University of Buffalo for the Teaching Black History Conference. As the signature event of the university’s Center for K-12 Black History and Racial Literacy Education, the conference gives educators the opportunity to learn the best curricular and instructional practices surrounding Black history education. Scholars and professors also have the opportunity to share their experience and research with people who are in the classroom.

Join me as I give the keynote speech entitled, “Everything I Know About Black History I Learned From Cookie Monster.”

Thank you, , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Today’s Reading List

South Carolina’s Critical Race War Part 2: How to Be a Pro Racist by Michael Harriot

Trump Wants to Silence His Critics. Colleges, Nonprofits and Corporations are Doing It For Him by Michael Harriot

‘I’m not afraid’: after Buffalo racist attack, Black residents remain unbowed by terror by Michael Harriot

Punished for Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal by Bettina Love

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There are very few miseries I have not suffered.

I have spooned cereal and water into my mouth while sitting in a home without power. I have been unjustly arrested while a Black police officer I considered a friend pretended I f a stranger. I have stood over the still-warm corpse of my sister, staring silently into the bullet hole in her face…

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When one pauses to examine the internal forces that have developed the Negro’s conscienceness and dignity, when one thinks of the forces that have cemented the Negro community, one immediately thinks of the Negro Press...It is one major voice of the conscience of our nation.

The 205 journals of Negro opinions say every day to the American people: “The s…

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ESPN recently announced several layoffs of prominent analysts and commentators in what is being sold as some sort of restructuring. Among the layoffs are folks of note like Cam Newton, Bart Scott and Ryan Clark. While I’m not sure where Scott will go, Newton will be fine; he’s got his own show, and while his stint at BET was cut short, Cam is enough of a personality that I imagine this move won’t be a thing that puts him into the background.

Ryan Clark, though, is interesting for a few reasons. He’s built up enough cachet and credibility where not being on ESPN and part of its football and sports culture isn’t great for his brand, but he can do the same thing on his own podcast, The Pivot, which he co-hosts with Channing Crowder and Fred Taylor. While it’s not ESPN, ESPN also isn’t The Pivot, which allows its hosts to have convos in ways ESPN would never touch. Clark, at this point, has also become something of a social media phenom. His takes, especially when something of notable cultural interest happens, travel far and wide all over social media. There’s a reason he managed to secure a more than $2 million annual deal at ESPN, even if it’s come to an end.

Which makes his termination all the more disrespectful. Getting let go from ESPN amidst several layoffs isn’t the part that’s disrespectful; he’ll be fine, and frankly, he might be able to do better. But Clark was fired while he was ON-AIR. ESPN’s company line was that it intended to announce his layoff with the rest of the announcements that happened on Tuesday, but for fear of him learning via social media instead of being told “face-to-face,” he was told of his termination on Monday while he was taping NFL Live.

For a person as ballyhoo’d as Clark, getting fired mid-show is up there with Craig famously getting fired on his day off on Friday. Except, Friday is fiction, a movie whose central premise is the pure stupidity of circumstances that led to the firing and the day that followed. Clark lives in the real world where real people came to the conclusion that this was the best way to relieve one of their highest-paid and most famous talents on the network of their work duties.

ESPN ought to be ashamed of itself. I’m pissed for him. If I were Clark, I’d go on The Pivot and tell them about themselves one good time and then follow the Bill Simmons blueprint of talking shit about them every so often in coy, IYKYK ways.

All that aside, Clark’s termination and the way he was let go got me thinking about just how disrespectful it was. It can’t be the most disrespectful way to be fired, but it’s surely not on the lower end of that scale. In fact, the only thing that I can think of that is more disrespectful is being fired live, on-air, during an actual segment where another co-host shares the knowledge. To wit, it seems he got the news mid-show, presumably from his agent or somebody at ESPN, and just never returned. It felt disrespectful enough to result in some furniture moving, though Clark has moved no furniture in the wake of his termination, thus far. He has instead opted for the canned social media response when you’re kind of already rich by showing how he’s back to it in the gym...which kind of doubles as an ad for Planet Fitness?

Either way, here are some other ways to be terminated that would absolutely piss me off.

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Why are Black people automatically programmed to clap on the two and four? Who fed Lawry’s Seasoned Salt into the Black algorithm? Nearly half of the trans-Atlantic trafficking system’s human chattel came from sub-equatorial Africa, where the North Star is invisible. So how did the Underground Railroad’s GPS system know to “follow the drinking gourd”?

Well, if you have ever tapped into the large language model known as African American Vernacular English, you already know the answer.

We been using AI.

All Black people are born with a subscription to an intuitive database known as “ancestral information.” We began seeding our cloud-based data centers with the lessons passed down from our ancestors long before white girls like Alexa, Siri and Gemini developed a way to monetize white nonsense. These instincts are why HBCUs don’t offer Spades seminars. It’s why we don’t need electric slide lessons to learn how to dance on beat (technically, the Nupes’ shoulder shimmy is part of the Kappa Alpha Psi plugin). In fact, the automatic updates to the Black operating system are why every Black leader—from W.E.B. Du Bois and Frederick Douglass to Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X—has historically rejected capitalism.

For some reason, we can’t get this technology to work on white people.

We first made it available in 1865, but by 1876, it caused a glitch called Jim Crow. Our civil rights software resulted in the assassination of Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers and Malcolm X. After eight years of beta testing under Barack Obama and four years of the whitest president ever, we assumed that we’d ironed out all the kinks just in time for the first Black woman president.

Oh, well.

But now there’s BlackGPT^®©TM

Our latest update—Blacks Leveraging Ancestral and Cultural Knowledge for Guidance, Perspective & Truth (BlackGPT)—combines the power of the internet, 500 years of the collective Black lived experience and recent advancements in wypipology in one all-inclusive, artificially intelligent large language model. After watching HBO’s House of the Dragon, our engineers realized there was a way to safely test BlackGPT without inadvertently sparking the kind of white backlash that caused segregation, massive resistance and a pedophile president.

Think about it: The George R.R. Martin Cinematic Universe might be the only place with more white nonsense than America. Plus, Rhaenyra Targaryen’s all-white Small Council has been falling apart ever since Corlys Velaryon abdicated his position as Hand of the Queen. That’s where we came in. After the fifth episode of season three, we gave Rhaenyra 24 hours with BlackGPT to see if it could solve the Seven Kingdoms’ most pressing problems.

Here are her prompts and her answers:

How do I address the civil unrest and the violent attacks on the Gold Cloaks without increasing crime?

Crime is a socioeconomic phenomenon, and you’re going through a recession.

The residents of Flea Bottom have dealt with police brutality, income inequality and food insecurity for years. But you know where there’s also a lot of violence, poverty and crime?

The Red Keep.

The city will always be vulnerable to civil unrest until you answer the following questions

• Did the poor, impoverished masses steal the gold from the Seven Kingdoms?

• Who owns the dragons that are eating all the meat in Westeros?

• Did crime, sexual assault and violence decrease after you flooded Flea Bottom with gold cloaks or did it increase?

• Whose fault is it that the city is overpoliced by poorly trained, over-militarized law enforcement officers who are immune to the consequences of their actions?

The people of Westeros will never be satisfied as long as the Westerosian is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. And if your law enforcement officers don’t enforce the law, prevent crime or even make the streets safe, then the answer is clear:

Abolish the Gold Cloaks.

Thankfully, someone is doing it for you.

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As the Seven Kingdoms gears up for what the Westeros Post calls “the most consequential primaries since the days of the First Men,” many people are still contemplating their decisions.

Still, if you squint, it looks exactly like a midterm: an unpopular incumbent nobody quite trusts, a base more energized by grievance than actual policy, and a challenger everyone agrees is “more qualified” but who somehow still can’t close the deal. The billionaire oligarchs are trying to influence the outcome of the election. The smallfolk are facing a recession, and the voters in the Driftwood are concerned about gerrymandering.

But if you are still trying to decide which candidate best fits your political agenda, ContrabandCamp’s election team is here to help.

Here are the candidates running for the Iron Throne in the Seven Kingdoms’ primaries.

Black Party

1. Rhaenyra “Hillary” Targaryen

Campaign slogan: “I’m with her (dragons).”

Campaign platform: While Rhaenyra’s claim to the Iron Throne is based on her status as the oldest trueborn child of King Viserys I Targaryen, she has campaigned on a populist message to the smallfolk that includes

• Economic policy: Her Westeros Rescue Plan would fight income inequality and cure the budget deficit by taxing the rich.

• Foreign policy: Rhaenyra would focus on “peace through strength” by developing a new generation of pilots at Dragonriders Equity Institute (DEI).

• Domestic Policy: Taxing the rich; reparations.

Experience: Although she interned as a cupbearer during her father’s administration, most of Rhaenyra’s experience comes from a brief stint as junior adviser on her father’s Small Council. She also served one tumultuous term as governor of Dragonstone.

Why she could win: Her list of high-profile endorsers includes establishment party leaders like former President Viserys I Targaryen, Driftmark Gov. Corlys Velaryon and Maester Orwyle “Cory” Booker. While support for reparations is low among the most powerful houses of the Seven Kingdoms, recent polls show that 73.3% of voters who identify as “smallfolk” support her commitment to fighting income inequality by taxing the rich.

She also has a bunch of dragons.

Why she could lose: Although she has enjoyed the support of the Black Party’s establishment leaders, her appointment of Democratic Socialist Mysaria Mamdani has alienated many of her corporate donors. Her campaign has also received criticism for using the gold cloaks to attack peaceful protesters in the inner city. Economic analysts point to a recent report from the Master of Coins, noting that an impending recession could override many voters' concerns.

Also, she’s a girl.

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“What he is in American politics is what, in the aquatic world, would be a pilot fish: a smaller fish that hovers around a larger predator, like a shark, living off of its detritus. That’s Lindsey. And when he swam around the McCain shark, broadly viewed as a virtuous and good shark, Lindsey took on the patina of virtue. But wherever the apex shark is, …

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Nikole Hannah-Jones is headed back to Iowa to host an African American Read-In event, but she won’t be coming alone. The 1619 Project author is bringing three of the most frequently banned young adult authors in the country as book bans surge in the state.

Jason Reynolds, Ang…

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If Martin Luther King Jr. was a communist, then how did he become a billionaire?

Growing up, I assumed MLK was the richest Black man who ever lived. According to my calculations, he earned most of his fortune from his lucrative chain of Black-owned funeral franchises (which was obviously why his face was on 73% of church fans). Plus, every Black household had a portrait of King with two of the wealthiest nepo babies in history—John F. Kennedy Jr. and Jesus (whose father was rich in houses and land). The velvet painting endorsement deal had to be at least eight figures.

It turns out, I was wrong about MLK’s embalming empire and his church endorsement deal. Although King believed that “capitalism has outlived its usefulness,” he regularly advocated for the support of “negro-owned banks.” In his last public address, King explained that supporting Black-owned businesses was the first step on the path to economic independence.

But what are the greatest Black-owned businesses of all time?

While we could argue forever about whether Motown is more important than the Jordan brand, we wanted to rank the kinds of Black-owned businesses. To create our list, we used the following criteria:

• Historical impact: Even if the industry or business no longer exists, how important was it at the time it existed?

• Cultural impact: Did the industry fill a need that was missing in Black communities?

• Economic impact: Rather than hoarding profit, how did Black people benefit economically and financially?

• Legacy: How are the companies and the individual members remembered today?

While we included unlicensed businesses and underground operations, for obvious reasons, we excluded criminal enterprises and lone hustlers like the guy who sells bootleg DVDs at barbershop.

The resulting list is not about money; it shows something more.

Not only have Black-owned businesses been a staple of Black communities since Black communities existed, but history is also replete with examples of Black people who achieved financial and economic success without sacrificing their values or exploiting their communities. In fact, Black-owned businesses actually disprove the myth that adopting the predatory, ruthless ways of capitalism is the only way to achieve what white people call “The American Dream.”

Here are a few people who did it right.

10. Candy Ladies

Unlike bodega owners, corner-store proprietors and traveling Jolly Rancher salesmen, candy ladies don’t operate out of storefronts. Also known as “residential retailers,” the Institute for Domestic Executives, Candy Ladies and Residential Entrepreneurs (I DECLARE) defines a candy lady as anyone who sells more than five packs of Now & Laters in the same home where they live. And, contrary to popular belief, loose-leaf Oreos, Chico Sticks and Mike & Ike cookies account for less than 22% of candy lady sales. The real profit margin comes from mass-producing frozen Kool-Aid cups, loosie cigarettes and homemade cakes and pies.

While this industry has traditionally been dominated by usher board members, Black men have made a significant impact in the candy lady industry. In fact, Middleton Tobacco recently settled a class-action lawsuit with the International Brotherhood of Candymen (no relation to the Sammy Davis Jr. song) over the theft of their idea to sell individual Black & Milds.

Candy ladies were doing it first.

Greatest Candy Lady of All Time: The Saxton Contraband Camp Store

During the Civil War, white Union soldiers discovered their superiors were paying a Black woman who lived in the contraband camp located in Beaufort, S.C. Instead of raising a fuss, she renounced the Army’s under-the-table stipend. Instead, she went “to her little cabin, and made about fifty pies, a great quantity of gingerbread, and two casks of root beer.” For the remainder of the Civil War, the sole proprietor made money by selling her products to her fellow officers. And because she was self-employed, the Combahee Ferry Raid was technically sponsored by one of the most famous candy ladies of all time:

Harriet Tubman.

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Editor’s Note: This is the final part of the three-part series, “We Got Receipts,” which explains why Black people have a rightful claim to reparations. Part one explored how Black bodies were monetized during slavery. Part two revealed how Black landowners had their property seized through either violence or trickery, often aided by the U.S. government. Today’s story spotlights how Black genius was denied, whitewashed, monetized and then celebrated as simply “American.”

America is cosplaying—cosplaying as a nation of protected freedoms and equal opportunity, and it just spent half a year throwing itself a 250th birthday party to prove it. I did not celebrate. A lot of us did not. How do you celebrate freedom in a year when so much of what the Constitution promised is being eroded in real time, when rights people bled for are being stripped away?

So millions of us made a different choice. We turned toward celebrating ourselves and our own history instead. Our family, our friends, our joy, which is its own kind of resistance. And when I turned toward my own people, I saw the thing this country has spent 250 years trying not to admit.

Those of us with memory, with a grip on the actual history of this country, are clear-eyed. No number of birthday parties changes the one fact this nation works hardest to bury: much of its progress was driven by the very people it tried to silence, destroy, discriminate against and diminish.

Diversity was never the burden for this nation. It has been the engine. So understand what the attack on Black innovation actually is. It is not simply that they dislike us. It is a strategy of theft. Distort our contributions, erase our names from them, and you can justify taking the intellectual property outright. Frame Black people as inferior, strip away the history that would prove otherwise, and you have manufactured a false story of white superiority. There is no such thing. There never was.

Let me show you what I mean. Let me start with a man named Thomas Fuller.

They stole him from West Africa when he was 14, somewhere between what we now call Liberia and Benin, and sold him to a farm in Virginia in 1724. He never learned to read or write. He was never given a single day of schooling in this country. He worked that farm as a field slave his whole life, until he died at 80. And Thomas Fuller could do things with numbers that almost no living person could do.

Ask him how many seconds a man who had lived 70 years, 17 days and 12 to hours, and he would tell you in about a minute and a half: 2,210,500,800. When one of the educated white men working it out on paper told him he was wrong, that the number was too big, Fuller stopped him. You forgot the leap years, he said. He was right. The man with the pen was wrong.

Here is what the scholars understand now. Fuller could not have learned that here, because they gave him nothing here. He carried it across the water. He came from West African mathematical traditions, whole systems of number and calculation, and he was already a mathematician the day they put him in chains. They did not buy a body that happened to be good at sums. They bought a human being with a mind and reduced it to a body. They knew he was more than a body. His owners refused good money, again and again, to sell him because they understood the value of his mind in service to them. His mind could run every part of their farm. A man they told the world was mindless was quietly doing the thinking that made them rich.

Now, here is the part I need you to sit with, because Thomas Fuller was not a miracle. He was a model. The genius was there, carried in the person, already whole. This country extracted it, put it to work and took the profit. Then they labeled him inferior. Mindless. Just a field hand. And that label was not ignorance. It was strategy. Calling him mindless is the exact thing that allowed them to use his mind for free and never credit it, never pay for it, never admit it was there. The lie about our inferiority was never a mistake this country made about our intelligence. It was the cover story for stealing it.

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Harry didn’t know a lot about white people.

Born in current-day Gambia around 1740, he lost his birth name when he was sold as a war captive to human traffickers. He still didn’t have a last name when he was purchased by an American real estate investor who needed bodies to literally drain a swamp. When that startup failed, FirstNameHarry was transported back to the 8,000-acre estate of his white enslaver. As one of more than 300 people enslaved at a forced labor camp about half as large as Washington, D.C., the surnameless servant still didn’t get the opportunity to learn much about white people.

But Harry knew freedom.

The enslaved people who worked alongside him were constantly emancipating themselves, so naturally, Harry shot his shot. On June 10, 1771, Mr. NoLastName’s enslaver paid a slave catcher the equivalent of $528 in today’s money to “recover” Harry, who had fled to New York. But Harry didn’t stop trying to get free.

Four years later, when Virginia’s Royal Governor Lord Dunmore offered to formally emancipate “Negroes” willing to bear arms for the British crown against the insurrectionists who had declared their independence, Harry disappeared again and joined Lord Dunmore’s Ethiopian Regiment. Later serving with the Black Pioneers, Harry was one of 3,000 Black Loyalists who were evacuated to Nova Scotia after the Revolutionary War.

After immigrating to Sierra Leone, Harry led a revolt against the British for taxation without representation. He was one of two leaders who were banished from the settlement for writing their own declaration of independence.

Harry Washington adopted George Washington’s last name after he freed himself. Harry left America before July 4, 1776, so Washington was not the name of a president. As a Loyalist soldier, Harry never served under “General Washington.” In fact, Harry had never met anyone named “Washington” who fought for his liberty or his independence. Even though Harry Washington didn’t know a lot about white people, his last name explains everything he knew about America’s first president and the “Father of Our Country.”

George Washington was Harry’s enslaver.

This story is about Barack Obama.

.

During a recent interview with MSNBCNOWThat’sWhatICallWhiteNews, the former president (the Black one) explained why it’s impossible to celebrate America’s 250th birthday without acknowledging slavery.

“Sometimes we get confused in thinking that these two stories are completely separate,” Obama Blacksplained. “They’re intertwined…which is why it’s possible for me to be a great admirer of George Washington and also acknowledge he was a slaveholder, and that does not negate his greatness.”

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Here’s the DM:

I’m gonna keep this short and sweet. You suck. You are an embarrassment to African-Americans. You’re a disingenuous, racist, insincere, unfunny boorish douche of a man. Here’s an idea for you and the rest of the r-tards in the democrats. Maybe whites aren’t voting Republican because they hate brown people; maybe they’re doing it because they don’t want to give power to a party that seems intent on relentlessly tearing them down for some perverse sense of ‘equality’ and ‘diversity’ that looks a lot like ‘less white people’.

Finally, the email:

Hi,

I would consider myself a moderate and enjoy a lot of your writing but sometimes I feel like you go out of your way to insult white people. I know you aren’t admonishing all white people, but this is about something else.

You always ask how black people making jokes about white people has any effect or how it makes non-racist whites turn against blacks and I thought of a good example.

Have you ever thought about your effect on voters?

I have numerous friends who are tired of being called racist at every turn or being made fun of. They don’t turn racist, but they are more likely to listen to stuff like Fox News and stuff like that, where they don’t have to worry about being insulted, which is an echo chamber of “fake news.” They see people beinefitting [sic] from affirmative action and whether it’s right or not, they become bitter that they don’t get the same opportunity. I think things like Permit Patty and names like Becky is going to cause even more white women to vote Republican in the midtersm [sic]

One great example is the criticism of Rebel Wilson. I’m not saying she was right to block people but it is human nature to fight back or disconnect when you are criticized.

I’m not one to tell people how to express themselves, but the divisive rhetoric and identity politics can have consequenses [sic] and it is not fair to point to one side and not the other.

Looking back, they were all correct.

The results of the election might have had something to do with white people’s aversion to being vilified in the media.

Let’s imagine that they are correct, that the constant vilification of white people made them angry enough to support blatant racists like Donald Trump. Let’s even accept your premise that anti-white rhetoric pushes white people toward the right.

You better make sure you lock your doors.

If DEI, a smattering of white jokes and hearing what Black people honestly think of racism is enough to send white people to the side of white supremacists, imagine what Black people have been considering in their heads for four centuries.

While covering the death of Mike Brown, I was standing on a street corner in Ferguson, Mo., and a brother from Jamaica asked, “Why y’all don’t just start chopping necks?” The only logical response I could muster was: “Amnesia.”

You’d better thank sweet Jesus for Black people’s amnesia. Praise your almighty white god for gifting Black people the superpower of forgetfulness.

If the word “wypipo” is enough to send wypipo into a tailspin, imagine a president erasing all the progress your ancestors bled, marched and died to give America. If you are worried about affirmative action, Mexicans and DEI taking your jobs, imagine how all those Black people felt during Jim Crow. Imagine how it felt watching mediocre white kids attend luxurious K-12 schools and prestigious colleges funded by the taxes of Black parents whose kids were banned from attending the institutions they paid for.

Imagine policies that snatched your children from your arms and put them in pens after you paid into a tax system that destroyed your family. Imagine your heart skipped a beat every time you saw blue lights or an ICE officer’s badge.

And imagine, every day, walking around in a diamond-encrusted, gold-plated land of freedom and opportunity that laid out the red carpet for everyone except the people who looked like you.

Now imagine knowing that the people who raped your grandmothers and lynched your grandfathers and stole your votes had the same plans for your children and your grandchildren.

Yet, no machetes.

Not one single racial massacre can be attributed to a Black mob. No HBCUs have ever had a policy banning white people. We helped white women gain the right to vote. We fought in wars that white people started. We fought for our rights and yours. There is not a single progressive movement in the history of America—from gun violence to Vietnam to women’s right to choose—that did not have Black people standing on the front lines.

The inverse has never, ever, ever, ever happened.

Not with abolition. Not with voting rights. Not with lynching. Not with Jim Crow. Not now. Not ever.

The vast majority of white people have never joined a movement for racial justice, equality or equal rights.

You should thank your evangelical lord and savior that Black people are incapable of keeping that same energy. When you consider the animus and privilege that white people have demonstrated every single day of this country’s existence, the fact that Black Americans have never adopted the ways of white folk is one of the most remarkable things in the history of civilization.

You should write hallelujah hymns to our inability to recollect. The fact that we are not armed with machetes and the justifiable desire to chop throats is a blessing unto this nation. You should be grateful to the Most High that we are, unequivocally, without a doubt, better than you.

Well…not all Black people.

I’m not.

I truly don’t believe that most white people will ever change. Whether 59% of white people voted for Trump out of spite, ignorance or genuine “economic anxiety,” they still proved my hypothesis. But, as I explained to the Jamaican guy in Ferguson, his machete-based solution is something white people would do.

If Black people had an iota of the thin-skinned fragility or the hateful spite that white people seem to have, this entire motherfucking country would be a pile of smoldering ashes.

And now it is.

And we both know exactly who did it.

…Not all white people.

Today’s Reading List:

• Polio’s Hidden Figures in Tuskegee by Kate Silver

• How to Be a Better White Person in 2020 by Michael Harriot

• The Privilege of White Individuality by Michael Harriot

A few years ago, while covering a story on Republican New Hampshire legislator Werner Horn, I summoned the best and brightest scholars that America had to offer.

Horn, who represents his 95.9% white hometown in his state’s House of Representatives, confounded people who actually…

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Except on Blacksplained.

Each week, host Michael Harriot will pick one question about history, politics, science, culture or anything else worth talking about. But instead of giving his opinion or sharing his feelings on …

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While we have heard much about Black maternal mortality and the dismal disparity that Black women are more likely to die in childbirth than all other groups in this country, I ask you to consider that this fact is just one thread to pull on the full picture of what is happening with Black women and the womb.

In this country, B…

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On Feb. 24, 1865, The Liberator published a letter from a white Union Army officer describing the bravest, handsomest warrior he had ever met:

…the only question I ever hear debated among the [white] officers is, whether [Black soldiers] are equal or superior to whites. I have never heard it suggested that they were inferior. …They tell me that [Prince Rivers] was once allowed to present a petition to the Governor of South Carolina in behalf of slaves, for the redress of certain grievances; and that a placard, offering two thousand dollars for his recapture, is still to be seen by the wayside between here and Charleston. He was a sergeant in the old "Hunter Regiment”… There is not a white officer in this regiment who has more administrative ability, or more absolute authority over the men. ... He is jet-black, or rather, I should say, wine-black; his complexion, like that of others of my darkest men, having a sort of rich, clear depth, without a trace of sootiness, and to my eye very handsome. His features are tolerably regular and full of command, and his figure superior to that of any of our white officers, being six feet high, perfectly proportioned, and of apparently inexhaustible strength and activity. His gait is like a panther’s; I never saw such a tread. …No anti-slavery novel has described a man of such marked ability. He makes Toussaint perfectly intelligible; and if there should ever be a black monarchy in South Carolina, he will be its king.

Prince Rivers was Him.

Born in a Beaufort, S.C., forced labor camp in 1824, Rivers taught himself to read at a young age. When his enslaver moved his entire portfolio of human chattel to Edgefield, S.C., to avoid the threat of emancipation, Rivers stole his master’s best horse and fled to the Saxton Contraband Camp in Beaufort. There, he joined South Carolina’s 1st Volunteers, a team of Gullah warriors who had been declared free by Union General David Hunter. Lincoln disbanded the unit after learning of the general’s “emancipation proclamation,” but Hunter secretly kept 100 of the best fighters. “Hunter’s Regiment” included Rivers, future S.C. Secretary of State Henry Hayne and a spy named Harriet Tubman.

When Lincoln realized the error of his decision, Hunter’s Regiment became part of the U.S. Army’s 33rd U.S. Colored Troops, and Rivers was the de facto leader. When Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, newspapers published illustrations of white officers giving the regimental flag to Rivers. Rivers’ freedom papers appeared in the New York Times.

During his time in the 33rd, Rivers collected money for a real estate fund to purchase property abandoned by whites slave owners. In 1863, he gave a speech telling his fellow soldiers what he intended to do with the money

“My brethren, I don’t intend to lay down my gun till the war is done and our brethren all get their freedom,” he explained. “And then, if I be alive, I will come home and enjoy my family and my land. We mens, fifty of us in the 1st S.C. have got $1,000 for land, and I won’t say how much more, but if any man bids against us, he will find we got another dollar more. So just remember that.”

After the race war, he returned to the county where he emancipated himself from slavery and purchased land in Hamburg, S.C.—an abandoned town in Edgefield County that was built “for the purpose of furnishing slaves to the planters of Georgia.” In 1868, he represented the county in South Carolina’s constitutional convention. And in 1871, months after the passage of the 15th Amendment, Rivers and six Black state representatives separated Hamburg from Edgefield County, founding Aiken County.

Not only did the residents send him to represent the county he founded in the South Carolina legislature, but Congressman Rivers also served as the mayor of Hamburg, Aiken County Coroner, Justice of the Peace and district registrar.

Prince Rivers was one of the greatest men America has ever produced. He accomplished something that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and all of the Founding Fathers combined could not do. He was not just a free Black man living in America. He freed himself.

And on July 4, 1876, one of the greatest men America had ever produced prepared to celebrate something America had never seen…

A democracy.

His democracy.

Is America a Democracy?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

— The Declaration of Independence

Some people (including the least educated member of Congress) love to claim that “America is a Constitutional Republic, not a Democracy.”

Those people are wrong.

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Will Rhaenyra appoint Zohran Mamdani as Hand of the King? Should Ketanji Brown Jackson replace the recently “retired” Lord Jasper Wylde as chief justice of the Westeros Supreme Court? Will billionaires relocate to the Free Cities rather than pay their fair share in taxes? Can the new administration “drain the swamp” of all the ascension deniers inside the government?

These are just a few of the themes explored on this week’s episode of the world’s most popular Sunday political show, “House of the Dragon.”

Titled “Rhaenyra Triumphant,” the third episode of season three offered an intimate, behind-the-scenes look at the problems facing the Iron Throne’s newest caretaker. To get a more objective picture of the political landscape in the Seven Kingdoms, ContrabandCamp asked a diverse group of political leaders and grassroots activists to share their thoughts on Rhaenyra’s first few days in office.

Alicent Hightower, DNC political strategist

“Integrity, morals and ethics.

Rhaenyra can’t be an effective ruler if she believes in that bullshit.”

– Alicent Hightower-Targaryen, president and CEO of Hightower Consultants, LLC

Like her father and former Hand of the King, Otto Hightower, the dowager queen has served under multiple administrations, each with its own political philosophy. Even though she is a registered Democrat and considers herself a feminist, Alicent believes in the No. 1 rule of Carville-Clinton-era politics:

Win at all costs.

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Black America was at a crossroads.

In 1972, 10,000 Black people convened in Gary, Indiana for the National Black Political Convention. The purpose of the convention was to develop a unified National Black Agenda amid calls for Black political independence. This was a time of great promise for the Black community—with the passage of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Acts after years of protest—but also crisis in light of the assassination of Black leaders such as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., and the schism between the civil rights and Black Power movements.

The Gary Declaration at the 1972 National Black Political Convention proclaimed that “all truly Black politics must begin from this truth: The American system does not work for the masses of our people, and it cannot be made to work without radical fundamental change,” adding that Black people must accept the challenge of “redefining the functions and operations of all levels of American government, for the existing governing structures…are obsolescent. That is part of the reason why nothing works and why corruption rages throughout public life. For white politics seeks not to serve but to dominate and manipulate.”

The Gary Declaration posed a challenge to Black America: “Will we believe the truth that history presses into our face—or will we, too, try to hide? Will the small favors some of us have received blind us to the larger sufferings of our people, or open our eyes to the testimony of our history in America?”

If one of us is getting the bag, that doesn’t mean we all benefit. Our community must be discerning, demand transparency and responsibility from those who act in our name and ask how—and if—it liberates Black people.

We must lean into the Black radical tradition and advance policies that redistribute wealth and power in America, reform the government and replace racially oppressive, economically exploitative institutions that are rooted in chattel slavery and foundational to America. Black people must reject two-faced, compromised leadership and cultivate leaders who are accountable only to the community rather than white capitalists, oligarchs and moderates.

Black power is again at a crossroads.

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